none the new avatar and the destiny of the soul the findings of natural science reduced to practical studies in psychology by jirah d. buck, m.d. author of "mystic masonry," "a study of man," "christos," "the genius of freemasonry," "constructive psychology," "the lost word found," "browning's paracelsus," and other mss. second edition indo-american book company (not inc.) south boulevard chicago ill. copyright stewart & kidd co. entered at stationers' hall, london, england all rights reserved to the great friends the helpers--visible and invisible--whose deepest motive and highest aim are to encourage, uplift, and inspire those who need; that all, at last, may stand together in the midst of the radiant splendor of eternal truth contents foreword xi introduction xvii section one studies in psychology i. classification of faculties, capacities, and powers ii. empirical and scientific evidence iii. mediumship, seership, and hypnosis iv. the measure of values v. summary and conclusions vi. the cross in religion and the crux in science with the great work in america vii. the modulus of nature and the theorem of psychology section two the new avatar of natural science viii. our indebtedness to ancient india ix. hero worship and folklore x. corroborative evidence xi. conceptions and portents of an avatar xii. portents of the present time xiii. the separable soul in folklore xiv. from confusion to construction xv. the science of psychology as a knowledge of the human soul xvi. the new avatar notes foreword the reader who is willing to give the following pages a careful reading, and a courteous hearing, is entitled to know the basis of study, observation or experience from which the suggestions, inferences and conclusions proceed, in order that he may fairly estimate their value. at the age of seventy-two, my egotism is at least softened by the discovery of the many things i do not know; and my dogmatism, so far as it ever existed, is equally relaxed by the realization that it is a bar to light and knowledge, which rest so largely on demonstration. for more than forty-five years i have been engaged in the active practice of medicine with consultations extending over three states. for an equal length of time i have lectured in medical colleges, fifteen years on the subject of physiology, an equal number on therapeutics (including pathology and histology), and for the last fifteen years on psychology, mental and nervous diseases, and all this time with a large college clinic from the poorer classes. from first to last, my "study of medicine" has been generically and specifically a "study of man," physical, mental, ethical, and psychical. outside of medicine as a "calling" or a "profession" my real interest has been to unravel the nature of man, grasp the problem of human life, and to apprehend the nature, laws, and destiny of the human soul. my library covers a rather continuous thread from , and the time of paracelsus, to profs. james, ladd, lombroso, sir oliver lodge, and münsterberg. my reading dips into the sacred books of the east, the records of the past, and particularly the psychic phenomena of different ages, finding at last the constructive theorem clearer than anywhere else in the "school of natural science," from the fact that it is demonstrably cognizant of all preceding work, and definitely conforms to the strict demands of science--physical, mental, ethical, psychical and spiritual, and proves to be the very thing for which i have searched for nearly half a century. the foregoing statements are not made to force credulity nor to assume authority. they simply mean--this is how, and where, and how long, i have been searching, largely, also at the bedside of the sick, the deranged and the dying; from the first breath of the little one that comes-- "out from the shore of the great unknown weeping and wailing and all alone," to the death-damp and the last sigh of the aged; in one case at nearly one hundred and four years. once i found an old lady of eighty, dying. the "death-damp" on her brow; the "death-rattle" in her throat; the chin dropped, and no pulse at the wrist. she had a wayward son who had been promised due notice of any change, and he had been sent for. speaking distinctly in her ear _i called her back_; the motive being the grief of her son at not bidding each other good-bye. the response was immediate. the "rattle" in her throat ceased. the pulse promptly returned. the mouth closed. then i said--"open your eyes," which she promptly did with a gentle smile. "you are not going to do it," i said. "no," she replied. the son soon came in and received his mother's caress and blessing. at the same hour on the following day, she passed peacefully to the beyond, dying of old age. had it been a "crisis" in disease, she might have recovered. as a psychic phenomenon i never saw anything just like it. had i before doubted the existence of a "separable soul," it would have ended all doubt. from the magnetic border of the "great divide" _with a sufficient motive_, i literally "called her back." the evidence of the concreteness, and wholeness and self-awareness of the individual intelligence, functioning in and through, and separable from the physical body, was complete. no other explanation or conclusion would fit or cover the case at all. had i been clairvoyant and able to _see_ the entity, it would have been another link in a chain whose sequence pointed all one way. but even here i was not without a witness. in another case, an old lady was dying. a "platform lecturer" (mediumistic) was present and described, incidentally, what she saw. she was a good, clean, ignorant woman and only "controlled" on the platform. she described a vapor emanating from the body, as the "death-damp" increased, and outer "awareness" failed. this vapor seemed to adhere together until it stood near the head, rounded and nearly reaching the ceiling. then the "spirit form" passed out from the top of the head, was inclosed in the ball of "vapor," and together they "floated away." i found that she had never heard of the "auric-egg" nor read a page of the old eastern philosophy, and yet she had accurately described, step by step, what the masters for ages declare occurs at death. science is the careful observation, demonstration and record of facts, their orderly grouping or classification, and the logical and sequential conclusions resulting therefrom. it is not a matter of opinion and belief, nor dogma and denial, no matter how large, respectable, and sincere may be the army of the dogmatists. take these suggestions and conclusions--my friend--for what you think them worth, since now you know how far they have grown from experience and the love and search for the simple truth. the temptation to quote and annotate from many authors is very great, but the material is so abundant that one scarcely knows where to begin, where to end; and as the address is solely to the reader of "average intelligence," and argument is eliminated as far as possible, many quotations could do little more than confirm opinions, and would extend beyond the limits designed by the author, or the brief space and popular form more desirable for the average reader. repetitions in the text seemed unavoidable for the reason, that at every phase of the subject i have continually to regard the individual, and that aggregate called society; the inner conscious life of _one_, and the associate elements and conditions regarding the many, and from different viewpoints. man, the individual, is like a "wheel within a wheel," the larger circle being humanity as a whole. nor does the thought or concept stop here. there is the relation of the individual intelligence we call man to the universal intelligence we call god, which as related to nature is "in all, through all, over all, and above all." not an "absentee god," but illuminant within and without revealing itself in what we call love and law. here "in brief" i rest the case and proceed to the evidence. introduction in "a study of man, and the way of health," first published twenty-one years ago, as a general outline for my classes of medical students, to enable them to grasp the real problem of life, and to emphasize the study of man, as basic in the study of medicine, the following epitome was placed in the preface. "the cosmic form in which all things are created and in which all things exist is a universal duality. involution and evolution express the two-fold process of the one law of development, corresponding to the two planes of being, the subjective and the objective. consciousness is the central fact of being. experience is the only method of knowing. therefore, to know, is to become. the modulus of nature, that is, the pattern, after which she everywhere builds, and the _method_ to which she continually conforms is an ideal, or archetypical man. the perfect man is the anthropomorphic god. a living, potential christ in every human soul. two natures meet on the human plane, and focalize in man. these are the animal ego and the higher self. the one, an inheritance from lower life. the other, an overshadowing from the next higher plane. the animal principle is selfishness. the divine principle is altruism. however defective in other respects human nature may be, all human endeavor must finally be measured by the principle of altruism and must stand or fall by the measure in which it inspires and uplifts humanity. the highest tribunal is the criterion of truth, and the test of truth is by its use and beneficence. 'by their work ye may know them.' superstition is not religion; speculation is not philosophy; materialism is not science; but true religion, true philosophy and true science are ever the handmaids of truth, and will at last be found in perfect harmony." after more than twenty years of continuous and careful study since the foregoing was written, i must still confirm and emphasize these basic propositions to-day. the attempt is herein made to apply them more particularly to the study of psychology. to add to what was then discerned and designated as "the modulus of nature," an exact and comprehensive theorem of psychology. i am well aware how presumptuous this would in certain quarters be considered, if there were the least probability that "those in authority" would read these pages at all. the motive is involved in the modulus, and i am quite content to leave it there, while the "common people," it is hoped, may find herein, as i have found in the search for more light, encouragement, inspiration, and hope. and these may lead to understanding. it is the farthest possible from my thought or wish to ignore or belittle the labors of earnest students and writers on psychology. but there is a habit of conservatism in physical science to-day, that in spirit and effect differs very little from dogma and orthodoxy in religion. it concerns methods rather than results. it is generally incredulous through fear of being over-credulous. it is bound by tradition, or the records of the past, and its dogmas are deductions from the consensus of _opinions_, rather than "decrees in councils" or "infallible popes." occasionally a scientist, like sir oliver lodge, seems to be utterly rid of both credulity and incredulity, and for these, science really means-- "the facts of nature, demonstrated, classified, and systematized." but for the "common people," the average intelligent student, for whom science and the pursuit of knowledge is not a profession, but a desire to know, and to understand, in order to be able to use wisely and well, it is of far less importance to know what others think or believe, deny or affirm, on the subject of psychology, than to _realize_ what are the faculties, capacities, and powers of their own souls. knowledge for the sake of knowledge, like "art for art's sake," is one thing, knowledge for _use_ in daily life, and for illuminating its pathway and revealing the purpose and destiny of man, is something different indeed. this hunger of the individual soul for real knowledge is perhaps the most patent "sign of the times." the average intelligent individual has broken away from the traditions of the past, and yet found nothing to take their place. one result is empty churches, and the race for wealth, display, position, and power. increased idleness begets dissipation, paresis and insanity increase, while wasted opportunity both shortens and embitters life. a very large number of intelligent men and women realizing all this, and repelled by the almost contemptuous conservatism of so-called science, swing to the side of credulity, and are robbed and exploited by charlatans. they believe the truth _ought_ to be forthcoming, and their intuitions and demands, though oft leading to sore disappointment, deserve a better fate. it is for these, and for these reasons, that these pages are written, and with no other hope of fame or reward. the demand is everywhere for knowledge of the soul. facts there are in abundance, but how far these facts are _demonstrated_, so as to constitute a basis of exact science, and how to classify and systematize them, the average intelligence does not know. the psychical scientist claims to know, and undoubtedly does know, but he busies himself almost exclusively in gathering and verifying _more facts_. when asked by the average intelligence, "what does it all mean?"--the answer is, "ah! there's the rub. _wait!_ some day we _may_ know." the simple fact is that the scientist is bewildered, while the theologian and the dogmatist appeal to faith without knowledge, and invoke miracle as in all past times. spiritualism has had its day and left an immense body of facts, while mediumship and the dark circle are more often repudiated by intelligent professed spiritualists. satisfied as to conscious existence after death as a _fact_, they have learned how generally unreliable are many messages from departed friends, owing to conditions beyond their control; while the effect of surrender to so-called "spirit-control" contributes to neither health nor a well-balanced mind or character. hypnotism maintains a precarious hold, simply through juggling with the words, "suggestion" and "hypnosis." the professional hypnotist, yielding as he must to the public fear and condemnation of hypnotism, advocates _just a little of it!_ under the false title "suggestion," for the good it is claimed to do in such cases as the drink and drug habit. as though a little further _weakening of the will_, would ultimately tend to restore and strengthen it! one is reminded of the baby in "pendennis." the mother "hoped the lord would forgive her, because it was such a little one!" even the leaders in the "emmanuel movement" have deceived themselves by this sophistry, and while they applaud the temporary results, they seem unaware that they are still further weakening self-control and real character, by dominating the will. it is thus that ignorance, confusion and unrest, like waves of ocean, ebb and flow in the great human tides. through impatience and discouragement alone, many give up the quest for knowledge as hopeless, and while too well-balanced to drift into dissipation, they suffer from _ennui_ and become pessimistic. real knowledge will not come all at once, like a vision, or a complete revelation. the first real light that comes will be that of faith, a term generally misunderstood and misused. faith is the complete antithesis of blind dogma and superstition. it is born within the soul, and never imposed by outward authority enforced by fear. "faith is the soul's _intuitive conviction_ of that which both reason and conscience approve." to give intellectual assent to belief in god is one thing; to be able to declare with light and warmth that uplifts and inspires, "_i know_ that my redeemer liveth" is another thing entirely. the impatience above referred to would see the end from the beginning, and know all about the development and destiny of the soul before it has learned the first lesson that guides and determines both. when, however, science and religion clasp hands, and the facts of nature guided by the light of faith, build character and guide progress, there is revealed a philosophy of life that needs little revision. it is like the compass that points continually to the pole, and gives unqualified assurance as to the _direction_ we are going. so also every step in the past enables us to get our bearings and verify our course by checking backward. faith is no longer a blind dogma, but a compass in the box of experience, the wise mariner's guide in the voyage of life. if neither science, religion nor philosophy, nor all together can thus come to the service of man, can not do it _now_, after all the weary centuries since plato and aristotle, we may as well write _qui bono_ on our banners and trail them in the dust! even the theologies of the day, recognizing the dilemma and the difficulties, still cling to the miraculous, and to make the best of a bad bargain, offer dogma in the place of demonstration, and contradictory and blind belief in place of the light of faith. while they count thousands as nominally in their communion, the intelligent among all these have many "mental reservations." the intelligent thought of the world flows past and beyond them. the "soul's intuitive conviction" agreeing with "both reason and conscience" holds and guides them, in spite of the verbal "confession of faith." the divinity of jesus, the christ, can be fully explained under natural and divine law, without invoking miracle. the result of such explanation is to dethrone him from the altars of dogma and superstition, and enthrone him on the altar of love in the heart of humanity. this is long delayed, but cannot be defeated. studies in psychology chapter i classification of faculties, capacities, and powers starting with the _modulus of nature_--an ideal or _archetypal man_, and coming down to practical things in daily life-- . man _is_ an _individual intelligence_. this is taken as an empirical _fact_, patent to every intelligent individual. the source and nature of intelligence itself need not here concern us. we may call it an _ultimate_ that all the philosophies of the world have signally failed to explain. it is something that grows, increases or decreases, expands, becomes confused, according to the conditions of bodily organ and function, heredity, environment, personal effort and the like; but so far as we know, it is the same thing, large or small, wise or foolish. it is still, measure for measure, individual intelligence. . the term _individual_ means distinct, concrete, relatively separate. man being an individual intelligence; god is the universal intelligence. just as the organism of man is involved in, and evolved from universal nature; so the intelligence of man is involved in, and evolved from universal intelligence. the empirical fact of the intelligence of man presupposes a "sufficient reason" or source. still we do not know what god and nature and intelligence are. we only know _how they manifest_. our intelligence enables us to observe, reflect, reason, and in some measure apprehend the _method_ and _manifestation_. i am not seeking to build nor unfold a "philosophy." "yes," someone replies, "but a philosophy is implied or involved." very well, let _it_ unfold _itself_. . the next empirical fact of prime importance is, the individual intelligence, not of man, but which _is_ man, is _aware of itself_, i.e., "self-conscious." it is able to distinguish between the self and the non-self. . again, as to _consciousness_, as with intelligence: we know that man has it and uses it, and what it _does_ to some extent; but we do not know what it _is_, intrinsically, nor do we need to know any of these _ultimates_. the effort to explain them has never ended in anything but confusion. we shall herein name them, and then pass them. . we have now postulated a self-conscious, individual intelligence, as the real man. next we find this man can _do_ things, or _refrain_ from doing; act, or refrain from action. this is called initiative, volition, will. . this power of action and of choice, inspired by intelligence, aware of the self, adapts actions to ends. this involves reason and judgment. . in the course of experience along the lines of action or restraint, and observing results in either case, the individual desiring or preferring certain results to others, acquires more or less self-control. he controls himself to secure desired results. here then, in brief outline, are the basis and the elements of our psychology. they are drawn from common observation and experience, and are verified by the facts of daily life--generally complicated, confused, or lost sight of in treatises on psychology. two of these factors, viz.: consciousness and will, enter into all psychological phenomena such as hypnotism and mediumship, and into every form of mental alienation, insanity, obsession and the like. moreover, by building out of mental phenomena a distinct entity--largely independent of the self-conscious intelligence, and almost equally so with consciousness--our "philosophies," "metaphysics," and explanations have become as confused and unreliable as the psychical phenomenon itself. hudson's so-called "law of psychic phenomena," "subliminal" and "supraliminal consciousness," and the juggling with the terms "suggestion" and "hypnosis" may serve as sufficient illustrations. in each instance phenomena are made to take the place of principles and the core of the problem is ignored, confused, or lost sight of. in the meantime these empiricists are hunting in the "rubbish of the temple" (which temple they have _metaphysically_ destroyed), for the human soul--i.e. the concrete, intrinsic individual intelligence, which is one, and which the master builder (universal intelligence) placed on the trestle-board of creation and time, for the building of character, and the evolution of the human soul. if the ideal, archetypal, or divine man, is recognized as the _modulus_ of both nature and divinity, our theorem must consist in adhering to the modulus and working out the problem. q. e. d., if applied to man's completion of his own individual temple, might stand for the last words of jesus, "it is finished," the problem is solved; "i have finished the work thou gavest me to do." science, religion and philosophy have clasped hands. divinity revealed in humanity is triumphant over death. "there is a natural (physical) body and there is a spiritual body," and the individual intelligence is one in each, or in both; viz.: the human-divine soul. to recognize the _modulus_ and intelligently to apprehend the _theorem_ is the foundation and the first step in the scientific solution of the problem of life, and the progressive and continuous evolution of the human soul. to use the term "science" (as applied to the study of psychology) in any other way, is pure empiricism, is wholly unscientific, and has never yet resulted in anything but confusion and in laying a foundation for belief, conjecture, theory, dogma, superstition, and fear. the step of next importance, both in the scientific study of psychology and in individual progress and evolution, is the mental attitude of the individual; his point of view; his open-mindedness and utter refusal to _pre_judge anything. he will often say, "i do not know." he will sometimes say, "i do not care." that phase or presentation does not appeal to, nor interest him. this is what the vedic philosophers called, "making the mind _one pointed_" and like a search-light, with the ability to concentrate it on a given point or subject. bias, prejudice, preconceived opinion, credulity and incredulity, are all like a crooked lens to the eye of the mind, or to the perception of the simple truth. not only are these principles basic in the scientific study of psychology and the evolution of the individual intelligence, but their neglect and oversight are solely responsible for the confusion everywhere manifest on the subject, as well as for _every form of subjective control_, mediumship, psychical epidemics, and obsession, and they enter into every form and phase of insanity. if this be true, and it is readily demonstrable, what subject is of equal importance; and what facts and considerations are so transcendent as these? the difference is that between a mad-house with its frenzied and frightened mob of helpless victims, and a palace of the gods in which dwelleth righteousness, love, peace, and eternal joy. is it not _worth while_? this modulus and theorem of the school of natural science involve religion, regeneration, redemption, and the well-being of souls here and hereafter. they separate religion from superstition, duty from dogma, cast out fear, release the wings of aspiration and faith; and where "the mourners went about the streets" is heard a new song of rejoicing that binds up the wounds and sorrows of the brokenhearted. again i ask, "is it not worth while?" chapter ii empirical and scientific evidence let us bear in mind that man _is_ an individual intelligence; that this involves self-consciousness, or awareness of self, the innate ability to distinguish between the self and the non-self. hence arises the power of choice, discernment, or discrimination. there also arises the impulse to _act_, or the initiative, called the will. this also involves the power of restraint, the act or the refraining from action. this action, under the basic endowment--intelligence--is called _rational volition_. there is thus, intelligence; the power to choose; the power to act and the adaptation of acts or restraints to ends, or to desired objects or results. experience teaches the individual, thus endowed, that he is responsible for all he thinks, feels, acts and does; and this, under his endowment of intelligence, is what we call _conscience_. we are not building up a theory, but simply analyzing psychological facts, demonstrated as true in the experience of every intelligent individual. just as the chemist analyzes a compound he finds in his laboratory. our _modulus_ is the perfect man. our _theorem_ is the method of use that, by experience and observation everywhere, has been demonstrated as constructive, enabling the individual to build toward, and to realize the modulus. the power to discriminate, choose and act, when normally exercised, implies judgment and understanding. hence, we have perception, rational choice, intelligent action and desired results, for which we recognize our personal responsibility. hence arise our ability and necessity to _review_ our actions, motives, aims and their results, and to pass judgment upon them in the light of conscience (con-science, to know the self) to pass judgment upon ourselves as to motives, aims, results, and consequences. the brain is a center of consciousness with avenues of perception and impulse and departments that by aggregation, separation or association, enable the individual intelligence to determine the relation in time, or duration, force and orderly relation of perceptions, desires, motives, actions (or thoughts and feelings) as to sequence or results. this whole conscious realm is the mind. it is the _inner chamber_ of the _soul_. it is in no sense an entity. the actor, the real entity, is the individual intelligence. to say, therefore, that "man is all mind," or that the mind does this, or that, is simply nonsense. it is like saying that the little room in which i am now writing, with its books and pictures, with my thoughts, feelings, emotions, and magnetism, is _i_! perhaps it is _like_ me, or _full_ of me, but _i_ am something _else_ and something _more_. let us get rid of this "confusion of tongues"; this "babel of psychology"; "new thought" (as old as man); "metaphysics"; "christian science" _et hoc genus omne_, and come down to common sense and the facts of nature. the aim and the results along these lines are often good and helpful; then why clothe them in the garb of absurdities? recognize the facts, and express them intelligently, and they may do ten times more good, for then we could understand them. they are, one and all, a weak dilution of the old hindoo yoga, thrashed over there for thousands of years; straining after _results_, while ignorant of, or ignoring _basic principles_. aside from the "eight systems of philosophy" now recognized in india, there are hundreds of varieties and classes of _yogis_. "to acquire powers" is one thing; self-mastery and self-knowledge are quite another. thus the one is often distorted and always transient; the other constructive, regenerative, and enduring. to illustrate by contrast what constructive psychology, or the building of character, _is not_, we may now take some of the forms of diseased action known to all time, occurring in individuals and in epidemics, and which to-day fill our insane asylums with "incurables." the point of first importance in all these cases, is the _lack_ of self-control. weakness, aberration or disease of the will. the individual intelligence fails to exercise its divine prerogative and be _master_ in and of its _own house_. in the place of this control, sensations, feelings, emotions, desires, appetites, passions, and ambitions run riot. the _servants_ of the master war among themselves, quarrel with each other, bind the master hand and foot, wreck the furniture, and at last destroy the house. the master has become the victim and at last the slave of his own servants. his will is in abeyance; his perceptions distorted; his feelings and emotions aggravated; his "reason dethroned"; his judgment impaired; he has an "unbalanced mind." what is here needed but _christos_ in the temple, "turning over the tables of the money-changers and the seats of them that sold doves," and restoring the high-priest in the holy temple--the human soul, viz.: the intelligent will of man, determined to govern his own house, and responsible for results? in place of rational volition, clear, just and true perceptions, sound judgment and clear understanding, we have "illusions," "hallucinations" and "delusions." in other words, the individual is _insane_! it all goes deeper than the _mind_; the soul, the individual intelligence is dethroned in his own kingdom; body, mind, and soul are out of joint. not only does this condition exist without being recognized; not only just here lies the whole secret and field of _education_ in child, woman and man, but so ignorant are thousands as to these patent facts and basic principles, that they covet and strive after this confusion, this devolution, in the vain search for knowledge, light, and truth. these are the office, the function and the result to the subject (or victim) of mediumship and hypnotism. they yield the will, the mastery of their own house, to another. the servants may be tractable for a while, but an _alien_ is seated upon the throne, and the master is no longer king in his own realm. others may indeed learn something from his undoing, from the crimes committed upon him, just as we learn from criminals how we _ought not_ to live. whether ignorantly, voluntarily, by persuasion, or by force of a stronger will, the medium and the hypnotic subject are victims either of ignorance or of design, to their own undoing. these psychical experiences have been found in all ages and among every people of whom we have any valid history, from the red indians of the north to the voodoos of africa, and from the hill tribes of india to the earliest scandinavian tribes and the islands of the sea. as civilizations advanced, the more intelligent and unscrupulous individuals, ambitious of knowledge or power, regardless of the rights or well-being of others, and discovering these powers, exercised them for their own aggrandizement. this has been known through the ages as _black magic_, and is laughed at to-day by so-called "scientists" as "nothing but the fears, credulity, and superstitions of the ignorant multitude." this was the core of egyptian paganism, and is the very genius of clericalism to-day--the domination of the individual will, through superstition and fear. owing to seismic and cataclysmic shocks, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, and great epidemics of disease, whole peoples have been dominated by fear or frenzied by superstitious dread, so that whole villages and cities became literally "mad-houses," and were often depopulated. read the story of "peter, the hermit," and "the crusades," the "black death," the "great plague" that swept over europe in the thirteenth century; or that of the "flagellants," and the "dancing mania," where whole villages became "dancing dervishes," samples of which may occasionally be found to-day in the cities of america, the "yogis" that are "buddhas" or "christs" in new york, and the dowies that were "elijahs" in chicago, the genius of point loma, obispo, santa rosa, "oahspe," "solar-biology," and again, _et hoc genus omne_! verily! "there is nothing new under the sun." contrast these individuals with an individual of sound mind, good judgment, and a well-ordered life, and see how and where and why the wreck inevitably follows. the pressure outside changes continually, and these things spread and grow like all contagions. nature at times seems wrathful and destructive, and there are, no doubt, deep-seated conditions and changes in the magnetism of the earth and air, not yet comprehended by modern science. in stamping out contagious and epidemic disease, simple cleanliness has been like a revelation from the gods, and modern surgery has only stopped short of the miraculous. society is but the aggregation of individuals, and on the one principle of _self-control_ every individual is related to the negative or the positive side of psychical and physical epidemics. there is scarcely an avenue along these lines that has not been more or less explored by modern science. that knowledge is still incomplete; that mistakes have been made; that matters have been contemptuously set aside, belittled, or declared to be not worth investigation, was to have been expected. but the progress has been immense, and the light shines on many obscure and difficult problems, where before was the utter darkness of superstition and fear, dirt, degradation, and death. these phenomena manifest on the physical plane, disturb the social state, and the relations of individuals to each other. they concern the environment of man in a world of matter, sense, and time. but the individual intelligence, which is man, lives also in another world, related to, but within, around, and beyond the physical. man senses or feels it as anterior to birth and extending beyond death. he calls it the subjective or spiritual world. the realm of his consciousness is related to it, as the body is related to the physical plane and the things of sense and time. his consciousness seems _aware_ of both planes or both worlds, though ignorant of the real nature and meaning of both, and capable of interpreting neither correctly. man feels his way through the life on the outer plane guided by his experience of weight, measure, distance, resistance, and the like. the other world--the inner, or subjective--seems distant, evasive, and unreal, and in contemplating it he is filled with uncertainty, dread, fear, and superstition. our friends die and disappear; we miss them, and mourn for them. where are they? what will become of us when we die? shall we ever meet them again? passing by religion and revelation, as we are dealing with facts and phenomena in the natural life of man, rather than with creeds and dogmas that undertake to cut the "gordian knot," these questions stare everyone in the face, and in every age man has tried to solve them by actual knowledge. belief in ghosts, angels and demons is practically universal; and just here comes in the whole range of psychical phenomena, facts and fantasies, illusions, hallucinations and delusions, rational volition, reason dethroned, and the will in subjection, already referred to. as individual experiences, subjective or objective, all are real. the fear incited by illusions and hallucination, or by "seeing a ghost," regardless of the fact of its actual existence, is as real to the individual as that of meeting a serpent in the grass, or a tiger in the jungle. soothsayers, diviners, prophets, mediums, conjurers, and seers consequently have been found in every age and among every people. ignorance, fear, dread of death, desire to know, have always provided them with patrons, followers, or disciples. they have often reaped a rich harvest, and not unfrequently dominated a race or a people, as the papacy does to-day. where they have failed to create belief, they have often triumphed through fear and anathema, and often supplemented these weapons by persecution, imprisonment, torture, and death, and so held sway. revelation begs the question; dogma forces the conclusion; and both dominate the soul without convincing and without _knowledge_. chapter iii mediumship, seership, and hypnosis into this arena of the inquiring soul of man, came modern spiritualism. it contained little or nothing new, as to methods, aims, or results. the church, protestant and catholic alike, uttered their warnings, called it "dealings with the devil," but divested of political authority and without power to arrest or persecute, as in the past, were unable to stay the tide. it swept the country like a whirlwind. the average individual, desiring to know and to get tidings from departed friends, was unrestrained and unterrified. he could not see why, if the gates were really ajar, angels might not communicate, no less than devils. then came the cry of "fraud," often amply justified, and a cloud of uncertainty and unreliability settled over the phenomena generally. unscrupulous men and women seeing their opportunity, sophisticated and exploited it, and "exposures" of these became common. but in spite of all this, there remained facts, and groups of phenomena impossible to explain away. finally, men like crookes and wallace took up the subject and investigated the phenomena, not from the emotional, expectant, or fraternal aspect, but from the purely scientific, and rendered their verdict, which, though frequently ignored or treated with contempt, remains practically unaltered. thousands became convinced of the _fact_ of life beyond the grave, and at the same time of the unreliability of many so-called "communications." finally the "society for psychical research" was formed; phenomena were searchingly examined, verified, and recorded as a basis for further research. the posthumous work of f. w. h. myers, "human personality and its survival of bodily death," added to the society's records and many other publications a record of verified facts in psychic phenomena such as never before existed, and which nothing short of a cataclysm can destroy. in the meantime, the "dark circle" went into desuetude, and spiritualism, as a cult, declined. accepting the broad conclusion of a life after death, and with no very clear demonstration as to exactly where, or how, the case rested largely. the reason for this obscurity was to be found in the absence of clear conceptions as to the nature of the human soul, and what life on the spiritual plane really signifies. in other words, the foundation was laid empirically to await classification and conclusions in a comprehensive philosophy of psychology, consistent with a science of the soul; and there it remains to-day with the average individual, and the average man of physical or psychical science. returning now from this brief excursion into the social status, to the problem as related to the mental, moral, and physical health of individuals, and bearing in mind our modulus of man, and theorem of constructive psychology, we find the annals of spiritualism, mediumship, or subjective control, of exceeding importance. another plane of life exists. individuals on either plane communicate with the controlling entity on the supra-physical plane. the medium is invariably subjective and controlled. he has no choice of controls, and often no knowledge (never reliable knowledge) as to who or what controls him. he is sometimes informed by his "guide" as to the control's identity, and learns, often, that he and his circle have been deceived by ignorant or "lying spirits." the whole process reverses our modulus and theorem of constructive psychology, the building of character and normal evolution. the most important consideration at this point is its relation to the sanity of individuals. there are thousands of individuals to-day, who, failing in rational volition, or self-control, are controlled by entities on the subjective plane. they are _obsessed_. this subjective control without the knowledge or consent of the victim, and unrecognized and generally called "absurd" by "alienists" and "experts," constitutes a very large per cent, of the insane to-day, and because ignored or unrecognized, these cases are classed as "incurable." it should be remembered that the annals of spiritualism, and the records of scientific psychical research, have _demonstrated_ the possibility and the _fact_ of such control. it should also be remembered that the average "expert alienist" is guided solely by results of such obsession, where it occurs; that he is blind to causes, liable to exclude or taboo obsession, and therefore largely liable to err. in other words, he is prejudiced; and his bias and incredulity blind him to the facts and to the real causes. he could hardly be expected to make the obsession _let go_, while denying that it exists. but he _might_ help the victim gain _self-control_ if he but recognized the facts and knew how. realizing the fact of the connection of the two worlds, the physical and the spiritual, and communication between them in the subjective or irresponsible way, the question naturally arises, "is there not another way of communication? may not the individual intelligence on the physical plane communicate with the denizens of the spiritual plane _at his own volition, independently_? may he not learn to see and hear them without attempting, or desiring to _control_ them, more than he does his associates, his friends and neighbors on the physical plane, or allowing them to control him?" is it not purely a question of _fact_, and of scientific demonstration, to be determined by experiment? this question leads us to another phase of psychology and the records of the past. there have been seers, clairvoyants, and clairaudiants in all ages. unlike the psychical phenomena already referred to,--and belonging to the positive and initiative, rather than the negative and subjective side of the psychical equation,--these seers have been fewer in number, and are always individuals showing a high degree of self-control, and of intellectual and moral evolution. admitting the general propositions involved, it can readily be seen that this must be so from the very nature of the case. the masters of mankind, in any and all directions have been few. the slaves, through ignorance, superstition and fear, have been legions. those who have gained habitual self-control, and finally self-mastery, knowledge and power, have been few; while the majority have been controlled by their own appetites and passions, and by other individuals. this self-mastery and higher evolution also includes another element beside strength of character, and that is, refinement. in other words; it is, from first to last, a journey from the gross and sensuous physical plane, toward the refined and spiritual plane, involving all the faculties, capacities, and powers, feelings, sensations, emotions, intuitions, and aspirations of man. it is, in short, a normal, higher evolution. all the elements of this higher evolution are basic and innate in the original endowment of man. by exercise, the latent faculties, capacities and powers grow, expand, and develop. self-control, rational volition, and the sense of personal responsibility, (conscience) make the evolution conformatory to the modulus--the perfect man. as this human being, dwelling on the physical plane, _e_volves, the spiritual faculties of the divine man are _in_volved from the spiritual plane. when this simultaneous and co-ordinate development is complete, the human and the divine are _at-one_ in the individual. this at-one-ment is the exact opposite of "vicarious." it is the result of personal effort and self-mastery. the dogma of the church has so completely sophisticated it as to turn normal evolution into _devolution_; and, so far as it has any effect, or is operative at all, to turn man backward toward the animal, instead of upward toward the divine. seership and spiritual powers, therefore, as the result of "living the life," are _evolutionary_. mediumship, subjective control, and obsession in any form, or in whatsoever degree, are _devolutionary_. progress along either line may be very slow, but the trend is as opposite as is the east from the west, as light from darkness, as good from evil. by classifying these powers of man and psychical phenomena to which they give rise, whether in the conscious, inner realm, in functions of the bodily organism, or observable to others, we are able to assign each to its proper class with considerable accuracy. both evolutionary and devolutionary progress, with the ordinary individual, are slow processes. seldom is either process a designed and straightforward climbing, or a quick descent "into the dark abyss." consequently, as the human race evolves as a whole, relatively more and more individuals are found who "get flashes" of sight or sound, more or less from the subjective or spiritual plane of being. there are intuitions, "warnings," and premonitions of coming events. some seek and cultivate, others fear and avoid them. they are mostly on the "border-land," if not on the "ragged-edge" of insanity. it is only necessary to further weaken the will, or to indulge the passions and emotions, in order to decide the matter, derange the mind, and send the individual to an asylum. on the other hand, with individuals who lead a clean, cheerful, well-ordered life, these experiences may mean encouragement, confirmation, and progress toward the spiritual realm of being. they should be observed carefully, but not _cultivated_. they may serve as guide-posts and as mere incidents of a day's journey. the average popular cult to-day, as often in the past, where psychical phenomena are involved, results in converting the normal mental realm, the realm of normal self-consciousness, into a vaudeville performance; a mere "variety show," where all due sense of proportion and relation is lost. in place of the normal individual intelligence, sitting serenely on the throne of life and ruling his kingdom with justice, wisdom and paternal love, the king joins the melee of acrobats and dancing girls, encourages the orchestra till, in a pandemonium of revelry, he puts out the lights, or in wild frenzy fires the building. sometimes it claims to "command success" by _demanding_ it; or wealth without earning it; or health without regard to hygienic law; or by "taking a mantram" to open the gates of heaven. or again, by servile obedience to the freaks or dogmas of a "leader" or "official head" and adulation _ad nauseam_, to gain admission to the "elect." one and all of these, from first to last, tend toward devolution. they are destructive, not constructive, in building character and true manhood and womanhood. again, the monk or the devotee abandons society, becomes a recluse, flees into the desert or the mountain, subsists upon roots or herbs, sits in one posture till the joints of the body become fixed, holds the arms above the head till they become immovable, and the finger nails _turn and grow through the palms of the hands_; or sits gazing at the navel and repeating the word _om_. indeed, it would seem that the ways and means to stop normal growth, constructive evolution and healthy living, had been well-nigh exhausted. the enthusiast, the fanatic and the "easy mark" of to-day are seldom aware of any of these things, and so they are bled, fleeced, and exploited accordingly. "all is mind!" "great is elijah!" or "mrs." elijah, and oahspe is his prophet! while babel reigns in the place of natural science. the theosophical movement inaugurated in this country by h. p. blavatsky in , differed essentially and radically from all others; first, in placing ethics as the first stone in the foundation of a real knowledge of the nature of man. its objects as concisely stated at the time were-- first: to establish a _nucleus_ for a universal brotherhood of man. second: to study ancient religions, philosophies and sciences, and determine their relations and values. third: to investigate the psychical powers latent in man. hospitality to truth from any source and under any name, was characteristic of the movement during the entire lifetime of the founders. dogma was eliminated, authority beyond facts and demonstrated truth denied, and superstition regarded as only another name for ignorance. while the facts and the demonstrations of science were recognized, and given the largest hospitality, nevertheless, the "secret doctrine" and, in a broad sense, the whole movement was an effort to present to modern times, and particularly to the western world, the most ancient and pure philosophy of old india, the _vedanta_ or "wisdom-religion." an immense work of rejuvenation has gone on in india, particularly in the establishment and maintenance of schools for girls, and in the relief of poverty and discouragement of the teeming millions. an immense literature was created, not yet appreciated, except by students here and there, who found light, explanation, and encouragement in their studies of the mysteries of nature and of life. since the death of the founders of the society, in this country at least, only a few branches and fragments of the original organization now remain. "leaders" and "official heads" often wholly ignorant of the philosophy, which colossal egotism and exploitation could hardly supply, have brought the very names "theosophy" and "brotherhood" into contempt and ridicule in many sections. as some of these "official heads" are still in evidence, final results cannot now be formulated, and need not be here considered or forecast. the evidence is not all in. personally, i desire to record my great indebtedness and highest appreciation of a noble life and a magnificent work accomplished by one of the most remarkable and unselfish women known to history, and for the light and knowledge which she made accessible, and which i still hold, practically unchanged, but with the theorems of natural science, in place of the postulates of philosophy as better fitting "the progressive intelligence" of the present time. the two lines of presentation when clearly apprehended are not antagonistic, but supplementary. their aims and purpose are the same. chapter iv the measure of values this is a very utilitarian age. start almost any subject, propose almost any scheme, adventure, or investment, and the question is asked, "will it pay?" the multitude are cautious; the lower stratum, the unsuccessful--the poor and the oppressed--are envious and often bitter and resentful; the successful are often reckless, dissipated, and proud. i am not writing an essay on economics, but on ethics and psychology; on the character, value, and use of the resources _within_ ourselves; our _real possessions_. here only may be found _actual values_. i am not considering the "hereafter," as to "rewards and punishments"; what gods, devils, angels, or men may do _to us_, here or hereafter; but what we may (if we choose) do _for ourselves_. this question is practical to the last degree. put the question, "does it pay?" and i answer: it pays like nothing else on earth; it is the only thing that is independent of time, place, or circumstance. it concerns man's _actual possessions_, of which nothing in "the three worlds" can ever dispossess him. i know of nothing so beneficent, in any concept of god or nature, providence or destiny, as this birthright and opportunity of man, to build character, and _be_ what he chooses to be. he who knows his power, realizes his opportunity and utilizes his resources, may build a palace of the soul, in which he may dwell, literally, in a "kingdom of heaven." and because god is the architect, and man the contractor and builder, working strictly to the "plans" and the designs, "that house shall stand." it is founded on the "rock of ages." did anyone ever know or see a noble character that was not built by the individual himself, by personal effort, by self-control, by self-denial, by justice and kindness to others; often in the face of poverty; often in spite of wealth; often in the face of sickness, pain and deformity; perhaps deaf and dumb and blind; and yet, like helen keller, the soul triumphant and glorified? to-day, as i write, i went to the crematory to see the dissolution of a poor, twisted, deformed, and tortured body of a woman past fifty, in which had dwelt a soul so serene, cheerful, and patient, that the beatitudes clustered around her, like doves in a garden of roses. it required no stretch of the imagination to determine what society she had entered. "like seeks like," and each "goes to his own place." her motive, the day-star of her life, was the mother-love for an only son. in spite of poverty and pain, she must reward him for love and loyalty, by being bright and cheerful and by belittling her own discomfort to save him sorrow. her reward was the growth of the soul that has now risen to its great reward, and dearer and sweeter than all this to the mother-heart, was to see and realize the growth, the tenderness, and the beautifying of the soul of the son. did it pay? i can almost hear her shouting for joy as she joins the anthem of the invisible choir of helpers that welcome her just over the border. she prayed many times, even the last time i saw her, before the great change, "if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." i could only say, "wait just a little longer," with the assurance that every shadow of darkness shall be transformed into dazzling light, and every drop of bitterness into the nectar of the gods. she was almost deaf and blind, but you should have heard the sweetness in her voice and seen the radiance in her face. i did not know that the end was so near. to the son, the sweetest sound on earth was that mother's voice, but, though silent for a thousand years, he would not recall her to one moment of the old torture. his sorrow for _himself_ is swallowed up and glorified in his joy for her release. and what is all this but a lesson in practical psychology, the growth of the soul? does it pay? ask that mother; ask that son now. "how do you know?" how do you know anything, except as you see, or experience it? character reveals itself. it cannot long hide itself. when the check goes to the bank the resources are there. the bank of god, and of nature, and of compensation, and eternal justice, cannot fail. its resources are infinite. independent of time, place, or circumstance, i said: intrinsic, inalienable. take another illustration almost at random. a cultured soul, winning its way alone, and at great disadvantage. in the middle of the tenth century lived farabi, or alfarabi. he did not confine himself to the koran, but fathomed the most useful and interesting sciences. he visited sifah doulet, the sultan of syria. the sultan was surrounded by the learned who were conversing with him on the sciences. farabi entered the salon where they were assembled and remained standing till the emperor desired that he should be seated; at which the philosopher, by a freedom rather astonishing, went and sat on the end of the sultan's sofa. the prince, surprised at his boldness, called one of his officers and commanded him, in a tongue not generally known, to put out the intruder. the philosopher heard him, and replied in the same tongue, "o signor! he who acts so hastily is subject to repent." the prince was no less astonished by his reply than by his manner and assurance. wishing to know more of him, he began a conference among his philosophers, in which farabi disputed with so much eloquence and energy that he reduced all the doctors to silence. then the sultan ordered music, and when the musicians entered, farabi accompanied them upon the lute with so much delicacy as to win the admiration of all present. he then drew out, at the sultan's request, a piece of his own composition, and sang it with his own accompaniment, and had the audience first in laughter, and then in tears--and to complete his magic, changed to another piece and put them all asleep. the sultan in vain urged farabi to remain near his person, and offered him a high position in his household. voluminous writings of farabi are preserved in the library at leyden. "a tale of the arabian nights," you may say, and yet it is historic. it reveals the fact that resources, character, and wisdom, in the end triumph and surmount all obstacles. they are intrinsic and permanent values. they may remain unknown or unappreciated by others, but they are none the less riches to him who possesses them. it was during this same tenth century in which alfarabi lived, that there existed at baghdad a society composed of mohammedans, jews, christians, and atheists, for the purpose of philosophical discussions and scientific investigation; and it was doubtless under this influence that alfarabi was educated and enabled to cope with the philosophers of the world. here in arabia was the highest culture known at the time, in medicine and all the arts and sciences, while the ecclesiastics were inaugurating the dark ages elsewhere, to eventually spread over the whole of europe. here and there have always appeared individuals superior to their age and time; men who dug to the foundations of knowledge, built character, accumulated resources, and left their impress upon all subsequent time. nor has this accumulation of real knowledge been derived from books and schools, though these resources have not been neglected. real culture of the individual has always consisted in the realization of the latent powers of man, in bringing these to light, in learning by experience how to use them. hence arise self-knowledge, self-control, and a higher evolution. it is not a mere technical, intellectual acquirement, the ability to define principles and formulate propositions. it rather consists in testing them out in actual experience; first by self-analysis to become familiar with the real self, its capacities and powers, its motives and aims in life; and having grasped and adjusted all these, then to start consciously, deliberately, determinedly, and intelligently, on "the road to the south," on the upward climb toward the light. "possessions," with the great majority of individuals, mean something outward, in space and time; what we have, and, for the time hold, rather than what we are. the average idea of enjoyment is something altogether superficial and transient. it is found, or supposed to be found, in variety of sensations, emotions and feelings; in ringing the changes on these, till vitality fails, disillusion or satiety supervenes, and old age or death closes the play. often the appetite remains, when vitality fails, and faust rejuvenated, would run the same gauntlet again. the pity of it is that thousands of these victims of either satiety or tantalus seem never to dream that there are other values, or anything else, or better, in life. and yet there is not one of these faculties, capacities and powers that is useless, or, in itself, evil or degrading. they are, one and all, resources of the individual intelligence; tools for the day's work; materials for the building of the temple; whereas, they most frequently are made the motive and the aim of life. they are means to a higher end, and not the end itself. without the latent passions, emotions, and feelings, man would be a mere mechanism. if all were mind, or mere intellect, there could be neither the creation nor the appreciation of beauty. every work of art would be soulless; music might amuse the intellect by intricate chords and variations, like a colorless kaleidoscope, but it could never touch the heart nor elevate the soul. music and art, in the highest sense, through consonant vibrations in us, open the doors and windows of the soul, put us in touch and tune with the infinite, and _then_, the real harmony begins. we live for the time in another world and return with a sigh and recover the bated breath, as though we had seen a vision beyond words. music is an agent, a talisman, a means to an end. it strikes in us chords that lie at the foundation, the combinations that unlock the doors, and the "imprisoned splendor" wings in and out like the doves of hesperides. blunt the passions, the feelings and the emotions by over-indulgence, by vice and dissipation, and the royal guests desert the banquet hall, the doors of the soul creak on their hinges; and in place of the "music of the spheres" you have a devil's dance, and the orgies of despair! _does it pay?_ it all depends on _use_. here lie the resources, the real possessions of man. here lies the "parable of the talents." look at the profusion, the prodigality, the beneficence of nature, flowers and fruit, beauty and bloom and fragrance everywhere. where there is no eye to see, no hand to pluck, mother nature delights in profusion, seemingly because she is made that way and cannot help it. and yet, in this little rose-garden of ours--the human soul -we tramp down the flowers, plant loathsome weeds and poisons that kill and degrade and besot us, set up the tables of the money-changers, drive out the doves of hesperides, and turn the temple into a shambles for wild beasts. "nothing pays." "let us curse god and--die!" is there not something after all in the _measure of values_, and in the inexorable _law of use_? and who _constrains_ us but _ourselves_? can god and nature be so prodigal, noting even the sparrows fall, and yet disregard the children of men? what our resources are we can never imagine till we draw upon and begin to utilize them as others have done throughout the ages. the "average sinner," seemingly to justify or excuse his own failure, will not believe that any have ever achieved. _but there they stand_ all down the ages! ecclesiastics help the deception and keep up the illusion by calling it _miracle_ or "special providence," and so prevent man from entering his birthright, _to possess it_; and so we sell our birthright for a mess of pottage. it is like the dissipated, poverty-stricken spendthrift, who shuts his eyes and refuses to believe that any, by industry, economy, integrity and hard work have secured a competency. and so he cries, "come on, boys! let's have another drink, and then rob this bond-holder, who has more than his share." the measure of values, and the law of use _hold everywhere_, in every department of human life; and the question, "does it pay?" is practical and scientific to the last degree, and no one can answer but ourselves. as we answer will be the results, and nothing but ourselves can change them. we must realize that the human body, the organism of man, with all its faculties, capacities and powers, is but an _instrument_ of the individual intelligence; and that every experience in life, every episode in our career, is like a day's work; perfecting the instrument for more and better work, if used rightly; till we advance from height to height of being; to larger and still larger and more glorious fields of work and experience. there would seem to be no limit to this evolution, this upward and onward journey of the human soul. the more good work done, the larger the capacity and the broader the field opening before us. "from height to height the spirit walks." the primary endowment of man is life and conscious intelligence, with the power to use both. this would seem to be the only gratuity, and whether we regard it as a blessing or a curse, depends on how we regard and use them. the great majority in all time, through ignorance or recklessness, seem to have misused them. hence sickness, disease, deformity, and degradation. it is a wonderful thing--this law of normal use--from which health, harmony, comfort, joy, growth, and development result, while misuse and abuse degrade and destroy. divinity seems to have put within the grasp of man's intelligence (if he _chooses and wills_) an almost infinite range in power, variety and application, of that subtle and basic principle of affinity, balance and equilibrium, that unites the atoms in a molecule, or a chemical substance; that law of attraction and repulsion--the parallelogram of force--that holds the planets in their orbits. divinity seems to have taken man into council and offered him, not only the kingdom of nature, but the royal domain of his own soul, as a reward for co-operation and loyal service, on condition that he shall use wisely, intelligently, loyally, and kindly, and not misuse or abuse. is it _worth while_? will it _pay_? nor is this all, beneficent as it seems. the whole journey of life on the physical plane here below is so designed and planned as to make the natural aging and decay of the physical body supplement, unfold and develop the spiritual body, through the right use of the faculties, capacities, and powers of the human soul--the individual intelligence. these are aspects, uses and powers of that subtle _something_ we call _life_; that _principle_ that "runs through all time, extends through all extent, lives undivided, operates unspent." normal use that insures growth and development, range and power of action, is also, from first to last, a _refining_ process; while misuse and abuse of these powers degrade and brutalize _inevitably_. it follows, therefore, as the bodily structure and functions fail _under normal use_ those of the spiritual body open, develop and unfold. first the seed, then the plant, then the flower and finally the fruit "of a well-spent life." there is no "theory" or "guess-work" about it. it becomes, step by step, a matter of conscious, intelligent, individual experience. we know it just as we know that fire will burn or that we are here now, living, breathing, and acting. if i thrust my finger into a flame, all the philosophers and metaphysicians of the world could not "argue" me out of the experience of the fact of "burn" and "pain"; nor could theologians succeed any better by quotations from scripture! man is so constituted that the _facts_ of _experience_ are stubborn things; and the more open to reason the individual the more convincing the facts of experience. ignorance, superstition, and fear recede in the presence of these lights of man's intelligence, as do dogma and despotism, that seek to enslave the human soul. theologians tell us that it is exceeding dangerous to take all this responsibility upon ourselves, thus appealing to ignorance, superstition, and fear. i would answer: i refuse to take the responsibility of _disregarding_ or _disobeying_ the law which the divine and universal intelligence has placed at the _very foundation_ of man's being; and i am so _un_orthodox as to imagine and believe that god knew what he was about, even better than the theologians, or the "infallible" italian who misinterprets god, nature, and man. to-day, as i write, "god's vicegerent" is instigating and promoting a "holy war" in priest-ridden spain, over the temporal power of the vatican, angered to the point of murder over the "posting of notices of places of public worship," other than catholic. they would rather turn the world into one "city of the dead," than yield _one point_ of freedom, enlightenment, or self-government to man. and men still call this _religion_, and cast aside the crucifix for the sword, the gun and the firebrand. the _inferno_ has never yet been portrayed or even outlined. its name is priestcraft and intolerance under the name of "religion." and is this a "study in psychology"? yea, verily! scientific psychology is the only thing that goes to the very bottom of it, and defines and classifies every element, every fact in human experience. man cannot build a _home_ on a piece of ground where a slaughter-house disputes every square yard of ground with the tombstones of a graveyard. clericalism is ever the one or the other, and frequently both; denying to man the right to build a _home_ for himself anywhere, except by its permission and according to its plans and specifications, fixing the rent and the revenues for all future time. the premier of spain to-day is disputing this prerogative of rome, and the graveyard has been thrown open. the pity, the marvel of it all is, that the people generally do not seem to care, and call any statement of facts "sensational" or "panicky." i am told by some very good people that these references to popery seem irrelevant, and by others, that they mar the symmetry of my essay. they are reminded that we are dealing with real and permanent values, and with what man may do and ought to do for himself. lying squarely across this upward pathway of man, to be pursued by free choice and personal effort, is the dogma of the vicarious atonement and the forgiveness of sin, of which "his holiness" claims to hold the _exclusive agency_. through appeal to superstition and fear this preposterous and sacrilegious claim to-day, as in all the past, paralyzes the will and discourages the personal efforts of millions of men and women. between that blind credulity which makes personal effort unnecessary, and the miracle and dogma which make it seem useless, the upward and onward march of man is hindered or annulled, notwithstanding the fact that many men and women lead noble lives who are yet communicants of the church, both catholic and protestant. true, they may, with little thinking, reason and reflection from early education and "lip-service," give intellectual assent to these dogmas. but the lives they lead and the personal effort put forth prove them "better than their creeds." they say with the lips, "christ has forgiven us," or "jesus will save us," and while they are _saying_ these things they _go to work saving themselves_ by "leading the life" through personal effort and experience. in other words, they "save themselves" in spite of their creeds and superstitions. it is, therefore, with this exact "measure of values," that we are dealing; and the necessity and value of these considerations are nowhere so plain to-day, or so imperative, as just here, in the face of these demoralizing dogmas and pretensions of men, who contradict all natural law and steal unblushingly the prerogatives of god, as his "vicegerent." the marvel of it is that it excites neither surprise nor protest, but is treated with a smile of good-natured complacency outside its circle of dupes. he who treats it seriously, as a thing that, more than any other, demoralizes, discourages and paralyzes _millions_, is regarded as "sensational," "emotional," or an "alarmist." in the face of all the facts, of which the daily papers are full, and the record of the vatican crowded, i prefer that my own arraignment _shall stand_. no one who knows half these facts can dispute or gainsay them. we are making history here to-day, as mankind has had to make it in all the past, in the face of these "lions in the path" of civilization and progress. if i must choose between being superficial, ignorant and insincere, or being an "alarmist," i certainly and unhesitatingly choose to be an _alarmist_! the strongest ally of superstition to-day is credulity, or indifference. the average man says, "i do not _believe_ there is any danger"; and if he "spoke his heart" would add, "if there is, i do not _care_." i would only reply, "if you mean to be honest, read, observe, and see." you may wait too long. spain and portugal are just awakening from the priest-ridden lethargy of centuries, and are making history anew. may a just god and all the angels help and protect them. the great daily newspapers of the country are very conservative wherever rome is concerned. she is too powerful and her resources too well organized and available to be disregarded. it is therefore very significant that an editorial in one of the largest and most influential of these papers to-day gives a clear, concise, and impartial epitome of the "_row in spain_," clearly locating its cause and animus in the vatican, and showing how unbearable this tyranny and exploitation had become to a large portion of the people of spain. i refer to this here for a special purpose, which involves and lies at the foundation of all other issues and considerations. and that is the statement in this editorial, that while the church of rome has held practically _undisputed sway_ in spain _for centuries_, with immense tracts of land, houses and revenues, independent of civil authority, with , priests, , communities with , inmates in a population of only , , of people--_seventy per cent. of the people are entirely uneducated._ with every opportunity, plenty of time and almost boundless resources, _rome has kept the people in ignorance, the easier to rob them_; determined to _own_ the land, the resources, and the people--body and soul--as the _autocrat_ of heaven and earth! a slavery in the name of "religion" found nowhere else on earth to-day. so much for spain and the vatican to-day. for the sequel, watch the daily papers. and what has this to do with america? with psychology? with the measure of values? simply this: is anyone so dense as to suppose that the _seventy per cent._ of dense ignorance in spain is an accident, or an oversight of the vatican and its servants? there lie the "policy" and the secret of the power of rome. in america our foundations, our bulwarks, and our hope and security of freedom, enlightenment, and progress lie in our free public schools. these rome hates, condemns as "godless," and would destroy if she could, as continually proved by the letters and edicts of the popes. seeing, however, that she cannot do this, and fearful of losing her hold on her thirteen or fourteen million of communicants in america, she rushes the building of parochial schools, and threatens her people with dire penalties who patronize any other. since she cannot _prevent_ education here, as in spain, she must "educate" _in her own way_, in order to retain her power over the rising generation. the basis of this education are ignorance, superstition, and fear; its crown, the slavery of conscience and the "dogma of obedience." the brutality of ignorance in spain is the sophistry of priestcraft under the name of "religion," in america. the genius of the vatican is "infallibility." it not only never errs, but it never changes. it dons another mask, adopts another slogan, and is now engaged in a great crusade to _educate_! constructive psychology, the building of individual character, means the _precise opposite_ of every principle, proposition, and practice of popery. i desire to make this plain and unmistakable. nothing on earth transcends in importance this basic, universal, and _eternal antithesis_. it marks and monuments, in all time, the _parting of the ways_ between good and evil; between liberty and despotism; between light and darkness; between evolution and devolution; between "modernism" and paganism; between civilization and the dark ages; between the "sermon on the mount"--the beatitudes, and the _spanish roman vatican inquisition_! and this "antithesis," this issue, is as imminent, as active, as burning in america to-day, as it is in spain. it only faces different ways. spain is _compelled_ to redeem her _past_; america to guard and protect her _future_. it is, from first to last, a psychological problem. it is an analysis by fire, in the crucible of fate and destiny, to determine _accurately_ the measure of values to the individual, to society, and to civilization. no man, woman or child, no society, no civilization ever has, or ever can, escape this issue. it is the design on the trestle-board of time. it is the modulus of both god and nature regarding man. it is the theorem of psychology. it involves the evolution and destiny of the human soul. as civilization in many places showed an advancing tendency from the darkness, despotism and brutality of the dark ages, the "robber barons" began to disappear. their slogan was, "he may seize who hath the power and he may hold who can." serfdom also began slowly to recede. popery and priestcraft assumed the rôle of these barons, changed the slogan from brute force (reserving that for emergencies) to "divine prerogative," "infallibility" (later), and pagan mummeries in the name of "religion." _the result, to the common people, remained unchanged_ to the present day--poverty, ignorance, and oppression. popery boasts that it never changes, never relents, nor forgives an enemy, nor forgets an injury, nor fails to "get even," like any brute, whenever she can. and this _power_ is not only the assumed custodian of the religion of jesus, but stands in the place of it, as a substitute, and the world tolerates it in the name of _religion_! as a problem in psychology, we have been considering the nature, use, and measure of values of the resources, faculties, capacities, and powers of man as an individual intelligence. facing opportunities, we have seen that there is a law of use and responsibility which cannot be evaded. institutions and societies of men are, one and all, from first to last, under the same law. it is simply an aggregate, into which not a new principle enters, nor one principle is changed. the recognized and scientifically determined value of man to himself, is the measure of his value to the state. the reverse proposition is equally true. the value of any institution to the individual, or to the state, must be measured and determined in the same way and under the same law. it may thus be seen that institutions, like popery, are deeply involved in this law of use and measure of values. this is simply making use of, and putting in practice, these basic principles. _of what use to man_, measured by these scientific standards of value, are popery and priestcraft? i answer unhesitatingly and unqualifiedly _an unmitigated curse!_ this answer is justified by all history, and is as true and as exact to-day, up to the latest act and message from rome, as it was during the horrors of the inquisition; and there are evidence and specific statements to show that rome would re-establish the "holy inquisition" to-day, _if she dared and had the power_. it is this power, exercised through fear, on the basis of ignorance and superstition so instilled by what popery calls "religious education," that prevents the majority of fourteen millions in america to-day, as everywhere and in all time, from exercising their prerogative and doing their duty as _individuals_. is it not plain, therefore, how impossible it is to separate the individual and the social status? psychology and sociology are departments of one science, viz.: the science of man, anthropology. individuals and institutions are under one law, one law of use, one measure of values. he who ignores, evades, or belittles these plain issues and scientific principles, can settle with the law in his own time, though he cannot evade them always. note.--during the last week of the year , the daily papers announced that before the beginning of _every priest in the diocese_ was required to take an oath to oppose and resist _modernism_ and to _obey_ in all things the dictum and dogmas of his holiness. as everyone knows that under the term _modernism_ is included all progress, investigation, and civilization condemned by the vatican, everything that even questions the dogmas and despotism of rome, the meaning of this required _oath_ is plain. it is doubtless renewed by reason of (among others) a book,--"letters to his holiness by a modernist," which, written seemingly by a priest, makes exceeding plain the meaning of modernism and the relation of the vatican thereto. the book marks an epoch in the close of the old year and the beginning of the new, and rome has acted accordingly. she can delay the stream of progress as she has always done, but she cannot turn it backward. it will eventually overwhelm her. chapter v summary and conclusions the problem of the continued conscious life of man after the death of the physical body, concerns the _where_ and the _how_, and does not, and need not, concern us at all now. it is, literally, an "after consideration." who and what man is, here and now, is the real problem. only when, or in the degree in which, we master this problem, can we really know anything definitely of the other. the complete separation of these two problems, and the exact definition and formulation of each, is the first step on the road to knowledge of the science of the soul. for the time being, in the study of psychology, "other worldliness" should be absolutely abandoned. almost everyone finds it difficult to do this. many find it impossible. the fear and uncertainty with which almost everyone faces the inevitable, the loss of friends, the broken lute, the empty chair, the lonely life--all these make us cry out in anguish--_where_ and _how_ and _when_, and overlook the "_what are we_?" so-called religion in all time has almost hopelessly mixed and confused these problems. the various concepts and doctrines of rewards and punishments hereafter, have put ulterior motives in the place of actual values, weakened the will and hindered man from doing his best. a still further confusion follows, in the measure of assets, that leads to time-serving and false values. satisfy the average individual that "death ends all" and he will cry, "let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die," notwithstanding the fact that he sees others who have "gone the pace," realized only "dust and ashes," declared it "all a mistake," and that if they had the chance they would "do it all the other way." remember, we are dealing with _actual values_ here and now, divested of both fear and anticipation of the hereafter. on the other hand, who ever saw an individual die, who had led a clean, upright, kindly life, indulge in regret or remorse, or declare life a disappointment or a failure? the first is anchored to the physical plane by insatiate appetite and passion, or desire to reform, which might soon be forgotten. the other has found sweetness and joy in life, in conscious growth, in doing good; and his soul is illumined and transfigured as the body fails and he approaches another plane, and this often independent of any formulated religious belief. it all depends on what the man is _within_ himself, his intrinsic character, his _real self_; and no matter where he goes, that character, that self, goes with him. it _is_ himself. the "change in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye," is not in the _man_ and cannot be. it is in the plane, or sphere, or world he inhabits, or to which he goes. it is a change of garments, of habitat, of houses in which we live--if we live at all. this much we _know_, and should not forget or confuse it. we know it, as we know that "twice two are four"; that fire will burn, or that bodies, unsupported, fall to the ground. we know it from the fact of our own self-conscious identity. radically or suddenly to change that essentially is to annihilate _us_. the preacher says, "study the bible." he might say, "study yourself!" the preacher says, "look to jesus." he might say, "look within!" the preacher says, "repent and pray." i would say, "after an inventory of your inner possessions, clean up the house and _go to work_ to improve it in every way." when "cleaning day" is well under way, if the "sure-enough" preacher drops in, and you show him the house and what you are trying your best to do, he will just start "old hundred," and will be too happy for anything else. i am not criticising the preacher, nor opposing religion, but getting ready for it, laying the foundation of morals and the building of character. "religion" cannot do this. _you_ and _i_ have to do it, or it is never done. without this work of _ours_, religion is little more, or else, than passing emotion or lasting superstition, "lip service," cant, hypocrisy, and then cold heartless dogmatism, a measure and jingling of words that never touch the heart, but leave the individual ready to throw stones and light brands of torture: a case-hardening of the affections and the aspirations, that wraps the soul like the bandages of the mummied pharaohs, a mere petrifaction. we know, or may know, as much actually and scientifically of the growth of the soul as of the growth of the body. the average individual knows more of the soul than of the body, but his knowledge is in confusion. it is a matter of hourly, daily, life-long, and changing _experience_. he knows little of physiology, except feelings, sensations, desires, and results. how and why the mechanism of the body works he knows not. body and soul are organically identified, intimately associated and interwoven, and act and react on each other. they are functionally synchronous in all movements. the analogies between them are numberless and easily traced. the physician and physiologist does not stop to inquire, "what _is_ life" and refuse to move till someone gives a satisfactory answer; yet he is dealing with life in its numberless manifestations in the human, organism continually. but this same physician is likely to debate and deny the existence of the soul, demanding that you define and demonstrate it. the term "individual intelligence" is as definite, specific, and demonstrable in psychology as the term "life" in physiology. we are alive and we possess a certain degree or measure of intelligence. these are facts in our conscious experience. we may shape or mold our lives. we may do this according to our ideals, or we may drift with the tides of circumstance, or of passion and caprice, and this is what most persons do. so also with that intelligence which is the guiding light in our lives. it may illumine our pathway, or it may flash and fitfully glare, with the shadows, rendering our pathway obscure and uncertain, illusory and deceitful, or dangerous and fearful. the soul is in the body; and this light of intelligence is in the soul, its center, its very essence. all else in us, and round about us, is diversity and multiplicity. this light of intelligence in us is _one_ and unchanging. our experience in life, however varied and diversified, is co-ordinated and unified by this intelligence in us. it is that which puts all our experiences together and views them through a single lens. it stands by itself alone, and all else pays tribute to it. it is the pronoun "i" and it stands for, speaks and acts for, all else in us. it is not alone the only _unity_ in us, but it is that which unifies all the rest, uses the "possessive case," and may subordinate all else in us to its will. does it, then, do violence to common sense and hourly experience, or is it any stretch of the imagination to speak of this unity as an entity, and call it the human soul? if we live after the change called death, in a spiritual world, in place of the physical we now inhabit, and with a spiritual or refined body to correspond with that plane of refined or etherialized substance, the individual intelligence must function in that body and on that plane as it does now in the physical body on the physical plane. either something very like this takes place, or we cease to exist as a self-conscious individual intelligence. there must remain and continue man's self-conscious identity. furthermore, if this be true, the _real nature_ of this individual intelligence we call the _self_, in the last analysis, is likely to be as much a mystery as ever. we may know _who we are_ without knowing _what it is_. now the composite nature of man, as we know it, not only justifies all these analogies, but seems to show that the modulus, the germ at least, of the spiritual body exists now within the physical; that it does not disintegrate when the physical body dies, but separates and coheres more closely than ever; and is still inhabited or possessed by the individual intelligence. moreover, it has often been seen by clairvoyants at the time of death, thus verifying the biblical declaration, "there is a natural (physical) body, and there is a spiritual body." the composite structures of man's organism above referred to are well known. they are called "systems." the bony or osseous system, the muscular system, the circulatory system, the lymphatic system, and the two nervous systems, serve as illustrations of the composite nature of man. all of these "systems" more or less inter-penetrate and diffuse each other. there is also a chemico-vital, kinetic, or magnetic body, diffused through and inter-penetrating all the rest. this gives the contrast between the living organism (with the flush of health upon the cheek and the light of intelligence in the eyes), and a corpse. death is often instantaneous, while decomposition often waits for days. there is a still further analogy regarding a single function, like a sensory or motor impulse, passing to or from the central brain, the organ of consciousness. the journey is one of relays and orderly sequences. this is proven in a great variety of forms of paresis. i cannot, as an individual intelligence, _directly_ move my hand any more than i can move a mountain. i conceive the object or act and set the will in motion. the impulse traverses the nerves, is transferred to the muscle, and then, when the circuit is complete, _i_ move my hand. the gap between my conscious intelligent wish and will, and my physical hand, is very great. one is metaphysical, the other physical. there is, therefore, a point of correlation where the one is converted into the other. the knowledge of these facts, and of this orderly sequence and correlation, constitutes the science of pathology and enables us to locate the lesion or disease. i cannot move my hand, and the pathologist locates the "short-circuit" in brain, or nerve, or "terminal plate," or muscle, as the case may be. now it is this _system_ of _composite systems_ that deserves special attention. we know that it exists as a series of relays and refining processes. in disease it is interrupted, or out of joint, or broken down. health means harmony, concord, rhythm between every part, and the power of the one individual intelligence to use it all, to act or refrain from action, and to hold and maintain through all, repose, equilibrium, and self-mastery. the physical body we know to be a thing of sense and time. we know its beginning, its gestation, its entrance and exit on this material plane. its secrets are all involved in the subtle relations it bears to the soul that inhabits, unifies, and utilizes it. the individual intelligence, ego, soul, or entity, is as patent to us in our _awareness of self_ as is the body it inhabits. it is our _very self_. our knowledge of it is a _direct personal experience_, so direct, immediate, and constant that we overlook its significance. i can see no reason to imagine that a human being, passing from the earthly plane and consciously living on the spiritual plane and recognizing itself as the same individual, would be any wiser as to the exact nature and origin of the individual intelligence than he is now; though his field of vision and range of conscious experience had so immeasurably increased and expanded. if he had solved this problem of _ultimates_, he would be at the end of his thread of life and would compass the infinite. he would be no longer man, but god. so, from all these considerations, and from all directions, we come back to human evolution, the upward and onward journey of the human soul. as man's health, usefulness, and happiness here depend on the perfection and utility of the physical body he inhabits, and its maintenance in health and harmony, have we the least reason to imagine that the same individual, dwelling on the spiritual plane, will not be under the same of analogous laws and relations there, since we have assumed the persistence and conscious identity of the soul there as here? i hold, therefore, that man possesses, now and here, the structure of a _spiritual_ body; and that the "growth of the soul" and our status and relation to the soul, and our status and relation to the life after death on the spiritual plane, depend _very largely_ on the character and integrity of this spiritual body, the "house we have builded." the whole of life, therefore, here, is what gestation of the infant body is before birth. when the child is born it is a separate personality, a distinct individuality. there has been woven into its organism a distinct and synchronous correspondence with that of the mother. during gestation it has passed through every plane of organic life, from _amoeba_, or mollusk, to man. it is thus in touch with every phase and quality of life. it epitomizes them all, transcends them all, and _may co-ordinate_ them all. on the other hand, the individual intelligence of the child, a distinct and separate _unity_, is in vital, spiritual, and synchronous relation to that of the mother that enfolds it. it is either building or rejuvenating a new spiritual body, as the "essential form" of the physical, organic, chemical, and kinetic or magnetic body. what we call "life," or "vitality," runs like a "dominant chord" in the harmonic scale of the whole. each part, organ, and function is related to every other and to the whole by definite vibrations and the laws of harmony. if, from the beginning, it is an "unwelcome child," the higher and subtler elements of the mother's nature, and all her emotions are turned against it, are discordant and not constructive and harmonic. discord is thus ingrained at the foundations and woven into the "subtle body" of the child. nature is so persistent in its determination to preserve and perpetuate the human race, that the building of the organic body of the child goes on; and the individual intelligence is so potent that it often triumphs over these prenatal obstructions, but by no means always. if "there _is_ a spiritual body" in the mother organism during the present life, as i am _entirely satisfied_ there is; and if the child is laying the foundation and weaving the pattern and fabric of a spiritual body of its own for the present life and that immediately beyond; then these psychological influences and conditions are of _transcendent importance_ and _may_ be largely determined by our intelligent choice. a higher race of beings will never inhabit this earth till these fundamental laws are recognized and regarded. we may illustrate and symbolize this spiritual habitation we are building by the over-tones and the harmonics in music. its nature and function and the whole process of building and development are a refining and purifying process. it may be conceived in the vito-magnetic field of man, as that which is in nearest relation and closest touch with the soul, the individual intelligence, and through, and by which the soul acts. being in synchronous relation with the physical organs and functions, like a chord in music, a high with a lower tone (but still harmonic), the _direct_ vehicle and agent of the soul would be this spiritual body; and when the physical body or vehicle dies, or is cast off, the spiritual body _with the soul_ escapes. empirical evidence along just these lines is so abundant in the annals of every people, and in all ages, that it is unnecessary to quote it here. whole volumes are filled with it, outside the annals of spiritualism and the psychical society, and antedating them by centuries and millenniums. the most important consideration is that the building of character by voluntary choice and personal effort, the "growth of the soul," and the evolution of this spiritual body are _inseparable_. this trinity which is man, is _potentially_ (and may be _actually_) a _unity_. the evolutionary and devolutionary lines run in precisely opposite directions, are easily differentiated and defined, are usually recognized by observation and by the individual himself. it is very difficult and takes a long time to deceive ourselves with regard to the upward or downward trend of our own life, till we have blunted by misuse and degraded all the finer faculties, capacities, and powers of our being. a quickened conscience, a moral uplift, a desire to do right, a noble ideal, mark the beginning; but self-study, a rigid and persistent self-analysis, taking account of stock of all our resources and capacities, all our real possessions and opportunities, is the scientific process by which man may become master of his own life and evolve to higher and still higher planes of being, even here in the present life. the question of rewards and punishments hereafter, and what we may expect, or hope, or fear, that we will _get_, will sink into utter nothingness before the great and ever-growing question of what we _are_, and what we are determined to _become_. incidentally with this dominating impulse and determination will be the growth and development of the spiritual body, and the intuition and guiding light of the individual intelligence. we shall become consciously _aware_ of this as a constant personal experience demanding no further proof. it is _knowledge_ of the soul _direct_. every faculty, capacity, and power of the soul will be our willing servant. this is constructive psychology, and is a normal evolution under both natural and divine law: "living the life that we may know the doctrine." it is practical, scientific psychology worked out and demonstrated in the laboratory of life. religions and revelations will no longer be mysteries, but open books; for we shall be in touch with their source and at-one with their inspiration. this is what is meant by "the school of natural science." nor is it an idle speculation, nor merely a thing "devoutly to be wished." if the whole nature of man is built and operated under law; if he is, as he seems to be, an aggregate of all substances, an epitome of all principles and processes; then it follows that to understand these laws, processes and correspondences, is to become _master_ of them and of life. wonderful as have been the discoveries in nature's finer forces and in applied science, all that science has discovered or invented, or art has devised, is like children's toys, when compared with the subtle and marvelous mechanism of man's organism. the rhythmic beating of the heart, synchronous with respiration and the circulation of the blood, are sufficient illustrations. but even this concerns the vehicle, not the driver; the instrument, not the player upon this "harp of a thousand strings." when it comes to the mental and psychical realm, cognition is direct and immediate. we become "aware" of relations and processes, of sequences and powers, by intuition, as we are _aware_ of the self. this is _apperception_ in its highest sense. not through the mind, which is a _process_ and a function, but through that which uses, controls and dominates the mind, viz.: the individual intelligence, the soul. in the mind, in daily life, _we_ weigh and measure, reason, choose, compare, and adjust. in intuition or apperception it is borne in, or comes like a flash of light, and seems as if "we always knew it." we may somewhat haltingly describe the process, but we can never impart the knowledge to another, because it is an _individual experience_. as easily could another feel, sense, and _realize_ the pain of thrusting our finger into the fire, as to receive vicariously, from us, a _real_ physical experience. here lies the difficulty, often the impossibility, of the teacher or the master, in imparting his knowledge. i am _entirety satisfied_ that by personal effort and experience along these lines of normal higher evolution, there comes a time and a degree of unfoldment and power when, from knowledge and self-mastery, the master--the individual intelligence--having evolved and learned to _control_ the spiritual body, can consciously and deliberately pass out of the physical body and return to it at will. he can do this as consciously and completely as it occurs at death; can go where he pleases, within the range of his unfoldment or spiritual experience, and retain conscious memory of it all after his return to the physical body. and suppose this all to be true, how can he demonstrate the fact, or transmit the experience to another; and particularly if that other declared to begin with that, "the whole process is absurd and impossible"? nor is mere credulity here a highway to knowledge. it is merely the opposite pole of incredulity, and both are begotten by ignorance. analogy and the basic principles and laws of scientific psychology are very different matters indeed. they point in this direction like a theorem in mathematics. the principles and laws being grasped and apprehended, the solution becomes only a question of _work_; and at every step the law is verified, "backward and forward it still spells the same." what is this but the _methods_ of natural science applied to psychical science upon the basis of the unity of natural phenomena and universal law? there is nothing to prevent any of us from starting on this upward journey of the soul, if we choose; and never till we do, shall we really begin to _know_, to realize our birthright, and progress toward the realm of eternal day. the science of ethics, the basis of morals, is the starting point, the first step; and _leading the life_, the way. and there is no climbing up some other way. so said the master of galilee, and so say the real masters in all times. when jesus said, "i am the way, the truth, and the life," he doubtless meant that these were all _in him_, and he at-one with them. when jesus said, "i and the father are _one_. no one cometh to the father but by me," he doubtless referred to this at-one-ment as the only way by which the natural man--adam--could become the spiritual man--_christos_. when he said, "the kingdom of heaven is within you," he undoubtedly meant that "heaven" is a condition, a harmonic state, and not a place. we undoubtedly create our own "hell" and our own "heaven," and people them with "devils" or with "angels." true science and true religion clasp hands, and are like the two hands of the one body of truth. they check each other, supplement each other, harmonize each other. superstition and blind dogma are the enemies of true science; religion--never. science and religion are the handmaids of truth; because both are the children of divinity, the agents of light and of eternal progress for man. this building of character, this growth of the soul, this harmonic of evolution, is a matter of _work_; of personal endeavor, of valid, real, personal experience. its results are our _real_ possessions, our "treasure in heaven" that nothing can ever destroy. life and death may ebb and flow, and come and go; but _we_ may, if we will, go on forever; or we may turn the other way and go down to death. _some day_ every human soul will elect, choose, and decide and then start on the journey, north or south. this is the meaning of soul, of individual intelligence, of rational volition, of personal responsibility. it is the science of nature aligned with divinity, and compassing humanity. the purpose of these outlines, suggestions, analogies, and inferences, is to show that this life is a period of gestation, in close analogy and comparable with that of the child _in utero_; that with the web and woof of character, organ and function, impulse and use, opportunity and destiny, we are building a spiritual body, the _immediate vehicle_ of the soul, as literally as is the physical body on the outer material plane; that the laws of spiritual health and vitality are as concrete, apprehensible, and demonstrable as those of physiology. normal use under law develops health, harmony, and strength, in the one case as in the other, demonstrably; and these laws, accurately formulated and demonstrated, constitute the school of natural science, accessible to all prepared to receive and wisely use them; advancement depending on progress, thoroughness, and loyalty, in all preceding degrees. is it worth while? chapter vi the cross in religion and the crux in science with the great work in america with the progress of civilization and the general growth and diffusion of intelligence everywhere, there is one problem upon which all else focalizes, though the fact seems to be seldom clearly apprehended or realized. not only do science and religion face each other at one point, but the life of each is at that one point involved. it is not only the often recognized "conflict between religion and science," which was long ago worn threadbare. it is the fact that both science and religion are out of joint with themselves. the battle-ground may, in a broad way, be named psychology. all problems and all discussions of the real issues arise from, involve, or center around, the nature, laws that govern, and destiny of the human soul. from the very nature of these problems, their intricacy and diversity, they remained the latest in the categories of science to be seriously investigated. for the same reasons they have been the subject of dogma and revelation in religion, with doors slammed in the face of all investigation as not only useless, but wicked, and often made dangerous. between the agnosticism of science, and the dogmatism of religion, knowledge has been crucified, and there it hangs to-day, a crux to the one, and the cross to the other: the same problem, only facing different ways. and yet the reconciliation is not far to seek. it is difficult for the average churchman, or theologian, to apprehend and remember, that a _fact_, in nature or in life, is one thing; and that the _interpretation_, or _explanation_ put upon that fact, by any man, or body of men, is another thing entirely. here is where belief, dogma, and heresy come in. as soon as one denies the interpretation, he is accused of denying the fact, no matter how illogical or absurd the interpretation may be, on the one hand, or how openly he admits the fact as the basis of his own conclusions, on the other. few individuals will be found nowadays who deny the _fact_ of the birth, life, mission, and death of jesus of nazareth. but the interpretations read into the fact differ so widely as to result in almost numberless sects, and an endless war of words. all this theological wrangling may be focalized at one point, almost on a single word. did jesus of nazareth differ in kind or in _degree_, from the rest of humanity? if he had "a like nature with ours," as he and his disciples took the utmost pains to declare, and to demonstrate, then he differed in _degree_ of unfoldment, and was indeed, our elder brother; he differed as the holy differs from the unholy; as the pure differs from the impure; as the kind and charitable differ from the unkind and the uncharitable. it is just at this point that all the theological juggling comes in, in the effort to reconcile contradictions and irreconcilable paradoxes, under the designation--mystery, miracle, and faith. few theologians would admit that it is desirable, even if possible, that the mystery and miracle should disappear, and that wisdom and understanding should take their place. in other words, that jesus should be proved an evolution under both natural and divine law, as the result of "living the life." bear in mind that we are dealing with _interpretations_ only, and with the opinions of men; and that there is nothing "sacred" or "holy" about these opinions, no matter how they may be hedged about by dogma, or ecclesiastic authority. the immaculate conception; the virgin birth; the resurrection of the physical body, and the vicarious atonement, are each and all dogmas; the opinions of men, in _interpreting_ the mystery, and miracle, they have assigned to the nature of jesus, in what they call the "plan," or the "scheme of salvation." if the nature of jesus were radically and essentially different from ours; if he differed from us in _kind_, instead of in _degree_; if he were "very god," instead of a perfected man, as the result of "living the life"; then he can have little in common with us; and, so far as "like natures," "common temptations," and human sympathies, and destinies, are concerned, he might as well have been born on the planet mars. but suppose that psychic and spiritual science could so define the faculties, capacities, and powers of man, and the nature and laws of the human soul, as to demonstrate the fact that jesus became _christos_ through "living the life," and "doing the will of the father," in strict conformity to both natural and divine law, thus revealing the fact that these _potencies_ are _latent_ in every human soul: that it does not depend so much upon what we _believe_, as upon what we _do_; not so much upon what we _profess_, as upon what we _are_; not so much upon what jesus did for us, as upon what we do for ourselves and for others, in strict analogy with the life and the teachings of jesus. would not jesus become, indeed and in truth, a _living example_, in place of a "blood offering"? theology ignores and sophisticates _personal responsibility_, which everything else, and every experience in life, justifies and enforces as the basis of morals. on the other hand, so-called psychic science misapprehends, belittles, and sophisticates the human will, the prime motor power of man. it then confuses rational volition and domination by juggling with the words _suggestion_ and _hypnosis_. this reveals the fact that they have no rational concept whatever of the psychical nature of man, not even a "working hypothesis" of the human soul. theologians affirm, "science" denies, and so they still face each other in this twentieth century with "a war of words," though, to a considerable extent, they have ceased making faces and calling each other names, because there is a deeper struggle going on. the theological hierarchy, worldly-wise in every generation, has dropped the cry of _heresy_ and gone to the very foundations of our civilization. they are sapping and mining the foundations of civil liberty, the "self-evident truths," and the "inalienable rights," upon which this government was founded. here is a thoroughly-organized, relentless determination, openly declared, and well under way to destroy our "free public schools," and substitute that "organized ignorance," the parochial schools, as the first step in reuniting church and state, through dogmatic authority instilled into the youths of this country. not one citizen in a thousand seems to realize what is here being attempted, how thoroughly organized it is, or what immense progress in this direction has already been made; or, if they know, they do not seem to care. it may thus be seen what practical and vital issues we are facing and how much is involved in the "cross of religion," and the "crux of science." intelligence, education, the light of science, and the illumination of true religion, are pitted in a conflict with ignorance, superstition, and fear; dogmatism, degeneration, and devolution. science and religion represent different departments in human interests and the life of man. so far as they are each true, they must eventually, and inevitably clasp hands, instead of working at cross-purposes. actual knowledge of the human soul, as a science of psychology, on the one hand; and the duty of man to himself, to his fellows, and to god, and the destiny of the human soul as essential religion, on the other; must constitute the basis of union, and the point of agreement. the accredited psychology of to-day has hitherto failed to demonstrate any actual knowledge of the human soul, or even to postulate its existence, as a fact in nature. the theologies and religions of to-day appeal largely to superstition and fear, and support their dogmas by "revelations," the diverse interpretations of which have segregated religions into a large number of sects with no bond of union or basis of agreement. competition here, in securing proselytes, differs little, except in name, from that everywhere in evidence between commercial organizations. it is hardly "the survival of the fittest," but rather, as everywhere, and in all ages, the triumph of the most powerful, aggressive, and unscrupulous. the roman hierarchy is still in the lead, with its pope "infallible," and anathematizing all progress and enlightenment, under the designation of "modernism," and all its energy exerted to perpetuate the "dark ages." it is thus that priestcraft masquerades in the name of religion to enslave the human soul. still outside this babel of religion and science, lie numberless cults and organizations professing both liberty and enlightenment along the lines of man's spiritual nature, not one of which puts forth any _clear and definite theorem_ of the human soul. with mere assertions, instead of demonstrated facts, and appealing often to the desire for wealth, health, and comfort in their followers, they often declare that one has only to "_demand_" these things, in order to have them. justice and the law of compensation are often entirely ignored, and the methods employed are _un_moral, to say the least, almost without exception, unscientific, and wholly empirical. occasionally we find "leaders," or "official heads," whose colossal ignorance of either moral or spiritual law, is only equaled by their monumental egotism, and this does not prevent them from gaining proselytes, and amassing fortunes in their own name. it would be difficult to see how many of these cults differ, either in principle or practice, or in the results wrought out in their disciples, from the priestcraft already referred to. they advertise an open thoroughfare, and seem to promise something for nothing, but from the vicarious atonement, up or down the scale, the votaries pay in "mint, anise, and cummin," while ignorantly blind to the weightier matters of the law. to one who for half a century has studied these personal and social problems, and witnessed the rise and fall of many of these cults, from the fox sisters and spiritualism, to braid and hypnotism, while priestcraft and popery, like tennyson's brook, "go on forever," it all seems pitiful that mankind must pay so dearly for freedom, enlightenment, and knowledge. and yet, when the real teacher comes, the rabble so long exploited cry, "away with him," "crucify him." when the rabble at last repent, priestcraft shifts its tactics and deifies the sacrifice, which it instigated, and so perpetuates the eternal tragedy. those familiar with the "seeking after god," and for real knowledge of the essential nature of man, in all ages, are aware that there have always been, in every age, those who have achieved it. it has been known, or rather concealed, under many names. its possessors and teachers have been reviled, persecuted, crucified, and thus their work has been hindered and often defeated. the ignorant and superstitious feared it. the vicious, ambitious, and time-serving hated it, because it prevented the few from dominating and exploiting the many; liberating, as it does, the earnest seeker after truth and enlightenment from the bondage of ignorance, dogma, superstition, and fear, in every form. hence institutional religions, schools of philosophy, coteries, syndicates, and many other organizations of men, constituted to dominate and rule the masses, have been the sworn foes of individual liberty and enlightenment, and of the "illuminati," or real teachers in every age, and a perpetual menace to their work. real knowledge of the nature and destiny of man, has first to be discovered, then recovered, and possessed. to become available, it must be simplified, formulated, and finally promulgated in some form, so as to reach those ready and capable of receiving it. it must be sought earnestly and deservedly. the candidate must demonstrate that he is duly and truly prepared, worthy, and well qualified. every step in advance is determined by his understanding and use of what he has hitherto received. the real possession of this sublime wisdom is an evolution from within and not something communicated from without. it is, literally, the building of character and the growth of the soul, as the highway of knowledge. to discover, possess, exemplify, and promulgate this knowledge, this higher evolution of the individual intelligence, in the face of all obstacles and difficulties, has been known and designated for ages as the _magnum opus_, the "great work." it is, indeed, the greatest work either known, permitted or possible to man. it solves the riddle of the sphinx of life and makes man master of his own destiny. such a master lives in a new world, untrammeled by the things of sense and time. he has indeed, "lived the life to know the doctrine," and can say with jesus, in sincerity and truth, "i, and the father, are one," because we are _at-one_. there is not a particle of evidence in history, in philosophy, or in science, to show that anyone has ever reached such knowledge, liberation, and enlightenment, in any other way than that in which jesus attained it; viz.: by renouncing the ordinary ambitions of life, wealth, fame, and power, and by overcoming selfishness and the lusts of the flesh; devoting their lives to the good of mankind, "without the hope of fee or reward." as the whole work is a spiritual unfoldment, and from beginning to end a refining process, it is easy to see how and why the conditions are what they are, and have always been the same. this is why those who have no apprehension or conception of the process, can see only mystery and miracle in the result. if anyone cites the so-called "black magicians" of egypt, and of antiquity, to refute the moral code as the essential condition of attainment, they will find that these priests and "magi climbing up some other way," and whom jesus designated as "thieves and robbers," could never function or pass beyond the so-called "astral plane." here is where the sibyl and the "virgin seer" came in. this is clearly shown in that little book "the idyll of the white lotus," as in several of bulwer's novels. hypnotism and ceremonial magic, as revealed in the writings of abbé constant, represent ambition for knowledge and power without "living the life," and at any cost to mankind. these _margraves_ have often existed, sealed their own fate, and "gone to their own place." h. p. blavatsky referred to them as "lost souls," or "soulless individuals." they are also graphically described in "the strange story of arinzeman." there was always the "right-hand path," and the "left-hand path." even a slight familiarity with ancient literatures and philosophies reveals the fact, that all these things have been known for ages. the subtlety of the hindoo mind has been such as to leave no phase of mental or psychic phenomena uninvestigated. to the casual and uninstructed reader, it often seems like an endless and hopeless jungle, and he is unable to bring order out of the seemingly endless confusion. there is not a single percept or concept in what is now called "new thought," that may not be found repeated with almost endless variations thousands of years ago. reference has already been made to the conditions imposed upon the student who aspires to know, and to become. the obligations upon the teacher are no less stringent, for both are, from first to last, working under both natural and spiritual law to which they are bound to conform. to be possessed of such knowledge the teacher must have abandoned worldly ambition, the love of wealth, and the applause of men. all motives of time-serving and self-seeking must assail him in vain. he becomes the almoner of the treasure-house of light and knowledge. he must exemplify what he teaches. if he can impart his knowledge, or assist an aspiring and worthy brother, it must be in the way he has himself received it, "without money and without price," or any "hope of reward or fee," and the brother so receiving, in his own degree, must be ready to pass it on under precisely the same terms and conditions. the teacher, therefore, must be in a position to give or to withhold; promulgate or conceal; teach or refuse to teach; governed solely by truth and law, and the solemn obligation under which he has himself received it. the meaning of the saying, "strait is the gate and narrow is the way, and few there be who find it," may thus be made apparent. fragments of this wisdom are found scattered through the ages, with here and there one who has achieved it. for two or three centuries the early christian church undertook to work on these lines, and instituted three degrees, as abundantly shown in the writings of many of the so-called "christian, or church fathers." jesus said to his disciples, "i have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now." and again, "the works that i do, ye shall do also, and greater things than these shall ye do, because i go to the father." and again, "unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them who are without, it is not given." mysteries, indeed, to the ignorant monks who were already wrangling over creed, and dogmas, and who, in at the first council at nice, fought it out surrounded by the soldiers of the pagan emperor, constantine; and thus settled the "orthodox _interpretation_," of what they were wholly incompetent to understand. their successors are still engaged in the same wrangle of interpretation, so far as the "infallible pope," and dogma of obedience, at rome has been unable to suppress it. somewhere between the middle of the first and second centuries, an effort at union and reconciliation arose from another quarter. ammonius saccas, a neo-platonist, endeavored to unite men of different cults and beliefs on the lines of the great work, precisely as the philalethean society is doing in new york to-day; but his movement was soon engulfed and lost sight of by the tide of ecclesiasticism, or suppressed by the soldiers of constantine. i am not attempting a history, for that would fill volumes. i am only giving a few sidelights of the great work. in the tenth century, at baghdad, a society was formed admitting jews, christians, mohammedans, and atheists, with a similar purpose. during the time of martin luther, john reuchlin made a similar attempt. both reuchlin and luther were pupils of trithemius, the abbot of st. jacob's at würzburg, one of whose books i possess, printed in the year , and also another book, "the theosophical transactions of the philadelphian society," printed in london in . browning's "paracelsus" gives a splendid outline of the philosophy and teachings of trithemius, and rescues paracelsus with all who can understand, from the vile slanders of his monkish enemies; and robert browning wrote his "paracelsus" at the age of twenty-three! can you wonder why so few "understand browning"? for more than fifteen hundred years mankind has been involved between the speculations of philosophy, on the one hand, and the creeds and dogmas of theology, on the other. there was also the deliberate destruction of ancient monuments, scrolls, and records, by religious fanatics. diocletian, in a.d. , burned the books of the egyptians. cæsar burned , rolls at alexandria, and leo isaurus , at constantinople in the eighth century. then came the mohammedans, who destroyed the remainder of the accessible scrolls at alexandria. gangs of fanatical monks, christian and pagan, roamed over europe destroying and defacing everything upon which they could lay their hands, as witnesses against their dogmas and superstitions. even to-day, in india, it is difficult for europeans to gain access to genuine ancient records. the records of these barbarities are still fresh in the minds of the guardians of sacred lore. even with such a record for thousands of years, ecclesiasticism is as arrogant and rampant as ever to-day. the wonder is, that there is anything left but barbarism. two writers declare that the most ancient and valuable of the records of the alexandrian library were kept in secret crypts known only to the highest officials, and preserved still in secret crypts known only to the illuminati. in baalbec and all through the east to-day these underground temples are being explored, and even the fragments found excite wonder and admiration. ignorant barbarians may be destructive on general principles, but fanatical ecclesiasticism has ever been destructive of all light, knowledge and civilization, through insane hatred or pure "cussedness"! we need only to regard intelligently what it has done, and is doing for southern europe to-day. can you wonder that the real science of the human soul found little recognition, or that it was denied as possible to man? as already shown, the science of to-day has neither recognized nor worked up to it; and the theology of to-day covers it with fable, mystery, and miracle as of old. in spite of both these the "philalethean society" exists, the "seekers after god" were never more numerous than now, and the _magnum opus_, the great work, was never, in the whole history of man, more in evidence than it is to-day. "truth crushed to earth shall rise again, the eternal years of god are hers." can it be that there is no great truth back of all these struggles and aspirations of the human soul? that there is no possible realization back of these soulful endeavors? is tantalus, after all, the creator and father of man? inspired only by love of disappointment, defeat, and despair, in his children? _for one, i do not believe it._ to plant these aspirations in the soul of man, and doom them to everlasting disappointment and defeat, would brand the creator of man as an infinite liar, instead of a loving father. the earnest student must first learn to recognize, and to discriminate; for the "blind leaders of the blind" are always legions. this power of discrimination, to which i have referred, goes deeper, and means far more, than most persons ever realize, and this is why so many are continually deceived. it is the light of understanding, of spiritual intelligence, within the soul of man. it may be likened to a traveler in a foreign country, and a strange land, suddenly hearing one speaking fluently his own language, his native tongue. it is impossible to deceive him. in this case, however, it is not the mere words, the inflection or pronunciation, but the ideas, sentiments, and principles expressed. "liberty, fraternity, equality," for example; or sympathy, charity, and loving kindness. the "sign of the master" is at once recognized by one already prepared to receive and to understand it. the soul that really desires truth and wisdom above all things, has thereby developed the power to recognize it. this is the discrimination referred to. it is not what someone else tells you, or what another claims. it is what _you_ discern and recognize, and the teaching and the life are in perfect harmony, like chords in music; and they strike a harmonic chord in you, that may be first a surprise, and soon a great joy and a bright light. it is not a question of authority, and of credentials, but of intrinsic reality. you must know how to assay and test the gold yourself. this is where the "alchemy of the great work" comes in, and here lies the beginning of adeptship, the preparation for the "great work." i can demonstrate this from a score of old books, some of them going back many centuries. it has also been symbolized and picturegraphed 'til the imagination ran riot, and ingenuity and fancy became lost, like ideas in a fantasy of words. i know of but one place, one institution, in modern times, where these essential truths of the great work have been preserved as a consistent whole, and that is in the symbolism of free masonry, but the craft long ago lost the real interpretation, though many to-day are on the lines that lead to it. the whole symbolism and ritual of the blue lodge in masonry is, from beginning to end, _a symbol of the journey of the human soul on this earth_, from darkness to light; from sin to righteousness; from ignorance to wisdom and understanding. in other words, it is an exact _theorem_ and solution of the _magnum opus_; a symbol of the philosophy and accomplishment of the great work. the science and the theology of the present day have been briefly contrasted. neither of them pretends to give us any real science of the human soul. science says frankly she "does not know." theology bids us believe and obey; trust and hope. philosophy speculates and reasons, while amusing itself with the kaleidoscope of "postulates" and "categories." science must deal with facts, demonstrate their actuality, and classify them; that is, find their natural order and sequence. in psychology, the facts are _within_ the realm of consciousness, and therefore their demonstration is a matter of individual experience. this is why psychology differs from all other sciences. no one can transfer his individual experiences directly to another. he can describe how he gained them, and give the result and conclusions, and here is where those who know nothing of the real problem, are often both incredulous and contemptuous. the only answer to these is, "they are joined to their idols, let them alone." "they would not believe though one arose from the dead," and yet we are told again and again that the "school of natural science" is the "school of personal experience." it may be well to reflect a moment, and ask ourselves, how it is that we really know anything? is it not through personal experience? real knowledge comes, and can come, in no other way. no teacher of the real science of psychology can ever transmit or transfer his knowledge to another. all he can do is to describe the methods, and steps, by which he acquired it, and assist the student in acquiring it for himself in the same way, or under the same processes and laws. we have only to reflect on the ordinary experiences of life, to realize that this is a universal principle and rule. in the deeper science of the soul, and the higher life, instead of this law being relaxed, it becomes all the more binding. do not the principles that adhere in atom, molecule and mass, still hold in worlds and solar systems? is not this precisely what is meant by "the reign of law"? if man were built upon some other scheme or plan than the rest of nature, how could he apprehend or adjust himself to nature? the very _concept_ of miracle is _lawlessness_, and mystery is but another name for _ignorance_. knowledge means experience and apprehension of law. neither can the laws of nature and the laws of god be at cross-purposes, for that would make harmony impossible and inconceivable. the confusion and discord are all in us, and the great work means adjustment, harmony, and then knowledge. it is the journey of the human soul on the royal highway to light, liberation, and eternal day. for many centuries those who have achieved this wisdom, this "great work," have been trying to make it accessible to mankind, and to place it in such form that the ethical, scientific, and philosophical principles involved, and upon which it is based, should not again be lost. every such effort has hitherto failed. the scientific spirit of the present age, in a very broad way, seemed to offer a new and a more advantageous opportunity; for the whole process is one of strict science. the psychology of the present day has become involved in phenomena and automatism, and is in no sense _constructive_. it is one thing to build theories, and quite a different thing to systematize demonstrated facts, through the recognition of co-ordinate relations, and underlying law. the work is open and accessible to all who manifest real interest, an open mind, and who have the intelligence and discrimination to recognize the character of the work. it has never, in the history of man, been open in any other way, on any other terms, or to any other individuals. those who can fill these requirements constitute to-day a larger number than have before existed at any one time, for perhaps many centuries. the "school of natural science" is in evidence. the "great work" is carefully outlined. there is no bar to one's making a beginning on the path, except indifference, incredulity, preoccupation, or prejudice; and these need not be in the least disturbed, for they will be kindly and courteously passed by. arguments, controversy, and proselyting, have no part in the great work, as there is no organization, and no personal ambitions to serve. those who speak a common language, are inspired by a common purpose, and aspire to a common and universal good, will, soon or late, find themselves associated together and co-operating. it is like a chorus of voices when an old song is started that we loved in childhood. each takes up the strain, falls into his own part, and helps to swell the harmony, from the joy of his own heart. those who "never did like the song," will "quietly steal away." both swedenborg and emerson have sufficiently illustrated the "law of correspondencies," and "compensation," to reveal the basis of all harmonious human associations, whether on the earth, or on other planes of being. hence the "harmonics of evolution," was the forerunner of the "great work." the pitiable byplay and claptrap of "affinities" so often seen and heard nowadays, where all previous obligations are ignored, and personal responsibilities set at naught, only serve to emphasize the real law of harmony and constructive evolution, by showing what it is not. the great work digs to the very foundations of life, and all human associations, and reveals the good, the true, and the beautiful, in the building of character, and the adornment of the temple of the human soul. this is indeed---- "eternal progress moving on, from state to state the spirit walks." death is neither the end nor the beginning. it is only a change in pitch, a shifting of keys, and the same old song of life goes on, if we have but learned the score, and caught the harmony. salvation is not a thing accomplished once for all. we have only to consider the monotony, the poverty of invention, and imagination, of those who have tried to portray the joy of the redeemed in heaven, in order to realize what a bore it would soon become, if that were all. inspiration, achievement, and eternal progress, with more and more helpfulness to others, with plane after plane achieved, revealing plane after plane beyond--does not this appeal far more strongly to the highest and best in us all? and pray, what is this, but the _great work_, that i have tried herein to outline, and as taught and lived by jesus, and every great master the world has ever known? each has achieved in his own degree, worded it in his own way, and "stepped out of sunlight into shade, to make more room for others." long before the birth of jesus, it was said, "the wise and peaceful ones live, renewing the earth like the coming of spring." and having themselves crossed the ocean of embodied existence, help all those who try to do the same thing, without personal motive. i have endeavored to give a general outline of the great work, drawn from history, tradition, philosophy, and symbolism, down to the present year of grace. i find many corroborations, many things pointing in the same general direction. but i find but one concise and definite _formulation_ of the _scientific theorem_, in which the outline is clear, and the analogy complete, and thereby made accessible and apprehensible to the open-minded and intelligent student. such students need experience no real difficulty in finding a clew to the labyrinth of life, or, as our ancient brothers put it in regard to the _magnum opus_--"a key to the closed palace of the king." this is the purpose of the "harmonic series" of books. they need rest upon no authority beyond the intrinsic evidence of truth, on every page. if they are not consistent in themselves, then they must fall in pieces. the only appeal to the reader is: read them carefully, analyze your own mind and soul, and come to your own conclusions. if they find no response, no answering chord in you, then they were written for someone else, or in vain. one further consideration remains to be noted at this time, as the question is sure to arise: "how about woman in the great work?" seldom in the past has she received recognition, since the earliest days in old india, though here and there have been the most noble women. i heard anna dickinson, many years ago, open one of her famous lectures with these words, "i claim for man and woman alike, the right to attempt and win. i claim for man and woman alike, the right to attempt and fail." it seems to me to-day, as it did more than thirty years ago, that this is the whole problem in a nutshell, and that any number of words could add nothing to the statement. the great work is as open to woman as to man, and on the same terms. they have perhaps more to overcome in some directions, and men more in others. this is like saying, "man and woman are different," that is all. one thing is certain; there will never be an ideal social state on earth, or a heaven anywhere, except as men and women _co-operate_ together for the happiness of each, and the highest, noblest, cleanest good of all, and this is only another phase or department of the great work. chapter vii the modulus of nature and the theorem of psychology the science of psychology, like any other science, must deal with demonstrated facts, classify them, and systematize the resulting categories. strictly logical conclusions drawn from categories of facts so derived, deserve the name of science. science is, therefore, a definite method of arriving at exact conclusions. no other method can legitimately bear the name of science. no one pretends to dispute the conclusions logically involved in the binomial theorem; or in the parallelogram of forces; or in correlative mechanical equivalents; or in many of the known laws of chemistry and physiology. when, however, we come to mental processes and psychical phenomena, the facts are so redundant, and so differently reported and apprehended, that argument, belief and prejudice, credulity and incredulity, overshadow and drown with a war of words all clear, scientific methods or conclusions. but if man, as a whole, is a fact in nature; or if "god made man a living soul," then the whole nature of man exists under law, and is apprehensible to science. man's function as a scientist is to read, to reflect, to weigh, to measure, and to understand. there are those who object to natural science as applied to "divine" things. they would preserve the mystery, and seem to prefer miracle and dogma to knowledge and law. their preference is to be respected, even though ignorance and superstition result. since the domain of science, in america at least, is no longer restricted by ecclesiastic law, the conflict between religion and science has gradually disappeared, and the conflict is rather that between knowledge and ignorance, with ignorance on the wane. "things settled by long use, if not absolutely good, at least fit well together." this transition period seems confusing to many earnest souls with its "new thought," its "occultisms" and its "lo here's" and "lo there's." but through and beneath it all, may be heard a note of harmony, the promise and the potency of the triumph of light and knowledge. we may not know the final results, but every sincere and earnest seeker may have the peaceful assurance that he is on the open highway that leads to the noblest and the best. the assurance of knowledge but makes clearer the revelations of faith. that "absentee god"--of which carlyle wrote, has been discerned as the universal intelligence, and equally love and law. among recent writers and books on the subject of psychology, professor hugo münsterberg's "psychotherapy" occupies a very high place. it appeals especially to the physician, more familiar than others with morbid psychical states. here i can look back on almost half a century of experience, the most active, in dealing with these cases. but i am at present less concerned with mental pathology and therapy, than with the general psychological basis; the _causative_ categories upon which they are based, and which occupy the first half of münsterberg's book. dividing the whole subject--the content of consciousness, all the faculties, capacities and powers, all processes and sequences--into two general groups or classes, the _purposive_ and the _causal_, münsterberg declares that "the _causal_ view only is the view of psychology"; "the _purposive_ view lies outside of psychology." (p. .) i hold, that without the _purposive_ view equally included and co-ordinated, there can be no such thing as scientific psychology. half views will hardly admit of synthetic generalizations. the complete separation here instituted, between the purposive and causal factors, in itself, for purposes of definition and study, need not be objected to, if it were consistently carried out, which it is not. he so nearly pre-empts the whole ground for the _causal_, giving scant courtesy to the _purposive_, merely a few crumbs of comfort, so that it cannot be said to be ignored altogether, and drops the scientific method entirely in dealing with it; assenting to moral precepts and principles, without a clew to any scientific basis, that one must object to the _name_--psychology--as being applied to it at all. it contains no hint of a "knowledge of the soul." it is the vito-motor mechanism of the mind. the automatism of the elements, incidents, changes, and sequences of our states of consciousness; based upon, and including all that we know of physiology. along these lines, münsterberg's work has probably never been equaled. it is concise, comprehensive, and exhaustive. his physical, physiological, and mental syntheses are well-nigh complete. whenever, in the future, what he calls "the _purposive_ view" shall be resurrected from the obscurity and nescience to which he has assigned it, and really habilitated in the garb of science, and recognized as the lawful spouse of the _causal_, we shall indeed have a true psychology, a science of the human soul. münsterberg neither scouts nor denies the possibility of such a future discovery. in the meantime, his viewpoint, and necessarily some of his conclusions and generalizations, are one-sided, and out of focus. emphasizing the _causal_ as he does, this could hardly be otherwise; and from this point of view, and for this reason, his practical psychotherapy is purely empirical. we need not deny his facts, or his results, even when mixed with hypnosis, more than he does the "cures" in "christian science," "faith cures," at lourdes, or by the "laying on of hands." all these things are too well known, and not one of them deserves the name of science. they are solely empirical methods. münsterberg's broader view and deeper analysis give to his methods great prominence, and he can point to no results that transcend the others. these facts and these results are as old as the history of man. they have, even as he points out, constituted epidemics of "cure." there is, moreover, a scientific view and method regarding what he calls the purposive view which he overlooks entirely, and which by emphasis of the causal, makes seemingly impossible. it is our purpose to try and make this clear. his analysis of suggestion, though largely automatic, is well-nigh exhaustive. awareness, and attention, are illustrated copiously; but not clearly differentiated as they may be, and actually are in the experience of individual life. fortunately, and wisely, he eliminates the "subconscious" as having no real meaning or scientific value as now used. but it might be applied to the mental awareness of physiological automatism (bodily habits, often beginning in an act of will, or attention; writing, speaking, music, dancing, and the like, and in less degree, all life impulses and movements below the line of attention or awareness). if, by courtesy, these might be called sub-conscious, then there is another group above the habitual plane of awareness, that, by equal courtesy, might be called supra-conscious. but, unless it is remembered, as münsterberg points out, that, regardless of phenomena, _consciousness is one_, these terms can only lead to confusion. certain cases designated "multiple" or "dissociated personalities" have only served to increase this confusion still further; and more especially, when the effort has been made to patch them together, or to control them from without, by hypnosis. the well-known case of "sally," reported by dr. morton prince, stands at last, as a "personally conducted" psychological excursion, with sally still preserving her incognito, and as much a mystery as ever. that automatism incident to all progressive organization and perfection of function, and through which physical, physiological, mental, and psychic synthesis becomes possible, has been allowed to usurp the place of the "builder of the temple," the "driver of the chariot," and the "player" upon the "harp of a thousand strings." harmony and equilibrium are incidents resulting from _causative_ processes! we need only to know the construction, relations of parts, and principles involved in the vibrations of the harp, in order to understand and appreciate the music. the player, the musician--drunk, or sober, tone-blind or genius--is a mere incident, and however _purposive_ or competent, is admitted by courtesy only, and warned not to interfere too much with the harp! to build, and keep in order, and tune the harp, constitutes the science of music. some day, when we have leisure and inclination, we may turn our attention to the musician, but that day seems far off. we admit that his function is _purposive_. he, no doubt, has designs on the harp, and upon us, but we are handling musical instruments at present, and if he objects to our calling ourselves "musicians" (psychologists) he is impertinent, and should study the science of music, or keep silent. i am not "begging the question" in regard to the human soul. i am simply emphasizing the fact of the individual intelligence, which, at the point of equilibrium, sweeps the strings with that harmony which is the soul of music. this harp of a thousand strings, is indeed, "fearfully and wonderfully made." its physics and kinetics; its consonants and dissonants; its shifting keyboards; its changes in pitch, rhythm, and harmony from atom and molecule, to neurons, cells and mass; with the tides of life--blood, plasma, water, air, magnetism--sweeping the whole at every breath or pulse beat, to the cry of the builder--life--"out with the old! in with the new!" and yet the _conscious identity_ in health, typically unchanged and unchanging--_causative_, _designed_, _scientific_--yea verily! and _purposive_, _human_, _intelligent_, _spiritual_, _divine_, but a dead corpse, given over to decomposition the moment it is bereft of that something we feel, and know, and name--the _individual intelligence_--the master musician; or the staggering, drunk, crazy fiddler, with this harp of a thousand strings, twanging perhaps in a mad-house! put the house in order; analyze, and classify; adjust the furniture with the handmaids of science, art, and beauty in evidence and at call; but for goodness' sake! stop hypnotizing the musician--"just a little"--under the fallacy or the pretense of _strengthening_ the will by _weakening_ it just a little more! this is "giving your patients fits, because you are death on fits"! rescue science from this atheromatous degeneration, and then suppress the dabblers in "black magic" who pose as hypnotists, as münsterberg advises. for clear intelligence and exhaustive analysis, münsterberg's "psychotherapy" is a masterpiece, but his psychic equation of _causative_ and _purposive_, with all his mathesis, not only remains unsolved, but leads to confusion, from the false light shed on the unknown quantity, and his failure to indicate the gnosis; the demarcation between automatism and purposive intelligence. that this confusion exists in the daily life of the average individual whose evolution is still incomplete; that it constitutes a large per cent. of all cases of "dominant ideas," obsessions, riotous emotions and passions; that it is nowhere recognized and defined in modern psychology, or made synthetically clear in modern philosophy, all these lapses make it all the more necessary that it should be clearly defined and made plain as the basis of scientific psychology. in addition to all this, if münsterberg's conclusions and applications are unsound because psychologically unscientific at the point; for example, where he almost hesitatingly indorses hypnosis, however qualified or safeguarded, he is certain to be quoted as authority on the subject by those who will ignore all his qualifications to justify the practice. in order to meet these imperative conditions, the attempt to formulate any philosophy of psychology will not be made. even were such an attempt made successfully, that would remove the discussion from the field of science, where it should by all means remain. what we need is a real science of life, and this should involve the whole mental and psychical realm, and lead ultimately to a knowledge of the human soul. recognized facts in common experience only need be appealed to, though different values will have to be placed upon some of these facts as their importance is made plain. we begin with the fact of consciousness. what it is, we do not know. what it means and does, we know very largely and broadly. in itself, it is purely passive. it never acts. like space, it is the "all container." it is the background, the theatre of our intelligence. with the individual intelligence, plus, or with consciousness, we have awareness. this is perception, or cognition, still negative. these basic conditions, faculties and capacities, are like a company of soldiers on parade. now comes the "word of command"--_attention_! latent consciousness--awareness--now becomes concentrated, focalized on one point, one feeling, or emotion, or act. the soldiers "dress up," glance down the line, and are ready to act. then comes the action, the movement, the drill, or the fight. the drill master is also a soldier, but he is in command. he is called the will. without him and his recognized authority, the soldiers may be a mob, or a rabble. with him, they "fall in line," give "attention," "dress up," and are ready to act. these are facts, and are basic and primary in our conscious _awareness_ and _attention_ in consciousness; the one negative, though inclusive; the other positive, and motor, or active. in his "psychotherapy" under the heading "the subconscious," münsterberg has much to say upon the meaning and differentiation of awareness, attention, and recognition, but he fails to point out in direct relation, at this point, the primary power--the will, moved by the individual intelligence. later in his work the will is recognized and frequently referred to, but from beginning to end he makes it incidental, rather than basic. when he comes to broad groups of psychic phenomena, or pathological symptoms, the sounding board of rational volition is cracked and there is where hypnosis slips in. broad as he has laid his foundations in physical and physiological synthesis, he loses sight of its importance in the psychological; regarding as an incident that which is a basic principle of prime importance. schopenhauer went, perhaps, as far to the opposite extreme. perhaps "the truth will be found in the middle of the road." the heir apparent, the prince regent, the lawful sovereign, by heredity, by the laws of nature, and "by the will of god," in this tabernacle of man, is the individual intelligence; no matter whether we recognize or dispute his rightful authority. his prime minister is the human will; whether conspiring against, or co-operating with, the king. we may analyze the foundation of the kingdom, and the affairs of state, and designate them as _causative_, or _purposive_. we may see monarchy, or anarchy; democracy or republicanism; we may dethrone the king, and turn the state, literally, into a mad-house; but all the facts of nature, conscious awareness, and scientific psychology, cry, with one voice, hail to the king! long live the king! i! me! mine! myself! a fact so basic, that it is as patent to the child as to the man. now comes the juggler, the little joker. münsterberg has sufficiently revealed the variety-stage, "the subconscious," and his biography of the various individual players and troupes is very elaborate. they are, one and all, _suggestions_. and suggestion is the "juggler," and the "little joker." after the intelligence and the will, our awareness finds subjects and objects, ideas, images, pictures, percepts and concepts. that all these, both within and without, are suggestive; that one idea, or image, or object, suggests another, or others, no one will deny, who has ever _thought_ about his own thinking. it is like saying, all mental pictures are composite; the elements of many kinds coming from many sources. so far, _suggestion_ is all right. it is awareness of an idea, percept, concept, or act awakened, called to attention by another, with the question, how does it strike you? what do you think of it? what, if anything, do you wish, or propose to do about it? it is purely negative, and suggests action or inhibition, without the slightest domination. remember that the will--rational volition--is that power, which, from the point of attention enables the individual to act, or refuse to consider, as he pleases. if i suggest to my friend here in my library, that it is near train time; that he can go if he chooses or remain with me all night, he is free to act on the suggestion and go or stay as he chooses. i have called to his attention certain facts of time, place, or circumstance, but left his will untrammeled. if i am tired of him and wish him to go, or really wish him to stay, in either case it is still a suggestion, because i have left him free to act or not. but in this case certain tones of my voice, not direct by touching the will, but coloring the feelings or emotions, color both his preferences and my own. even persuasion, the power of another example, the placing of certain views or considerations before another, all these but make the more clear and specific the suggestion. they reach the will through the inside, in the realm of ideation, and not from the outside, in the way of domination. all these things are essential elements in social intercourse. if, however, i have a motive in wishing my friend to go, or to stay, and have determined in my own mind which it shall be; ignoring or overriding his own choice; and if i use my will, or passes, or touch his eyes, or forehead, with the purpose of concentrating _his_ attention or will, on _my_ wish, or idea, or command, it is no longer free choice with him, but domination; no longer suggestion, but hypnosis, pure and simple. the confusion and juggling at this point has been made the sole excuse for hypnotism, through belittling or ignoring the importance, normal action, and supremacy of the human will. no one denies that the exchange or forcible expression of ideas, percepts, mental pictures, or concepts, is suggestive. but the normal individual is free to accept or reject them. education, bias, prejudice, and the like, have also much to do in determining results. but the moment you interfere with the free choice of the individual and dominate toward your choice, regardless of his own, you enter the realm of hypnosis; deprive him, just to that degree, of free choice, and might as well call it "fiddlesticks" as "suggestion." it is domination, the mastery, so far as it goes or exists at all, of the will, voluntary powers, and sensory organs of one individual, by the will of another; thus reversing completely the process of nature. to dominate the will of another is to weaken it. timidity, apprehension, fear, are in inverse ratio to confidence, self-assurance, courage, and self-control. health, happiness, and self-development lie along the lines of man's higher evolution, and the basic principle, the primary power, the minister of state, is the rational and intelligent will. the scientific theorem of psychology can be nothing else than nature's modulus of man, with its root in universal intelligence. man individualizes and involves this intelligence as he evolves form, function, adaptation, and adjustment, and at least secures and maintains perfect equilibrium. this is nature's modulus, else the whole of human life is purposeless and meaningless. given, then, an individual intelligence, endowed with self-consciousness; with rational volition, the power to choose and to act or refuse to act; how shall it master its environment; adapt itself to any conditions; secure adjustment and become _master_? the starting point and the keynote from first to last is self-control. then come high ideals, intelligent choice, and the will backed by discrimination and judgment. these lead to understanding and wisdom. the "courage of one's convictions," can be neither conceited nor blatant egotism, but a readiness to assume full responsibility of motives, acts, and results. this recognition of personal responsibility is what we call _conscience_. it is the judgment-seat of the individual intelligence in the kingdom of its own soul, or realm of consciousness. the moment this throne totters, or is obscured, devolution begins, and degeneration, insanity, and inferno lie that way. it does not change one principle involved, or weaken either modulus or theorem when we reflect that most equations are ended by death, long before being brought to successful solution. for the time they are certainly interrupted. neither do the babel of tongues, the theories, theologies, or philosophies change either modulus or theorem, because they are grounded in demonstrated facts, recognized, either vaguely or clearly, in the conscious experience of every intelligent thinking man and woman. constructive psychology, based upon science, for the building of character by persistent effort, increasing continually all personal resources, means the normal higher evolution of man. so-called religions and the life after death have been purposely left unconsidered. if we really have a science of the soul--the individual intelligence--based upon psychological facts, demonstrated in the daily experience of every healthy individual, it touches religion at its most vital point, viz.: ethics or morals. if these ethical principles are true and demonstrable, they must constitute the foundation of religion as of ethics. if morals are strengthened and made clear, and personal responsibility as conscience, is recognized and accepted, the vicarious atonement will have to go, and theologians will have to change their mystical and miraculous interpretations from vicarious atonement to personal at-one-ment with _christos_. the "miraculous conception," and "virgin birth," held equally in regard to christna centuries before, and also the literal resurrection of the physical body will have to be otherwise explained. the purposive view as one full term of the psychological equation, will find uniform law and order in place of the credulous legends of ignorant and superstitious monks, while the divine man will be taken down from the cross and restored to the heart of humanity, as the modulus of nature, _realized_ as a normal evolution, under natural and spiritual law. salvation from sin, ignorance, superstition, and fear, will be recognized as the result of "leading the life," and vicarious only through a divine example; or, if you please, _legitimate suggestion_; with personal effort, rational volition, and personal responsibility working in harmony toward the desired result. section two the new avatar of natural science chapter viii our indebtedness to ancient india it is more than thirty years since in southern europe, england, and america, a genuine renaissance of vedic literature, philosophy, and religion began to assume a popular form and to become accessible to the general reading public. scholars, like sir william jones, had for the past century been familiar with the ancient civilization and the vedic literature and the study of sanscrit had made some progress in the universities. the idea, however, that these antiquities had any vital interest to us, beyond curious myths and obsolete superstitions, had not been perceived, much less admitted. the antiquity of man, and the philosophy of evolution, had opened new fields for thought, and necessitated a revision of all previous concepts of man and nature. old records and interpretations were everywhere revised, and the interpretations of the mosaic records were challenged at every point. popular religions were up in arms and were compelled to adjust themselves to the new régime. but even after this century of progress and enlightenment, it has scarcely yet dawned on the mind of theologians that the challenge of science was, after all, insignificant, compared with that which was to come, and for which modern science had paved the way. the whole realm of theology, and the foundations of religion, were to undergo revision. facts incontestable were being gathered and proofs established beyond all possible denial, or controversy, that all modern theologies and religions were copied and adapted from vedic and ante-vedic sources, antedating our present era by more than two thousand years. the superficial and devout churchman, whose faith is fortified on the one hand by superstition, and on the other at least borders on fanaticism, is apt to be resentful in the presence of these facts, and, falling back on the infallibility and plenary inspiration of the bible, to declare that if his own superficial interpretations are questioned or denied, religion will be done for and mankind left in utter darkness. he does not perceive that the facts of nature and the essentials of religion are one thing, and man's _interpretation_ of them another thing entirely. he does not perceive how these ignorant and superstitious interpretations of men have set at naught the real life of jesus and the teachings of the christ. he does not realize how doctrine has usurped the place of duty, and dogmatism has hardened the soul of man. one thing, however, is inevitable. facts and evidence as to origin, analogies, and adaptation of the christian mysteries from ancient india, are widely known, and the time has come when these mysteries are being examined as to their intrinsic meaning and their bearing on the daily life of man and the progress of the human race. the author of this little book has only attempted a bare outline of these great facts, and to put them in such shape that the reader may perceive their general bearing, and the sources whence they are derived. the following extracts made almost at random, the quantity of evidence being so redundant, from jacolliot's "bible in india," a translation of which was made in this country as early as , and prof. max müller's lectures, "india, what can it teach us?" printed here more than a quarter of a century ago, will give the reader the evidence and the assurance that these ancient sources of wisdom are scarcely yet known in outline to the western world. jacolliot spent many years in india, studying its present civilization and its ancient lore, while prof. max müller derived his knowledge largely from study of sanscrit and the vedanta. "soil of ancient india, cradle of humanity, hail! hail, venerable and efficient nurse, whom centuries of brutal invasion have not yet buried under the dust of oblivion! hail, fatherland of faith, of love, of poetry, and of science. may we hail a revival of thy past in our western future. "i have dwelt 'midst the depths of your mysterious forests, seeking to comprehend the language of your lofty nature, and the evening airs that murmured 'midst the foliage of banyans and tamarinds whispered to my spirit these three magic words: zeus, jehovah, brahma. "i have inquired of brahmins and priests under the porches of temples and ancient pagodas, and they have replied: "'to live is to think, and to think is to study god, who is all, and in all.... "'to live is to learn, to learn is to examine and to fathom in all their perceptible forms the innumerable manifestations of celestial power. "'to live is to be useful; to live is to be just; and we learn to be useful and just in studying this book of the vedas, which is the word of eternal wisdom, the principle of principles as revealed to our fathers.'" ("the bible in india," p. .) plotinus, the neoplatonist, said: "god is not the principal of beings, but the principle of principles." this was the hindoo concept of _para brahm_ two thousand years before. "in the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the upanishads. it has been the solace of my life--it will be the solace of my death. [schopenhauer, quoted by max müller.] ... if i were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power and beauty that nature can bestow--in some parts a very paradise on earth--i should point to india. if i were asked under what sky the human mind had most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied plato and kant--i should point to india. and if i were to ask myself from what literature we, here in europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of greeks and romans, and of one semitic race, the jewish, may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human, a life, not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal life--again i should point to india." the reader should remember that this is not the _opinion_ of an ignorant enthusiast, but the mature judgment of one of the most profound scholars and sanscritists in europe in his day--prof. max müller. "the study of mythology has assumed an entirely new character, chiefly owing to the light that has been thrown on it by the ancient vedic mythology of india. "buddhism is now known to have been the principal source of our legends and parables." the story of the two women who claimed each to be the mother of the same child is found literally in the kanjur, translated from the buddhist tripitake, and the "judgment of solomon" is only a copy of the older story. "the history of all histories, and yet the mystery of all mysteries--take religion, and where can you study its true origin, its natural growth and its inevitable decay better than in india, the home of brahmanism, the birthplace of buddhism, and the refuge of zoroastrianism. "take any of the burning questions of the day--popular education, higher education, parliamentary representation, codification of laws, finance, emigration, poor-law, and whether you have anything to teach and to try, or anything to observe and to learn, india will supply you with a laboratory such as exists nowhere else. "and in the study of the history of the human mind, and the study of ourselves, of our true selves, india occupies a place second to no other country. whatever sphere of the human mind you may select for your special study, whether it be language, or religion, or mythology, or philosophy, whether it be laws or customs, primitive art or primitive science, everywhere, you have to go to india, whether you like it or not, because some of the most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in india, and in india only. "sleeman tells us men (in india) adhere habitually and religiously to the truth, and 'i have had before me hundreds of cases,' he says, 'in which a man's property, liberty, and life have depended upon his telling a lie, and he has refused to tell it.' could many an english judge say the same?" (remarks by prof. müller.) prof. müller quotes from an arabian writer of the thirteenth century, "the indians are innumerable, like grains of sand, free from all deceit and violence. they fear neither death nor life." and again, from marco polo, in the thirteenth century, "you must know, marco polo says, that these abralaman (hindoos) are the best merchants in the world, and the most truthful, for they would not tell a lie for anything on earth." "in the sixteenth century abu fazl, the minister of the emperor akbar, says in his 'ayin akbari,' 'the hindus are religious, affable, cheerful, lovers of justice, given to retirement, able in business, admirers of truth, grateful and of unbounded fidelity, and their soldiers know not what it is to fly from the field of battle.'" (how badly these "poor heathen" were in need of the jesuit missionary, and the british government and civilization!) prof. müller quotes warren hastings regarding the hindus in general, as follows, "they are gentle and benevolent, more susceptible of gratitude for kindness shown them, and less prompted to vengeance for wrongs inflicted, than any people on the face of the earth--faithful, affectionate, submissive to legal authority." bishop heber said, "the hindus are brave, courteous, intelligent, most eager for knowledge and improvement, sober, industrious, dutiful to parents, affectionate to their children, uniformly gentle and patient, and more easily affected by kindness and attention to their wants and feelings than any people i ever met with." elphinstone said, "no set of people among the hindus are so depraved as the dregs of our own great towns." (it might have been wiser to have employed english missionaries at home.) sir thomas munro bears even stronger testimony. he writes, "if a good system of agriculture, unrivaled manufacturing-skill, a capacity to produce whatever can contribute to either convenience or luxury, schools established in every village for teaching reading, writing and arithmetic, the general practice of hospitality, and charity among each other, and above all, a treatment of the female sex full of confidence, respect, and delicacy, are among the signs which denote a civilized people--then the hindus are not inferior to the nations of europe--and if civilization is to become an article of trade between england and india, _i am convinced that england will gain by the import cargo_. "even at the present moment, after a century of english rule and english teaching, i believe that sanskrit is more widely understood in india, than latin was in europe at the time of dante. "there are thousands of brahmans, even now, when so little inducement exists for vedic studies, who know the whole of the rig-veda by heart, and can repeat it, and what applies to the rig-veda, applies to many other books." (ten thousand and seventeen hymns.) speaking of other and later literature, prof. müller says, "it is different with the ancient literature of india, the literature dominated by the vedic and buddhistic religions. that literature opens to us a chapter in what has been called the education of the human race, to which we can find no parallel anywhere else. whoever cares for the historical growth of our language, that is, of our thoughts; whoever cares for the intelligible development of religion and mythology, whoever cares for the first foundation of what in later times we call the sciences of astronomy, metronomy, grammar and etymology; whoever cares for the first intimations of philosophical thought; for the first attempts at regulating family life, village life, and state life, as founded on religion, ceremonial, tradition and contact (samaya), must in future pay the same attention to the literature of the vedic period as to the literature of greece and rome and germany. "i maintain then that for a study of man, or, if you like, for a study of aryan humanity, there is nothing in the world equal in importance with the veda. "the aristocracy of those who know--_di color che sanno_--or try to know, is open to all who are willing to enter, to all who have a feeling for the past; an interest in the genealogy of our thoughts, and a reverence for the ancestry of our intellect, who are, in fact, historians in the true sense of the word, i.e. inquirers into that which is past, but not lost. "but if we mean by primitive the people who have been the first of the aryan race to leave behind literary relics of their existence on earth, then i say the vedic poets are primitive; the vedic language is primitive; the vedic religion is primitive, and, taken as a whole, _more primitive than anything else that we are ever likely to recover in the whole history of our race_.... "for this reason, because the religion of the veda was so completely guarded from all strange infection, it is full of lessons which the student of religion could learn nowhere else." the foregoing quotations have been made from a little volume, "india: what can it teach us?" published by funk and wagnalls in , and sold at cents, so that these statements of prof. max müller have been accessible for more than a quarter of a century. since , however, we have heard more and more of the "wisdom of old india." the whole theosophical movement, degenerate as it may have become in some directions, and much as it has been misinterpreted, and ridiculed and exploited in others, was primarily a sincere and earnest attempt "to bring the secret doctrine of ancient india within reach of western students," to promote the brotherhood of man; the study of ancient philosophy and the psychical powers latent in man. there are thousands of intelligent and earnest students all over the world who have been uplifted, illuminated, and encouraged by these studies. when the true history of the present epoch comes to be written, there can be no shadow of doubt as to the recognition that will be accorded to h. p. blavatsky and her aims, her life, and her work. but such movements as are going on in the world, continually change their base, their methods, and their prospective. while the new awakening unmistakably goes back to old india, and compels a review and a readjustment of all our knowledge, and all our hopes and aims, another spirit has entered our intellectual realm, and compelled attention and recognition. it has made for itself a habitation and a name, and nothing less than a cataclysm can altogether overthrow it. it is the genius of scientific criticism, research, and demonstration. the "mistakes of moses" may indeed be paralleled by those of modern physical science, and these are being revealed side by side with those of theology and dogmatic assertion. it has hardly yet dawned upon the mind of the physical scientist that the concept of the psychical and spiritual life and nature of man comprises, with the world of matter and form, a complete theorem of human life. he is often as incredulous, resentful, and contemptuous as the creed-bound religionist at the approach of more light, and the suggestion that all these essential problems were included and solved ages ago in ancient aryavarta; and that "the few who know," the ancient order of the _illuminati_, now designated the "school of natural science," has treasured this knowledge for ages. the vedas are not only ancient, but complicated and diffuse, and the busy life of the modern student will hardly suffice for the mastery of their wisdom, or the understanding of their secrets. when, however, this ancient wisdom is condensed and epitomized, in perfect harmony with the concepts, the methods, and the demonstrations of natural science, the "jewel in the lotus,"--to use a vedic synonym,--will appear in all its beauty and glory, to all who have eyes to see, and ears to hear, with determination to "honor every truth by use," and loyal service. in the foregoing quotations it may be seen what this real knowledge did for the people of ancient india in building character on constructive lines, promoting justice, equity, charity, and kindness among the common people, and the teeming millions of india, when our saxon and norman ancestors were still barbarians, and before the jew or the christian were even dreamed of. in the following quotations from jacolliot's "bible in india," an outline will be given as to the source of some of our myths, pantheons, and religions. these brief and imperfect outlines from two small and generally forgotten books, ought to satisfy any intelligent and unbiased student how completely the general thesis may be demonstrated from the ancient records themselves. the books from which these quotations are made are like kindergarten primers for the use of beginners. the present writer's interest in and study of theosophy and the secret doctrine were instigated by schopenhauer's "world as will and idea." he found how largely schopenhauer had drawn from the upanishads (see previous quotation), and how little, after all, his "philosophy" had utilized the ancient wisdom. hence he resolved to seek the ancient sources of knowledge, and has been trying his best to apprehend and utilize them, the hoarded wisdom of the ages. he is not in the least anxious to gain recognition for, or to seek to rehabilitate old india, for its own sake. she speaks for herself, through the centuries of the past, and will continue to speak and to influence all coming time. jacolliot shows, however, a little irritation at this point over the suppression of facts, the brutality of marauding invaders, and the wholesale and brazen appropriation without the least credit to india's store of wisdom. the present writer is, however, exceedingly desirous that his fellow-students in the west should discover, recognize, and utilize this ancient mine of wisdom for themselves. its day of recognition is just now at the dawn, and the most pressing problems concerning the real nature, the spiritual possibilities, and the eternal destiny of the soul of man, are pressing and burning questions to-day. that these problems do not wait solution by modern physical science and physio-psychology, but await only the understanding and acceptance of every earnest and intelligent student, is easily demonstrated. it challenges the world to-day, as it has not done before for many millenniums, and the issues are to be tried out to a scientific demonstration. the preferences and prejudices of partisans will not be consulted, nor will they in the least interrupt the progress, nor interfere with the solution. the question is no longer, "what think ye of jesus?" but "what _know_ ye of your own soul?" a new faith will supersede the old superstitions. faith, from the viewpoint of natural science, is "the soul's intuitive _conviction_ of that which both reason and conscience approve." blind faith, or belief, is ever the handmaid of superstition. the new faith is the harbinger, the promise, and the potency of knowledge, the anchor of the soul, and the armor of righteousness. this is indeed the language of confidence, and it should be put to the test of science and experience. the scornful and the contemptuous are not even _invited_! they are left alone with their idols. coming now more directly to the splendid work of jacolliot, one thing i think ought to be apparent to every honest and intelligent reader of "the bible in india," and that is, that its author is in no sense a partisan of hinduism, but a searcher and witness for the simple truth as he finds and apprehends it. he puts aside mystery, miracle, and divine revelation, as dispassionately in the vedic, brahmanical, and buddhistic cults, as in the mosaic and christian. belief in god, and reverence for truth in the light of reason and conscience, shine from every page of his work. to flippantly call him an "atheist," or a "destroyer of holy things," as though that were in any sense an answer to his thesis, and which formerly was the rule, and may even now be attempted in certain quarters, will simply brand the bigot as by no means intelligent--if indeed honest--who attempts it. the majority of such sectarians have grown wise or prudent enough to ignore all such issues. there has been a great change in public sentiment since jacolliot went to india as an earnest student of these subjects, and in the nearly forty years since he wrote this book. the saying that "truth passes through three phases before being accepted," specially applies here. first, people say, "it is not true." second, "it contradicts scripture," and when it at last is triumphant, that "_everybody knew it before_." the truths of which jacolliot writes have already reached at least the beginning of the third stage. of course, "everybody" here means those who read, and think, and dare to use conscience and reason. in referring to a religious debate between a missionary and a brahman, and the universal interest manifested among all classes as to the outcome of the encounter, "hooting the vanquished in either case with strict impartiality," jacolliot adds, "we shall be less surprised at this when it is known that there is not a hindoo, whatever his rank or caste, who does not know the principles of the holy scripture, that is, the vedas, and who does not _perfectly know how to read and write_." three hundred and forty millions of people, thousands of them pariahs and outcasts, sharing refuse with the dogs, with no rights that any one else is bound to respect, bowing their faces in the dust when a brahman passes ten paces away--and yet everyone can read and write! max müller said he had had in his study at oxford a young hindoo who could repeat the whole of the mahabharata _without missing a word or an inflection_ from beginning to end. these are some of the _remnants_ in the decline of old india after thousands of years of brahman rule and slavish domination of the people to preserve their own exclusive caste and exploitation. western people have yet to learn the inevitable tendency, and the invariable rule of exploitation of the people, by a dominant priesthood, and the poverty and degradation of the masses that always results. it has never once failed in this result in three thousand years. the whole of southern europe is already awakening to a realization of this result to-day. it is accomplished in the name of "religion" by those who call themselves "viceregents of god," and who arrogantly trample on the rights of conscience, and the freedom of man. brahmanism first set the example as originators of this slavish abomination. the studies and investigations of jacolliot in india, go back to the vedic or pre-brahmanic age; then to the rise, development, and slow decline of brahmanism; then the epoch of christna; the influence of buddha, and his being driven out of india by the powerful brahmans; and finally, to the present poverty and degradation of the millions through foreign invasion and domination. the ruling brahmans had neither thought nor desire for _constructive nationality_. in their pride and lust for power and gold, even in their just pride over their inheritance from vedic ancestors, and wisdom, patriotism was unknown to them. invaders contended with them in robbing and enslaving the people. the people who despised and hated the foreign invader dare not, even yet, to rise against their real despoilers--the brahmans--or defy or break their power. it is the vedic literature, and the earliest, or pre-brahmanic time that jacolliot lauds so highly, and in which he finds and demonstrates, the existence of the sources of all human knowledge. it will be ignorant folly, therefore, for the bigot and the sectarian to attempt to answer or oppose him, by referring to the condition of the people of india as it is to-day. jacolliot simply shows the causes that have led to the present degradation. it is _priestcraft_, despite the vedic wisdom, and the missions and teaching of christna and buddha. all this jacolliot demonstrates beyond all controversy. the bulk of his work consists in demonstrating the source of greek and roman mythology, language, law, philosophy, etc., and equally of every jewish and christian doctrine and tradition. jacolliot shows that as the french code is copied or adapted from the justinian, so equally the justinian was derived from that of manu, many centuries previously. and what is true of law is equally true of philosophy, theology, morals, and the principles of science, art, architecture, and all the rest. the hindoos were demoralized by the priests, but the moral degradation extended even to them, and the arms they employed were turned against themselves. "the first result of the baneful domination of priests in india was the abasement and moral degradation of woman, so respected and honored during the vedic period. "if you would reign over the persons of slaves, over brutalized intelligence, the history of these infamous epochs presents a means of unequaled simplicity. _degrade and demoralize the woman_, and you will soon have made of man a debased creature, without energy to struggle against the darkest despotisms; for, according to the fine expression of the vedas, 'the woman is the soul of humanity.'" as did the brahman priesthood, when through greed and ambition they forsook the ancient wisdom, so do the priesthood of rome, with their celibacy added to the abominations and opportunities of the confessional. search the records of all time, and the traditions and customs of every people, and you will find nowhere else such recognition and reverence paid to woman as in the early vedic days. "let it be well understood," says jacolliot, "that it was but sacerdotal influence and brahminical decay that, in changing the primitive condition of the east, reduced woman to a state of subordination which has not yet disappeared from our social system. "let us read these maxims taken at hazard from the sacred books of india." (i quote only a few.) "man is strength--woman is beauty; he is the reason that governs, but she is the wisdom that moderates; the one cannot exist without the other, and hence the lord created them two, for the one purpose. "he who despises woman, despises his mother. "who is cursed by a woman, is cursed by god. "the tears of woman call down the fire of heaven on those who make them flow. "the songs of women are sweet in the ears of the lord; men should not, if they wish to be heard, sing the praise of god without women. "women should be protected with tenderness, and gratified with gifts, by all who wish for length of days. "it was at the prayer of a woman that the creator pardoned man; cursed be he who forgets it." (see the vedic "garden of eden.") moses, trained only in the decay of the old religion by the degenerate priests of egypt, while drawing his legend of creation from the ancient vedic source, reverses all this and places the blame of the "fall" on woman, and the women of the bible are more often concubines and prostitutes than love's pure evangels as in the ancient days. jacolliot proves this from many citations, as witness also the following: (numbers, chapter xxi.) "and moses was enraged against the chief officers of the army, against the tribunes, and the centurions who returned from battle. "and he said unto them, why have you saved the women and the children? "slay therefore all the males amongst the children, and the women who have been married. "but reserve for yourselves all the young girls who are still virgins." moses spoke "in the name of god," as does his holiness at rome to-day. comment is hardly necessary. a few more quotations from the vedas: "a virtuous woman needs no purification, for she is never defiled, even by contact with impurity. "women should be shielded by fostering solicitude by their fathers, their brothers, their husbands, and the brothers of their husbands, if they hope for great prosperity. "when women are honored, the divinities are content, but where they are not honored, all undertakings fail." the sacerdotal caste in egypt followed the inspiration of the brahmans, and took care to make no change in that situation. and moses followed the example of the priests of egypt, where woman was a slave or a prostitute in the temples as out. the degeneracy of a people, the decay of religion, and the degradation of woman are inseparable, and it is so-called "religion" that institutes the change, and sets the pace, "down the steep descent." the brahmans "forgot god" and instituted the worship of saints and holy men, and mythological characters, just as rome does to-day. the women of america to-day by a consensus of public opinion should make auricular confession _disreputable_. excommunication, which is such a power in the hands of rome, is merely a subterfuge and substitute for the degradation of "outcasts," and pariahs, instituted by the brahman priests to terrify the disobedient and retain their power. if the reader cares to know the danger and the degradation to woman fostered and protected through the confessional by the celibate roman priesthood, he should read "the history of auricular confession," by de lasteyrie, translated into english and printed in london in . now and then a pope or a council undertook to institute reform, but found, as in spain, prostitution of women by priests through the confessional so widespread and universal that they more often gave up the attempt through fear of scandal and contempt for the church itself. lecky, in his "history of european morals," records the case of "the abbot-elect of st. augustine, at canterbury, who in was found on investigation to have _seventeen illegitimate children in a single village_; or, an abbot of st. pelayo, in spain, who in was proved to have kept no less than seventy concubines; or henry iii, bishop of liège, who was deposed in for having sixty-five illegitimate children." (history of european morals. p. .) if the reader remarks that "this is ancient history," he should remember that a celibate priesthood to-day have the same opportunity, through the secrecy and power of the confessional, as ever. i have barely touched on this disgusting but all-important question on the general thesis of jacolliot, viz.: "the first result of the baneful domination of priests in india was the abasement and moral degradation of woman." rome, who derived her religious code from paganized egypt, added celibacy to the opportunities and inducements for the degradation of woman. rome never attained the heights from which the brahman priesthood plunged into debauchery. even to-day in the festivals in the brahman temples wholesale orgies of prostitution are sometimes found, as witnessed and recorded by jacolliot. from the first, brahman priests have married and reared families. their degradation and debauchery, therefore, cannot be charged to their original "divine revelation," but to their corruption of it. i have given a few brief quotations among hundreds recorded by jacolliot as to the respect and veneration accorded to woman in early vedic times, and in the laws of manu. "the brahman may not approach the altar of sacrifice _but with a soul pure, in a body undefiled_. "spirituous liquors beget drunkenness, neglect of duty, and they profane prayer. "the antiquity of india stands forth to establish its priority of religious legislation in prohibiting to priests the use of spirituous liquors, and especially in forbidding the pleasures of love when they are about to offer sacrifice. "the woman whose words and thoughts and person are pure is a celestial balm. "happy shall he be whose choice is approved by all the good. "it is ordained that a devotee shall choose a wife from his own class. "the brahman who marries a woman who is not a virgin, who is a widow, or divorced by her husband, or who is not known as a virtuous woman, cannot be permitted to offer sacrifice, for he is impure, and nothing can cleanse him from his impurities." and jacolliot adds, "it is not recorded, says the divine manu, that a brahman has ever, even by compulsion, married a girl of low class. "let the brahman espouse a brahmine, says the veda. "let him take a well-formed virgin, of an agreeable name, of the graceful carriage of the swan, or of the young elephant, whose body is covered with light down, her hair fine, her teeth small, and her limbs charmingly graceful." jacolliot compares these early vedic injunctions with leviticus, chapter xxi, and the absurdities introduced by moses as to a "crooked nose or a squint eye." woman here in the west is just emerging from the slavery and degradation of ages, and she _ought_ to know that that degradation was not the handicap of barbaric and undeveloped races, so far as the aryan race is concerned, but a demoralization and degradation instituted by priests, in the name of religion, through which they have sought to rule the world, and so far as institutional religions are concerned, woman has had to progress _in spite of them_. without the aid and influence of woman to-day, neither protestant nor roman church could exist at all, as witness almost any sabbath service where women outnumber men often ten to one. one day woman will be wise enough and brave enough to dictate terms, as she did ages ago in old aryavarta. when that day comes, and the really divine motherhood planted in every true woman's soul is recognized by man and woman alike, god grant that she may thenceforth hold the fort till the kali-yuga is at full tide, and the spiritual evolution of our present humanity is fully accomplished. in the meantime the world will have learned to _know_ jesus, who and what he was, and how he became the christ, and will have joined in his divine mission to man, as the teeming millions joined in old india under christna ages ago. chapter ix hero worship and folklore the history of every people, of all time, and of every religion of which we have any record, reveals a similar origin, course, and destiny. we of the present day have the advantage of these records upon which to institute comparisons, ascertain relations, and draw conclusions. true, the partisans and postulants of all these religions at the present day will claim exception in favor of their own cult, and regard as sacrilegious and profane any attempt to institute comparisons and draw general conclusions. any attempt to persuade them of their error would be useless. the essentials of their religion will not be called in question, but on the other hand, they will find that it is impossible to escape from the habitual and universal tendencies in which they are involved. however veritable may have been the original revelations, the tendencies and habits of weaving around them the traditions and superstitions of folklore seem to have been inevitable and universal. it is the province of science to ascertain the facts in any given case, to institute comparisons, and to draw deductions and generalizations dispassionately and relentlessly. it is thus that every tradition, superstition, creed, dogma, and revelation comes under review, and is placed on trial. true science has no preconceived notion, no foregone conclusion. each subject examined must tell its own story and in its own way, and stand or fall measured by intrinsic evidence and revealed fact. to this tribunal every episode in the life of man and the history of the human race must at last come. what are the _facts_? what do they reveal and signify? to most religionists this method and aim of science seem as relentless and dogmatic as their own creed or dogmas. it is a sifting and discriminative process, that, while relentless, is in the end eminently just, and in the end will be found to be the revealer of all that is essential and true in religion itself. in itself, science is not and never can be a religion. it is a _method_ only, which, like a search-light, reveals all religions in all their essentials, and places them in their true light. religion _per se_ is an essential element in the nature and life of man and of the human race. science is a method, a way of procedure in the intelligent mind of man in its search for truth. religion is vital, essential, basic. it is born of the relation which inheres in the kinship of the individual intelligence to the universal spirit of nature and of all life. science is the intelligent and rational use of the mental powers of man. religion is intuitional, spiritual perception, involving the heart, the affections. man aspires, worships, adores, and by the light of faith or intuitive conviction, recognizes that which he cannot explain and cannot get rid of if he tries. science is the just weight and measure of things seen, and of the natural causes of phenomena. religion--the evidence of things unseen. religion, as a _fact_, can never be explained away by science. the so-called science that assumes or undertakes to do that, is materialism and nescience. superstition is the false interpretation of religion, and folklore and tradition are the accretions that gather around the foundations and original revelations of religion, and lead at last to obscuration and the need of a new revelation. each genuine new "revelation" is but the rehabilitation of the primeval religion in which accretions, false interpretations, and dogmatic assertions are cast aside. religion represents man's endeavor to apprehend and interpret the unseen; that "something more" and "something beyond" the visible, the sensuous, and the tangible. it is this conscious _awareness_ of something more and something beyond the visible and the tangible, that furnishes man with a conception of god and of the human soul. this is a natural intuition, inseparable from the _awareness_ of self. it lies at the foundation like man's self-conscious identity, and can neither be explained nor explained away. here lies the root of all religions. the imagery of man's imagination, in his effort to apprehend the unseen, and to formulate the unknown, gives rise to myths, allegory, tradition, folklore, and in the end, to superstition, creed, and dogma. then come priestcraft, oppression, persecution. the death of religion, the deification of the revealer or _avatar_, and the substitution of the priesthood as of divine authority, in place of the _revealer_ or the revelation. jove, orpheus, jehovah, and at last jesus, are enthroned beyond the clouds, and priest or church assume the earthly prerogative, speak in their place, assume dogmatic authority, promise heaven and happiness for obedience, and dire penalties for disobedience, and resort to persecution to maintain their authority. the traditions, mythologies, and folklore of all the past have thus arisen. the creeds and dogmas of the present constitute the effort of man to assume exclusive dominion, and to exercise divine authority over the masses of mankind. it is only another form of the ambition of individuals for wealth, fame or power, lifting them to a "class" above the toiling, suffering, and sorrowing masses. there are exceptional individuals all along the way, who conceive, hold, and exercise the spirit of the master, and sink self in the service of man, and but for these the organized priesthood would be execrated by mankind long before. the organized church deifies, where the true disciple humanizes and helps mankind in the name and in the spirit of the master. this is the spirit, the origin, the genius and the history of every avatar, of christna, and all the buddhas, the saviors and redeemers of history. the orthodox christian of to-day, whether catholic or protestant, will be likely to admit the foregoing outline except as it applies to his own religion. whereas it is abundantly proven to-day regarding his own religion as nowhere else in history. the histories of former religions are vague, distant, and so covered over by tradition, myth, and folklore, as to be difficult to trace. the beginnings, history, and progress of the christian religion are comparatively nearer at hand, and the process above outlined readily demonstrable. not only so, but the recognition of the facts and processes is everywhere in evidence. this fact, however, by no means ends the controversy. traditions, creeds, and dogmas die hard, and fight to the last extremity. nothing else known to man fights so desperately and dies so hard as an organized priesthood, and beyond this, they are upheld by the ignorance, superstition, the fear, and the faith of the masses. their adherents often believe and assume that they have discovered final truths, essential and unalterable verities. they undertake to support and to maintain these by dogmatic authority, a holy book, a "thus sayeth the lord." "there it is, down in black and white." no further evidence is required. to question such authority is to be damned. to believe, accept, and to conform, is to be _saved_. difference of opinion and of interpretation inevitably arise, even among those who dare not question the ultimate authority and genuineness of the original revelation. hence arise sects, schisms, and theological warfare. notwithstanding all this, the original revelation becomes a matter of thorough investigation and of criticism. the so-called "higher criticism" had already discovered errors in translation, and contradictions in interpretation, resulting in a "revised edition" of the sacred books, while under the name "_pragmatism_," certain metaphysical writers and accredited teachers have undertaken to determine essential meanings and interpretations, and to submit religious revelations, creeds, dogmas, and theologies to critical analysis. how far this analysis has gone, and how little of the original interpretation actually remains, only they are aware who keep abreast of current thought, and who with open mind care more for the simple truth than for custom, tradition, theologies, and the folklore of the past. dogmatic theological authority is completely undermined, and its days are numbered.[ ] with the masses there is the habitual unrest, the feeling of uncertainty, the social upheaval, with the inevitable tendency to confusion and anarchy. a new religion is already in the formative stage, a new avatar inevitable. it is to be less a repudiation than a revision and rehabilitation of the old religion. people everywhere are looking for the new revelation, for the coming of _christos_, for the new avatar, and few are aware that he is already here. it should be borne strictly in mind that in every instance in the past, the advent of the avatar has been unattended by signs and wonders, has come upon the stage of human action in the most commonplace way, and that myth, miracle, and folklore have followed as time went on. to the people of his time jesus was the "son of the carpenter," whose family was obscure. he came "eating with publicans and sinners." jesus, the demigod of to-day, was unknown and undreamed of in galilee. philo judæus seems never to have heard of him. what and who jesus was, and what he did, is separated from what the church and theologians have made of him by a gulf that seems almost impassable, and yet this gulf has already been bridged and passed. the new avatar has for its mission the rehabilitation of jesus as he actually existed, divested of all myth and miracle, while the mission for which he came, and the doctrines for which he lived and died are to be completely restored to mankind in their purity. the old hindoos would call this transformation a "reincarnation of vishnu," a "new avatar." it will mean jesus the divine man, the master, _christos_, restored to the heart of humanity from the mysticism and miracle of monks and theologies, from the superstitions and folklore of the multitude. this means a reconstruction and a restatement of the religion of jesus. jesus remaining what he actually was and is, it will be the province of natural science to explain and to demonstrate by natural and spiritual law, how, without mystery or miracle, jesus became the master _christos_ and so remains to-day. natural science is not the invention of man, more than is the law of gravitation, the law of equilibrium, or the binomial theorem. man may discover these laws from the phenomena of nature, and demonstrate their existence and mode of operation like any others. it is a question of dispassionate and intelligent apprehension and demonstration. all actual progress of man up to the present time lies along these lines. beyond this all is conjecture and guess-work. natural science, however, is far more than modern physical science so-called. it includes physical, mental, moral, and spiritual science. its _methods_ everywhere and at all times are the same. it may theorize, but never dogmatize, and it must _demonstrate_ at every step. facts must not only support the theorem, but demonstrate the conclusions as inevitable, and the basis of all such actual demonstration must be a verifiable individual experience, with formulated laws and processes for its repetition, just as in physical science, in chemistry, and mathematics. nothing less than this on any plane or in any department of investigation can enable the individual to declare "_i know_." demonstration is the sign manual of knowledge; dogmatism the arrogance of ignorance. it is impossible to make these radical distinctions too clear and specific. when this method of natural science is applied to the investigation of religions, tradition is separated from fact, dogma from demonstration, miracle from natural law, mythology and folklore are found to be the fabric woven by the imagination of mankind around the receding revelations, deifying their authors, and mingling fact with fable, till the originals become unrecognizable. romance and superstition become substitutes for simple faith, moral law, and social justice. to question or to repudiate the dogmas of superstition becomes a "mortal sin," even when the most plain and specific moral or ethical obligations are entirely subverted or reversed by dogmatic authority. it is thus that the original revelation is subverted and at last overthrown. from first to last, the whole fabric is claimed to be "sacred and divine," and to question it, "sacrilege" and "profanation of holy things." thus, that which seemed originally as wings to the toiling, sorrowing children of men, becomes at last a "millstone about the neck," a "burden grievous to be borne." then comes protest, repudiation, reform, and usually a new revelation, embodying the primitive faith, and adapting it to modern times and conditions. this is, in brief, the history of the avatars of ancient india, the buddhas and the zoroasters of later centuries; of the greek orpheus; of the legends and folklore clustering around many of the sages of israel, and though in a less miraculous fashion, of confucius and laotse. but most patent of all does this principle apply to the founder of the christian religion, because less ancient and more readily verifiable. though no new avatar is yet recognized, the _spirit_ of _modern science_ does not hesitate to repudiate myth, miracle, and superstition, and to insist on fact and natural law. ----- [ ] see president eliot's latest utterances. chapter x corroborative evidence the devout and conscientious believers in the christian religion of to-day often view with sorrow and alarm the encroachments of modern science. unable to prevent these encroachments, they stubbornly resent them. once admitted, it seems to them that nothing sacred or worthy the name of religion would remain. to shift to other and more ancient faiths can never be considered at all, for the "higher criticism" and "pragmatism" have left them all in even a worse plight. it seems to these devout souls like the death of religion itself, and its elimination from the life of man. the intuitive basis and the intrinsic necessity of religion in some form have already been considered. this point is often overlooked or ignored by the iconoclasts. their position would seem to be, "unravel the superstition, disprove the possibility of miracle, and let the deluge come if it must." neither pragmatism nor higher criticism has been in any large sense constructive, but more largely destructive. the really spiritual element in all religions, already referred to, is generally lost sight of. modern psychology is no nearer a science of the soul, than are folklore and superstition to true religion. it should be recognized and granted once for all that psychology, as a department of modern physical science, has no substitute whatever to offer in the place of religion. it is gathering facts, classifying, and labeling psychic phenomena. here and there an advanced scientist, like sir oliver lodge, ignores tradition, repudiates orthodox scientific restraints, and steps over the border of actual or implied nihilism. this smug nihilism with its superior air of scientific wisdom, is often only the opposite pole of the dogmatic certitude of the churchman. actual knowledge of the human soul is quite as far removed from the one as from the other. credulity and incredulity simply annul each other; often make faces at each other; while progress stalks alone in the middle of the road, a "tramp" or a "vagabond," like paracelsus, "reading the leaves of the book of nature," laughing at poverty, fleeing from persecution, yet _knowing_, and "becoming a light to man forever." the consensus of opinion among the presidents and professors in the leading colleges and universities of this country, their unhesitating and unqualified denial or repudiation of the claims set up by the church regarding revelation and the basic dogmas of the christian religion, and which his "holiness" of the vatican designates as "modernism," reveal, not only the "signs of the times," but show indisputably that modern education has shaken itself free from the superstitions of the past, and repudiated the old restraints to free thought and modern progress. orthodoxy in religious matters has often nothing to do in determining college curriculums, in the selection of presidents, or in filling the chairs. bright young men and women, the advanced students of the schools of to-day, who are to become the leaders of thought and the teachers of to-morrow, find little restraint and no formative element in the creeds and dogmas that in the past have been so much in evidence, and so constraining. intensity of feeling has given place to breadth and inclusiveness, and under the name of "comparative religions," ancient faiths and modern, are classified, and studied like fossils in the different ages of the past. the "crusader impulse" has rather settled down in each individual breast, as the master passion, to do, to dare, and to become something more and better than the individual, or than the past has hitherto known. such a general period of intellectual activity, with so few restraints, history nowhere else records, and the world has never before known. here lie the elements, the impulses, and the formative stage of the new avatar. at this stage of our discussion it is of exceeding interest and importance to bear in mind one great fact. the average intelligent student of to-day may take this fact tentatively, reserving final judgment till accumulative evidence becomes satisfactory and conclusive. no one who is dominated by shallow incredulity, and who attempts to close this door contemptuously, will ever arrive at the real truth. the judgment of such individuals is simply worthless, notwithstanding the smug conceit of their own opinions. the important fact referred to, is the demonstrated existence, all through the ages, of the so-called _mysteries_. their existence is beyond all question. what they concealed and taught is sometimes difficult to determine. there were also the genuine and the spurious mysteries, and a fair appreciation of their origin, purpose, methods, and genius, as illustrated by plato, pythagoras, zoroaster, and nearly every great sage of antiquity, leaves no possible doubt that in these "secret orders" were preserved the loftiest and the most profound mental and spiritual achievements of all previous human history. if there were no other evidence in existence at the present day except the traditions, landmarks, ritual, and genius of freemasonry, a careful and intelligent study of that ancient order would be sufficient. whether one mason in a thousand to-day apprehends and realizes this fact, has nothing whatever to do with the real question. the evidence is there, and the indifference or superficial intelligence of numbers cannot alter it. chapter xi conceptions and portents of an avatar the conflict between science and religion has been thoroughly thrashed out during the last half century, and the "reign of law," and orderly, and progressive evolution, have made for themselves a habitation and a name that nothing is likely to overthrow. it is recognized that every effect has a sufficient and a commensurate cause, not _en bloc_, but in matter, energy, mind, and spirit. action and reaction are definite mathematical processes. the parallelogram of force tends everywhere to equilibrium and secures further action and new processes under universal law. the "special creation" theory--everything made out of nothing by a personal god--is no longer regarded as tenable by intelligent individuals, though miracle and special providence are often included in accounting for the vicissitudes of life, just as the so-called scientist superficially and flippantly uses the word "coincidence," as though it really explained anything. "the rational order that pervades the universe," as prof. huxley defined the concept and aim of scientific discovery, has steadily gained ascendancy, until it dominates and measures individual intelligence. the criticism is still occasionally made that this means pantheism, overlooking the fact that in all mythologies and cosmologies, an ideal and pure theism was recognized as lying back of and beyond the pantheons of the gods and the deification of the powers of nature. this was true in the greek, persian, egyptian, and hindoo mythologies. back of the many, and beyond the transient and contending divinities, was the _one_, postulated, but unknown and changeless. every religion known to man, with the advancing civilization of a people, copied, modified, adopted, and adapted the mythology and folklore of some pre-existing religion and people. this is readily demonstrable with the hebrew, greek, and later christian dispensations, notwithstanding the most strenuous and persistent determination to deny, disprove, and destroy the ancient records. it is embodied in the etymology of the very names of heroes, gods, and demigods. a new language arising with any people _de novo_ can nowhere be found. phonetics and picturegraphs, the various alphabets and glyphs, are mixed and modified, but never invented nor altogether changed. complicated as they may be, it is thus that philology, ethnology, theology, and anthropology constitute a consistent whole, the mythology and folklore of mankind. this reveals the practical unity and solidarity of the human race. the tradition and prophecy among the ancient hebrews of the coming of the messiah, the portents that heralded, and the signs and wonders that preceded or accompanied his appearance, are merely translations or adaptations from previous eras, buddhas, or avatars. whether christian or non-christian, the object of the advent is always identical. the light of the spirit having become enfeebled or obscured, the people are left in darkness and given over to sin and wickedness. moral ruin seems inevitable unless there is a divine influx, a new avatar, or buddha, or advent of the god-man. god incarnates himself as the son of mary, and jesus says, "i am come a light into the world that whosoever believeth in me should not abide in darkness." christna says, "though i am unborn, and my nature is eternal, and i am the lord also of all creatures, yet taking control of my nature-form, i am born by my illusive power. for whenever piety decays, o son of bharata, and impiety is in the ascendant, then i produce myself. for the protection of good men, for the destruction of evildoers, for the re-establishment of piety, i am born from age to age." (bhagavadgita.) the historical buddha taught that he was only one of a long series of buddhas, who appear at intervals in the world, and who all teach the same system. after the death of each buddha his religion flourishes for a time and then decays, till at last it is completely forgotten and wickedness and violence rule the earth. the names of twenty-four of these buddhas who appeared previous to gautama have been handed down to us, just as the "second coming of christ" is believed in and referred to among the christians. even the mohammedan koran refers to this succession of prophets and messengers of allah. the same is true of the parsis. "i have said that i first of all chose abad, and after him i sent thirteen prophets in succession, all called abad. by these fourteen prophets the world enjoyed prosperity." "tradition informs us that when these auspicious prophets and their successors behold evil to prevail among mankind, they invariably withdraw from among them--as they could not endure to behold or hear wickedness." this is precisely what happened to egypt after the ambitious priesthood had gained the ascendency. the master builders retired. bonwick says ("egyptian belief and modern thought"): "what is commonly called the _christ idea_ of humanity, thus appears to have been the hope and consolation of the ancient egyptians so many thousand years ago." that which thus appears and disappears, dies out and is born again, is the spiritual light in the soul of man. the diversity of man's intellectual activities exercise, elaborate, and deepen his mental perceptions, and these largely concern the things of sense and time, his appetites, passions, desires, and ambitions. back of and beyond all these lie the things of the spirit. on the physical plane of life the former obscure and crowd out the latter, which are thus continually in need of renewal. in adapting the new revelation to the conditions of life on the physical plane, it is intellectualized and theologized. pundits and theologians undertake to _explain_ what it all means and how it happened to be. hence arise wrangles, disputes, and finally creeds, dogmas, and persecution. "men fight like devils for the love of god." this is the ultimate history of every religion known to man. meantime, the soul of man, a spiritual being dwelling in a material body on the physical plane, is seeking real knowledge of spiritual things. this real knowledge is an experience of the soul. it concerns, and is comprised in, the _living of a life_. it is more than mind or intellect. it is _knowledge_ gained by experience. "this only i know, that whereas i was blind, now i see." "whether in the body or out of the body, i know not, but i saw things impossible to utter." gradually man's _idea_ of god and his conception of nature have changed and enlarged. man, as a spiritual being, is part of a spiritual universe. he has been able to harmonize his concept of god and nature progressively as he has gained larger views and deeper insight of both. he is no longer a puppet of infinite caprice, nor a somewhat "improved animal." the idea of man as a "fallen god" with the capacity to regain his heavenly estate, is far nearer the truth. as man advances in knowledge through the combined experiences of his spiritual nature and his physical embodiment, his beliefs change, his horizon enlarges, and his concepts become elevated and purified. the past is apprehended and utilized and the future intelligently anticipated. he begins to understand. this means the recognition of law and order, permanency, _foundation_, and stability. the birth stories, the portents, signs and wonders that announce, accompany, or follow the birth of a messiah or avatar, are almost identical. a common instinct seems to have led all scripture-compilers to infer a simultaneous stimulus of nature and man upon the appearance of what the hindoo calls an avatar. men, too, seem prepared to expect such an advent as its necessary time approaches. it is an instinct which tells them that "the darkest hour precedes the dawn." in the christian scriptures the premonitions and birth stories are found largely in the apocryphal books. doubtless the copying and substitution from the lives of christna and buddha were too plain. at the death of jesus the seismic, astral, and cosmic disturbances are graphically described, as befitting the death of a god. "the veil of the temple was rent in twain," etc. the simple fact is that mankind feels instinctively in the soul the far-reaching influences at work. the spiritual nature is stirred to its depths, and when he tries to describe what he sees and feels, his emotions, fears, or aspirations being at white heat, his imagination draws from the folklore of other times, races, and religions, to express what he so powerfully, but vaguely senses. but beyond all this, the time of great religious revivals and social upheavals is likely to coincide with seismic disturbance, tidal waves and the like, owing to the conjunction of planets under the general law of cycles. man is completely involved with and evolved from the bosom of nature. his freedom is determined by knowledge and obedience to law. from the mystic hymns of orpheus, with the legends of gods, demigods, and heroes, and the personification of the varied powers of man and nature, arose the greek pantheon, which, in poetic concept, romantic and dramatic embodiment and expression, as a concise and complete whole, has probably never been equaled by man. true, every essential element, under a different name and detail, may be found elsewhere, but never equaled in concise and constructive folklore and mythology. but running underneath all this, like a vein of gold under the mountain, was the philosophy of plato. grasping the _one_ from the many, unity from the fantastic diversity, he came to the individual experience of the human soul and its conscious mastership over the body and the things of sense and time. civic pride, patriotism, and heroism, walked side by side with dialectics, and the pantheon of the gods and the achievements of warriors rivaled each other on the stage, as themes for the poetic philosopher and dramatist. mythology and folklore here furnished a background from which the philosophy of the mysteries and the real science of life gained a hearing. plato and pythagoras generalized, and with many reservations represented that which they had been taught in the mysteries of egypt. greece, with its triumphs in literature, in the drama and in art, and all its magnificent civilization, knew no avatar. jacolliot, in his "bible in india," has shown conclusively that not only the whole greek pantheon, its folklore and mythology, and even its civil code were adopted from the laws of manu and the far older aryan civilization, including even the names of heroes. the fame of greece rests upon its _genius fo construction_ in art and architecture and the drama, and upon the open door it gave to philosophy. there was no dominant priesthood to close the door of progress. it utilized all the past and built and beautified the present. it bequeathed no creed nor dogma to the future, and yet its civilization was transcendent and is immortal. it had its canons of art and of architecture. these it demonstrated by constructive work. it illustrated, explained and exemplified, but it did not argue nor dogmatize. the world for two thousand years has been "going back to greece" and trying to explain how it all happened, just as we have been trying to explain goethe's "faust." genius is transcendent and immortal. with the decline of greece there arose the genius of the tiber, imperial rome, and the cæsars. rome created an _avatar_ out of the "babe of bethlehem." having enthroned jehovah, it proceeded to deify jesus, and then by substitution to take the place of both. imperial rome, the "scarlet mother of the tiber," assumed the government and dictatorship of the world. imperial, dogmatic, relentless, the arbiter of the fate of humanity on earth and beyond. here was arbitrary, relentless _power_ at any cost, to be maintained on any terms. "the end always justified the means." in the civilization of greece, the individual, the citizen was first, and association and co-operation built the state. with rome the individual is nothing but a pawn, an accessory to the church. it was and is the church first, last, and all the time. the individual can claim no right nor prerogative except as a concession from the church. the contrast is extreme and absolute between the genius of greece and that of rome. as the genius of greece was adapted from the older aryan, so also was that of rome, from the brahmans, through egypt. among the various avatars of old india designated as "incarnations of vishnu," siva "_the destroyer_," was often in evidence. rome proceeded to adopt the hindoo trinity--brahma, vishnu, and siva--(the creator, the preserver, and the destroyer), and to so shape its creed and dogmas as to secure and maintain the power of mother church, simply with a change of names--"father, son, and holy ghost." it has enslaved nations and slaughtered millions in order to maintain its power. for more than fifteen hundred years it has maintained its relentless warfare against the inalienable rights of the individual, and the inevitable progress of humanity. it has escaped the execration of the world only by its priestly trick of deifying jesus and sophisticating every doctrine that he taught. supporting its pretensions by mariolatry, the auricular confession, and its army of spies and inquisitors, it has dominated mankind, impoverished whole nations, devastated provinces and murdered all who opposed its progress wherever and whenever it has gained civil power. rome is to-day the literal and visible reincarnation of _siva_, the _avatar of destruction_. she has originated nothing. her mass and all her ritualistic mummeries are adopted from paganism at its worst stage and in its most degenerate form, and she awaits the fate that befell egypt and all her predecessors, "sodom, gomorrah, and the cities of the plain." protestantism has hitherto "protested" only in part. refusing mariolatry and auricular confession, protestantism, by accepting the miraculous conception, the deification of jesus and the vicarious atonement, has kept rome in countenance. when these are swept away, and their doom is already declared by the leaders of thought in nearly all our institutions of higher learning, the roman _avatar_ will stand revealed in all its nakedness and villainy to the execration of mankind. it is this "_modernism_" that "his holiness" so much fears and is trying to arrest. it is too late, unless civilization and the march of time move backward. the most amazing thing about it all is, how the world, with its present intelligence and culture, can be so indifferent to this most aggressive, cruel, and relentless avatar of all the ages, instead of repelling it with contempt and execration. thirty-seven italian cardinals,[ ] proud and arrogant, rule the church, elect the pope, and assume dictatorship of the earth, as also arbiters of human destiny, here and hereafter. america, the corn-bin of this modern egypt, by courtesy has _one cardinal_, just to keep her in countenance. the effrontery is cyclopean, but our supineness and indifference are deplorable and inexcusable. shipping her impoverished, degraded, criminal, and priest-ridden hordes to america by the million every year, rome is massing her army for the overthrow of our government and all our present civilization. with her dogma of obedience, her army now _votes_ and will, by and by, _fight_ under the dictatorship of the cardinals at rome. already undermining our public free schools, boycotting the public press, with their army of jesuit spies and secret assassins of every liberty prized by man, the "merry war" goes on right under our eyes, and we sleep and dream and blindly assume that "there is no danger." read the history of the crusaders, of the protestant reformation and of the "holy inquisition," and if further enlightenment is needed, study the origin, history, and denouement of all the avatars of the past, the fate of egypt, the cities of the plain, where paganism and a degenerate priesthood usurped the place of pure and undefiled religion, and literally wiped from the map of the world the civilizations of the past. _nemesis_ is written in letters of flame across the starry heavens, as an atonement for the blood of nations and the degeneracy and diabolism of an ambitious, cruel, relentless, and unrestrained priesthood. and it is all being literally repeated to-day without the novelty of a new idea, or method, or device, or motive. it is _the reincarnation of the avatar of siva, the destroyer_. ----- [ ] at the death of pope leo there were cardinals, of whom were italians. chapter xii portents of the present time there is no disguising nor denying the fact that during the past half century institutional religion in the west has steadily lost its hold upon the great mass of the people. creeds and dogmas are denied and repudiated. the "higher criticism" represents the reluctant yielding of theologians to the existing conditions. in order to maintain any hold whatever upon the people and retain a semblance of the old faith, they have revised and modified beliefs and interpretations, and relaxed completely the former demand for the confession of faith and acceptance of the old creeds. mere general verbal assent admitting of many mental reservations is now often deemed sufficient. in the meantime, the living of the life and the doing of the work demanded by jesus have come more and more into demand and general recognition. the "emmanuel movement," now gaining such recognition and making such rapid progress, is sufficient evidence at this point. with the church of rome no such change is manifest. by keeping its people in ignorance, by condemning all change or any improvement under the name of "modernism," and by insisting upon the dogma of infallibility and blind obedience, rome thus far has resisted all change and refused all compromise. the change in protestantism represents the growth of intelligence, the recognition of the rights of conscience, and individual and intellectual freedom. the stability so apparent in romanism relies solely on ignorance, superstition, and fear, enforced by the dogma of "_infallibility_," and reinforced by the power of "excommunication" and the penalty of "anathema." the unity and stability of the roman church, thus secured by force, will presently be found to be apparent only. it could only work and hold in the dark ages. internal division and dissension, now known to exist, await only some fresh act of oppression, or some new abomination, or abuse of political power, to disrupt its solidarity. in the meantime physical science has steadily advanced, opening new avenues of wealth, industry, and opportunity, and so developing the resources of this western world. but more important and far-reaching still have been the discoveries regarding the finer forces of nature. the wonderful development and application of discoveries in electricity have not only opened a new world previously unknown and unsuspected, but have seemed to endow these subtle forces almost with an intelligence of their own. crass materialism is dead and space practically annihilated. if a single wire or a vibrating disc cannot originate intelligent speech, it can retain, repeat, and transmit the qualities, tones and inflections of the human voice in a way that seems miraculous and uncanny. it is thus that our concepts of nature have been enlarged, refined, and actually spiritualized. "brutal" and "dead" matter are no longer in evidence nor even mentioned. with the advent of modern spiritualism came another group of phenomena. making the largest allowance for fraud, self-deception, and all the vagaries of the imagination, no intelligent individual, familiar with the phenomena, will attempt to deny the extension of man's psychic world of consciousness and the manifestation of intelligence in ways and under conditions previously unknown. the identification of these intelligences, always difficult, and generally problematical, need not here be discussed at all. the facts and the phenomena are all that we are here concerned with. the most important consideration regarding all these phenomena is that they do not _develop_, but on the contrary _dominate_ the individual. they are, in fact, altogether subjective. the medium may put himself in the negative or passive condition to be controlled, but he cannot _command_ nor _control_ the influence nor the "entity" that influences him, and eventually he loses the power to resist it, and likewise the power of self-control. science demands _facts_, and here are facts in abundance. these facts supplement the discoveries in electricity and nature's finer forces, and pass from physics to metaphysics, from physiology to psychology, and push back the veil of the unseen, and hitherto unknown, many degrees. the trend of all this progress, and of these discoveries, is exceedingly plain. our concepts of nature, of life, and of man have been almost immeasurably enlarged, refined, and elevated. expectancy is in the air. "what next is going to happen?" is the question everywhere asked. the conditions and portents, in a general way, are those that herald a new avatar; an avatar now, of science rather than of religion; of knowledge rather than of faith, and this knowledge is to be of spiritual things, the foundations of which are already in evidence. this science is not to be time-serving, but man-serving; not so much a renewal of faith as a revelation of knowledge; less anxious for the glory of god than for the elevation of man, which is the more direct and certain way of honoring divinity. this does not mean the decay nor the repudiation of religion, but a _realization_ of _true_ religion, such as heretofore prophets have foretold, revelation has forecast, and toward which humanity has toiled and journeyed in sorrow and pain; the very religion that jesus lived and taught. "a clean life, an open mind, an unveiled spiritual perception, a brotherliness for all, and human life a journeying upward toward the realms of eternal day, 'with no night there, and no sorrow.'" _and why not?_ if man can conceive it, why may he not _realize_ it? the "old adam" as an excuse is exploded. the "new adam" is indeed "a quickening spirit." nothing is plainer nor more demonstrable at the present day than the fact that mankind is slowly but surely shaking off the traditions and the superstitions that have bound it in the past, rising above the myths and the folklore of every age and clime, and awaking as if from slumber, to behold a new day and a new world. this awakening is even more in evidence and remarkable in the case of woman than of man. progress here during the last decade has been such as the world has never before seen on any such scale, and it means more to the elevation of humanity than anyone has hitherto been able to forecast or to measure. in the meantime social and economic conditions with the great masses of the people are very far from what they should be. unrest and confusion are strongly in evidence. on the whole, there is far less suffering and destitution than ever before. oppression and abominations meet with quick and powerful protest from all classes, when exposed, and at least temporary relief is quick to follow. the blame is confined to no one class, rich or poor. the equitable distribution of wealth, resources, and opportunity that have developed beyond all precedent during the last half century, requires time. justice and equity are not dead, but everywhere in evidence, dominating mankind at large. public sentiment was never more keen and never nearer right than to-day. there is general confusion, however, as to methods and ways and means. the cunning shark and the selfish brute resort to concealment, cunning and subterfuge, to deceive the people and often succeed for a time, only to meet with condemnation and execration later. injustice is often in evidence, but it is neither rampant nor dominant. it stands in fear of public sentiment. these, in brief and in outline, are the conditions, the portents, to-day, everywhere in evidence: . the decay of creeds and dogmas. . great progress in science, art, and the crafts. . immense discoveries regarding nature's finer forces and the psychical powers latent in man. . great expectancy as to new revelations. . unprecedented increase in wealth and the development of natural resources. . enfranchisement of woman, and immense progress as to her rights and opportunities. . economic justice recognized and aimed at, and fortified by public sentiment, with strong efforts to secure and maintain it. the present age or epoch is not one of darkness, but of light; not of discouragement, but of hope. it is neither retrograde nor stagnant, but progressive to a degree never before witnessed in the history of man on so large a scale and involving all classes and so many people at one time. organized or institutional religion alone is on the wane. evidence and utility are everywhere demanded. nothing is sacred simply because it is old; nor true merely because it is dogmatically asserted so to be. holy books, holy men, and holy days are matters of evidence, and not of blind credence. what will the new religion--the new revelation--be? and whence will it come? chapter xiii the separable soul in folklore belief in a separable soul in man is virtually universal. such belief is found amongst the lowest races, and in the few instances where it has not been clearly discovered it is admitted that it may still exist and be disguised by the native meaning of words or signs that escape the explorer. the universality of this belief has often been urged as an evidence of its validity and proof of the soul's existence. modern physical science deduces this belief from the phenomena of daily life and the analogies of individual experience, thus giving precedence to material causes for mental concepts, or universal ideas. this view is, i think, entitled to the most careful consideration, but it cannot once for all be admitted, nor is it consistent with the general theory and progress of evolution that the phenomenal stands to the noumenal, the actual to the ideal, as cause to effect. these two groups of experiences are alternate and coincident; and, as to priority, it is only the old question in a new form, as to which was first, the bird that laid the egg, or the egg that hatched the bird. this distinction is particularly pertinent to the present subject, for the reason that by the method of modern physical science, in dealing with the belief in the existence of the soul, the whole of this universal belief is swept away. its origin is found in the ignorance, superstition, and false analogies of barbarous races, and the inference is that the belief can only linger as a remnant of superstition among civilized men. this method prejudges the whole question, and (while it must readily be admitted that the opposite method equally prejudges it), my contention is for neither the one nor the other, but for the careful consideration and final blending of both. if at first sight these two theories, which form the basis of the working hypothesis of the materialist and the spiritist, seem paradoxical and wholly irreconcilable, with careful consideration and unbiased investigation of both sides of the problem the paradox will disappear. with both the lowest and the highest races not only do we find the existence of belief in the existence of a separable soul in man, but of ghosts, gods, genii, a spirit of the air, and hierarchies of celestial and infernal beings. in this regard, philosophers like plato and pythagoras, the intellectual giants of the human race, may be said to have elaborated and specialized the rude conceptions of the fiji islander, and to vie with him in peopling space with invisible entities and potencies. in spite of the dictum of science, the world, intelligent and ignorant alike, believes, and will continue to believe, in the reality of the unseen universe, and the platonic doctrine of "emanation" and the "world of divine ideas" not only begin where modern physical science leaves off, but at this very point science either begs the question, or ignores it entirely. how things come to be what they are, and to evolve as they do, science nowhere declares. it simply takes things as it finds them, and dubs the ultimate and antecedent causation the _unknowable_. the philosophy of plato, it is true, reaches at last the unknowable and the incomprehensible, but only after revealing another universe, the metaphysical and spiritual, entirely unknown to, or ignored or derided by the materialist. it is, however, from this invisible realm that all visible things have come forth, the two being not only under absolute and universal law, but bearing everywhere definite analogies to each other. hence plato says, "god geometrizes." absolute mathematics determines the relations of atoms to suns, and the circulation of the blood in man to the revolutions of suns and solar systems. a further general consideration remains to be noted before taking up the evidence of belief in the separable soul, and that is, the evolutionary life-wave of humanity on our earth. the progress of man for some millions of years past has by no means been a straightforward climbing from barbarism to civilization. the wave of evolution has ebbed and flowed. while at one place man has slowly emerged from savagery, at another he has as surely sunk to it. continents and islands have risen from and again sunk to the bottom of the sea, bearing the races of men in their upheavals or descent, and cataclysmic and seismic or volcanic upheavals have blotted out in a day the accumulated progress of centuries. the poles of the earth have shifted with results to the life of the globe more awful than the imagination can portray. bodies of people like our north american indians represent the remains of many peoples, as in russia or india to-day, fragments of many nationalities are being absorbed in one. bearing in mind, therefore, that owing to many causes a nation may descend to barbarism or disappear entirely, we shall find everywhere the fragments and decay of the old belief no less than the dawn of the new. a noble creed, or a philosophical concept of a highly advanced race, may exist as a transformed and degrading superstition with a race, or a fragment of a people, undergoing degeneracy. every religion known to man has gone through just this transformation. the tendency is innate and inevitable and no civilization or religion has ever yet been able long to resist it. if we bear this in mind we shall be less surprised at anthropogeneses, cosmogeneses or psychologies found sometimes among otherwise rude or savage peoples, and be better able to understand the incongruities and lack of symmetry in their evolution. it would be easy to cite instances and draw comparisons at this point. bearing in mind, then, these general considerations underlying all interpretation, and nowhere more applicable than to our present subject, the following illustrations of belief in the separable soul, gleaned largely from spencer's "descriptive sociology," may be of interest. it is drawn largely from the lower civilizations, as all are more or less familiar with the mythologies of the greeks, babylonians, phoenicians, etc., all of which are accessible. the material available is embarrassing on account of its magnitude alone. oscar peschel, in his "races of man," says that "perhaps the brazilian botocudos, of all the inhabitants of the world, are most nearly in the primitive state, and yet," he adds, "possibly we may be altogether mistaken in this regard, as their languages are very imperfectly known." humboldt rescued the caribs from such an impeachment and declares that their language "combines wealth, grace, strength, and gentleness. it has expressions for abstract ideas, for futurity, eternity, and existence, and enough numerical terms to express all possible combinations of our numerals." it might be noted in passing that it was these same brazilian natives that the portuguese settlers sought to decimate by spreading smallpox and scarlet fever amongst them, as the english colonists in tasmania shot the natives when they had no better food for their dogs. hariot says that "many of the indian natives of north and south america believe that the soul, after its separation from the body, enters into a wide path crowded with spirits which are journeying toward a region of eternal repose. they have to cross an impetuous river on a trembling wicker bridge which is very dangerous." some greenlanders believe that the soul can go astray out of the body for a considerable time. some believe that they can leave their souls at home when going on a journey, and others believe in the migration of souls. belief in the soul and a future state is universal among the indians of north america. all are familiar with the tradition of the "happy hunting ground." with them the future life is patterned after the present. schoolcraft says that the chippewas believe that there are duplicate souls, one of which remains with the body, while the other is free to depart on excursions during sleep. after death the soul departs to the indian elysium and a fire is kept burning on the newly-made grave for four days, the time required for the soul to reach its destination. the dakotas stand in great fear of the spirits of the dead, who they think have power to injure them, and they recite prayers and give offerings to appease them. the mandans, according to schoolcraft, have anticipated prof. lloyd's etidorhpa, even to the beautiful maiden. they believe that they were the first people created on the earth, and that they first lived inside the globe. they raised many vines, one of which having grown up through a hole in the earth, one of the young men climbed up until he crawled out on the bank of the river where the mandan village stands. (jack and the bean stalk.) the young man returned to the nether world and piloted several of his companions to the outer world, and among them two very beautiful virgins. among those who tried to get up was a very large and fat woman, who was ordered by the chiefs to remain behind. her curiosity prompted her secretly to make the trial. the vine broke under her weight and she was badly hurt by the fall, but did not die, and was ever after in disgrace for having cut off all communication with the upper world. those who had already ascended built the mandan village, and when these die they expect to return to the nether world from which they came. they also believe the earth a great tortoise, and have a tradition of a universal deluge. the indians of guiana believe in the immortality of the soul, as do also the arawaks. the brazilians are said by spix and martins to have had no religious belief whatever before mingling with the civilized races. the guaranis believed in a soul which remained in the grave with the body. the patagonians believe in a country of the dead which they call alhue mapu and they kill the horses of the deceased in order that their owner may ride in alhue mapu. from the beliefs of the negritto and malayo-polynesian races, i glean the following: the fuegians believe in a superior being, and in good and evil spirits, in dreams, omens, signs, etc. fitzroy says he could not satisfy himself that they had any idea of the immortality of the soul. the veddahs believe in the guardianship of the spirits of the dead, who visit them in dreams and minister to them in sickness, and they have ceremonies of invocation. eyra says some at least of the australians believe in the existence and separability of the soul. the tasmanians believed in a future life as a tradition of a primitive religion, and bonwick says they conversed with the spirits of the dead. the new caledonians believe that white men are the spirits of the dead, and that they bring sickness. they believe that the soul on leaving the body goes to the bush, and every fifth month they have a "spirit night" or "grand concert of spirits." the gods of the new caledonians are their ancestors, whose relics they keep and idolize. the fijians believe in a separable soul, and dying is by them described by the same terms as sunset. belief in a future state among them is said by siemann to be universal. in fiji heaven the inhabitants plant, live in families, fight, and so repeat the incidents of life on earth. they believe that the spirit of men, while still alive, may leave the body and trouble other people when asleep. the sandwich islanders believe that the spirit of the departed hovers about his former home, appears to his relatives in dreams, and they worship an image which they believe to be in some way connected with the departed. they regard the spirit of one of their ancient kings as a tutelar deity, and the king and the priest were believed to be descended from the gods. the tahitians believe in a separable soul which, on leaving the body, is seized by other spirits and conducted to the state of night, where it is by degrees eaten by the gods. a few escape this fate, while others, after being three times eaten, become immortal. the tongons believe that the human soul is the more ethereal part of the body and that it exists in bolotoo in the form and likeness of the body the moment after death. the samoans believe that the spirits of the dead have power to return and to cause disease and death in other members of the family, hence all are anxious to part with the dying on good terms. the new zealanders believe that during sleep the mind leaves the body, and that dreams are the objects seen during its wanderings. they believe in two separate abodes for departed spirits, the sky, and the sea, and that the abodes of souls are to be approached only down the face of a steep precipice--cape maria van dieman. the dyaks have great difficulty in distinguishing sleep from death. they believe that the soul during sleep goes on an expedition of its own, and sees, hears, and talks. they believe in spirits, omens, and in all that occurs in dreams as real and literally true. the sumatrans believe in spirits and superior beings, and are said to have a vague idea of the immortality of the soul, and the malays believe in spirits, good and bad, and seem to have a vague idea of a separable soul. the mexicans believed in a separable soul, and distinguished three different abodes for it after death. landa says the people of yucatan have always believed more firmly in the immortality of the soul than other people, though they were less advanced in civilization. they believed that after death there would be a better life, which the soul would enjoy after its separation from the body. they worshiped their dead kings as gods. the mythology of the people of guatemala, honduras, and nicaragua is extensive and complicated and their national book, the popol vuh, possesses intense interest for the student. there can be no doubt that these people believed in a separable soul, as did also the chibchas. it was the belief of the ancient peruvians that the soul leaves the body during sleep, and that the soul itself cannot sleep, but that dreams are what the soul sees in the world while the body sleeps. waitz says they believed in the transmigration of human souls into the bodies of animals. in the case of the arabians the primitive belief, which was sabianism, has been altered far less by mohammedan invasion than most persons suppose. burton says mohammed and his followers conquered only the more civilized bedouins, and baker says that the arabs are unchanged, and that the theological opinions which they now hold are the same as those which prevailed in remote ages, and of this belief the soul and its immortality formed a part. in general the hill tribes of india share in the universal belief in the soul, in spirits, gods, and devils, though of many of these tribes little is really known in modern times. nearly all our north american indians (i can find no exceptions) bury objects with their dead, such as food implements, jewelry, etc., and kill the horses of the deceased that he may ride in the happy hunting ground. with the carib's death his wife and captives were killed, and food utensils, etc., were buried with him. a curious custom prevailed with some brazilian tribes. after burying food, utensils, arms, etc., with the body, a month after death the body was disinterred, put in a pan over a fire, the volatile substances driven off, the black residue reduced to powder and mixed with water and drunk by the company. the patagonians bury all the possessions of the deceased with the body. with the hottentots, widows lose one joint of a finger as an offering to the deceased husband every time they re-marry. with the kaffirs, the hut and utensils of the deceased are burnt. the east africans offer prayer to the dead. the congo people bury ornaments, utensils, arms, etc., and embalm the body after one or two years. the body of the chief must be carried in a straight line from the hut to place of burial, and if trees or huts impede the passage, they are cut down. the coast negroes bury property with the body and have a ceremony like an irish wake, as do also the abyssinians. with the ashantis, gold dust and utensils are buried and human sacrifices occur. the wives of the fijians are strangled that they may attend their lords in the new country. the people of malagasy bury in vaults × , and feet high, and put in a large quantity of property. with the ancient mexicans, wives, slaves, concubines, and chaplains were slaughtered to attend the deceased. the arabs fasten the camels to the grave of their master. the todas cremate the dead and slaughter the whole herd of buffalo belonging to him, in order to secure them to him in the after life. i have by no means given a complete category of the primitive and barbarous peoples who believe in a separate soul, and who believe in a future state much like the present and in conformity with that belief bury arms, ornaments, and utensils with the dead or place them on the grave, and who slaughter horses, camels, wives, slaves, etc., in order that the deceased may retain his possessions. how far these customs extend in case of the death of woman i do not know, but as with most of these people the women are regarded as chattels of the males, the case is doubtless very different. now as to the origin of these beliefs and customs, their causes naturally fall into two categories, the physical and the metaphysical. modern biological science regards the whole question from the physical side almost exclusively, and facts and experiences that belong largely or exclusively to the metaphysical realm are warped out of their natural order to fit the theory of interpretation. every savage observes not only that he casts a shadow, but that shadows attend all inanimate objects that stand so as to intercept the light, and as shadows move as do objects that gives rise to the idea of animation. hence we have genii, dryads, naiads, ghosts, angels, demons, etc. to fortify this belief we have echoes, which give voice to animate and inanimate objects. movement and voice are the universal accompaniment of animation. the part played by the breath, and its sudden cessation at death, are believed to contribute to the belief in invisible existences. the beating of the heart, and its cessation at death, adds another link to the chain of phenomena, going to show that _something_ leaves the body at death. this may be the origin of the sacrifice of the hearts of captives to the gods, or to a deceased warrior or chief as with the ancient mexicans, with the belief that the heart is the seat of the soul, and the soul of the captive or victim shall attend the departed chief in the other world. but the most important place should doubtless be assigned to dreams as giving rise to belief in the world of spirits. dreams are universal amongst men, and animals like the dog also dream. most if not all primitive people are also aware that fasting promotes dreaming, and while many of them practice long fasting, partly, no doubt, to increase fortitude and bodily endurance, in very many cases it is known to be practiced for the purpose of promoting dreams. beyond this voluntary fasting there is the enforced fast due to famine or the scarcity of food. it will be noticed in many of the cases cited how much stress is laid on the phenomena of dreams and how literally they are interpreted. among civilized races and those wise in philosophy dreams play a very important part, and are classified as monitorial, prophetic, etc., etc. the habit in modern times of regarding dreams as altogether fantastic and unreal, is unscientific. in the mingling of the real and the apparently unreal, in the dream state, while the experience itself is always real to the dreamer, lies undoubtedly the source of many beliefs that influence the lives of men. dreaming must be regarded as one of the states of consciousness, and hence, of whatsoever stuff dreams are made, they represent an actual experience of the individual. no greater mistake can be made than the belief that no experience is real save that which brings us in contact with gross matter through the agency of the five senses. the world of ideas and the creations of the imagination are in fact no more evanescent than matter itself. here impermanency differs only in time. all in time pass away. i hold that dreams, in general, show more clearly the nature of the soul, and the experiences of the waking state show the office of the bodily organism, and that each _on its own plane_ is as valid as the other. in other words, "the soul is such stuff as dreams are made of." it does not hold true, nor need it, that the experiences in dreams shall be true and valid on the physical plane, though this is often the case, or that the experiences of the physical plane shall be literally repeated in dreams, which, nevertheless, frequently happens. it is an undeniable fact that the experiences of the conscious ego in man compass the subjective no less than the objective planes of being. that the subjective avenues should be closed when the ego is functioning on the physical plane through the bodily organs by aid of the senses, is quite as remarkable as that the physical avenues should be closed when in dreams, or trance, or syncope, or under anaesthetics, the ego functions on the subjective planes. i hold, therefore, that here, more than anywhere else, is the source of not only belief in the existence of the soul, but of the relatively uniform conceptions everywhere attained. the common experience of man on the one plane is as easily accounted for as on the other, and individual experience differs no more widely in the one case than in the other. so also is the persistence of the human type, or the _genus_, involved in the one case no less than in the other. all the agencies recognized in modern evolution tend to elevation only through differentiation, and even the "eternal cell" of weismann fails in explaining permanency of form through any physical transmission. when atavism and degeneracy are admitted as factors, as they certainly must be, the perpetuity of the human species fails from physical causes alone. i hold the idea of a separable soul to be innate in the human consciousness, as a necessary deduction from the experience of the continuity of self-consciousness which compasses both the objective and subjective states. this deduction from experience occurs whenever the evolving ego has advanced sufficiently above the animal plane to reason on its own experience, and for this reason the belief in the separable soul is universal. it is no more strange that the experience of the individual should be modified by traditions and the beliefs of others regarding, for example, the dream state, than that the experience of the individual should in like manner be modified or shaped by traditions and the ceremonies and usages of others on the physical plane. the bond of unity and that of diversity have one common root in humanity. what we need for larger knowledge is, i think, a recognition of the breadth and sweep of human experience. to stop either ignoring or quibbling over one-half of all our actual experience. the inner world of thought and being is really the habitat of the soul, while the physical body, like the diving-bell, enables us to explore and gain experience on another plane which otherwise must remain to us forever unknown. the limitations of space and time are unknown to us in dreams. these are the limitations of the fleshly casket. the consciousness of freedom, the absence of pain and sorrow even under great trial, are often experienced in the dream state. the range and character of experience in the subjective state is modified, and held in check by that of the physical plane, and the correspondence of an emotion to an idea, or of an act to a thought, ought to give us the key to the two sets of experiences and reveal the underlying basis of equilibrium. a universal fact and a common experience argue a universal nature. like conditions everywhere come from like causes. these are neither accidental nor incidental, nor are they left to the caprice of savages, nor to that of the more advanced civilizations. it is not at all strange that a common experience should result in a universal belief. the range of experience and varying vicissitudes of life on the outer physical plane differ as widely as do those of the dream plane, and the conscious identity of the individual is equally preserved on both planes. i hold that here lies the origin of belief in the existence of a soul in man, separable from the body, and the confines of matter, space, and time, in an actual experience of every individual. the beating of the heart, the phenomena of respiration, the cessation of these at death, and the shadows cast by man and inanimate bodies serve as connecting links between the experiences of the individual on the subjective and objective planes of being. the dream state and the experiences thence derived are subjects for psychological science to investigate. the experiences allotted by du maurier to "peter ibbetson" are not altogether fantastic and unwarranted, as the records of somnambulism and hypnotism abundantly prove. when we remember that nothing deserving the name of psychology or psychic science exists in the western world to-day, we need not wonder why men eminent for investigations in other departments prove themselves novices and dogmatists here. the folklore, the traditions, and the mythology of dreams would form a very interesting subject for discussion. it is true that the literature of the subject is fantastic, mixed with fable and often altogether unreliable; but these difficulties offer no more formidable bar to scientific investigation than many another problem already classified and formulated for systematic study. i know a lady of very superior ability, the mother of a prominent jurist, who all her life has had distinct premonitions of many calamities and coming events, and there are those who dream true in every community. fantasies, nightmare, dreams from indigestion and delirium, form a separate class where the dreamer is entangled in the meshes of the bodily functions. here fasting, either voluntary or enforced, comes in, and drugs known to the remotest times are found to promote and to determine the character of dreams. there are furthermore processes of mental gymnastics whereby the thinker withdraws himself from the bodily avenues of sense and functions at will on the subjective plane of being. "when then," said socrates, in the _phædo_, "does the soul light on the truth? for when it attempts to consider anything in conjunction with the body, it is plain that it is led astray by it." "and surely," he continues, "the soul reasons best when none of these things disturb it, neither hearing, nor sight, nor pain, nor pleasure of any kind, but it retires as much as possible _within itself_, _taking leave of the body_, and as far as it can, not communicating or being in contact with it, _it aims at the discovery of that which is_." i hold that the most valuable triumphs of science in the future lie in the realm of psychology, and that by no means the least important contribution in this direction will come from the study of folklore, of which belief in the separable soul, and the phenomena and universality of the dream state must form a very important part. one final consideration is suggested not without some degree of hesitation and diffidence. if there be a soul in man destined to continued existence, and if in any case perfection is the goal of evolution as formulated by herbert spencer for a future residue of the human race, then this soul in its essential elements is without beginning in time. pre-existence and evolution necessitate repeated re-embodiment on the physical plane, and the continuity of self-consciousness in man i hold to be the proof of life without beginning or end. viewed in this light, dreams and all subjective experiences in man must mingle reminiscences of the soul with the experiences of the present life, and the theory of innate ideas assumes a purely scientific form. we hence arrive at the intuition of the soul to account for universal belief. the experience of socrates and the fiji islander agree as to the subjective plane as perfectly as in regard to the beating of the heart. they differ only in degree of evolution. chapter xiv from confusion to construction a concise and detailed review of the past, in the long journey of man toward civilization and independent self-knowledge, has not been herein attempted. only hints, here and there, and the barest outline have been undertaken. if, however, the intelligent student will follow these clews, he will find a mass of material and abundant evidence to corroborate the general thesis. every great religion has had its avatar, its redeemer, its _christos_. each of these religions has adapted from its predecessors and transformed the old, in whole or in part, to suit the conditions and apparent needs of the time. each of these revivals of religion has been instituted on account of the abominations of a dominant priesthood and the poverty and degradation of the masses. what was at first claimed and instituted as a divine revelation for the elevation and happiness of the whole people, has openly and shamelessly degenerated into enslavement of the masses and the creation of a despotic and arrogant class who enslaved both body and soul in the name of religion. priest, prince, and potentate generally, united to terrorize through force, and by superstition and fear, in order to retain their power. the reaction has invariably resulted from economic conditions, as in the case of the protestant reformation, when the gold sent to rome through the shameless sale of indulgences, threatened to impoverish the whole of northern europe, and princes broke allegiance to the priesthood in desperate self-protection. then, and then only, came sufficient protest and reformation. the religionist is apt to regard and designate science as "profane," and religion _per se_, as essentially "holy." nothing can be really considered "holy" that does not elevate, encourage, and inspire the whole human race and promote the brotherhood of man. whenever any religion fails to do this it becomes indeed a profanation of holy things. the only religion that ever became the inspiration of a whole people, so far as history records, was that of christna, with the teeming millions of india. buddhism was driven out of india by the powerful and unscrupulous brahmans, and took refuge in ceylon, thibet, and adjacent provinces. the religion of jesus met a similar fate from the jews and the roman governors, until pagan rome adapted and transformed it on the principle of dominance and exploitation inherent in the genius of the latin race. since which time no one will pretend to claim that the religion of jesus has ever dominated the human race or any large part of it. rome to-day no more represents the religion of jesus than the brahmans of to-day represent that of christna, or buddha, or the religion of the vedas. nothing is so amazing to-day as that the intelligence of the present age fails to recognize this fact. all of these religions of the past have adapted their teaching to the multitude through parable and allegory. nothing in literature can be found more beautiful and inspiring, and at the same time comprehensible to the commonest intelligence, than christna's "parable of the fisherman." christna and buddha, like jesus, taught to their disciples a "secret doctrine," apprehensible only to the few. "to you it is given to know the mysteries," but to others, who are without, it is not given. it can readily be proven from at least a half score of the early church fathers (see page _et seq._ of the author's "mystic masonry"), that the early church practiced "initiation," patterned after those of the gnostics, therapeutia and the mysteries of egypt, and divided their neophytes and postulants into three degrees, as in blue lodge masonry to-day. while the great mass of mankind to-day are incapable of apprehending these genuine mysteries of life, and of the individual soul of man, it is doubtful if any civilization ever existed where so many were willing and capable of understanding them as are found here in america to-day. the reason for this and the growth of intelligence have already been outlined. a new race is slowly forming here, designated by the ancient wisdom as the "fifth race," and called the _manasic_, the growth of intelligence, or "mind." it is above all things important that with this development of _mind_ there should also develop that of _buddhi_, or loving kindness, the essential element in the universal brotherhood of man; a thing largely overlooked in the modern theory of evolution, and ignored, or set at naught by romanism by its dogmas, anathemas, and persecutions. instead of the brotherhood of man, she has exhibited the cruelty and rapacity of devils. (establishment of roman catholic caste.) this all-around development of the whole man, as essential to human evolution, is everywhere insisted upon by all the great masters of antiquity, and is illustrated and exemplified in the genuine greater mysteries. hence, the saying in kabala, "the wicked _obey_ the law through _fear_; the wise _keep_ the law through _knowledge_." the saviors all preached and practiced the "good law," and obedience to legal mandates. the explanation usually given of an avatar by the ancient masters, as "a descent, embodiment, or incarnation of _vishnu_," who is not only the "preserver," but the "rejuvenator" of mankind, is rather a _blind_, and was an interpretation given to the common people, or the "profane." all things--even heaven and earth--pass away, and all things are renewed. this renewal, or regeneration, through the constructive principle of evolution, is "designed" to be continually on higher and still higher planes. it is not the range of experience, nor the growth of intelligence alone, that elevates man, but the progressive and constructive growth of the soul, from the physical toward the spiritual plane of being. this actual growth means knowledge, wisdom, understanding, knowledge of the law, obedience to its commands, and realization of its rewards. this constructive psychology is the _growth of the soul_. man passes, therefore, from the age of fable, superstition, and fear, to the age of faith and obedience, and finally to that of actual knowledge. this _age of knowledge_--not for all of mankind, but for a larger number who are worthy and well-qualified, duly and truly prepared than was ever known at one time before--has at last dawned. the question is continually asked, "why do the masters of wisdom conceal their knowledge?" the only adequate answer is that so few are ready, willing, and able to receive it in the right way, and to use and not abuse it. those who deny that any such knowledge has ever existed, or exists to-day, or can exist, had better waste no time over it. they cannot alter it, nor destroy it, as their predecessors have tried to do for ages, often murdering or crucifying all who were even suspected of possessing it. they might as well try to destroy the law of gravitation, or imagine that by murdering the foremost mathematician of the day that they had destroyed the science of mathematics. i am speaking of _knowledge_ of spiritual things. a new avatar, therefore, is not simply an individual, though many individuals may understand and exemplify it--the initiated, the illuminati--and one man may lead in representing it. to call it "the descent and embodiment, or incarnation of vishnu," in a metaphysical sense, the spirit (generically), that renews, rejuvenates, transforms, and regenerates, is by no means an empty metaphor. in the same sense we speak of the "genius of greece," or of rome, or of civilization. the _idea_ is composite, and represents an underlying and _universal principle and potency_. but after all metaphor and generalization, each avataric movement centered around an individual _man_, and this _man_ embodied the principle and undertook the special work of an evangel, or _christos_, or "avatar," amongst men. not only have there been many avatars, and many buddhas, but when we realize the meaning of these terms and the mysteries they represent, we discover that while it may be the special mission of one, like christna, or buddha, or jesus, to undertake the work of enlightening and redeeming any age; there are other masters, or illuminati, engaged in other work, on different planes, to promote the same general results. the result with each of the great saviors of mankind has been, that the common people, or the priesthood, have eventually either crucified or deified them. in the case of jesus they have done both. eight separate and deliberate attempts have already been made to assassinate the present representative of the school of natural science, who was educated in the order of the illuminati, and delegated by that order to present these great truths to the world to-day. this individual is only in the broadest _metaphysical_ sense (as already defined), an avatar, which, as shown, is a _composite idea_, _focused_ in and _represented by_ an individual man or teacher. the work of this master is to instruct, to exemplify, and to demonstrate, the ancient wisdom on scientific lines, in keeping with the needs, the opportunities, and the scientific spirit of the present age. he does not preach to the multitude in parables. he undertakes to instruct the few who are ready and qualified to receive such instruction, and who will properly use and not abuse it, and he does this "without money and without price"; "without the hope of fee or reward." (herein is the avataric spirit of freemasonry.) what his reward will be with the rabble, or with the "money changers," he knows too well, but to such as he, fear is unknown. i am speaking not _for_ him, but _of_ him, after the blessed privilege of seven years of the most intimate association, and such co-operation as i have been capable of giving. his plan and motive seem to be to get as much as possible of this knowledge of the soul, and of spiritual things, to the attention of the "progressive intelligence of the present age," in order that it may become exemplified and diffused among all classes, and for the benefit of the whole human race. we have passed the age of fable, and of blind faith, and have come to the age of fact and law. _kali yuga_ means the iron age. as two natures, the physical and spiritual, meet and mingle in the constitution of man, so do his faculties, capacities, and powers mingle and function on the two planes, the physical and the spiritual, though very largely on the former, with the great majority in any age or time. there is implanted in the very foundation of man's being the idea or the consciousness of a separable soul. it would seem to be an intuition, for with nearly every people of which we have any knowledge, no matter how near the animal plane, the belief or the folklore of a separable soul exists, in many cases held to be separable during life, and in most cases believed to survive the death of the physical body. (see folio editions of herbert spencer's "descriptive sociology," and chapter xiii, herein.) it has generally been held by scientists and commentators, that this intuition, or belief, results largely from dreams. to say that dreams, in general, are mere fantasies, or the results of imagination, and have no real basis in consciousness, is folly; for dreams are of many kinds, and present great varieties. they are, moreover, both reminiscent and prophetic, sometimes moving like any other conscious experience, from fact to fruition, and in others, we are unable to relate them to any other conscious experience.[ ] hypnosis and telepathy are related to the same states, so much so, that the modern scientist has been constrained to coin two new terms to avoid endless repetitions, viz.: "subliminal" and "supraliminal" states of consciousness. bearing in mind all these subjective states and experiences, including the whole range of so-called mediumship, the _theorem_ of the masters and adepts of all ages may be made exceeding plain. [footnote : for a very valuable and suggestive treatise on "sleep," see f. w. h. myers "human personality," chap. iv.] it consists in the _dominance of the will_ over all conscious states. this is the _alpha_ and the _omega_--the principle, the potency, and the act--of mastership. the mind of the master no longer drifts in a boundless sea of fantasy, but with rudder and compass, he guides his ship whithersoever he would go. this does not mean that there are not still degrees and related states and conditions of consciousness in his experience. it does mean, however, that all these states and conditions, with all his faculties, capacities, and powers, are _co-ordinated_, not only in his _awareness_ of them as a whole, but in the exercise of each and its relation to the others, dominated by his own will. he has "mastered" them, and can incite or repress them, while they can no longer dominate him. can the reader imagine such a degree of _self-control_? this, however, is but the beginning, as the "secret of power," and by no means the end. controlling the phases and forms of consciousness, there comes next the determination to extend their boundary and to _refine and elevate the powers of the soul_. in the first case, that of co-ordination, the ancient wisdom admonishes the student or _chela_ to "_make the mind one pointed, like a light burning in a quiet place_." light a candle and put it in a corner where no draught can reach it, and the flame will seem as though cut out of solid fire, and "one pointed." it is at the point of refining and elevating the individual consciousness that ethics or morals come in. it is just at this point also that the _path_ is determined. what our ancient brothers called "the power of will and yoga"--self-control--_may_ ignore ethics. here the paths separate, and are called "the right-hand path" and "the left-hand path," determining the "white" and the "black magician," about whom so much is said in all ancient scriptures and traditions regarding "sorcery" and "black magic," of which egypt and rome and modern mediumship and hypnotism, are illustrations. the _supreme importance_ of this natural division or "parting of the way" reveals the real and final reason why the masters of the "right-hand path" conceal their knowledge from the profane and reveal it only after an ethical formulary has been learned and once for all _ingrained_. the "thugs" of india are no more an idle dream nor a bugaboo to frighten children and old women than are the mafia and the roman jesuit to-day. in egypt the time came when these "black magicians" dominated the people and drove out those of the right-hand path who built the great pyramid and gave to egypt the wisdom and glory of its prime. the consciousness and power of these evil men, however, was limited to the lower planes. whenever they wished to transcend these lower planes they were powerless. hence arose the _sibyl_; young boys or virgins were hypnotized, and being pure, they could thus be inducted into a somewhat higher plane. (see mabel collins' "idyll of the white lotus.") margrave, in bulwer's "strange story," is a fine picture of an "adept of the left-hand path." he would sacrifice the whole human race in order to gain his personal and selfish ends, just as would "mother church" to-day. the master of the white lodge would readily lay down his life for the benefit of his fellowmen. herein is the vital difference. here lies the meaning and the complete antithesis represented by _christos_ and _satan_. both names are generic and avataric, and yet, may be personified. this elevating and refining process to which i have referred is not a matter of sentiment or emotion, but a matter of fact, with a definite, scientific formula. in a previous chapter belief in the existence and separability of the human soul has been shown to be virtually universal, and in some cases, even with people of very low development, the belief is held that the soul may be separated from the body and reunited again during life. this is, however, a _belief_, and proves nothing as to _fact_, _science_, and _law_, beyond the existence of the belief, with all the appurtenances, concomitants, and subjective experiences of individuals thereunto belonging. we thus arrive at the real _theorem_ as a cold psychological problem. can the existence and separability of the soul of man, during his physical embodiment on earth, and its survival of the death of the physical body, be scientifically demonstrated as a _fact_? if so, then the principles involved, the methods employed and the whole _modus operandi_ must be capable of exact, scientific formulation, the same as any other theorem of science. furthermore, granting that this is true, and that it can be done according to exact formulary, the value, the effect of such a demonstration upon the character and the normal faculties, capacities, and powers of the individual who undertakes and accomplishes such a demonstration, must be revealed and taken fully into account. does it elevate or degrade him? is it in line with normal evolution, and therefore, potentially the birthright, and finally, through spiritual evolution, the higher destiny of all men? nor is this all. the effect of the existence of such knowledge and of its teaching, upon communities, as a substitute for blind superstition, credulity, or belief, must also be taken into account. it may thus be seen how much even beyond the mere _fact_ of demonstration, is included in this transcendent problem; this question of all ages, "if a man die, shall he live again?" or, "does the real man ever die at all?" now it is a demonstrated fact, proven in every case of a genuine master, and held inviolable in the "greater mysteries" of every age and time, that the ethical question above raised, as to the effect upon individuals and society, _comes first_, and is made a _test_ of the "first step" in the way of demonstration. this is the meaning of the oft repeated quotation, the candidate for initiation must first be "worthy and well-qualified, duly and truly prepared." this comprises and constitutes the "lesser mysteries," as in the school of pythagoras, viz.: the instruction of the neophyte in ethics or morals. nor is this instruction sufficient in any case. the candidate must himself demonstrate that he has absorbed, apprehended, and utilized such instruction by "_living the life_." in other words, it must have become so ingrained in his character as to govern absolutely all his acts and impulses to action, i.e., automatic, habitual, and natural. in the school of natural science this comprises and constitutes the "ethical section of the general formulary." in the school of pythagoras we are informed that students sometimes remained for years in the "outer court," and sometimes they failed entirely and hopelessly, and went back to the outer world. whereupon a white stone was erected to their memory as though they were dead. they were indeed, for the time being, dead to the school. this fully answers the ethical question as to the effect of this real knowledge on the individual and on mankind. the real master sees to it that all that precaution can provide, or human wisdom can suggest, is done to insure beneficent _use_ of the knowledge gained. it is here that "degrees" in initiation become a necessity. every step, or passage of the candidate from a lower to a higher degree, is marked and determined finally and solely by his "proficiency in the preceding degree." the question of morals, or the ethical effect, therefore, is pre-determined, and as far as possible, solved first. but even with all this wise precaution, the unprepared and the unqualified have sometimes entered the outer courts; and when compelled at last to reveal their character, have turned to rend their teachers, and have done their utmost to destroy the school and demoralize mankind. if these moral renegades could only realize the _meaning to themselves_ of thus entering the "left-hand path" of devolution and of starting voluntarily "down the deep descent," as portrayed in dante's "inferno," or in ahrinzeman, they would, indeed, hesitate long before "turning to the left," for inevitable destruction lies that way. here lies the scientific explanation of the "fall of lucifer," portrayed in some form in the pantheons and mythologies of every philosophy and religion known to man. the ordinary "sinner" may yet possess an "average" of all the virtues, and the ordinary "saint" an "average" of all the vices. concerning these it was said, "i would have you either hot or cold, but because ye are neither hot nor cold, i have spewed you out of my mouth." no lukewarm soul ever entered the kingdom of heaven. but a time at last comes when the soul of man, enmeshed in the "lusts of the flesh and the deceitfulness of riches," _must make his choice_. he _realizes_ that he can no longer "serve two masters." he will make his choice knowingly, deliberately, and voluntarily. happy and blessed will be he if with his whole soul, and with every impulse of his being, he declares, "i know not what others may do, _but as for me and my house, we will serve the lord_." if there are real masters (and there are), they have to work under both natural and divine law, and in strict harmony with the higher evolution of the whole human race. it is only a low, feeble, and undeveloped intelligence that finds god and nature at cross-purposes. he who has found "the place of peace," harmonized his own nature, purified his own life, and elevated all his desires and aspirations, has discerned the "harmony of the morning stars," and caught the symphony of the heavenly hosts. in other words, he is already functioning on the spiritual plane. this would seem to make clear the ethical problem raised, the stress placed upon it, and how it is met and answered by every genuine initiate throughout the ages. it has to be solved _first_ in each individual case. only "he who _lives the life_ shall know the doctrine," or advance to power. chapter xv the science of psychology as a knowledge of the human soul the writer of the present treatise is quite well aware that the great majority of intelligent and educated people at the present day will deny that any real knowledge of the human soul as a spiritual entity, separable from the physical body during life and demonstrably surviving its death, exists now, has heretofore existed, or, if possible for man, is likely to exist for some time to come. some will unhesitatingly declare such a thing _unknowable_ for man. i hold the firm _conviction_ that this knowledge has been for ages the possession of certain individuals, few in number in any age or country, and that this knowledge has resulted through conformity to certain definite and specific requirements, formulated under well-known laws of man's spiritual being, involving a definite individual experience and resulting in a scientific and exact demonstration. i ask the reader to note two points in the foregoing statement: first, that for myself i use the word "conviction," and not "knowledge"; and, second, that the demonstration of real knowledge referred to, is made by, and confined to an individual, in each instance. with these individuals the knowledge is a _scientific demonstration through personal experience_. with me, the "firm conviction" is a matter of "circumstantial evidence," supported by analogy, and fortified by empirical testimony, such as acquaint the world with the facts and findings of science, and which i think admit of no other consistent and rational interpretation. in the foregoing pages i have endeavored to give outlines, analogies, and suggestions which seem to fortify the conviction referred to. while these are fragmentary and desultory, owing to the fact that the circumstances are so varied, the subject so vast, and the materials so abundant, yet, taken as a whole, they seem overwhelming, and, except to the careful, persistent, and intelligent student, confusing. it must be clearly apprehended that no one familiar with the subject can reasonably suppose, nor has it ever been claimed by a real master of the "art," that this knowledge ever has been, or can be, communicated to, or acquired by groups of individuals at any time, or under any circumstances. through all the past, and at the present time, it is designated as an _individual experience_. true, the ethics, and the philosophy, and even the principles of exact psychic science that in the past constituted the "lesser mysteries," can be, and often have been, taught to groups, or classes. in the present "school of natural science," this preparatory training constitutes the "ethical section." but above and beyond all the foregoing general considerations the "empirical facts" and the "circumstantial evidence," if we know personally one who claims to have had the specific instruction, the personal experience, and to have made the scientific demonstration referred to and outlined in the problem, our opportunity for instruction, and for the application of tests for validity and reasonableness as to the whole problem, is exceedingly valuable. this personal acquaintance may become the nearest possible criterion, short of our own personal experience, as to demonstration. in previous chapters this phase of the subject has, perhaps, been sufficiently dwelt upon. the master may say, "i know; i have had the personal experience; i have demonstrated." the student may at last say, "i believe; i am convinced; i am satisfied." all through the foregoing pages the effort has continually been made to preserve clearly this distinction. in tracing analogies through the history of the past, the conditions, premonitory, present, and subsequent to great world-movements have often been referred to. nothing is more common or more patent than the oft-repeated saying, "this is the age of science." any great movement that undertakes at the present day to deal with the deeper problems of individual and social life, must fit in and conform to the "spirit of the present age." to that platform it must appeal; in that language it must be addressed, and by such judgment and criterion must it stand or fall. all these tests and criteria have been fully met by the school of natural science, and they are clearly outlined and set forth in the "great work," addressed to "the progressive intelligence of the age." there need be no misconception or misinterpretation at this point. it is true that superficial thinkers and readers, enthusiasts and emotionalists, are likely to infer that the science of the soul can now be had "for a consideration" and in "a dozen easy lessons." all such are doomed to disappointment. it is furthermore likely, if the average "physical scientist" pays any heed at all, that he will devise a series of "tests" and "experiments" of his own, to fit his preconceived notion of things psychical, with the latent conviction, at least, that he will be able to prove the whole thing a humbug. these, also, are doomed to disappointment. physical tests of psychical and spiritual laws and processes are unscientific. no spiritual problem can be solved in terms of physical matter alone. so-called psychological science to-day is in the condition of one possessing a fine piece of ground, and gathering materials for a house, a superstructure. the ground is already covered with bricks and stones, and sand and lumber, piled in every direction, with the purpose of one day beginning the work of construction, and the slogan, "wait! not yet!" "some day we are hoping to build." no architect, "no designs on the trestle-board," and so they go on accumulating "facts" and "evidence" day after day, year after year, century after century. they have a "working hypothesis," but no definite _theorem_, and they may work till doomsday on this line without a glimmer of real scientific knowledge of the human soul, yet with mountains of "facts" or of "rubbish." they can never prove the existence of a _spiritual entity_ in terms of matter on the physical plane. their work has been, and still is, of great interest and value, but it is in no scientific sense, _constructive_, backed by the laws of proportion and harmony, nor the "canon of architecture." the apotheosis of natural science is like the "canon of proportion" in architecture, introduced by vitruvius (an initiate) centuries ago. it is the verification of plato's saying, "god geometrizes," and his concept of "the world of divine ideas." plato further declares, "he who knows not the common things of life is a brute among men. he who knows the common things of life is a man among brutes. but he who knows all that can be learned by diligent inquiry is a god among men." natural science, as shown in the great work, includes scientific knowledge on all planes of being on which the soul of man functions: the physical, moral, psychical, and spiritual; for man is a composite being. the apotheosis of natural science, therefore, is fact, law, demonstration, and knowledge; before theory, conjecture, creed, dogma, superstition, or fear, intuition, inspiration, revelation, and "holy men" or "holy books" that must be accepted without evidence, or "believed" against evidence. the _avatars_ of all the past have originated great reformations which have at last degenerated into dogma and superstition. the people, incapable of understanding the law, have been taught in parables, while the few in all religions and in every age have apprehended the law and learned the "secret doctrine." to-day, for the first time in centuries, for the reasons already assigned, and in keeping with the scientific spirit of the age, and because superstition in power, dogma, and persecution are politically dethroned, these great truths, this great work, is openly declared and outlined so that he who wills may apprehend. let no one say, "this is an effort to _deify_ an individual." it _is_ an effort to enthrone truth; to remove the barriers to the rights of conscience, the shackles of reason, private judgment and individual responsibility, and to free the soul of man from all the fetters of ignorance, superstition, and fear, in order that he may be "first a man," "then a master," and at length on a higher plane of being, something more than man has yet realized, or ever dreamed. something "that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it yet entered into the heart of man to conceive the glory that shall be revealed." the beginning is here and now, when man shall achieve the mastery of self and really possess his own soul, and not hold it tremblingly as a _pawn_ of some pretentious potentate of the soul. the right of light, knowledge, and further progress by "_being a man_," and not a chattel, an asset, a pawn, or a slave. this is the coming _avatar_, and the dawn is already here. will the day darken, the light be quenched? who can tell? the redemption of woman from the slavery of all the past is well under way, and it is indeed a glorious sign. no lesson in history is plainer nor more readily demonstrated than the fact that the degeneracy of a religion and the degradation of woman go hand in hand. demonstrate to-day in any country on earth the status of woman as a whole, and no mistake need be made as to the prevailing religion. woman's political disability is another matter entirely; for she is dominated by man only because, and only so far as, she is handicapped or degraded by the dominant religion. take woman from the churches, protestant or romish, to-day, and no church could do business for a twelvemonth. for these reasons the immense and rapidly growing movements, women's clubs and the like, to-day, are of great significance, backed and illuminated as they are by all past history. in the new movement, the school of natural science, the door is as wide open to woman as to man. i might paraphrase the slogan of the robber barons of the middle ages. "_she_ may seize who hath the power, _she_ may hold who can." in the coming illuminati woman will stand by the side of man in all opportunity, endeavor, or achievement. in the new age woman will be something few men have even yet dreamed of. we might call this new age "_the woman's avatar_," without doing violence to either religion, tradition, history, or science; while the sacred hymns of the vedas, with the angel of the household and the inspirer of the soul of man, the worship of divinity, by both men and women, opened a new heaven on this old earth. and then--such children as will be born, without pain, not through chance, caprice, nor under protest, but even as they were in greece, as an offering of love on the altar of divine man-womanhood, with a song of joy to heaven. prof. fiske somewhere said, "the evolution of man by natural selection draws near its close, to be followed by that of divine selection." the divinity _in_ man is _christos_, the "son of the father," the divine and eternal _avatar_. belief is rather a superficial process, the intellect ("mortal mind") mingled with the emotions, changing and evanescent. "now you see it, and now you don't." it is mingled with hope that alternates with fear and doubt. faith, when once analyzed and apprehended, is another thing entirely, though nearly every one, and most writers, confuse "belief" and "faith." "faith is the soul's _intuitive conviction_ of that which both _reason_ and _conscience_ approve." genuine faith rarely wavers or changes, because it is an evolution, a "growth of the soul," a spiritual experience, and it becomes the "dominant chord" in the symphony of life, determining harmony. it is in this deliberate and discriminative sense that i have used the term _conviction_ in relation to the master and his "great work." he never dogmatizes, nor undertakes to "indoctrinate." in answer to a question on some deep and perplexing problem of the soul or of the spiritual plane, he replies, "so far as we _know_, it is so and so." "a new experience, or an added light, may alter our conclusion." the average individual scarcely realizes what absolute sincerity, with no motive save love of truth, and beneficence to man guided by clear intelligence, and dominated by the rational will, means, or can accomplish. these are the natural powers of the human soul. there is nothing mysterious or miraculous about them, more than in the art of music of a beethoven or a paganini, or in gymnastics and the winner of the marathon. "to _shape_ and _use_, arise and fly, the reeling faun, the sensual feast, move upward, working out the beast, and let the ape and tiger die." my _conviction_ is strong, and my faith unwavering. "the great and peaceful ones live, regenerating the world like the coming of spring: and having themselves crossed the ocean of embodied existence, help those who try to do the same thing without personal motive." ("crest jewel of wisdom.") chapter xvi the new avatar from all the foregoing general considerations it may be discerned that the "new avatar" is strictly that of _scientific demonstration_. as we use terms in vogue at the present day, it pertains to the field of natural science. this does not imply that it is irreligious, nor unreligious, nor sacrilegious. when it is clearly apprehended it will be found to be the only thing that harmonizes--not the institutions of man--but science, philosophy, and religion _per se_, as departments in human intelligence. man will thus discern "the rational order that pervades the universe." the purpose and result of such knowledge to man are harmony, enlightenment, courage, and hope. man _is_ the arbiter of his own destiny. he may _become_ the master of his own fate. such are the _illuminati_, the "masters of the great white lodge," the benefactors of the whole human race, the members of the "school of natural science." what would i have my readers do? i answer, _investigate_! study! think! wait! hope! anticipate! careful, intelligent, and conscientious investigation will determine the fact that we possess in america to-day _one_ who can fill all the requirements that i have endeavored to designate and portray--not as a "reincarnation" of buddha or jesus, but as a "master"--one who has been duly instructed and prepared, who has had the personal experience, and has made a _practical demonstration_, that determines mastership. he has demonstrated that "there is no death," but transition only (except through conscious and determined devolution, or _suicide of the soul_). man is, after all, and in the last analysis, a "free moral agent." as a member of the "great school" he was educated and initiated many years ago, and has consecrated his life to this service. he has demonstrated the separability of the soul by leaving and returning to his body at will. the school of natural science; the great work; the individual representative; the conditions of the present age; the opportunities offered; the demand for real knowledge everywhere; the falling in pieces of creeds and dogmas; the expectancy so often voiced--all of these correspond intimately with what the ancient aryans designated as "_avataric_." it is not now the deification of any individual, but the "_apotheosis of natural science_," as the foundation and method in the achievement of actual knowledge. from this actual knowledge will arise a new faith, not a new religion, but the old religion of humanity, precisely as taught and lived by jesus, christna, buddha, and all the other "redeemers," and real avatars of the past. the "enemy of all righteousness," as already said, have made many attempts to assassinate this representative of the great school, but he goes steadily about his own work. these enemies realize the danger to their unholy work, but not the _power_ back of this great movement. this they can never destroy. the day of enlightenment has come, and the cry has gone forth, ho! all ye who are heavy-laden, involved in fear and doubt and uncertainty; bewildered, discouraged, despairing, and committing suicide! there is no death! man is the arbiter of his own fate! look up and live, and hope and _realize_! and there shall dawn for you a new heaven and a new earth in which dwelleth love and peace and righteousness; with jesus--the _christos_--your "elder brother," leading the way, and the downtrodden, the poor and despised children of men, shouting hosanna! for the loving kindness that will have taken the place of selfishness, strife, cruelty, superstition, and dogma. religion will no longer be a matter of mere sentiment, nor of emotion, of blind belief, nor of fear, superstition, dogma, nor creed--but a _great work_. so mote it be. the author of this volume can lay no claim for it as a systematic treatise on psychology, either according to the rules of composition or the orderly sequence of science. it is rather a number of essays, some of which were written without reference to publication, or the design, at the time, of putting them together in a single volume. there is, therefore, more or less repetition, the same subject under a different title, viewed from a different aspect, yet involving the same principles, motives, and aims. but the subject of psychology is so vast, so intricate, so interesting and important, and yet, in the average mind, so confused, and so little known, that considerations from many sides, and even repetitions in the application of a given principle in various ways, are believed more likely to make the whole subject apprehensible to the general reader to whom it is addressed. moreover, the author believes that the time has come when psychology, as a _constructive science_ of the nature, laws, and destiny of the human soul, need no longer be regarded as unknown or unattainable, but open to all who seek it in the right way, giving to it the consideration, time, and loyalty it so amply deserves. to such as these, it is hoped, the foregoing pages may give many clews and sidelights, suggestions, encouragement, and hope. psychology, to the author of this volume, means literally _a knowledge of the human soul_, rather than of treatises upon the subject, or of the opinions, beliefs, or dogmas of men. notes the oligarchy of creeds, and the autocrats of rome no more represent the "coming of the son of man," the divine logos that was and is "in the bosom of the father in heaven," than do the rockefellers, the morgans and the harrimans, constituting the oligarchy of wealth, or than the political grafters and bosses of our municipalities represent the "new commandment," "that ye love one another." the barons of wealth have not yet resorted directly to murder, as has rome for ages. st. augustine says, "what is now called the christian religion existed among the ancients and was not absent from the human race until christ came, from which time, the true religion, which existed already, began to be called 'christian.'" (see heckethorne's "secret societies," page , introduction.) as to the basis of scientific chronology regarding the wisdom of the masters, and their indestructible records, i quote the following from a modern student of astrology. his method of reckoning is correct, even though his dates may not be absolutely exact, as he is not a "master." chronology and the "riddle of the sphinx." ancient religious symbols bear a striking resemblance to the constellations of the heavens, especially those of the zodiac, and if this be their true meaning, we have an infallible key to their chronology. at the beginning of the christian era, the constellation aries, or ram, occupied the equinoctial place, being in the first degree of that constellation. about b.c. the first degree of taurus, or bull, contained the equinox. when the constellation taurus, or the bull, was in the first division, or the equinoctial place, the people used a symbol representing a bull, described as giving fecundity, a deity of vegetation as at dodona, in their religious ceremonies. one of the statuettes found recently in the excavations of crete, was a woman figured between bulls and lions, with a dove or eagle on her head, and holding serpents in her hand. this figure would seem to represent mother earth between the constellations taurus, leo, scorpio, and aquarius. she is figured between taurus (the bull) on one side, leo (the lion) at her feet, aquila (or eagle) in the constellation, aquarius on her head, and scorpio (or the serpent) in her hand; all forming the sacred cross or 'swastika,' with the constellations taurus in the vernal equinox; leo beneath the earth, the eagle or aquarius overhead, and scorpio held in her hand toward the west. archæologists place the date in which this symbol was in use in crete at to b.c. these dates are included between b.c. and the year a.d. by the same method we are enabled to calculate the age of the sphinx. this sphinx apparently represents the constellations leo (the lion) and virgo (the virgin). it has a lion's body, and a woman's head and breast. when the sphinx was built, it seems the spring equinox occupied a point between these two constellations, and as the spring, or easter, festivals of the ancients were held on or about march st of our calendar, this sphinx was the representation of leo and virgo, the point in which the sun crossed the equator, or equinoctial line. now as the equinox retrogrades from east to west in the reverse order of the constellations, as well as the reverse order of the movement of the planets, the sun will not cross the equator at the same point each year, but at a point a little to the west, amounting to about fifty and a third seconds of arc. at this rate the equinox will pass backward through the constellations, making a complete revolution in a little less than twenty-six thousand years, or at the rate of about twenty-one hundred and fifty years to a constellation of thirty degrees. now by taking the present position of the equinox in the constellation pisces, we find that it has nearly reached the constellation aquarius. about years ago it was in the first point of aries. if we begin at its present point in pisces, and count back to the junction of leo-virgo, we will have to count years to first point of aries; years to the first point of taurus; years to camini; years to cancer; years to leo and years to the constellation virgo. this indicates that the sphinx was built , years ago, or approximately , b.c. (john kilduff.) the harmonic series these are the text books of that ancient school of wisdom whose members have ever been "masters of the law" of life and of death, able at will, independently at all times, to travel in the spiritual world and communicate with those who live there--your friends and our friends,--who have passed through the gates of death and now live another life beyond the grave. vol. i. harmonics of evolution by florence huntley this book is a clear statement of the philosophy of individual life, as taught by modern masters of the law. its teachings mean the dawn of a "new day" in the intellectual and ethical evolution of the whole world. mrs. huntley has sensed the very soul of mankind and understands and explains its yearnings for what drummond names "the greatest thing in the world, love." pages; illustrated. vol. ii. the great psychological crime by tk this remarkable book deals with the imminent dangers of the day, and covers the most mysterious and fascinating phenomena and experiences of human life. the author's analysis of hypnotism and mediumship is masterly and complete. for fifteen chapters, by the most relentless and unanswerable facts, he _proves_ that hypnotism and subjective mediumship are vitally destructive to the physical body and _the human soul_. this volume carries a hope, a message, a suggestion and a warning to all who are honestly, patiently and persistently seeking to prove that death does not end all. pages; illustrated. vol. iii. the great work by tk this is the book which tells _how_ one must live and _what_ he must do to become able himself to demonstrate the fact of another life. "_the great work_" _and_ "_the great psychological crime_" were written by the american representative of that "venerable school of wisdom," whose records are the most ancient at this time known to man, and which for many thousands of years, has influenced the civilization and work of every great nation of earth. pages; illustrated. these books are founded upon an exact science. more impressive, more fascinating and "stranger than fiction." "when a man dies, he shall live again," is the inspiring message of the great work in america,--and this message is written in clear, concise, simple and easily readable english. bound in red silk, gold stamped. price single copy, $ . . _per set $ . , express prepaid._ in persian morocco, _de luxe_ edition $ . each. _the set at one time, $ . ._ [illustration] three-in-one "as beautiful a volume as the mind can imagine." the harmonic series--three volumes--bound in full, persian morocco (oxford bible style), round corners, silk head-bands and markers, red-under-gold edges, _genuine gold stamped_. printed on japan french paper; several beautiful full-page half-tones. durable, practical, artistic. name stamped on cover in pure gold, if desired. price _de luxe_ edition, all charges prepaid, $ . . all orders filled the same day they are received. indo-american book co. south boulevard, chicago, ill. questions on natural science [illustration] this volume is an aid to the study of the "harmonic series." while it commands the attention of the casual reader of the text books, it is intended more especially for those who contemplate a closer relationship with the philosophy and for those who _have been admitted to studentship_. to the aspiring student it opens up the entire harmonic philosophy in a manner that invites and facilitates the most intense interest, satisfaction and progress. pages, chapters, and , carefully formulated questions, all of which are _authoratatively_ answered in the text books. three-quarter leather, price $ . . key to questions on natural science. leather, $ . . -------------------- the spirit of the work [illustration] _by tk._ these beautiful and inspiring essays by the beloved elder brother are now printed in book form, for ready reference, and will prove to be quite as interesting and helpful to the beginner in natural science, as they are useful to instructors and regularly admitted students. they unfold in simple language a wealth of spiritual light that leads at once to a most searching soul--analysis and readjustment of the entire intelligence to the constructive principle in nature. every page breathes the very inmost meaning and spirit of the educational work of the great school. if you are in earnest this book will help you. pages, cloth, price $ . . -------------------- the question box series [illustration] _by tk._ these two volumes consist of questions from students and friends of the work of the great school, touching all manner of interesting subjects, together with answers by the tk. volume i contains about general topics, pages. volume ii has over topics and pages. charming and valuable aids to readers, students and instructors, and strictly authoritative in their teaching. large, clear, beautiful type; carefully indexed, and attractively arranged. price, $ . each. -------------------- harmonic birthday book [illustration] a large book-- pages. there are quotations from the "harmonic philosophy" for every day in the year (with space for writing) and the following valuable and unique features: a section devoted to birthstones; wedding anniversaries; the meaning of flowers; section devoted to the deaths of relatives and friends, and a frontispiece and beautiful half-tone portrait of _florence huntley_. it is really a family record, that will increase in value with the years and become priceless to the fortunate owner. bound in leather, gold stamped and embossed, gold edges and printed on heavy parchment paper. without doubt the most beautiful gift book ever sold. price, $ . . the dream child (gift edition) [illustration] _by florence huntley_ this is doubtless one of the most beautiful, masterful and mystical books ever written. the descriptive incidents in this book could only emanate from the brilliant and fertile brain of florence huntley. florence huntley was the first instructed student of the tk, dating from the year ; and from the work commanded her undivided time and effort. "_the dream child_"--the first result of that interest--was written in , and stands for that earlier and therefore more poetic and less exact treatment of the great law than her later writings. a book that everybody reads and re-reads with the keenest appreciation and enthusiasm. price $ . -------------------- the gay gnani of gingalee. [illustration] _by florence huntley_ only those who knew mrs. huntley's earlier humorous writings will be prepared for such a book from the serious author of "_harmonics of evolution_." the publishers feel entirely safe in saying there is nothing like "the gay gnani" in the whole range of modern satirical fiction. the most extraordinary feature of this indescribable satire lies in chapter xii, "the wages of sin is death," contributed by the tk. this chapter is a masterpiece of concept, treatment and beauty, setting forth the meaning and purpose of the whole extravaganza. don't miss reading this book. red cloth, gold stamped. price, $ . . -------------------- zanoni and zicci [illustration] _by sir edward bulwer lytton_ as a work of art this romance is one of great power and original conception. no other works of this great author have provoked such diversity of criticism as "_zanoni_." to some, this book represents a temporary aberration of genius without definite purpose. to others it represents surpassing, bold and original speculation, profound analysis of character and thrilling interest; but _to the one who knows_, every character in this book is recognized by a familiar sign and symbol which, though hidden, is nevertheless patent to the initiated. the two books, "zanoni" and "zicci" in one, special edition, cloth, gold stamped. price, $ . . -------------------- a strange story and the haunted and the haunters [illustration] this is another of those marvelous books by _sir edward bulwer lytton_. "a strange story" is the antithesis of "zanoni." it is a most absorbingly interesting story depicting the destructive psychic practices and possibilities against which "_the great psychological crime_" so timely warns the human race. as a matter of fact, both "a strange story" and "zanoni" are carefully veiled exposes of the two oldest and most powerful centers of spiritual knowledge extant, and are revelations of the loftiest pursuits and the most malign practices known to human intelligence. be sure to read both of these books. special edition. price, $ . . three dialogues between hylas and philonous, in opposition to sceptics and atheists by george berkeley ( - ) the first dialogue philonous. good morrow, hylas: i did not expect to find you abroad so early. hylas. it is indeed something unusual; but my thoughts were so taken up with a subject i was discoursing of last night, that finding i could not sleep, i resolved to rise and take a turn in the garden. phil. it happened well, to let you see what innocent and agreeable pleasures you lose every morning. can there be a pleasanter time of the day, or a more delightful season of the year? that purple sky, those wild but sweet notes of birds, the fragrant bloom upon the trees and flowers, the gentle influence of the rising sun, these and a thousand nameless beauties of nature inspire the soul with secret transports; its faculties too being at this time fresh and lively, are fit for those meditations, which the solitude of a garden and tranquillity of the morning naturally dispose us to. but i am afraid i interrupt your thoughts: for you seemed very intent on something. hyl. it is true, i was, and shall be obliged to you if you will permit me to go on in the same vein; not that i would by any means deprive myself of your company, for my thoughts always flow more easily in conversation with a friend, than when i am alone: but my request is, that you would suffer me to impart my reflexions to you. phil. with all my heart, it is what i should have requested myself if you had not prevented me. hyl. i was considering the odd fate of those men who have in all ages, through an affectation of being distinguished from the vulgar, or some unaccountable turn of thought, pretended either to believe nothing at all, or to believe the most extravagant things in the world. this however might be borne, if their paradoxes and scepticism did not draw after them some consequences of general disadvantage to mankind. but the mischief lieth here; that when men of less leisure see them who are supposed to have spent their whole time in the pursuits of knowledge professing an entire ignorance of all things, or advancing such notions as are repugnant to plain and commonly received principles, they will be tempted to entertain suspicions concerning the most important truths, which they had hitherto held sacred and unquestionable. phil. i entirely agree with you, as to the ill tendency of the affected doubts of some philosophers, and fantastical conceits of others. i am even so far gone of late in this way of thinking, that i have quitted several of the sublime notions i had got in their schools for vulgar opinions. and i give it you on my word; since this revolt from metaphysical notions to the plain dictates of nature and common sense, i find my understanding strangely enlightened, so that i can now easily comprehend a great many things which before were all mystery and riddle. hyl. i am glad to find there was nothing in the accounts i heard of you. phil. pray, what were those? hyl. you were represented, in last night's conversation, as one who maintained the most extravagant opinion that ever entered into the mind of man, to wit, that there is no such thing as material substance in the world. phil. that there is no such thing as what philosophers call material substance, i am seriously persuaded: but, if i were made to see anything absurd or sceptical in this, i should then have the same reason to renounce this that i imagine i have now to reject the contrary opinion. hyl. what i can anything be more fantastical, more repugnant to common sense, or a more manifest piece of scepticism, than to believe there is no such thing as matter? phil. softly, good hylas. what if it should prove that you, who hold there is, are, by virtue of that opinion, a greater sceptic, and maintain more paradoxes and repugnances to common sense, than i who believe no such thing? hyl. you may as soon persuade me, the part is greater than the whole, as that, in order to avoid absurdity and scepticism, i should ever be obliged to give up my opinion in this point. phil. well then, are you content to admit that opinion for true, which upon examination shall appear most agreeable to common sense, and remote from scepticism? hyl. with all my heart. since you are for raising disputes about the plainest things in nature, i am content for once to hear what you have to say. phil. pray, hylas, what do you mean by a sceptic? hyl. i mean what all men mean--one that doubts of everything. phil. he then who entertains no doubts concerning some particular point, with regard to that point cannot be thought a sceptic. hyl. i agree with you. phil. whether doth doubting consist in embracing the affirmative or negative side of a question? hyl. in neither; for whoever understands english cannot but know that doubting signifies a suspense between both. phil. he then that denies any point, can no more be said to doubt of it, than he who affirmeth it with the same degree of assurance. hyl. true. phil. and, consequently, for such his denial is no more to be esteemed a sceptic than the other. hyl. i acknowledge it. phil. how cometh it to pass then, hylas, that you pronounce me a sceptic, because i deny what you affirm, to wit, the existence of matter? since, for aught you can tell, i am as peremptory in my denial, as you in your affirmation. hyl. hold, philonous, i have been a little out in my definition; but every false step a man makes in discourse is not to be insisted on. i said indeed that a sceptic was one who doubted of everything; but i should have added, or who denies the reality and truth of things. phil. what things? do you mean the principles and theorems of sciences? but these you know are universal intellectual notions, and consequently independent of matter. the denial therefore of this doth not imply the denying them. hyl. i grant it. but are there no other things? what think you of distrusting the senses, of denying the real existence of sensible things, or pretending to know nothing of them. is not this sufficient to denominate a man a sceptic? phil. shall we therefore examine which of us it is that denies the reality of sensible things, or professes the greatest ignorance of them; since, if i take you rightly, he is to be esteemed the greatest sceptic? hyl. that is what i desire. phil. what mean you by sensible things? hyl. those things which are perceived by the senses. can you imagine that i mean anything else? phil. pardon me, hylas, if i am desirous clearly to apprehend your notions, since this may much shorten our inquiry. suffer me then to ask you this farther question. are those things only perceived by the senses which are perceived immediately? or, may those things properly be said to be sensible which are perceived mediately, or not without the intervention of others? hyl. i do not sufficiently understand you. phil. in reading a book, what i immediately perceive are the letters; but mediately, or by means of these, are suggested to my mind the notions of god, virtue, truth, &c. now, that the letters are truly sensible things, or perceived by sense, there is no doubt: but i would know whether you take the things suggested by them to be so too. hyl. no, certainly: it were absurd to think god or virtue sensible things; though they may be signified and suggested to the mind by sensible marks, with which they have an arbitrary connexion. phil. it seems then, that by sensible things you mean those only which can be perceived immediately by sense? hyl. right. phil. doth it not follow from this, that though i see one part of the sky red, and another blue, and that my reason doth thence evidently conclude there must be some cause of that diversity of colours, yet that cause cannot be said to be a sensible thing, or perceived by the sense of seeing? hyl. it doth. phil. in like manner, though i hear variety of sounds, yet i cannot be said to hear the causes of those sounds? hyl. you cannot. phil. and when by my touch i perceive a thing to be hot and heavy, i cannot say, with any truth or propriety, that i feel the cause of its heat or weight? hyl. to prevent any more questions of this kind, i tell you once for all, that by sensible things i mean those only which are perceived by sense; and that in truth the senses perceive nothing which they do not perceive immediately: for they make no inferences. the deducing therefore of causes or occasions from effects and appearances, which alone are perceived by sense, entirely relates to reason. phil. this point then is agreed between us--that sensible things are those only which are immediately perceived by sense. you will farther inform me, whether we immediately perceive by sight anything beside light, and colours, and figures; or by hearing, anything but sounds; by the palate, anything beside tastes; by the smell, beside odours; or by the touch, more than tangible qualities. hyl. we do not. phil. it seems, therefore, that if you take away all sensible qualities, there remains nothing sensible? hyl. i grant it. phil. sensible things therefore are nothing else but so many sensible qualities, or combinations of sensible qualities? hyl. nothing else. phil. heat then is a sensible thing? hyl. certainly. phil. doth the reality of sensible things consist in being perceived? or, is it something distinct from their being perceived, and that bears no relation to the mind? hyl. to exist is one thing, and to be perceived is another. phil. i speak with regard to sensible things only. and of these i ask, whether by their real existence you mean a subsistence exterior to the mind, and distinct from their being perceived? hyl. i mean a real absolute being, distinct from, and without any relation to, their being perceived. phil. heat therefore, if it be allowed a real being, must exist without the mind? hyl. it must. phil. tell me, hylas, is this real existence equally compatible to all degrees of heat, which we perceive; or is there any reason why we should attribute it to some, and deny it to others? and if there be, pray let me know that reason. hyl. whatever degree of heat we perceive by sense, we may be sure the same exists in the object that occasions it. phil. what! the greatest as well as the least? hyl. _i_ tell you, the reason is plainly the same in respect of both. they are both perceived by sense; nay, the greater degree of heat is more sensibly perceived; and consequently, if there is any difference, we are more certain of its real existence than we can be of the reality of a lesser degree. phil. but is not the most vehement and intense degree of heat a very great pain? hyl. no one can deny it. phil. and is any unperceiving thing capable of pain or pleasure? hyl. no, certainly. phil. is your material substance a senseless being, or a being endowed with sense and perception? hyl. it is senseless without doubt. phil. it cannot therefore be the subject of pain? hyl. by no means. phil. nor consequently of the greatest heat perceived by sense, since you acknowledge this to be no small pain? hyl. i grant it. phil. what shall we say then of your external object; is it a material substance, or no? hyl. it is a material substance with the sensible qualities inhering in it. phil. how then can a great heat exist in it, since you own it cannot in a material substance? i desire you would clear this point. hyl. hold, philonous, i fear i was out in yielding intense heat to be a pain. it should seem rather, that pain is something distinct from heat, and the consequence or effect of it. phil. upon putting your hand near the fire, do you perceive one simple uniform sensation, or two distinct sensations? hyl. but one simple sensation. phil. is not the heat immediately perceived? hyl. it is. phil. and the pain? hyl. true. phil. seeing therefore they are both immediately perceived at the same time, and the fire affects you only with one simple or uncompounded idea, it follows that this same simple idea is both the intense heat immediately perceived, and the pain; and, consequently, that the intense heat immediately perceived is nothing distinct from a particular sort of pain. hyl. it seems so. phil. again, try in your thoughts, hylas, if you can conceive a vehement sensation to be without pain or pleasure. hyl. i cannot. phil. or can you frame to yourself an idea of sensible pain or pleasure in general, abstracted from every particular idea of heat, cold, tastes, smells? &c. hyl. i do not find that i can. phil. doth it not therefore follow, that sensible pain is nothing distinct from those sensations or ideas, in an intense degree? hyl. it is undeniable; and, to speak the truth, i begin to suspect a very great heat cannot exist but in a mind perceiving it. phil. what! are you then in that sceptical state of suspense, between affirming and denying? hyl. i think i may be positive in the point. a very violent and painful heat cannot exist without the mind. phil. it hath not therefore according to you, any real being? hyl. i own it. phil. is it therefore certain, that there is no body in nature really hot? hyl. i have not denied there is any real heat in bodies. i only say, there is no such thing as an intense real heat. phil. but, did you not say before that all degrees of heat were equally real; or, if there was any difference, that the greater were more undoubtedly real than the lesser? hyl. true: but it was because i did not then consider the ground there is for distinguishing between them, which i now plainly see. and it is this: because intense heat is nothing else but a particular kind of painful sensation; and pain cannot exist but in a perceiving being; it follows that no intense heat can really exist in an unperceiving corporeal substance. but this is no reason why we should deny heat in an inferior degree to exist in such a substance. phil. but how shall we be able to discern those degrees of heat which exist only in the mind from those which exist without it? hyl. that is no difficult matter. you know the least pain cannot exist unperceived; whatever, therefore, degree of heat is a pain exists only in the mind. but, as for all other degrees of heat, nothing obliges us to think the same of them. phil. i think you granted before that no unperceiving being was capable of pleasure, any more than of pain. hyl. i did. phil. and is not warmth, or a more gentle degree of heat than what causes uneasiness, a pleasure? hyl. what then? phil. consequently, it cannot exist without the mind in an unperceiving substance, or body. hyl. so it seems. phil. since, therefore, as well those degrees of heat that are not painful, as those that are, can exist only in a thinking substance; may we not conclude that external bodies are absolutely incapable of any degree of heat whatsoever? hyl. on second thoughts, i do not think it so evident that warmth is a pleasure as that a great degree of heat is a pain. phil. _i_ do not pretend that warmth is as great a pleasure as heat is a pain. but, if you grant it to be even a small pleasure, it serves to make good my conclusion. hyl. i could rather call it an indolence. it seems to be nothing more than a privation of both pain and pleasure. and that such a quality or state as this may agree to an unthinking substance, i hope you will not deny. phil. if you are resolved to maintain that warmth, or a gentle degree of heat, is no pleasure, i know not how to convince you otherwise than by appealing to your own sense. but what think you of cold? hyl. the same that i do of heat. an intense degree of cold is a pain; for to feel a very great cold, is to perceive a great uneasiness: it cannot therefore exist without the mind; but a lesser degree of cold may, as well as a lesser degree of heat. phil. those bodies, therefore, upon whose application to our own, we perceive a moderate degree of heat, must be concluded to have a moderate degree of heat or warmth in them; and those, upon whose application we feel a like degree of cold, must be thought to have cold in them. hyl. they must. phil. can any doctrine be true that necessarily leads a man into an absurdity? hyl. without doubt it cannot. phil. is it not an absurdity to think that the same thing should be at the same time both cold and warm? hyl. it is. phil. suppose now one of your hands hot, and the other cold, and that they are both at once put into the same vessel of water, in an intermediate state; will not the water seem cold to one hand, and warm to the other? hyl. it will. phil. ought we not therefore, by your principles, to conclude it is really both cold and warm at the same time, that is, according to your own concession, to believe an absurdity? hyl. i confess it seems so. phil. consequently, the principles themselves are false, since you have granted that no true principle leads to an absurdity. hyl. but, after all, can anything be more absurd than to say, there is no heat in the fire? phil. to make the point still clearer; tell me whether, in two cases exactly alike, we ought not to make the same judgment? hyl. we ought. phil. when a pin pricks your finger, doth it not rend and divide the fibres of your flesh? hyl. it doth. phil. and when a coal burns your finger, doth it any more? hyl. it doth not. phil. since, therefore, you neither judge the sensation itself occasioned by the pin, nor anything like it to be in the pin; you should not, conformably to what you have now granted, judge the sensation occasioned by the fire, or anything like it, to be in the fire. hyl. well, since it must be so, i am content to yield this point, and acknowledge that heat and cold are only sensations existing in our minds. but there still remain qualities enough to secure the reality of external things. phil. but what will you say, hylas, if it shall appear that the case is the same with regard to all other sensible qualities, and that they can no more be supposed to exist without the mind, than heat and cold? hyl. then indeed you will have done something to the purpose; but that is what i despair of seeing proved. phil. let us examine them in order. what think you of tastes, do they exist without the mind, or no? hyl. can any man in his senses doubt whether sugar is sweet, or wormwood bitter? phil. inform me, hylas. is a sweet taste a particular kind of pleasure or pleasant sensation, or is it not? hyl. it is. phil. and is not bitterness some kind of uneasiness or pain? hyl. i grant it. phil. if therefore sugar and wormwood are unthinking corporeal substances existing without the mind, how can sweetness and bitterness, that is, pleasure and pain, agree to them? hyl. hold, philonous, i now see what it was delude time. you asked whether heat and cold, sweetness at were not particular sorts of pleasure and pain; to which simply, that they were. whereas i should have thus distinguished: those qualities, as perceived by us, are pleasures or pair existing in the external objects. we must not therefore conclude absolutely, that there is no heat in the fire, or sweetness in the sugar, but only that heat or sweetness, as perceived by us, are not in the fire or sugar. what say you to this? phil. i say it is nothing to the purpose. our discourse proceeded altogether concerning sensible things, which you defined to be, the things we immediately perceive by our senses. whatever other qualities, therefore, you speak of as distinct from these, i know nothing of them, neither do they at all belong to the point in dispute. you may, indeed, pretend to have discovered certain qualities which you do not perceive, and assert those insensible qualities exist in fire and sugar. but what use can be made of this to your present purpose, i am at a loss to conceive. tell me then once more, do you acknowledge that heat and cold, sweetness and bitterness (meaning those qualities which are perceived by the senses), do not exist without the mind? hyl. i see it is to no purpose to hold out, so i give up the cause as to those mentioned qualities. though i profess it sounds oddly, to say that sugar is not sweet. phil. but, for your farther satisfaction, take this along with you: that which at other times seems sweet, shall, to a distempered palate, appear bitter. and, nothing can be plainer than that divers persons perceive different tastes in the same food; since that which one man delights in, another abhors. and how could this be, if the taste was something really inherent in the food? hyl. i acknowledge i know not how. phil. in the next place, odours are to be considered. and, with regard to these, i would fain know whether what hath been said of tastes doth not exactly agree to them? are they not so many pleasing or displeasing sensations? hyl. they are. phil. can you then conceive it possible that they should exist in an unperceiving thing? hyl. i cannot. phil. or, can you imagine that filth and ordure affect those brute animals that feed on them out of choice, with the same smells which we perceive in them? hyl. by no means. phil. may we not therefore conclude of smells, as of the other forementioned qualities, that they cannot exist in any but a perceiving substance or mind? hyl. i think so. phil. then as to sounds, what must we think of them: are they accidents really inherent in external bodies, or not? hyl. that they inhere not in the sonorous bodies is plain from hence: because a bell struck in the exhausted receiver of an air-pump sends forth no sound. the air, therefore, must be thought the subject of sound. phil. what reason is there for that, hylas? hyl. because, when any motion is raised in the air, we perceive a sound greater or lesser, according to the air's motion; but without some motion in the air, we never hear any sound at all. phil. and granting that we never hear a sound but when some motion is produced in the air, yet i do not see how you can infer from thence, that the sound itself is in the air. hyl. it is this very motion in the external air that produces in the mind the sensation of sound. for, striking on the drum of the ear, it causeth a vibration, which by the auditory nerves being communicated to the brain, the soul is thereupon affected with the sensation called sound. phil. what! is sound then a sensation? hyl. i tell you, as perceived by us, it is a particular sensation in the mind. phil. and can any sensation exist without the mind? hyl. no, certainly. phil. how then can sound, being a sensation, exist in the air, if by the air you mean a senseless substance existing without the mind? hyl. you must distinguish, philonous, between sound as it is perceived by us, and as it is in itself; or (which is the same thing) between the sound we immediately perceive, and that which exists without us. the former, indeed, is a particular kind of sensation, but the latter is merely a vibrative or undulatory motion the air. phil. i thought i had already obviated that distinction, by answer i gave when you were applying it in a like case before. but, to say no more of that, are you sure then that sound is really nothing but motion? hyl. i am. phil. whatever therefore agrees to real sound, may with truth be attributed to motion? hyl. it may. phil. it is then good sense to speak of motion as of a thing that is loud, sweet, acute, or grave. hyl. _i_ see you are resolved not to understand me. is it not evident those accidents or modes belong only to sensible sound, or sound in the common acceptation of the word, but not to sound in the real and philosophic sense; which, as i just now told you, is nothing but a certain motion of the air? phil. it seems then there are two sorts of sound--the one vulgar, or that which is heard, the other philosophical and real? hyl. even so. phil. and the latter consists in motion? hyl. i told you so before. phil. tell me, hylas, to which of the senses, think you, the idea of motion belongs? to the hearing? hyl. no, certainly; but to the sight and touch. phil. it should follow then, that, according to you, real sounds may possibly be seen or felt, but never heard. hyl. look you, philonous, you may, if you please, make a jest of my opinion, but that will not alter the truth of things. i own, indeed, the inferences you draw me into sound something oddly; but common language, you know, is framed by, and for the use of the vulgar: we must not therefore wonder if expressions adapted to exact philosophic notions seem uncouth and out of the way. phil. is it come to that? i assure you, i imagine myself to have gained no small point, since you make so light of departing from common phrases and opinions; it being a main part of our inquiry, to examine whose notions are widest of the common road, and most repugnant to the general sense of the world. but, can you think it no more than a philosophical paradox, to say that real sounds are never heard, and that the idea of them is obtained by some other sense? and is there nothing in this contrary to nature and the truth of things? hyl. to deal ingenuously, i do not like it. and, after the concessions already made, i had as well grant that sounds too have no real being without the mind. phil. and i hope you will make no difficulty to acknowledge the same of colours. hyl. pardon me: the case of colours is very different. can anything be plainer than that we see them on the objects? phil. the objects you speak of are, i suppose, corporeal substances existing without the mind? hyl. they are. phil. and have true and real colours inhering in them? hyl. each visible object hath that colour which we see in it. phil. how! is there anything visible but what we perceive by sight? hyl. there is not. phil. and, do we perceive anything by sense which we do not perceive immediately? hyl. how often must i be obliged to repeat the same thing? i tell you, we do not. phil. have patience, good hylas; and tell me once more, whether there is anything immediately perceived by the senses, except sensible qualities. i know you asserted there was not; but i would now be informed, whether you still persist in the same opinion. hyl. i do. phil. pray, is your corporeal substance either a sensible quality, or made up of sensible qualities? hyl. what a question that is! who ever thought it was? phil. my reason for asking was, because in saying, each visible object hath that colour which we see in it, you make visible objects to be corporeal substances; which implies either that corporeal substances are sensible qualities, or else that there is something besides sensible qualities perceived by sight: but, as this point was formerly agreed between us, and is still maintained by you, it is a clear consequence, that your corporeal substance is nothing distinct from sensible qualities. hyl. you may draw as many absurd consequences as you please, and endeavour to perplex the plainest things; but you shall never persuade me out of my senses. i clearly understand my own meaning. phil. i wish you would make me understand it too. but, since you are unwilling to have your notion of corporeal substance examined, i shall urge that point no farther. only be pleased to let me know, whether the same colours which we see exist in external bodies, or some other. hyl. the very same. phil. what! are then the beautiful red and purple we see on yonder clouds really in them? or do you imagine they have in themselves any other form than that of a dark mist or vapour? hyl. i must own, philonous, those colours are not really in the clouds as they seem to be at this distance. they are only apparent colours. phil. apparent call you them? how shall we distinguish these apparent colours from real? hyl. very easily. those are to be thought apparent which, appearing only at a distance, vanish upon a nearer approach. phil. and those, i suppose, are to be thought real which are discovered by the most near and exact survey. hyl. right. phil. is the nearest and exactest survey made by the help of a microscope, or by the naked eye? hyl. by a microscope, doubtless. phil. but a microscope often discovers colours in an object different from those perceived by the unassisted sight. and, in case we had microscopes magnifying to any assigned degree, it is certain that no object whatsoever, viewed through them, would appear in the same colour which it exhibits to the naked eye. hyl. and what will you conclude from all this? you cannot argue that there are really and naturally no colours on objects: because by artificial managements they may be altered, or made to vanish. phil. i think it may evidently be concluded from your own concessions, that all the colours we see with our naked eyes are only apparent as those on the clouds, since they vanish upon a more close and accurate inspection which is afforded us by a microscope. then' as to what you say by way of prevention: i ask you whether the real and natural state of an object is better discovered by a very sharp and piercing sight, or by one which is less sharp? hyl. by the former without doubt. phil. is it not plain from dioptrics that microscopes make the sight more penetrating, and represent objects as they would appear to the eye in case it were naturally endowed with a most exquisite sharpness? hyl. it is. phil. consequently the microscopical representation is to be thought that which best sets forth the real nature of the thing, or what it is in itself. the colours, therefore, by it perceived are more genuine and real than those perceived otherwise. hyl. i confess there is something in what you say. phil. besides, it is not only possible but manifest, that there actually are animals whose eyes are by nature framed to perceive those things which by reason of their minuteness escape our sight. what think you of those inconceivably small animals perceived by glasses? must we suppose they are all stark blind? or, in case they see, can it be imagined their sight hath not the same use in preserving their bodies from injuries, which appears in that of all other animals? and if it hath, is it not evident they must see particles less than their own bodies; which will present them with a far different view in each object from that which strikes our senses? even our own eyes do not always represent objects to us after the same manner. in the jaundice every one knows that all things seem yellow. is it not therefore highly probable those animals in whose eyes we discern a very different texture from that of ours, and whose bodies abound with different humours, do not see the same colours in every object that we do? from all which, should it not seem to follow that all colours are equally apparent, and that none of those which we perceive are really inherent in any outward object? hyl. it should. phil. the point will be past all doubt, if you consider that, in case colours were real properties or affections inherent in external bodies, they could admit of no alteration without some change wrought in the very bodies themselves: but, is it not evident from what hath been said that, upon the use of microscopes, upon a change happening in the burnouts of the eye, or a variation of distance, without any manner of real alteration in the thing itself, the colours of any object are either changed, or totally disappear? nay, all other circumstances remaining the same, change but the situation of some objects, and they shall present different colours to the eye. the same thing happens upon viewing an object in various degrees of light. and what is more known than that the same bodies appear differently coloured by candle-light from what they do in the open day? add to these the experiment of a prism which, separating the heterogeneous rays of light, alters the colour of any object, and will cause the whitest to appear of a deep blue or red to the naked eye. and now tell me whether you are still of opinion that every body hath its true real colour inhering in it; and, if you think it hath, i would fain know farther from you, what certain distance and position of the object, what peculiar texture and formation of the eye, what degree or kind of light is necessary for ascertaining that true colour, and distinguishing it from apparent ones. hyl. i own myself entirely satisfied, that they are all equally apparent, and that there is no such thing as colour really inhering in external bodies, but that it is altogether in the light. and what confirms me in this opinion is, that in proportion to the light colours are still more or less vivid; and if there be no light, then are there no colours perceived. besides, allowing there are colours on external objects, yet, how is it possible for us to perceive them? for no external body affects the mind, unless it acts first on our organs of sense. but the only action of bodies is motion; and motion cannot be communicated otherwise than by impulse. a distant object therefore cannot act on the eye; nor consequently make itself or its properties perceivable to the soul. whence it plainly follows that it is immediately some contiguous substance, which, operating on the eye, occasions a perception of colours: and such is light. phil. howl is light then a substance? hyl. . i tell you, philonous, external light is nothing but a thin fluid substance, whose minute particles being agitated with a brisk motion, and in various manners reflected from the different surfaces of outward objects to the eyes, communicate different motions to the optic nerves; which, being propagated to the brain, cause therein various impressions; and these are attended with the sensations of red, blue, yellow, &c. phil. it seems then the light doth no more than shake the optic nerves. hyl. nothing else. phil. and consequent to each particular motion of the nerves, the mind is affected with a sensation, which is some particular colour. hyl. right. phil. and these sensations have no existence without the mind. hyl. they have not. phil. how then do you affirm that colours are in the light; since by light you understand a corporeal substance external to the mind? hyl. light and colours, as immediately perceived by us, i grant cannot exist without the mind. but in themselves they are only the motions and configurations of certain insensible particles of matter. phil. colours then, in the vulgar sense, or taken for the immediate objects of sight, cannot agree to any but a perceiving substance. hyl. that is what i say. phil. well then, since you give up the point as to those sensible qualities which are alone thought colours by all mankind beside, you may hold what you please with regard to those invisible ones of the philosophers. it is not my business to dispute about them; only i would advise you to bethink yourself, whether, considering the inquiry we are upon, it be prudent for you to affirm--the red and blue which we see are not real colours, but certain unknown motions and figures which no man ever did or can see are truly so. are not these shocking notions, and are not they subject to as many ridiculous inferences, as those you were obliged to renounce before in the case of sounds? hyl. i frankly own, philonous, that it is in vain to longer. colours, sounds, tastes, in a word all those termed secondary qualities, have certainly no existence without the mind. but by this acknowledgment i must not be supposed to derogate, the reality of matter, or external objects; seeing it is no more than several philosophers maintain, who nevertheless are the farthest imaginable from denying matter. for the clearer understanding of this, you must know sensible qualities are by philosophers divided into primary and secondary. the former are extension, figure, solidity, gravity, motion, and rest; and these they hold exist really in bodies. the latter are those above enumerated; or, briefly, all sensible qualities beside the primary; which they assert are only so many sensations or ideas existing nowhere but in the mind. but all this, i doubt not, you are apprised of. for my part, i have been a long time sensible there was such an opinion current among philosophers, but was never thoroughly convinced of its truth until now. phil. you are still then of opinion that extension and figures are inherent in external unthinking substances? hyl. i am. phil. but what if the same arguments which are brought against secondary qualities will hold good against these also? hyl. why then i shall be obliged to think, they too exist only in the mind. phil. is it your opinion the very figure and extension which you perceive by sense exist in the outward object or material substance? hyl. it is. phil. have all other animals as good grounds to think the same of the figure and extension which they see and feel? hyl. without doubt, if they have any thought at all. phil. answer me, hylas. think you the senses were bestowed upon all animals for their preservation and well-being in life? or were they given to men alone for this end? hyl. i make no question but they have the same use in all other animals. phil. if so, is it not necessary they should be enabled by them to perceive their own limbs, and those bodies which are capable of harming them? hyl. certainly. phil. a mite therefore must be supposed to see his own foot, and things equal or even less than it, as bodies of some considerable dimension; though at the same time they appear to you scarce discernible, or at best as so many visible points? hyl. i cannot deny it. phil. and to creatures less than the mite they will seem yet larger? hyl. they will. phil. insomuch that what you can hardly discern will to another extremely minute animal appear as some huge mountain? hyl. all this i grant. phil. can one and the same thing be at the same time in itself of different dimensions? hyl. that were absurd to imagine. phil. but, from what you have laid down it follows that both the extension by you perceived, and that perceived by the mite itself, as likewise all those perceived by lesser animals, are each of them the true extension of the mite's foot; that is to say, by your own principles you are led into an absurdity. hyl. there seems to be some difficulty in the point. phil. again, have you not acknowledged that no real inherent property of any object can be changed without some change in the thing itself? hyl. i have. phil. but, as we approach to or recede from an object, the visible extension varies, being at one distance ten or a hundred times greater than another. doth it not therefore follow from hence likewise that it is not really inherent in the object? hyl. i own i am at a loss what to think. phil. your judgment will soon be determined, if you will venture to think as freely concerning this quality as you have done concerning the rest. was it not admitted as a good argument, that neither heat nor cold was in the water, because it seemed warm to one hand and cold to the other? hyl. it was. phil. is it not the very same reasoning to conclude, there is no extension or figure in an object, because to one eye it shall seem little, smooth, and round, when at the same time it appears to the other, great, uneven, and regular? hyl. the very same. but does this latter fact ever happen? phil. you may at any time make the experiment, by looking with one eye bare, and with the other through a microscope. hyl. i know not how to maintain it; and yet i am loath to give up extension, i see so many odd consequences following upon such a concession. phil. odd, say you? after the concessions already made, i hope you will stick at nothing for its oddness. but, on the other hand, should it not seem very odd, if the general reasoning which includes all other sensible qualities did not also include extension? if it be allowed that no idea, nor anything like an idea, can exist in an unperceiving substance, then surely it follows that no figure, or mode of extension, which we can either perceive, or imagine, or have any idea of, can be really inherent in matter; not to mention the peculiar difficulty there must be in conceiving a material substance, prior to and distinct from extension to be the substratum of extension. be the sensible quality what it will--figure, or sound, or colour, it seems alike impossible it should subsist in that which doth not perceive it. hyl. i give up the point for the present, reserving still a right to retract my opinion, in case i shall hereafter discover any false step in my progress to it. phil. that is a right you cannot be denied. figures and extension being despatched, we proceed next to motion. can a real motion in any external body be at the same time very swift and very slow? hyl. it cannot. phil. is not the motion of a body swift in a reciprocal proportion to the time it takes up in describing any given space? thus a body that describes a mile in an hour moves three times faster than it would in case it described only a mile in three hours. hyl. i agree with you. phil. and is not time measured by the succession of ideas in our minds? hyl. it is. phil. and is it not possible ideas should succeed one another twice as fast in your mind as they do in mine, or in that of some spirit of another kind? hyl. i own it. phil. consequently the same body may to another seem to perform its motion over any space in half the time that it doth to you. and the same reasoning will hold as to any other proportion: that is to say, according to your principles (since the motions perceived are both really in the object) it is possible one and the same body shall be really moved the same way at once, both very swift and very slow. how is this consistent either with common sense, or with what you just now granted? hyl. i have nothing to say to it. phil. then as for solidity; either you do not mean any sensible quality by that word, and so it is beside our inquiry: or if you do, it must be either hardness or resistance. but both the one and the other are plainly relative to our senses: it being evident that what seems hard to one animal may appear soft to another, who hath greater force and firmness of limbs. nor is it less plain that the resistance i feel is not in the body. hyl. i own the very sensation of resistance, which is all you immediately perceive, is not in the body; but the cause of that sensation is. phil. but the causes of our sensations are not things immediately perceived, and therefore are not sensible. this point i thought had been already determined. hyl. i own it was; but you will pardon me if i seem a little embarrassed: i know not how to quit my old notions. phil. to help you out, do but consider that if extension be once acknowledged to have no existence without the mind, the same must necessarily be granted of motion, solidity, and gravity; since they all evidently suppose extension. it is therefore superfluous to inquire particularly concerning each of them. in denying extension, you have denied them all to have any real existence. hyl. i wonder, philonous, if what you say be true, why those philosophers who deny the secondary qualities any real existence should yet attribute it to the primary. if there is no difference between them, how can this be accounted for? phil. it is not my business to account for every opinion of the philosophers. but, among other reasons which may be assigned for this, it seems probable that pleasure and pain being rather annexed to the former than the latter may be one. heat and cold, tastes and smells, have something more vividly pleasing or disagreeable than the ideas of extension, figure, and motion affect us with. and, it being too visibly absurd to hold that pain or pleasure can be in an unperceiving substance, men are more easily weaned from believing the external existence of the secondary than the primary qualities. you will be satisfied there is something in this, if you recollect the difference you made between an intense and more moderate degree of heat; allowing the one a real existence, while you denied it to the other. but, after all, there is no rational ground for that distinction; for, surely an indifferent sensation is as truly a sensation as one more pleasing or painful; and consequently should not any more than they be supposed to exist in an unthinking subject. hyl. it is just come into my head, philonous, that i have somewhere heard of a distinction between absolute and sensible extension. now, though it be acknowledged that great and small, consisting merely in the relation which other extended beings have to the parts of our own bodies, do not really inhere in the substances themselves; yet nothing obliges us to hold the same with regard to absolute extension, which is something abstracted from great and small, from this or that particular magnitude or figure. so likewise as to motion; swift and slow are altogether relative to the succession of ideas in our own minds. but, it doth not follow, because those modifications of motion exist not without the mind, that therefore absolute motion abstracted from them doth not. phil. pray what is it that distinguishes one motion, or one part of extension, from another? is it not something sensible, as some degree of swiftness or slowness, some certain magnitude or figure peculiar to each? hyl. i think so. phil. these qualities, therefore, stripped of all sensible properties, are without all specific and numerical differences, as the schools call them. hyl. they are. phil. that is to say, they are extension in general, and motion in general. hyl. let it be so. phil. but it is a universally received maxim that everything which exists is particular. how then can motion in general, or extension in general, exist in any corporeal substance? hyl. i will take time to solve your difficulty. phil. but i think the point may be speedily decided. without doubt you can tell whether you are able to frame this or that idea. now i am content to put our dispute on this issue. if you can frame in your thoughts a distinct abstract idea of motion or extension, divested of all those sensible modes, as swift and slow, great and small, round and square, and the like, which are acknowledged to exist only in the mind, i will then yield the point you contend for. but if you cannot, it will be unreasonable on your side to insist any longer upon what you have no notion of. hyl. to confess ingenuously, i cannot. phil. can you even separate the ideas of extension and motion from the ideas of all those qualities which they who make the distinction term secondary? hyl. what! is it not an easy matter to consider extension and motion by themselves, abstracted from all other sensible qualities? pray how do the mathematicians treat of them? phil. i acknowledge, hylas, it is not difficult to form general propositions and reasonings about those qualities, without mentioning any other; and, in this sense, to consider or treat of them abstractedly. but, how doth it follow that, because i can pronounce the word motion by itself, i can form the idea of it in my mind exclusive of body? or, because theorems may be made of extension and figures, without any mention of great or small, or any other sensible mode or quality, that therefore it is possible such an abstract idea of extension, without any particular size or figure, or sensible quality, should be distinctly formed, and apprehended by the mind? mathematicians treat of quantity, without regarding what other sensible qualities it is attended with, as being altogether indifferent to their demonstrations. but, when laying aside the words, they contemplate the bare ideas, i believe you will find, they are not the pure abstracted ideas of extension. hyl. but what say you to pure intellect? may not abstracted ideas be framed by that faculty? phil. since i cannot frame abstract ideas at all, it is plain i cannot frame them by the help of pure intellect; whatsoever faculty you understand by those words. besides, not to inquire into the nature of pure intellect and its spiritual objects, as virtue, reason, god, or the like, thus much seems manifest--that sensible things are only to be perceived by sense, or represented by the imagination. figures, therefore, and extension, being originally perceived by sense, do not belong to pure intellect: but, for your farther satisfaction, try if you can frame the idea of any figure, abstracted from all particularities of size, or even from other sensible qualities. hyl. let me think a little--i do not find that i can. phil. and can you think it possible that should really exist in nature which implies a repugnancy in its conception? hyl. by no means. phil. since therefore it is impossible even for the mind to disunite the ideas of extension and motion from all other sensible qualities, doth it not follow, that where the one exist there necessarily the other exist likewise? hyl. it should seem so. phil. consequently, the very same arguments which you admitted as conclusive against the secondary qualities are, without any farther application of force, against the primary too. besides, if you will trust your senses, is it not plain all sensible qualities coexist, or to them appear as being in the same place? do they ever represent a motion, or figure, as being divested of all other visible and tangible qualities? hyl. you need say no more on this head. i am free to own, if there be no secret error or oversight in our proceedings hitherto, that all sensible qualities are alike to be denied existence without the mind. but, my fear is that i have been too liberal in my former concessions, or overlooked some fallacy or other. in short, i did not take time to think. phil. for that matter, hylas, you may take what time you please in reviewing the progress of our inquiry. you are at liberty to recover any slips you might have made, or offer whatever you have omitted which makes for your first opinion. hyl. one great oversight i take to be this--that i did not sufficiently distinguish the object from the sensation. now, though this latter may not exist without the mind, yet it will not thence follow that the former cannot. phil. what object do you mean? the object of the senses? hyl. the same. phil. it is then immediately perceived? hyl. right. phil. make me to understand the difference between what is immediately perceived and a sensation. hyl. the sensation i take to be an act of the mind perceiving; besides which, there is something perceived; and this i call the object. for example, there is red and yellow on that tulip. but then the act of perceiving those colours is in me only, and not in the tulip. phil. what tulip do you speak of? is it that which you see? hyl. the same. phil. and what do you see beside colour, figure, and extension? hyl. nothing. phil. what you would say then is that the red and yellow are coexistent with the extension; is it not? hyl. that is not all; i would say they have a real existence without the mind, in some unthinking substance. phil. that the colours are really in the tulip which i see is manifest. neither can it be denied that this tulip may exist independent of your mind or mine; but, that any immediate object of the senses,--that is, any idea, or combination of ideas--should exist in an unthinking substance, or exterior to all minds, is in itself an evident contradiction. nor can i imagine how this follows from what you said just now, to wit, that the red and yellow were on the tulip you saw, since you do not pretend to see that unthinking substance. hyl. you have an artful way, philonous, of diverting our inquiry from the subject. phil. i see you have no mind to be pressed that way. to return then to your distinction between sensation and object; if i take you right, you distinguish in every perception two things, the one an action of the mind, the other not. hyl. true. phil. and this action cannot exist in, or belong to, any unthinking thing; but, whatever beside is implied in a perception may? hyl. that is my meaning. phil. so that if there was a perception without any act of the mind, it were possible such a perception should exist in an unthinking substance? hyl. i grant it. but it is impossible there should be such a perception. phil. when is the mind said to be active? hyl. when it produces, puts an end to, or changes, anything. phil. can the mind produce, discontinue, or change anything, but by an act of the will? hyl. it cannot. phil. the mind therefore is to be accounted active in its perceptions so far forth as volition is included in them? hyl. it is. phil. in plucking this flower i am active; because i do it by the motion of my hand, which was consequent upon my volition; so likewise in applying it to my nose. but is either of these smelling? hyl. no. phil. i act too in drawing the air through my nose; because my breathing so rather than otherwise is the effect of my volition. but neither can this be called smelling: for, if it were, i should smell every time i breathed in that manner? hyl. true. phil. smelling then is somewhat consequent to all this? hyl. it is. phil. but i do not find my will concerned any farther. whatever more there is--as that i perceive such a particular smell, or any smell at all--this is independent of my will, and therein i am altogether passive. do you find it otherwise with you, hylas? hyl. no, the very same. phil. then, as to seeing, is it not in your power to open your eyes, or keep them shut; to turn them this or that way? hyl. without doubt. phil. but, doth it in like manner depend on your will that in looking on this flower you perceive white rather than any other colour? or, directing your open eyes towards yonder part of the heaven, can you avoid seeing the sun? or is light or darkness the effect of your volition? hyl. no, certainly. phil. you are then in these respects altogether passive? hyl. i am. phil. tell me now, whether seeing consists in perceiving light and colours, or in opening and turning the eyes? hyl. without doubt, in the former. phil. since therefore you are in the very perception of light and colours altogether passive, what is become of that action you were speaking of as an ingredient in every sensation? and, doth it not follow from your own concessions, that the perception of light and colours, including no action in it, may exist in an unperceiving substance? and is not this a plain contradiction? hyl. i know not what to think of it. phil. besides, since you distinguish the active and passive in every perception, you must do it in that of pain. but how is it possible that pain, be it as little active as you please, should exist in an unperceiving substance? in short, do but consider the point, and then confess ingenuously, whether light and colours, tastes, sounds, &c. are not all equally passions or sensations in the soul. you may indeed call them external objects, and give them in words what subsistence you please. but, examine your own thoughts, and then tell me whether it be not as i say? hyl. i acknowledge, philonous, that, upon a fair observation of what passes in my mind, i can discover nothing else but that i am a thinking being, affected with variety of sensations; neither is it possible to conceive how a sensation should exist in an unperceiving substance. but then, on the other hand, when i look on sensible things in a different view, considering them as so many modes and qualities, i find it necessary to suppose a material substratum, without which they cannot be conceived to exist. phil. material substratum call you it? pray, by which of your senses came you acquainted with that being? hyl. it is not itself sensible; its modes and qualities only being perceived by the senses. phil. i presume then it was by reflexion and reason you obtained the idea of it? hyl. i do not pretend to any proper positive idea of it. however, i conclude it exists, because qualities cannot be conceived to exist without a support. phil. it seems then you have only a relative notion of it, or that you conceive it not otherwise than by conceiving the relation it bears to sensible qualities? hyl. right. phil. be pleased therefore to let me know wherein that relation consists. hyl. is it not sufficiently expressed in the term substratum, or substance? phil. if so, the word substratum should import that it is spread under the sensible qualities or accidents? hyl. true. phil. and consequently under extension? hyl. i own it. phil. it is therefore somewhat in its own nature entirely distinct from extension? hyl. i tell you, extension is only a mode, and matter is something that supports modes. and is it not evident the thing supported is different from the thing supporting? phil. so that something distinct from, and exclusive of, extension is supposed to be the substratum of extension? hyl. just so. phil. answer me, hylas. can a thing be spread without extension? or is not the idea of extension necessarily included in spreading? hyl. it is. phil. whatsoever therefore you suppose spread under anything must have in itself an extension distinct from the extension of that thing under which it is spread? hyl. it must. phil. consequently, every corporeal substance, being the substratum of extension, must have in itself another extension, by which it is qualified to be a substratum: and so on to infinity. and i ask whether this be not absurd in itself, and repugnant to what you granted just now, to wit, that the substratum was something distinct from and exclusive of extension? hyl. aye but, philonous, you take me wrong. i do not mean that matter is spread in a gross literal sense under extension. the word substratum is used only to express in general the same thing with substance. phil. well then, let us examine the relation implied in the term substance. is it not that it stands under accidents? hyl. the very same. phil. but, that one thing may stand under or support another, must it not be extended? hyl. it must. phil. is not therefore this supposition liable to the same absurdity with the former? hyl. you still take things in a strict literal sense. that is not fair, philonous. phil. i am not for imposing any sense on your words: you are at liberty to explain them as you please. only, i beseech you, make me understand something by them. you tell me matter supports or stands under accidents. how! is it as your legs support your body? hyl. no; that is the literal sense. phil. pray let me know any sense, literal or not literal, that you understand it in.--how long must i wait for an answer, hylas? hyl. i declare i know not what to say. i once thought i understood well enough what was meant by matter's supporting accidents. but now, the more i think on it the less can i comprehend it: in short i find that i know nothing of it. phil. it seems then you have no idea at all, neither relative nor positive, of matter; you know neither what it is in itself, nor what relation it bears to accidents? hyl. i acknowledge it. phil. and yet you asserted that you could not conceive how qualities or accidents should really exist, without conceiving at the same time a material support of them? hyl. i did. phil. that is to say, when you conceive the real existence of qualities, you do withal conceive something which you cannot conceive? hyl. it was wrong, i own. but still i fear there is some fallacy or other. pray what think you of this? it is just come into my head that the ground of all our mistake lies in your treating of each quality by itself. now, i grant that each quality cannot singly subsist without the mind. colour cannot without extension, neither can figure without some other sensible quality. but, as the several qualities united or blended together form entire sensible things, nothing hinders why such things may not be supposed to exist without the mind. phil. either, hylas, you are jesting, or have a very bad memory. though indeed we went through all the qualities by name one after another, yet my arguments or rather your concessions, nowhere tended to prove that the secondary qualities did not subsist each alone by itself; but, that they were not at all without the mind. indeed, in treating of figure and motion we concluded they could not exist without the mind, because it was impossible even in thought to separate them from all secondary qualities, so as to conceive them existing by themselves. but then this was not the only argument made use of upon that occasion. but (to pass by all that hath been hitherto said, and reckon it for nothing, if you will have it so) i am content to put the whole upon this issue. if you can conceive it possible for any mixture or combination of qualities, or any sensible object whatever, to exist without the mind, then i will grant it actually to be so. hyl. if it comes to that the point will soon be decided. what more easy than to conceive a tree or house existing by itself, independent of, and unperceived by, any mind whatsoever? i do at this present time conceive them existing after that manner. phil. how say you, hylas, can you see a thing which is at the same time unseen? hyl. no, that were a contradiction. phil. is it not as great a contradiction to talk of conceiving a thing which is unconceived? hyl. it is. phil. the tree or house therefore which you think of is conceived by you? hyl. how should it be otherwise? phil. and what is conceived is surely in the mind? hyl. without question, that which is conceived is in the mind. phil. how then came you to say, you conceived a house or tree existing independent and out of all minds whatsoever? hyl. that was i own an oversight; but stay, let me consider what led me into it.--it is a pleasant mistake enough. as i was thinking of a tree in a solitary place, where no one was present to see it, methought that was to conceive a tree as existing unperceived or unthought of; not considering that i myself conceived it all the while. but now i plainly see that all i can do is to frame ideas in my own mind. i may indeed conceive in my own thoughts the idea of a tree, or a house, or a mountain, but that is all. and this is far from proving that i can conceive them existing out of the minds of all spirits. phil. you acknowledge then that you cannot possibly conceive how any one corporeal sensible thing should exist otherwise than in the mind? hyl. i do. phil. and yet you will earnestly contend for the truth of that which you cannot so much as conceive? hyl. i profess i know not what to think; but still there are some scruples remain with me. is it not certain i see things at a distance? do we not perceive the stars and moon, for example, to be a great way off? is not this, i say, manifest to the senses? phil. do you not in a dream too perceive those or the like objects? hyl. i do. phil. and have they not then the same appearance of being distant? hyl. they have. phil. but you do not thence conclude the apparitions in a dream to be without the mind? hyl. by no means. phil. you ought not therefore to conclude that sensible objects are without the mind, from their appearance, or manner wherein they are perceived. hyl. i acknowledge it. but doth not my sense deceive me in those cases? phil. by no means. the idea or thing which you immediately perceive, neither sense nor reason informs you that it actually exists without the mind. by sense you only know that you are affected with such certain sensations of light and colours, &c. and these you will not say are without the mind. hyl. true: but, beside all that, do you not think the sight suggests something of outness or distance? phil. upon approaching a distant object, do the visible size and figure change perpetually, or do they appear the same at all distances? hyl. they are in a continual change. phil. sight therefore doth not suggest, or any way inform you, that the visible object you immediately perceive exists at a distance, or will be perceived when you advance farther onward; there being a continued series of visible objects succeeding each other during the whole time of your approach. hyl. it doth not; but still i know, upon seeing an object, what object i shall perceive after having passed over a certain distance: no matter whether it be exactly the same or no: there is still something of distance suggested in the case. phil. good hylas, do but reflect a little on the point, and then tell me whether there be any more in it than this: from the ideas you actually perceive by sight, you have by experience learned to collect what other ideas you will (according to the standing order of nature) be affected with, after such a certain succession of time and motion. hyl. upon the whole, i take it to be nothing else. phil. now, is it not plain that if we suppose a man born blind was on a sudden made to see, he could at first have no experience of what may be suggested by sight? hyl. it is. phil. he would not then, according to you, have any notion of distance annexed to the things he saw; but would take them for a new set of sensations, existing only in his mind? hyl. it is undeniable. phil. but, to make it still more plain: is not distance a line turned endwise to the eye? hyl. it is. phil. and can a line so situated be perceived by sight? hyl. it cannot. phil. doth it not therefore follow that distance is not properly and immediately perceived by sight? hyl. it should seem so. phil. again, is it your opinion that colours are at a distance? hyl. it must be acknowledged they are only in the mind. phil. but do not colours appear to the eye as coexisting in the same place with extension and figures? hyl. they do. phil. how can you then conclude from sight that figures exist without, when you acknowledge colours do not; the sensible appearance being the very same with regard to both? hyl. i know not what to answer. phil. but, allowing that distance was truly and immediately perceived by the mind, yet it would not thence follow it existed out of the mind. for, whatever is immediately perceived is an idea: and can any idea exist out of the mind? hyl. to suppose that were absurd: but, inform me, philonous, can we perceive or know nothing beside our ideas? phil. as for the rational deducing of causes from effects, that is beside our inquiry. and, by the senses you can best tell whether you perceive anything which is not immediately perceived. and i ask you, whether the things immediately perceived are other than your own sensations or ideas? you have indeed more than once, in the course of this conversation, declared yourself on those points; but you seem, by this last question, to have departed from what you then thought. hyl. to speak the truth, philonous, i think there are two kinds of objects:--the one perceived immediately, which are likewise called ideas; the other are real things or external objects, perceived by the mediation of ideas, which are their images and representations. now, i own ideas do not exist without the mind; but the latter sort of objects do. i am sorry i did not think of this distinction sooner; it would probably have cut short your discourse. phil. are those external objects perceived by sense or by some other faculty? hyl. they are perceived by sense. phil. howl is there any thing perceived by sense which is not immediately perceived? hyl. yes, philonous, in some sort there is. for example, when i look on a picture or statue of julius caesar, i may be said after a manner to perceive him (though not immediately) by my senses. phil. it seems then you will have our ideas, which alone are immediately perceived, to be pictures of external things: and that these also are perceived by sense, inasmuch as they have a conformity or resemblance to our ideas? hyl. that is my meaning. phil. and, in the same way that julius caesar, in himself invisible, is nevertheless perceived by sight; real things, in themselves imperceptible, are perceived by sense. hyl. in the very same. phil. tell me, hylas, when you behold the picture of julius caesar, do you see with your eyes any more than some colours and figures, with a certain symmetry and composition of the whole? hyl. nothing else. phil. and would not a man who had never known anything of julius caesar see as much? hyl. he would. phil. consequently he hath his sight, and the use of it, in as perfect a degree as you? hyl. i agree with you. phil. whence comes it then that your thoughts are directed to the roman emperor, and his are not? this cannot proceed from the sensations or ideas of sense by you then perceived; since you acknowledge you have no advantage over him in that respect. it should seem therefore to proceed from reason and memory: should it not? hyl. it should. phil. consequently, it will not follow from that instance that anything is perceived by sense which is not, immediately perceived. though i grant we may, in one acceptation, be said to perceive sensible things mediately by sense: that is, when, from a frequently perceived connexion, the immediate perception of ideas by one sense suggests to the mind others, perhaps belonging to another sense, which are wont to be connected with them. for instance, when i hear a coach drive along the streets, immediately i perceive only the sound; but, from the experience i have had that such a sound is connected with a coach, i am said to hear the coach. it is nevertheless evident that, in truth and strictness, nothing can be heard but sound; and the coach is not then properly perceived by sense, but suggested from experience. so likewise when we are said to see a red-hot bar of iron; the solidity and heat of the iron are not the objects of sight, but suggested to the imagination by the colour and figure which are properly perceived by that sense. in short, those things alone are actually and strictly perceived by any sense, which would have been perceived in case that same sense had then been first conferred on us. as for other things, it is plain they are only suggested to the mind by experience, grounded on former perceptions. but, to return to your comparison of caesar's picture, it is plain, if you keep to that, you must hold the real things, or archetypes of our ideas, are not perceived by sense, but by some internal faculty of the soul, as reason or memory. i would therefore fain know what arguments you can draw from reason for the existence of what you call real things or material objects. or, whether you remember to have seen them formerly as they are in themselves; or, if you have heard or read of any one that did. hyl. i see, philonous, you are disposed to raillery; but that will never convince me. phil. my aim is only to learn from you the way to come at the knowledge of material beings. whatever we perceive is perceived immediately or mediately: by sense, or by reason and reflexion. but, as you have excluded sense, pray shew me what reason you have to believe their existence; or what medium you can possibly make use of to prove it, either to mine or your own understanding. hyl. to deal ingenuously, philonous, now i consider the point, i do not find i can give you any good reason for it. but, thus much seems pretty plain, that it is at least possible such things may really exist. and, as long as there is no absurdity in supposing them, i am resolved to believe as i did, till you bring good reasons to the contrary. phil. what! is it come to this, that you only believe the existence of material objects, and that your belief is founded barely on the possibility of its being true? then you will have me bring reasons against it: though another would think it reasonable the proof should lie on him who holds the affirmative. and, after all, this very point which you are now resolved to maintain, without any reason, is in effect what you have more than once during this discourse seen good reason to give up. but, to pass over all this; if i understand you rightly, you say our ideas do not exist without the mind, but that they are copies, images, or representations, of certain originals that do? hyl. you take me right. phil. they are then like external things? hyl. they are. phil. have those things a stable and permanent nature, independent of our senses; or are they in a perpetual change, upon our producing any motions in our bodies--suspending, exerting, or altering, our faculties or organs of sense? hyl. real things, it is plain, have a fixed and real nature, which remains the same notwithstanding any change in our senses, or in the posture and motion of our bodies; which indeed may affect the ideas in our minds, but it were absurd to think they had the same effect on things existing without the mind. phil. how then is it possible that things perpetually fleeting and variable as our ideas should be copies or images of anything fixed and constant? or, in other words, since all sensible qualities, as size, figure, colour, &c., that is, our ideas, are continually changing, upon every alteration in the distance, medium, or instruments of sensation; how can any determinate material objects be properly represented or painted forth by several distinct things, each of which is so different from and unlike the rest? or, if you say it resembles some one only of our ideas, how shall we be able to distinguish the true copy from all the false ones? hyl. i profess, philonous, i am at a loss. i know not what to say to this. phil. but neither is this all. which are material objects in themselves--perceptible or imperceptible? hyl. properly and immediately nothing can be perceived but ideas. all material things, therefore, are in themselves insensible, and to be perceived only by our ideas. phil. ideas then are sensible, and their archetypes or originals insensible? hyl. right. phil. but how can that which is sensible be like that which is insensible? can a real thing, in itself invisible, be like a colour; or a real thing, which is not audible, be like a sound? in a word, can anything be like a sensation or idea, but another sensation or idea? hyl. i must own, i think not. phil. is it possible there should be any doubt on the point? do you not perfectly know your own ideas? hyl. i know them perfectly; since what i do not perceive or know can be no part of my idea. phil. consider, therefore, and examine them, and then tell me if there be anything in them which can exist without the mind: or if you can conceive anything like them existing without the mind. hyl. upon inquiry, i find it is impossible for me to conceive or understand how anything but an idea can be like an idea. and it is most evident that no idea can exist without the mind. phil. you are therefore, by your principles, forced to deny the reality of sensible things; since you made it to consist in an absolute existence exterior to the mind. that is to say, you are a downright sceptic. so i have gained my point, which was to shew your principles led to scepticism. hyl. for the present i am, if not entirely convinced, at least silenced. phil. i would fain know what more you would require in order to a perfect conviction. have you not had the liberty of explaining yourself all manner of ways? were any little slips in discourse laid hold and insisted on? or were you not allowed to retract or reinforce anything you had offered, as best served your purpose? hath not everything you could say been heard and examined with all the fairness imaginable? in a word have you not in every point been convinced out of your own mouth? and, if you can at present discover any flaw in any of your former concessions, or think of any remaining subterfuge, any new distinction, colour, or comment whatsoever, why do you not produce it? hyl. a little patience, philonous. i am at present so amazed to see myself ensnared, and as it were imprisoned in the labyrinths you have drawn me into, that on the sudden it cannot be expected i should find my way out. you must give me time to look about me and recollect myself. phil. hark; is not this the college bell? hyl. it rings for prayers. phil. we will go in then, if you please, and meet here again tomorrow morning. in the meantime, you may employ your thoughts on this morning's discourse, and try if you can find any fallacy in it, or invent any new means to extricate yourself. hyl. agreed. the second dialogue hyl. i beg your pardon, philonous, for not meeting you sooner. all this morning my head was so filled with our late conversation that i had not leisure to think of the time of the day, or indeed of anything else. philonous. i am glad you were so intent upon it, in hopes if there were any mistakes in your concessions, or fallacies in my reasonings from them, you will now discover them to me. hyl. i assure you i have done nothing ever since i saw you but search after mistakes and fallacies, and, with that view, have minutely examined the whole series of yesterday's discourse: but all in vain, for the notions it led me into, upon review, appear still more clear and evident; and, the more i consider them, the more irresistibly do they force my assent. phil. and is not this, think you, a sign that they are genuine, that they proceed from nature, and are conformable to right reason? truth and beauty are in this alike, that the strictest survey sets them both off to advantage; while the false lustre of error and disguise cannot endure being reviewed, or too nearly inspected. hyl. i own there is a great deal in what you say. nor can any one be more entirely satisfied of the truth of those odd consequences, so long as i have in view the reasonings that lead to them. but, when these are out of my thoughts, there seems, on the other hand, something so satisfactory, so natural and intelligible, in the modern way of explaining things that, i profess, i know not how to reject it. phil. i know not what way you mean. hyl. i mean the way of accounting for our sensations or ideas. phil. how is that? hyl. it is supposed the soul makes her residence in some part of the brain, from which the nerves take their rise, and are thence extended to all parts of the body; and that outward objects, by the different impressions they make on the organs of sense, communicate certain vibrative motions to the nerves; and these being filled with spirits propagate them to the brain or seat of the soul, which, according to the various impressions or traces thereby made in the brain, is variously affected with ideas. phil. and call you this an explication of the manner whereby we are affected with ideas? hyl. why not, philonous? have you anything to object against it? phil. i would first know whether i rightly understand your hypothesis. you make certain traces in the brain to be the causes or occasions of our ideas. pray tell me whether by the brain you mean any sensible thing. hyl. what else think you i could mean? phil. sensible things are all immediately perceivable; and those things which are immediately perceivable are ideas; and these exist only in the mind. thus much you have, if i mistake not, long since agreed to. hyl. i do not deny it. phil. the brain therefore you speak of, being a sensible thing, exists only in the mind. now, i would fain know whether you think it reasonable to suppose that one idea or thing existing in the mind occasions all other ideas. and, if you think so, pray how do you account for the origin of that primary idea or brain itself? hyl. i do not explain the origin of our ideas by that brain which is perceivable to sense--this being itself only a combination of sensible ideas--but by another which i imagine. phil. but are not things imagined as truly in the mind as things perceived? hyl. i must confess they are. phil. it comes, therefore, to the same thing; and you have been all this while accounting for ideas by certain motions or impressions of the brain; that is, by some alterations in an idea, whether sensible or imaginable it matters not. hyl. i begin to suspect my hypothesis. phil. besides spirits, all that we know or conceive are our own ideas. when, therefore, you say all ideas are occasioned by impressions in the brain, do you conceive this brain or no? if you do, then you talk of ideas imprinted in an idea causing that same idea, which is absurd. if you do not conceive it, you talk unintelligibly, instead of forming a reasonable hypothesis. hyl. i now clearly see it was a mere dream. there is nothing in it. phil. you need not be much concerned at it; for after all, this way of explaining things, as you called it, could never have satisfied any reasonable man. what connexion is there between a motion in the nerves, and the sensations of sound or colour in the mind? or how is it possible these should be the effect of that? hyl. but i could never think it had so little in it as now it seems to have. phil. well then, are you at length satisfied that no sensible things have a real existence; and that you are in truth an arrant sceptic? hyl. it is too plain to be denied. phil. look! are not the fields covered with a delightful verdure? is there not something in the woods and groves, in the rivers and clear springs, that soothes, that delights, that transports the soul? at the prospect of the wide and deep ocean, or some huge mountain whose top is lost in the clouds, or of an old gloomy forest, are not our minds filled with a pleasing horror? even in rocks and deserts is there not an agreeable wildness? how sincere a pleasure is it to behold the natural beauties of the earth! to preserve and renew our relish for them, is not the veil of night alternately drawn over her face, and doth she not change her dress with the seasons? how aptly are the elements disposed! what variety and use in the meanest productions of nature! what delicacy, what beauty, what contrivance, in animal and vegetable bodies i how exquisitely are all things suited, as well to their particular ends, as to constitute opposite parts of the whole i and, while they mutually aid and support, do they not also set off and illustrate each other? raise now your thoughts from this ball of earth to all those glorious luminaries that adorn the high arch of heaven. the motion and situation of the planets, are they not admirable for use and order? were those (miscalled erratic) globes once known to stray, in their repeated journeys through the pathless void? do they not measure areas round the sun ever proportioned to the times? so fixed, so immutable are the laws by which the unseen author of nature actuates the universe. how vivid and radiant is the lustre of the fixed stars! how magnificent and rich that negligent profusion with which they appear to be scattered throughout the whole azure vault! yet, if you take the telescope, it brings into your sight a new host of stars that escape the naked eye. here they seem contiguous and minute, but to a nearer view immense orbs of fight at various distances, far sunk in the abyss of space. now you must call imagination to your aid. the feeble narrow sense cannot descry innumerable worlds revolving round the central fires; and in those worlds the energy of an all-perfect mind displayed in endless forms. but, neither sense nor imagination are big enough to comprehend the boundless extent, with all its glittering furniture. though the labouring mind exert and strain each power to its utmost reach, there still stands out ungrasped a surplusage immeasurable. yet all the vast bodies that compose this mighty frame, how distant and remote soever, are by some secret mechanism, some divine art and force, linked in a mutual dependence and intercourse with each other; even with this earth, which was almost slipt from my thoughts and lost in the crowd of worlds. is not the whole system immense, beautiful, glorious beyond expression and beyond thought! what treatment, then, do those philosophers deserve, who would deprive these noble and delightful scenes of all reality? how should those principles be entertained that lead us to think all the visible beauty of the creation a false imaginary glare? to be plain, can you expect this scepticism of yours will not be thought extravagantly absurd by all men of sense? hyl. other men may think as they please; but for your part you have nothing to reproach me with. my comfort is, you are as much a sceptic as i am. phil. there, hylas, i must beg leave to differ from you. hyl. what! have you all along agreed to the premises, and do you now deny the conclusion, and leave me to maintain those paradoxes by myself which you led me into? this surely is not fair. phil. _i_ deny that i agreed with you in those notions that led to scepticism. you indeed said the reality of sensible things consisted in an absolute existence out of the minds of spirits, or distinct from their being perceived. and pursuant to this notion of reality, you are obliged to deny sensible things any real existence: that is, according to your own definition, you profess yourself a sceptic. but i neither said nor thought the reality of sensible things was to be defined after that manner. to me it is evident for the reasons you allow of, that sensible things cannot exist otherwise than in a mind or spirit. whence i conclude, not that they have no real existence, but that, seeing they depend not on my thought, and have all existence distinct from being perceived by me, there must be some other mind wherein they exist. as sure, therefore, as the sensible world really exists, so sure is there an infinite omnipresent spirit who contains and supports it. hyl. what! this is no more than i and all christians hold; nay, and all others too who believe there is a god, and that he knows and comprehends all things. phil. aye, but here lies the difference. men commonly believe that all things are known or perceived by god, because they believe the being of a god; whereas i, on the other side, immediately and necessarily conclude the being of a god, because all sensible things must be perceived by him. hyl. but, so long as we all believe the same thing, what matter is it how we come by that belief? phil. but neither do we agree in the same opinion. for philosophers, though they acknowledge all corporeal beings to be perceived by god, yet they attribute to them an absolute subsistence distinct from their being perceived by any mind whatever; which i do not. besides, is there no difference between saying, there is a god, therefore he perceives all things; and saying, sensible things do really exist; and, if they really exist, they are necessarily perceived by an infinite mind: therefore there is an infinite mind or god? this furnishes you with a direct and immediate demonstration, from a most evident principle, of the being of a god. divines and philosophers had proved beyond all controversy, from the beauty and usefulness of the several parts of the creation, that it was the workmanship of god. but that--setting aside all help of astronomy and natural philosophy, all contemplation of the contrivance, order, and adjustment of things--an infinite mind should be necessarily inferred from the bare existence of the sensible world, is an advantage to them only who have made this easy reflexion: that the sensible world is that which we perceive by our several senses; and that nothing is perceived by the senses beside ideas; and that no idea or archetype of an idea can exist otherwise than in a mind. you may now, without any laborious search into the sciences, without any subtlety of reason, or tedious length of discourse, oppose and baffle the most strenuous advocate for atheism. those miserable refuges, whether in an eternal succession of unthinking causes and effects, or in a fortuitous concourse of atoms; those wild imaginations of vanini, hobbes, and spinoza: in a word, the whole system of atheism, is it not entirely overthrown, by this single reflexion on the repugnancy included in supposing the whole, or any part, even the most rude and shapeless, of the visible world, to exist without a mind? let any one of those abettors of impiety but look into his own thoughts, and there try if he can conceive how so much as a rock, a desert, a chaos, or confused jumble of atoms; how anything at all, either sensible or imaginable, can exist independent of a mind, and he need go no farther to be convinced of his folly. can anything be fairer than to put a dispute on such an issue, and leave it to a man himself to see if he can conceive, even in thought, what he holds to be true in fact, and from a notional to allow it a real existence? hyl. it cannot be denied there is something highly serviceable to religion in what you advance. but do you not think it looks very like a notion entertained by some eminent moderns, of seeing all things in god? phil. i would gladly know that opinion: pray explain it to me. hyl. they conceive that the soul, being immaterial, is incapable of being united with material things, so as to perceive them in themselves; but that she perceives them by her union with the substance of god, which, being spiritual, is therefore purely intelligible, or capable of being the immediate object of a spirit's thought. besides the divine essence contains in it perfections correspondent to each created being; and which are, for that reason, proper to exhibit or represent them to the mind. phil. i do not understand how our ideas, which are things altogether passive and inert, can be the essence, or any part (or like any part) of the essence or substance of god, who is an impassive, indivisible, pure, active being. many more difficulties and objections there are which occur at first view against this hypothesis; but i shall only add that it is liable to all the absurdities of the common hypothesis, in making a created world exist otherwise than in the mind of a spirit. besides all which it hath this peculiar to itself; that it makes that material world serve to no purpose. and, if it pass for a good argument against other hypotheses in the sciences, that they suppose nature, or the divine wisdom, to make something in vain, or do that by tedious roundabout methods which might have been performed in a much more easy and compendious way, what shall we think of that hypothesis which supposes the whole world made in vain? hyl. but what say you? are not you too of opinion that we see all things in god? if i mistake not, what you advance comes near it. phil. few men think; yet all have opinions. hence men's opinions are superficial and confused. it is nothing strange that tenets which in themselves are ever so different, should nevertheless be confounded with each other, by those who do not consider them attentively. i shall not therefore be surprised if some men imagine that i run into the enthusiasm of malebranche; though in truth i am very remote from it. he builds on the most abstract general ideas, which i entirely disclaim. he asserts an absolute external world, which i deny. he maintains that we are deceived by our senses, and, know not the real natures or the true forms and figures of extended beings; of all which i hold the direct contrary. so that upon the whole there are no principles more fundamentally opposite than his and mine. it must be owned that i entirely agree with what the holy scripture saith, "that in god we live and move and have our being." but that we see things in his essence, after the manner above set forth, i am far from believing. take here in brief my meaning:--it is evident that the things i perceive are my own ideas, and that no idea can exist unless it be in a mind: nor is it less plain that these ideas or things by me perceived, either themselves or their archetypes, exist independently of my mind, since i know myself not to be their author, it being out of my power to determine at pleasure what particular ideas i shall be affected with upon opening my eyes or ears: they must therefore exist in some other mind, whose will it is they should be exhibited to me. the things, i say, immediately perceived are ideas or sensations, call them which you will. but how can any idea or sensation exist in, or be produced by, anything but a mind or spirit? this indeed is inconceivable. and to assert that which is inconceivable is to talk nonsense: is it not? hyl. without doubt. phil. but, on the other hand, it is very conceivable that they should exist in and be produced by a spirit; since this is no more than i daily experience in myself, inasmuch as i perceive numberless ideas; and, by an act of my will, can form a great variety of them, and raise them up in my imagination: though, it must be confessed, these creatures of the fancy are not altogether so distinct, so strong, vivid, and permanent, as those perceived by my senses--which latter are called red things. from all which i conclude, there is a mind which affects me every moment with all the sensible impressions i perceive. and, from the variety, order, and manner of these, i conclude the author of them to be wise, powerful, and good, beyond comprehension. mark it well; i do not say, i see things by perceiving that which represents them in the intelligible substance of god. this i do not understand; but i say, the things by me perceived are known by the understanding, and produced by the will of an infinite spirit. and is not all this most plain and evident? is there any more in it than what a little observation in our own minds, and that which passeth in them, not only enables us to conceive, but also obliges us to acknowledge. hyl. i think i understand you very clearly; and own the proof you give of a deity seems no less evident than it is surprising. but, allowing that god is the supreme and universal cause of an things, yet, may there not be still a third nature besides spirits and ideas? may we not admit a subordinate and limited cause of our ideas? in a word, may there not for all that be matter? phil. how often must i inculcate the same thing? you allow the things immediately perceived by sense to exist nowhere without the mind; but there is nothing perceived by sense which is not perceived immediately: therefore there is nothing sensible that exists without the mind. the matter, therefore, which you still insist on is something intelligible, i suppose; something that may be discovered by reason, and not by sense. hyl. you are in the right. phil. pray let me know what reasoning your belief of matter is grounded on; and what this matter is, in your present sense of it. hyl. i find myself affected with various ideas, whereof i know i am not the cause; neither are they the cause of themselves, or of one another, or capable of subsisting by themselves, as being altogether inactive, fleeting, dependent beings. they have therefore some cause distinct from me and them: of which i pretend to know no more than that it is the cause of my ideas. and this thing, whatever it be, i call matter. phil. tell me, hylas, hath every one a liberty to change the current proper signification attached to a common name in any language? for example, suppose a traveller should tell you that in a certain country men pass unhurt through the fire; and, upon explaining himself, you found he meant by the word fire that which others call water. or, if he should assert that there are trees that walk upon two legs, meaning men by the term trees. would you think this reasonable? hyl. no; i should think it very absurd. common custom is the standard of propriety in language. and for any man to affect speaking improperly is to pervert the use of speech, and can never serve to a better purpose than to protract and multiply disputes, where there is no difference in opinion. phil. and doth not matter, in the common current acceptation of the word, signify an extended, solid, moveable, unthinking, inactive substance? hyl. it doth. phil. and, hath it not been made evident that no such substance can possibly exist? and, though it should be allowed to exist, yet how can that which is inactive be a cause; or that which is unthinking be a cause of thought? you may, indeed, if you please, annex to the word matter a contrary meaning to what is vulgarly received; and tell me you understand by it, an unextended, thinking, active being, which is the cause of our ideas. but what else is this than to play with words, and run into that very fault you just now condemned with so much reason? i do by no means find fault with your reasoning, in that you collect a cause from the phenomena: but i deny that the cause deducible by reason can properly be termed matter. hyl. there is indeed something in what you say. but i am afraid you do not thoroughly comprehend my meaning. i would by no means be thought to deny that god, or an infinite spirit, is the supreme cause of all things. all i contend for is, that, subordinate to the supreme agent, there is a cause of a limited and inferior nature, which concurs in the production of our ideas, not by any act of will, or spiritual efficiency, but by that kind of action which belongs to matter, viz. motion. phil. i find you are at every turn relapsing into your old exploded conceit, of a moveable, and consequently an extended, substance, existing without the mind. what! have you already forgotten you were convinced; or are you willing i should repeat what has been said on that head? in truth this is not fair dealing in you, still to suppose the being of that which you have so often acknowledged to have no being. but, not to insist farther on what has been so largely handled, i ask whether all your ideas are not perfectly passive and inert, including nothing of action in them. hyl. they are. phil. and are sensible qualities anything else but ideas? hyl. how often have i acknowledged that they are not. phil. but is not motion a sensible quality? hyl. it is. phil. consequently it is no action? hyl. i agree with you. and indeed it is very plain that when i stir my finger, it remains passive; but my will which produced the motion is active. phil. now, i desire to know, in the first place, whether, motion being allowed to be no action, you can conceive any action besides volition: and, in the second place, whether to say something and conceive nothing be not to talk nonsense: and, lastly, whether, having considered the premises, you do not perceive that to suppose any efficient or active cause of our ideas, other than spirit, is highly absurd and unreasonable? hyl. i give up the point entirely. but, though matter may not be a cause, yet what hinders its being an instrument, subservient to the supreme agent in the production of our ideas? phil. an instrument say you; pray what may be the figure, springs, wheels, and motions, of that instrument? hyl. those i pretend to determine nothing of, both the substance and its qualities being entirely unknown to me. phil. what? you are then of opinion it is made up of unknown parts, that it hath unknown motions, and an unknown shape? hyl. i do not believe that it hath any figure or motion at all, being already convinced, that no sensible qualities can exist in an unperceiving substance. phil. but what notion is it possible to frame of an instrument void of all sensible qualities, even extension itself? hyl. i do not pretend to have any notion of it. phil. and what reason have you to think this unknown, this inconceivable somewhat doth exist? is it that you imagine god cannot act as well without it; or that you find by experience the use of some such thing, when you form ideas in your own mind? hyl. you are always teasing me for reasons of my belief. pray what reasons have you not to believe it? phil. it is to me a sufficient reason not to believe the existence of anything, if i see no reason for believing it. but, not to insist on reasons for believing, you will not so much as let me know what it is you would have me believe; since you say you have no manner of notion of it. after all, let me entreat you to consider whether it be like a philosopher, or even like a man of common sense, to pretend to believe you know not what and you know not why. hyl. hold, philonous. when i tell you matter is an instrument, i do not mean altogether nothing. it is true i know not the particular kind of instrument; but, however, i have some notion of instrument in general, which i apply to it. phil. but what if it should prove that there is something, even in the most general notion of instrument, as taken in a distinct sense from cause, which makes the use of it inconsistent with the divine attributes? hyl. make that appear and i shall give up the point. phil. what mean you by the general nature or notion of instrument? hyl. that which is common to all particular instruments composeth the general notion. phil. is it not common to all instruments, that they are applied to the doing those things only which cannot be performed by the mere act of our wills? thus, for instance, i never use an instrument to move my finger, because it is done by a volition. but i should use one if i were to remove part of a rock, or tear up a tree by the roots. are you of the same mind? or, can you shew any example where an instrument is made use of in producing an effect immediately depending on the will of the agent? hyl. i own i cannot. phil. how therefore can you suppose that an all-perfect spirit, on whose will all things have an absolute and immediate dependence, should need an instrument in his operations, or, not needing it, make use of it? thus it seems to me that you are obliged to own the use of a lifeless inactive instrument to be incompatible with the infinite perfection of god; that is, by your own confession, to give up the point. hyl. it doth not readily occur what i can answer you. phil. but, methinks you should be ready to own the truth, when it has been fairly proved to you. we indeed, who are beings of finite powers, are forced to make use of instruments. and the use of an instrument sheweth the agent to be limited by rules of another's prescription, and that he cannot obtain his end but in such a way, and by such conditions. whence it seems a clear consequence, that the supreme unlimited agent useth no tool or instrument at all. the will of an omnipotent spirit is no sooner exerted than executed, without the application of means; which, if they are employed by inferior agents, it is not upon account of any real efficacy that is in them, or necessary aptitude to produce any effect, but merely in compliance with the laws of nature, or those conditions prescribed to them by the first cause, who is himself above all limitation or prescription whatsoever. hyl. i will no longer maintain that matter is an instrument. however, i would not be understood to give up its existence neither; since, notwithstanding what hath been said, it may still be an occasion. phil. how many shapes is your matter to take? or, how often must it be proved not to exist, before you are content to part with it? but, to say no more of this (though by all the laws of disputation i may justly blame you for so frequently changing the signification of the principal term)--i would fain know what you mean by affirming that matter is an occasion, having already denied it to be a cause. and, when you have shewn in what sense you understand occasion, pray, in the next place, be pleased to shew me what reason induceth you to believe there is such an occasion of our ideas? hyl. as to the first point: by occasion i mean an inactive unthinking being, at the presence whereof god excites ideas in our minds. phil. and what may be the nature of that inactive unthinking being? hyl. i know nothing of its nature. phil. proceed then to the second point, and assign some reason why we should allow an existence to this inactive, unthinking, unknown thing. hyl. when we see ideas produced in our minds, after an orderly and constant manner, it is natural to think they have some fixed and regular occasions, at the presence of which they are excited. phil. you acknowledge then god alone to be the cause of our ideas, and that he causes them at the presence of those occasions. hyl. that is my opinion. phil. those things which you say are present to god, without doubt he perceives. hyl. certainly; otherwise they could not be to him an occasion of acting. phil. not to insist now on your making sense of this hypothesis, or answering all the puzzling questions and difficulties it is liable to: i only ask whether the order and regularity observable in the series of our ideas, or the course of nature, be not sufficiently accounted for by the wisdom and power of god; and whether it doth not derogate from those attributes, to suppose he is influenced, directed, or put in mind, when and what he is to act, by an unthinking substance? and, lastly, whether, in case i granted all you contend for, it would make anything to your purpose; it not being easy to conceive how the external or absolute existence of an unthinking substance, distinct from its being perceived, can be inferred from my allowing that there are certain things perceived by the mind of god, which are to him the occasion of producing ideas in us? hyl. i am perfectly at a loss what to think, this notion of occasion seeming now altogether as groundless as the rest. phil. do you not at length perceive that in all these different acceptations of matter, you have been only supposing you know not what, for no manner of reason, and to no kind of use? hyl. i freely own myself less fond of my notions since they have been so accurately examined. but still, methinks, i have some confused perception that there is such a thing as matter. phil. either you perceive the being of matter immediately or mediately. if immediately, pray inform me by which of the senses you perceive it. if mediately, let me know by what reasoning it is inferred from those things which you perceive immediately. so much for the perception. then for the matter itself, i ask whether it is object, substratum, cause, instrument, or occasion? you have already pleaded for each of these, shifting your notions, and making matter to appear sometimes in one shape, then in another. and what you have offered hath been disapproved and rejected by yourself. if you have anything new to advance i would gladly bear it. hyl. i think i have already offered all i had to say on those heads. i am at a loss what more to urge. phil. and yet you are loath to part with your old prejudice. but, to make you quit it more easily, i desire that, beside what has been hitherto suggested, you will farther consider whether, upon supposition that matter exists, you can possibly conceive how you should be affected by it. or, supposing it did not exist, whether it be not evident you might for all that be affected with the same ideas you now are, and consequently have the very same reasons to believe its existence that you now can have. hyl. i acknowledge it is possible we might perceive all things just as we do now, though there was no matter in the world; neither can i conceive, if there be matter, how it should produce' any idea in our minds. and, i do farther grant you have entirely satisfied me that it is impossible there should be such a thing as matter in any of the foregoing acceptations. but still i cannot help supposing that there is matter in some sense or other. what that is i do not indeed pretend to determine. phil. i do not expect you should define exactly the nature of that unknown being. only be pleased to tell me whether it is a substance; and if so, whether you can suppose a substance without accidents; or, in case you suppose it to have accidents or qualities, i desire you will let me know what those qualities are, at least what is meant by matter's supporting them? hyl. we have already argued on those points. i have no more to say to them. but, to prevent any farther questions, let me tell you i at present understand by matter neither substance nor accident, thinking nor extended being, neither cause, instrument, nor occasion, but something entirely unknown, distinct from all these. phil. it seems then you include in your present notion of matter nothing but the general abstract idea of entity. hyl. nothing else; save only that i super-add to this general idea the negation of all those particular things, qualities, or ideas, that i perceive, imagine, or in anywise apprehend. phil. pray where do you suppose this unknown matter to exist? hyl. oh philonous! now you think you have entangled me; for, if i say it exists in place, then you will infer that it exists in the mind, since it is agreed that place or extension exists only in the mind. but i am not ashamed to own my ignorance. i know not where it exists; only i am sure it exists not in place. there is a negative answer for you. and you must expect no other to all the questions you put for the future about matter. phil. since you will not tell me where it exists, be pleased to inform me after what manner you suppose it to exist, or what you mean by its existence? hyl. it neither thinks nor acts, neither perceives nor is perceived. phil. but what is there positive in your abstracted notion of its existence? hyl. upon a nice observation, i do not find i have any positive notion or meaning at all. i tell you again, i am not ashamed to own my ignorance. i know not what is meant by its existence, or how it exists. phil. continue, good hylas, to act the same ingenuous part, and tell me sincerely whether you can frame a distinct idea of entity in general, prescinded from and exclusive of all thinking and corporeal beings, all particular things whatsoever. hyl. hold, let me think a little--i profess, philonous, i do not find that i can. at first glance, methought i had some dilute and airy notion of pure entity in abstract; but, upon closer attention, it hath quite vanished out of sight. the more i think on it, the more am i confirmed in my prudent resolution of giving none but negative answers, and not pretending to the least degree of any positive knowledge or conception of matter, its where, its how, its entity, or anything belonging to it. phil. when, therefore, you speak of the existence of matter, you have not any notion in your mind? hyl. none at all. phil. pray tell me if the case stands not thus--at first, from a belief of material substance, you would have it that the immediate objects existed without the mind; then that they are archetypes; then causes; next instruments; then occasions: lastly something in general, which being interpreted proves nothing. so matter comes to nothing. what think you, hylas, is not this a fair summary of your whole proceeding? hyl. be that as it will, yet i still insist upon it, that our not being able to conceive a thing is no argument against its existence. phil. that from a cause, effect, operation, sign, or other circumstance, there may reasonably be inferred the existence of a thing not immediately perceived; and that it were absurd for any man to argue against the existence of that thing, from his having no direct and positive notion of it, i freely own. but, where there is nothing of all this; where neither reason nor revelation induces us to believe the existence of a thing; where we have not even a relative notion of it; where an abstraction is made from perceiving and being perceived, from spirit and idea: lastly, where there is not so much as the most inadequate or faint idea pretended to--i will not indeed thence conclude against the reality of any notion, or existence of anything; but my inference shall be, that you mean nothing at all; that you employ words to no manner of purpose, without any design or signification whatsoever. and i leave it to you to consider how mere jargon should be treated. hyl. to deal frankly with you, philonous, your arguments seem in themselves unanswerable; but they have not so great an effect on me as to produce that entire conviction, that hearty acquiescence, which attends demonstration. i find myself relapsing into an obscure surmise of i know not what, matter. phil. but, are you not sensible, hylas, that two things must concur to take away all scruple, and work a plenary assent in the mind? let a visible object be set in never so clear a light, yet, if there is any imperfection in the sight, or if the eye is not directed towards it, it will not be distinctly seen. and though a demonstration be never so well grounded and fairly proposed, yet, if there is withal a stain of prejudice, or a wrong bias on the understanding, can it be expected on a sudden to perceive clearly, and adhere firmly to the truth? no; there is need of time and pains: the attention must be awakened and detained by a frequent repetition of the same thing placed oft in the same, oft in different lights. i have said it already, and find i must still repeat and inculcate, that it is an unaccountable licence you take, in pretending to maintain you know not what, for you know not what reason, to you know not what purpose. can this be paralleled in any art or science, any sect or profession of men? or is there anything so barefacedly groundless and unreasonable to be met with even in the lowest of common conversation? but, perhaps you will still say, matter may exist; though at the same time you neither know what is meant by matter, or by its existence. this indeed is surprising, and the more so because it is altogether voluntary and of your own head, you not being led to it by any one reason; for i challenge you to shew me that thing in nature which needs matter to explain or account for it. hyl. the reality of things cannot be maintained without supposing the existence of matter. and is not this, think you, a good reason why i should be earnest in its defence? phil. the reality of things! what things? sensible or intelligible? hyl. sensible things. phil. my glove for example? hyl. that, or any other thing perceived by the senses. phil. but to fix on some particular thing. is it not a sufficient evidence to me of the existence of this glove, that i see it, and feel it, and wear it? or, if this will not do, how is it possible i should be assured of the reality of this thing, which i actually see in this place, by supposing that some unknown thing, which i never did or can see, exists after an unknown manner, in an unknown place, or in no place at all? how can the supposed reality of that which is intangible be a proof that anything tangible really exists? or, of that which is invisible, that any visible thing, or, in general of anything which is imperceptible, that a perceptible exists? do but explain this and i shall think nothing too hard for you. hyl. upon the whole, i am content to own the existence of matter is highly improbable; but the direct and absolute impossibility of it does not appear to me. phil. but granting matter to be possible, yet, upon that account merely, it can have no more claim to existence than a golden mountain, or a centaur. hyl. i acknowledge it; but still you do not deny it is possible; and that which is possible, for aught you know, may actually exist. phil. i deny it to be possible; and have, if i mistake not, evidently proved, from your own concessions, that it is not. in the common sense of the word matter, is there any more implied than an extended, solid, figured, moveable substance, existing without the mind? and have not you acknowledged, over and over, that you have seen evident reason for denying the possibility of such a substance? hyl. true, but that is only one sense of the term matter. phil. but is it not the only proper genuine received sense? and, if matter, in such a sense, be proved impossible, may it not be thought with good grounds absolutely impossible? else how could anything be proved impossible? or, indeed, how could there be any proof at all one way or other, to a man who takes the liberty to unsettle and change the common signification of words? hyl. i thought philosophers might be allowed to speak more accurately than the vulgar, and were not always confined to the common acceptation of a term. phil. but this now mentioned is the common received sense among philosophers themselves. but, not to insist on that, have you not been allowed to take matter in what sense you pleased? and have you not used this privilege in the utmost extent; sometimes entirely changing, at others leaving out, or putting into the definition of it whatever, for the present, best served your design, contrary to all the known rules of reason and logic? and hath not this shifting, unfair method of yours spun out our dispute to an unnecessary length; matter having been particularly examined, and by your own confession refuted in each of those senses? and can any more be required to prove the absolute impossibility of a thing, than the proving it impossible in every particular sense that either you or any one else understands it in? hyl. but i am not so thoroughly satisfied that you have proved the impossibility of matter, in the last most obscure abstracted and indefinite sense. phil. . when is a thing shewn to be impossible? hyl. when a repugnancy is demonstrated between the ideas comprehended in its definition. phil. but where there are no ideas, there no repugnancy can be demonstrated between ideas? hyl. i agree with you. phil. now, in that which you call the obscure indefinite sense of the word matter, it is plain, by your own confession, there was included no idea at all, no sense except an unknown sense; which is the same thing as none. you are not, therefore, to expect i should prove a repugnancy between ideas, where there are no ideas; or the impossibility of matter taken in an unknown sense, that is, no sense at all. my business was only to shew you meant nothing; and this you were brought to own. so that, in all your various senses, you have been shewed either to mean nothing at all, or, if anything, an absurdity. and if this be not sufficient to prove the impossibility of a thing, i desire you will let me know what is. hyl. i acknowledge you have proved that matter is impossible; nor do i see what more can be said in defence of it. but, at the same time that i give up this, i suspect all my other notions. for surely none could be more seemingly evident than this once was: and yet it now seems as false and absurd as ever it did true before. but i think we have discussed the point sufficiently for the present. the remaining part of the day i would willingly spend in running over in my thoughts the several heads of this morning's conversation, and tomorrow shall be glad to meet you here again about the same time. phil. i will not fail to attend you. the third dialogue philonous. tell me, hylas, what are the fruits of yesterday's meditation? has it confirmed you in the same mind you were in at parting? or have you since seen cause to change your opinion? hylas. truly my opinion is that all our opinions are alike vain and uncertain. what we approve to-day, we condemn to-morrow. we keep a stir about knowledge, and spend our lives in the pursuit of it, when, alas i we know nothing all the while: nor do i think it possible for us ever to know anything in this life. our faculties are too narrow and too few. nature certainly never intended us for speculation. phil. what! say you we can know nothing, hylas? hyl. there is not that single thing in the world whereof we can know the real nature, or what it is in itself. phil. will you tell me i do not really know what fire or water is? hyl. you may indeed know that fire appears hot, and water fluid; but this is no more than knowing what sensations are produced in your own mind, upon the application of fire and water to your organs of sense. their internal constitution, their true and real nature, you are utterly in the dark as to that. phil. do i not know this to be a real stone that i stand on, and that which i see before my eyes to be a real tree? hyl. know? no, it is impossible you or any man alive should know it. all you know is, that you have such a certain idea or appearance in your own mind. but what is this to the real tree or stone? i tell you that colour, figure, and hardness, which you perceive, are not the real natures of those things, or in the least like them. the same may be said of all other real things, or corporeal substances, which compose the world. they have none of them anything of themselves, like those sensible qualities by us perceived. we should not therefore pretend to affirm or know anything of them, as they are in their own nature. phil. but surely, hylas, i can distinguish gold, for example, from iron: and how could this be, if i knew not what either truly was? hyl. believe me, philonous, you can only distinguish between your own ideas. that yellowness, that weight, and other sensible qualities, think you they are really in the gold? they are only relative to the senses, and have no absolute existence in nature. and in pretending to distinguish the species of real things, by the appearances in your mind, you may perhaps act as wisely as he that should conclude two men were of a different species, because their clothes were not of the same colour. phil. it seems, then, we are altogether put off with the appearances of things, and those false ones too. the very meat i eat, and the cloth i wear, have nothing in them like what i see and feel. hyl. even so. phil. but is it not strange the whole world should be thus imposed on, and so foolish as to believe their senses? and yet i know not how it is, but men eat, and drink, and sleep, and perform all the offices of life, as comfortably and conveniently as if they really knew the things they are conversant about. hyl. they do so: but you know ordinary practice does not require a nicety of speculative knowledge. hence the vulgar retain their mistakes, and for all that make a shift to bustle through the affairs of life. but philosophers know better things. phil. you mean, they know that they know nothing. hyl. that is the very top and perfection of human knowledge. phil. but are you all this while in earnest, hylas; and are you seriously persuaded that you know nothing real in the world? suppose you are going to write, would you not call for pen, ink, and paper, like another man; and do you not know what it is you call for? hyl. how often must i tell you, that i know not the real nature of any one thing in the universe? i may indeed upon occasion make use of pen, ink, and paper. but what any one of them is in its own true nature, i declare positively i know not. and the same is true with regard to every other corporeal thing. and, what is more, we are not only ignorant of the true and real nature of things, but even of their existence. it cannot be denied that we perceive such certain appearances or ideas; but it cannot be concluded from thence that bodies really exist. nay, now i think on it, i must, agreeably to my former concessions, farther declare that it is impossible any real corporeal thing should exist in nature. phil. you amaze me. was ever anything more wild and extravagant than the notions you now maintain: and is it not evident you are led into all these extravagances by the belief of material substance? this makes you dream of those unknown natures in everything. it is this occasions your distinguishing between the reality and sensible appearances of things. it is to this you are indebted for being ignorant of what everybody else knows perfectly well. nor is this all: you are not only ignorant of the true nature of everything, but you know not whether anything really exists, or whether there are any true natures at all; forasmuch as you attribute to your material beings an absolute or external existence, wherein you suppose their reality consists. and, as you are forced in the end to acknowledge such an existence means either a direct repugnancy, or nothing at all, it follows that you are obliged to pull down your own hypothesis of material substance, and positively to deny the real existence of any part of the universe. and so you are plunged into the deepest and most deplorable scepticism that ever man was. tell me, hylas, is it not as i say? hyl. i agree with you. material substance was no more than an hypothesis; and a false and groundless one too. i will no longer spend my breath in defence of it. but whatever hypothesis you advance, or whatsoever scheme of things you introduce in its stead, i doubt not it will appear every whit as false: let me but be allowed to question you upon it. that is, suffer me to serve you in your own kind, and i warrant it shall conduct you through as many perplexities and contradictions, to the very same state of scepticism that i myself am in at present. phil. i assure you, hylas, i do not pretend to frame any hypothesis at all. i am of a vulgar cast, simple enough to believe my senses, and leave things as i find them. to be plain, it is my opinion that the real things are those very things i see, and feel, and perceive by my senses. these i know; and, finding they answer all the necessities and purposes of life, have no reason to be solicitous about any other unknown beings. a piece of sensible bread, for instance, would stay my stomach better than ten thousand times as much of that insensible, unintelligible, real bread you speak of. it is likewise my opinion that colours and other sensible qualities are on the objects. i cannot for my life help thinking that snow is white, and fire hot. you indeed, who by snow and fire mean certain external, unperceived, unperceiving substances, are in the right to deny whiteness or heat to be affections inherent in them. but i, who understand by those words the things i see and feel, am obliged to think like other folks. and, as i am no sceptic with regard to the nature of things, so neither am i as to their existence. that a thing should be really perceived by my senses, and at the same time not really exist, is to me a plain contradiction; since i cannot prescind or abstract, even in thought, the existence of a sensible thing from its being perceived. wood, stones, fire, water, flesh, iron, and the like things, which i name and discourse of, are things that i know. and i should not have known them but that i perceived them by my senses; and things perceived by the senses are immediately perceived; and things immediately perceived are ideas; and ideas cannot exist without the mind; their existence therefore consists in being perceived; when, therefore, they are actually perceived there can be no doubt of their existence. away then with all that scepticism, all those ridiculous philosophical doubts. what a jest is it for a philosopher to question the existence of sensible things, till he hath it proved to him from the veracity of god; or to pretend our knowledge in this point falls short of intuition or demonstration! i might as well doubt of my own being, as of the being of those things i actually see and feel. hyl. not so fast, philonous: you say you cannot conceive how sensible things should exist without the mind. do you not? phil. i do. hyl. supposing you were annihilated, cannot you conceive it possible that things perceivable by sense may still exist? phil. _i_ can; but then it must be in another mind. when i deny sensible things an existence out of the mind, i do not mean my mind in particular, but all minds. now, it is plain they have an existence exterior to my mind; since i find them by experience to be independent of it. there is therefore some other mind wherein they exist, during the intervals between the times of my perceiving them: as likewise they did before my birth, and would do after my supposed annihilation. and, as the same is true with regard to all other finite created spirits, it necessarily follows there is an omnipresent eternal mind, which knows and comprehends all things, and exhibits them to our view in such a manner, and according to such rules, as he himself hath ordained, and are by us termed the laws of nature. hyl. answer me, philonous. are all our ideas perfectly inert beings? or have they any agency included in them? phil. they are altogether passive and inert. hyl. and is not god an agent, a being purely active? phil. i acknowledge it. hyl. no idea therefore can be like unto, or represent the nature of god? phil. it cannot. hyl. since therefore you have no idea of the mind of god, how can you conceive it possible that things should exist in his mind? or, if you can conceive the mind of god, without having an idea of it, why may not i be allowed to conceive the existence of matter, notwithstanding i have no idea of it? phil. as to your first question: i own i have properly no idea, either of god or any other spirit; for these being active, cannot be represented by things perfectly inert, as our ideas are. i do nevertheless know that i, who am a spirit or thinking substance, exist as certainly as i know my ideas exist. farther, i know what i mean by the terms i and myself; and i know this immediately or intuitively, though i do not perceive it as i perceive a triangle, a colour, or a sound. the mind, spirit, or soul is that indivisible unextended thing which thinks, acts, and perceives. i say indivisible, because unextended; and unextended, because extended, figured, moveable things are ideas; and that which perceives ideas, which thinks and wills, is plainly itself no idea, nor like an idea. ideas are things inactive, and perceived. and spirits a sort of beings altogether different from them. i do not therefore say my soul is an idea, or like an idea. however, taking the word idea in a large sense, my soul may be said to furnish me with an idea, that is, an image or likeness of god--though indeed extremely inadequate. for, all the notion i have of god is obtained by reflecting on my own soul, heightening its powers, and removing its imperfections. i have, therefore, though not an inactive idea, yet in myself some sort of an active thinking image of the deity. and, though i perceive him not by sense, yet i have a notion of him, or know him by reflexion and reasoning. my own mind and my own ideas i have an immediate knowledge of; and, by the help of these, do mediately apprehend the possibility of the existence of other spirits and ideas. farther, from my own being, and from the dependency i find in myself and my ideas, i do, by an act of reason, necessarily infer the existence of a god, and of all created things in the mind of god. so much for your first question. for the second: i suppose by this time you can answer it yourself. for you neither perceive matter objectively, as you do an inactive being or idea; nor know it, as you do yourself, by a reflex act, neither do you mediately apprehend it by similitude of the one or the other; nor yet collect it by reasoning from that which you know immediately. all which makes the case of matter widely different from that of the deity. hyl. you say your own soul supplies you with some sort of an idea or image of god. but, at the same time, you acknowledge you have, properly speaking, no idea of your own soul. you even affirm that spirits are a sort of beings altogether different from ideas. consequently that no idea can be like a spirit. we have therefore no idea of any spirit. you admit nevertheless that there is spiritual substance, although you have no idea of it; while you deny there can be such a thing as material substance, because you have no notion or idea of it. is this fair dealing? to act consistently, you must either admit matter or reject spirit. what say you to this? phil. _i_ say, in the first place, that i do not deny the existence of material substance, merely because i have no notion of it' but because the notion of it is inconsistent; or, in other words, because it is repugnant that there should be a notion of it. many things, for aught i know, may exist, whereof neither i nor any other man hath or can have any idea or notion whatsoever. but then those things must be possible, that is, nothing inconsistent must be included in their definition. i say, secondly, that, although we believe things to exist which we do not perceive, yet we may not believe that any particular thing exists, without some reason for such belief: but i have no reason for believing the existence of matter. i have no immediate intuition thereof: neither can i immediately from my sensations, ideas, notions, actions, or passions, infer an unthinking, unperceiving, inactive substance--either by probable deduction, or necessary consequence. whereas the being of my self, that is, my own soul, mind, or thinking principle, i evidently know by reflexion. you will forgive me if i repeat the same things in answer to the same objections. in the very notion or definition of material substance, there is included a manifest repugnance and inconsistency. but this cannot be said of the notion of spirit. that ideas should exist in what doth not perceive, or be produced by what doth not act, is repugnant. but, it is no repugnancy to say that a perceiving thing should be the subject of ideas, or an active thing the cause of them. it is granted we have neither an immediate evidence nor a demonstrative knowledge of the existence of other finite spirits; but it will not thence follow that such spirits are on a foot with material substances: if to suppose the one be inconsistent, and it be not inconsistent to suppose the other; if the one can be inferred by no argument, and there is a probability for the other; if we see signs and effects indicating distinct finite agents like ourselves, and see no sign or symptom whatever that leads to a rational belief of matter. i say, lastly, that i have a notion of spirit, though i have not, strictly speaking, an idea of it. i do not perceive it as an idea, or by means of an idea, but know it by reflexion. hyl. notwithstanding all you have said, to me it seems that, according to your own way of thinking, and in consequence of your own principles, it should follow that you are only a system of floating ideas, without any substance to support them. words are not to be used without a meaning. and, as there is no more meaning in spiritual substance than in material substance, the one is to be exploded as well as the other. phil. how often must i repeat, that i know or am conscious of my own being; and that _i_ myself am not my ideas, but somewhat else, a thinking, active principle that perceives, knows, wills, and operates about ideas. i know that i, one and the same self, perceive both colours and sounds: that a colour cannot perceive a sound, nor a sound a colour: that i am therefore one individual principle, distinct from colour and sound; and, for the same reason, from aft other sensible things and inert ideas. but, i am not in like manner conscious either of the existence or essence of matter. on the contrary, i know that nothing inconsistent can exist, and that the existence of matter implies an inconsistency. farther, i know what i mean when i affirm that there is a spiritual substance or support of ideas, that is, that a spirit knows and perceives ideas. but, i do not know what is meant when it is said that an unperceiving substance hath inherent in it and supports either ideas or the archetypes of ideas. there is therefore upon the whole no parity of case between spirit and matter. hyl. i own myself satisfied in this point. but, do you in earnest think the real existence of sensible things consists in their being actually perceived? if so; how comes it that all mankind distinguish between them? ask the first man you meet, and he shall tell you, to be perceived is one thing, and to exist is another. phil. _i_ am content, hylas, to appeal to the common sense of the world for the truth of my notion. ask the gardener why he thinks yonder cherry-tree exists in the garden, and he shall tell you, because he sees and feels it; in a word, because he perceives it by his senses. ask him why he thinks an orange-tree not to be there, and he shall tell you, because he does not perceive it. what he perceives by sense, that he terms a real, being, and saith it is or exists; but, that which is not perceivable, the same, he saith, hath no being. hyl. yes, philonous, i grant the existence of a sensible thing consists in being perceivable, but not in being actually perceived. phil. and what is perceivable but an idea? and can an idea exist without being actually perceived? these are points long since agreed between us. hyl. but, be your opinion never so true, yet surely you will not deny it is shocking, and contrary to the common sense of men. ask the fellow whether yonder tree hath an existence out of his mind: what answer think you he would make? phil. the same that i should myself, to wit, that it doth exist out of his mind. but then to a christian it cannot surely be shocking to say, the real tree, existing without his mind, is truly known and comprehended by (that is exists in) the infinite mind of god. probably he may not at first glance be aware of the direct and immediate proof there is of this; inasmuch as the very being of a tree, or any other sensible thing, implies a mind wherein it is. but the point itself he cannot deny. the question between the materialists and me is not, whether things have a real existence out of the mind of this or that person, but whether they have an absolute existence, distinct from being perceived by god, and exterior to all minds. this indeed some heathens and philosophers have affirmed, but whoever entertains notions of the deity suitable to the holy scriptures will be of another opinion. hyl. but, according to your notions, what difference is there between real things, and chimeras formed by the imagination, or the visions of a dream--since they are all equally in the mind? phil. the ideas formed by the imagination are faint and indistinct; they have, besides, an entire dependence on the will. but the ideas perceived by sense, that is, real things, are more vivid and clear; and, being imprinted on the mind by a spirit distinct from us, have not the like dependence on our will. there is therefore no danger of confounding these with the foregoing: and there is as little of confounding them with the visions of a dream, which are dim, irregular, and confused. and, though they should happen to be never so lively and natural, yet, by their not being connected, and of a piece with the preceding and subsequent transactions of our lives, they might easily be distinguished from realities. in short, by whatever method you distinguish things from chimeras on your scheme, the same, it is evident, will hold also upon mine. for, it must be, i presume, by some perceived difference; and i am not for depriving you of any one thing that you perceive. hyl. but still, philonous, you hold, there is nothing in the world but spirits and ideas. and this, you must needs acknowledge, sounds very oddly. phil. i own the word idea, not being commonly used for thing, sounds something out of the way. my reason for using it was, because a necessary relation to the mind is understood to be implied by that term; and it is now commonly used by philosophers to denote the immediate objects of the understanding. but, however oddly the proposition may sound in words, yet it includes nothing so very strange or shocking in its sense; which in effect amounts to no more than this, to wit, that there are only things perceiving, and things perceived; or that every unthinking being is necessarily, and from the very nature of its existence, perceived by some mind; if not by a finite created mind, yet certainly by the infinite mind of god, in whom "we five, and move, and have our being." is this as strange as to say, the sensible qualities are not on the objects: or that we cannot be sure of the existence of things, or know any thing of their real natures--though we both see and feel them, and perceive them by all our senses? hyl. and, in consequence of this, must we not think there are no such things as physical or corporeal causes; but that a spirit is the immediate cause of all the phenomena in nature? can there be anything more extravagant than this? phil. yes, it is infinitely more extravagant to say--a thing which is inert operates on the mind, and which is unperceiving is the cause of our perceptions, without any regard either to consistency, or the old known axiom, nothing can give to another that which it hath not itself. besides, that which to you, i know not for what reason, seems so extravagant is no more than the holy scriptures assert in a hundred places. in them god is represented as the sole and immediate author of all those effects which some heathens and philosophers are wont to ascribe to nature, matter, fate, or the like unthinking principle. this is so much the constant language of scripture that it were needless to confirm it by citations. hyl. you are not aware, philonous, that in making god the immediate author of all the motions in nature, you make him the author of murder, sacrilege, adultery, and the like heinous sins. phil. in answer to that, i observe, first, that the imputation of guilt is the same, whether a person commits an action with or without an instrument. in case therefore you suppose god to act by the mediation of an instrument or occasion, called matter, you as truly make him the author of sin as i, who think him the immediate agent in all those operations vulgarly ascribed to nature. i farther observe that sin or moral turpitude doth not consist in the outward physical action or motion, but in the internal deviation of the will from the laws of reason and religion. this is plain, in that the killing an enemy in a battle, or putting a criminal legally to death, is not thought sinful; though the outward act be the very same with that in the case of murder. since, therefore, sin doth not consist in the physical action, the making god an immediate cause of all such actions is not making him the author of sin. lastly, i have nowhere said that god is the only agent who produces all the motions in bodies. it is true i have denied there are any other agents besides spirits; but this is very consistent with allowing to thinking rational beings, in the production of motions, the use of limited powers, ultimately indeed derived from god, but immediately under the direction of their own wills, which is sufficient to entitle them to all the guilt of their actions. hyl. but the denying matter, philonous, or corporeal substance; there is the point. you can never persuade me that this is not repugnant to the universal sense of mankind. were our dispute to be determined by most voices, i am confident you would give up the point, without gathering the votes. phil. i wish both our opinions were fairly stated and submitted to the judgment of men who had plain common sense, without the prejudices of a learned education. let me be represented as one who trusts his senses, who thinks he knows the things he sees and feels, and entertains no doubts of their existence; and you fairly set forth with all your doubts, your paradoxes, and your scepticism about you, and i shall willingly acquiesce in the determination of any indifferent person. that there is no substance wherein ideas can exist beside spirit is to me evident. and that the objects immediately perceived are ideas, is on all hands agreed. and that sensible qualities are objects immediately perceived no one can deny. it is therefore evident there can be no substratum of those qualities but spirit; in which they exist, not by way of mode or property, but as a thing perceived in that which perceives it. i deny therefore that there is any unthinking-substratum of the objects of sense, and in that acceptation that there is any material substance. but if by material substance is meant only sensible body, that which is seen and felt (and the unphilosophical part of the world, i dare say, mean no more)--then i am more certain of matter's existence than you or any other philosopher pretend to be. if there be anything which makes the generality of mankind averse from the notions i espouse, it is a misapprehension that i deny the reality of sensible things. but, as it is you who are guilty of that, and not i, it follows that in truth their aversion is against your notions and not mine. i do therefore assert that i am as certain as of my own being, that there are bodies or corporeal substances (meaning the things i perceive by my senses); and that, granting this, the bulk of mankind will take no thought about, nor think themselves at all concerned in the fate of those unknown natures, and philosophical quiddities, which some men are so fond of. hyl. what say you to this? since, according to you, men judge of the reality of things by their senses, how can a man be mistaken in thinking the moon a plain lucid surface, about a foot in diameter; or a square tower, seen at a distance, round; or an oar, with one end in the water, crooked? phil. he is not mistaken with regard to the ideas he actually perceives, but in the inference he makes from his present perceptions. thus, in the case of the oar, what he immediately perceives by sight is certainly crooked; and so far he is in the right. but if he thence conclude that upon taking the oar out of the water he shall perceive the same crookedness; or that it would affect his touch as crooked things are wont to do: in that he is mistaken. in like manner, if he shall conclude from what he perceives in one station, that, in case he advances towards the moon or tower, he should still be affected with the like ideas, he is mistaken. but his mistake lies not in what he perceives immediately, and at present, (it being a manifest contradiction to suppose he should err in respect of that) but in the wrong judgment he makes concerning the ideas he apprehends to be connected with those immediately perceived: or, concerning the ideas that, from what he perceives at present, he imagines would be perceived in other circumstances. the case is the same with regard to the copernican system. we do not here perceive any motion of the earth: but it were erroneous thence to conclude, that, in case we were placed at as great a distance from that as we are now from the other planets, we should not then perceive its motion. hyl. i understand you; and must needs own you say things plausible enough. but, give me leave to put you in mind of one thing. pray, philonous, were you not formerly as positive that matter existed, as you are now that it does not? phil. i was. but here lies the difference. before, my positiveness was founded, without examination, upon prejudice; but now, after inquiry, upon evidence. hyl. after all, it seems our dispute is rather about words than things. we agree in the thing, but differ in the name. that we are affected with ideas from without is evident; and it is no less evident that there must be (i will not say archetypes, but) powers without the mind, corresponding to those ideas. and, as these powers cannot subsist by themselves, there is some subject of them necessarily to be admitted; which i call matter, and you call spirit. this is all the difference. phil. pray, hylas, is that powerful being, or subject of powers, extended? hyl. it hath not extension; but it hath the power to raise in you the idea of extension. phil. it is therefore itself unextended? hyl. i grant it. phil. is it not also active? hyl. without doubt. otherwise, how could we attribute powers to it? phil. now let me ask you two questions: first, whether it be agreeable to the usage either of philosophers or others to give the name matter to an unextended active being? and, secondly, whether it be not ridiculously absurd to misapply names contrary to the common use of language? hyl. well then, let it not be called matter, since you will have it so, but some third nature distinct from matter and spirit. for what reason is there why you should call it spirit? does not the notion of spirit imply that it is thinking, as well as active and unextended? phil. my reason is this: because i have a mind to have some notion of meaning in what i say: but i have no notion of any action distinct from volition, neither can i conceive volition to be anywhere but in a spirit: therefore, when i speak of an active being, i am obliged to mean a spirit. beside, what can be plainer than that a thing which hath no ideas in itself cannot impart them to me; and, if it hath ideas, surely it must be a spirit. to make you comprehend the point still more clearly if it be possible, i assert as well as you that, since we are affected from without, we must allow powers to be without, in a being distinct from ourselves. so far we are agreed. but then we differ as to the kind of this powerful being. i will have it to be spirit, you matter, or i know not what (i may add too, you know not what) third nature. thus, i prove it to be spirit. from the effects i see produced, i conclude there are actions; and, because actions, volitions; and, because there are volitions, there must be a will. again, the things i perceive must have an existence, they or their archetypes, out of my mind: but, being ideas, neither they nor their archetypes can exist otherwise than in an understanding; there is therefore an understanding. but will and understanding constitute in the strictest sense a mind or spirit. the powerful cause, therefore, of my ideas is in strict propriety of speech a spirit. hyl. and now i warrant you think you have made the point very clear, little suspecting that what you advance leads directly to a contradiction. is it not an absurdity to imagine any imperfection in god? phil. without a doubt. hyl. to suffer pain is an imperfection? phil. it is. hyl. are we not sometimes affected with pain and uneasiness by some other being? phil. we are. hyl. and have you not said that being is a spirit, and is not that spirit god? phil. i grant it. hyl. but you have asserted that whatever ideas we perceive from without are in the mind which affects us. the ideas, therefore, of pain and uneasiness are in god; or, in other words, god suffers pain: that is to say, there is an imperfection in the divine nature: which, you acknowledged, was absurd. so you are caught in a plain contradiction. phil. that god knows or understands all things, and that he knows, among other things, what pain is, even every sort of painful sensation, and what it is for his creatures to suffer pain, i make no question. but, that god, though he knows and sometimes causes painful sensations in us, can himself suffer pain, i positively deny. we, who are limited and dependent spirits, are liable to impressions of sense, the effects of an external agent, which, being produced against our wills, are sometimes painful and uneasy. but god, whom no external being can affect, who perceives nothing by sense as we do; whose will is absolute and independent, causing all things, and liable to be thwarted or resisted by nothing: it is evident, such a being as this can suffer nothing, nor be affected with any painful sensation, or indeed any sensation at all. we are chained to a body: that is to say, our perceptions are connected with corporeal motions. by the law of our nature, we are affected upon every alteration in the nervous parts of our sensible body; which sensible body, rightly considered, is nothing but a complexion of such qualities or ideas as have no existence distinct from being perceived by a mind. so that this connexion of sensations with corporeal motions means no more than a correspondence in the order of nature, between two sets of ideas, or things immediately perceivable. but god is a pure spirit, disengaged from all such sympathy, or natural ties. no corporeal motions are attended with the sensations of pain or pleasure in his mind. to know everything knowable, is certainly a perfection; but to endure, or suffer, or feel anything by sense, is an imperfection. the former, i say, agrees to god, but not the latter. god knows, or hath ideas; but his ideas are not conveyed to him by sense, as ours are. your not distinguishing, where there is so manifest a difference, makes you fancy you see an absurdity where there is none. hyl. but, all this while you have not considered that the quantity of matter has been demonstrated to be proportioned to the gravity of bodies. and what can withstand demonstration? phil. let me see how you demonstrate that point. hyl. i lay it down for a principle, that the moments or quantities of motion in bodies are in a direct compounded reason of the velocities and quantities of matter contained in them. hence, where the velocities are equal, it follows the moments are directly as the quantity of matter in each. but it is found by experience that all bodies (bating the small inequalities, arising from the resistance of the air) descend with an equal velocity; the motion therefore of descending bodies, and consequently their gravity, which is the cause or principle of that motion, is proportional to the quantity of matter; which was to be demonstrated. phil. you lay it down as a self-evident principle that the quantity of motion in any body is proportional to the velocity and matter taken together; and this is made use of to prove a proposition from whence the existence of matter is inferred. pray is not this arguing in a circle? hyl. in the premise i only mean that the motion is proportional to the velocity, jointly with the extension and solidity. phil. but, allowing this to be true, yet it will not thence follow that gravity is proportional to matter, in your philosophic sense of the word; except you take it for granted that unknown substratum, or whatever else you call it, is proportional to those sensible qualities; which to suppose is plainly begging the question. that there is magnitude and solidity, or resistance, perceived by sense, i readily grant; as likewise, that gravity may be proportional to those qualities i will not dispute. but that either these qualities as perceived by us, or the powers producing them, do exist in a material substratum; this is what i deny, and you indeed affirm, but, notwithstanding your demonstration, have not yet proved. hyl. i shall insist no longer on that point. do you think, however, you shall persuade me that the natural philosophers have been dreaming all this while? pray what becomes of all their hypotheses and explications of the phenomena, which suppose the existence of matter? phil. what mean you, hylas, by the phenomena? hyl. i mean the appearances which i perceive by my senses. phil. and the appearances perceived by sense, are they not ideas? hyl. i have told you so a hundred times. phil. therefore, to explain the phenomena, is, to shew how we come to be affected with ideas, in that manner and order wherein they are imprinted on our senses. is it not? hyl. it is. phil. now, if you can prove that any philosopher has explained the production of any one idea in our minds by the help of matter, i shall for ever acquiesce, and look on all that hath been said against it as nothing; but, if you cannot, it is vain to urge the explication of phenomena. that a being endowed with knowledge and will should produce or exhibit ideas is easily understood. but that a being which is utterly destitute of these faculties should be able to produce ideas, or in any sort to affect an intelligence, this i can never understand. this i say, though we had some positive conception of matter, though we knew its qualities, and could comprehend its existence, would yet be so far from explaining things, that it is itself the most inexplicable thing in the world. and yet, for all this, it will not follow that philosophers have been doing nothing; for, by observing and reasoning upon the connexion of ideas, they discover the laws and methods of nature, which is a part of knowledge both useful and entertaining. hyl. after all, can it be supposed god would deceive all mankind? do you imagine he would have induced the whole world to believe the being of matter, if there was no such thing? phil. that every epidemical opinion, arising from prejudice, or passion, or thoughtlessness, may be imputed to god, as the author of it, i believe you will not affirm. whatsoever opinion we father on him, it must be either because he has discovered it to us by supernatural revelation; or because it is so evident to our natural faculties, which were framed and given us by god, that it is impossible we should withhold our assent from it. but where is the revelation? or where is the evidence that extorts the belief of matter? nay, how does it appear, that matter, taken for something distinct from what we perceive by our senses, is thought to exist by all mankind; or indeed, by any except a few philosophers, who do not know what they would be at? your question supposes these points are clear; and, when you have cleared them, i shall think myself obliged to give you another answer. in the meantime, let it suffice that i tell you, i do not suppose god has deceived mankind at all. hyl. but the novelty, philonous, the novelty! there lies the danger. new notions should always be discountenanced; they unsettle men's minds, and nobody knows where they will end. phil. why the rejecting a notion that has no foundation, either in sense, or in reason, or in divine authority, should be thought to unsettle the belief of such opinions as are grounded on all or any of these, i cannot imagine. that innovations in government and religion are dangerous, and ought to be discountenanced, i freely own. but is there the like reason why they should be discouraged in philosophy? the making anything known which was unknown before is an innovation in knowledge: and, if all such innovations had been forbidden, men would have made a notable progress in the arts and sciences. but it is none of my business to plead for novelties and paradoxes. that the qualities we perceive are not on the objects: that we must not believe our senses: that we know nothing of the real nature of things, and can never be assured even of their existence: that real colours and sounds are nothing but certain unknown figures and motions: that motions are in themselves neither swift nor slow: that there are in bodies absolute extensions, without any particular magnitude or figure: that a thing stupid, thoughtless, and inactive, operates on a spirit: that the least particle of a body contains innumerable extended parts:--these are the novelties, these are the strange notions which shock the genuine uncorrupted judgment of all mankind; and being once admitted, embarrass the mind with endless doubts and difficulties. and it is against these and the like innovations i endeavour to vindicate common sense. it is true, in doing this, i may perhaps be obliged to use some ambages, and ways of speech not common. but, if my notions are once thoroughly understood, that which is most singular in them will, in effect, be found to amount to no more than this.--that it is absolutely impossible, and a plain contradiction, to suppose any unthinking being should exist without being perceived by a mind. and, if this notion be singular, it is a shame it should be so, at this time of day, and in a christian country. hyl. as for the difficulties other opinions may be liable to, those are out of the question. it is your business to defend your own opinion. can anything be plainer than that you are for changing all things into ideas? you, i say, who are not ashamed to charge me with scepticism. this is so plain, there is no denying it. phil. you mistake me. i am not for changing things into ideas, but rather ideas into things; since those immediate objects of perception, which, according to you, are only appearances of things, i take to be the real things themselves. hyl. things! you may pretend what you please; but it is certain you leave us nothing but the empty forms of things, the outside only which strikes the senses. phil. what you call the empty forms and outside of things seem to me the very things themselves. nor are they empty or incomplete, otherwise than upon your supposition--that matter is an essential part of all corporeal things. we both, therefore, agree in this, that we perceive only sensible forms: but herein we differ--you will have them to be empty appearances, i, real beings. in short, you do not trust your senses, i do. hyl. you say you believe your senses; and seem to applaud yourself that in this you agree with the vulgar. according to you, therefore, the true nature of a thing is discovered by the senses. if so, whence comes that disagreement? why is not the same figure, and other sensible qualities, perceived all manner of ways? and why should we use a microscope the better to discover the true nature of a body, if it were discoverable to the naked eye? phil. strictly speaking, hylas, we do not see the same object that we feel; neither is the same object perceived by the microscope which was by the naked eye. but, in case every variation was thought sufficient to constitute a new kind of individual, the endless number of confusion of names would render language impracticable. therefore, to avoid this, as well as other inconveniences which are obvious upon a little thought, men combine together several ideas, apprehended by divers senses, or by the same sense at different times, or in different circumstances, but observed, however, to have some connexion in nature, either with respect to co-existence or succession; all which they refer to one name, and consider as one thing. hence it follows that when i examine, by my other senses, a thing i have seen, it is not in order to understand better the same object which i had perceived by sight, the object of one sense not being perceived by the other senses. and, when i look through a microscope, it is not that i may perceive more clearly what i perceived already with my bare eyes; the object perceived by the glass being quite different from the former. but, in both cases, my aim is only to know what ideas are connected together; and the more a man knows of the connexion of ideas, the more he is said to know of the nature of things. what, therefore, if our ideas are variable; what if our senses are not in all circumstances affected with the same appearances. it will not thence follow they are not to be trusted; or that they are inconsistent either with themselves or anything else: except it be with your preconceived notion of (i know not what) one single, unchanged, unperceivable, real nature, marked by each name. which prejudice seems to have taken its rise from not rightly understanding the common language of men, speaking of several distinct ideas as united into one thing by the mind. and, indeed, there is cause to suspect several erroneous conceits of the philosophers are owing to the same original: while they began to build their schemes not so much on notions as on words, which were framed by the vulgar, merely for conveniency and dispatch in the common actions of life, without any regard to speculation. hyl. methinks i apprehend your meaning. phil. it is your opinion the ideas we perceive by our senses are not real things, but images or copies of them. our knowledge, therefore, is no farther real than as our ideas are the true representations of those originals. but, as these supposed originals are in themselves unknown, it is impossible to know how far our ideas resemble them; or whether they resemble them at all. we cannot, therefore, be sure we have any real knowledge. farther, as our ideas are perpetually varied, without any change in the supposed real things, it necessarily follows they cannot all be true copies of them: or, if some are and others are not, it is impossible to distinguish the former from the latter. and this plunges us yet deeper in uncertainty. again, when we consider the point, we cannot conceive how any idea, or anything like an idea, should have an absolute existence out of a mind: nor consequently, according to you, how there should be any real thing in nature. the result of all which is that we are thrown into the most hopeless and abandoned scepticism. now, give me leave to ask you, first, whether your referring ideas to certain absolutely existing unperceived substances, as their originals, be not the source of all this scepticism? secondly, whether you are informed, either by sense or reason, of the existence of those unknown originals? and, in case you are not, whether it be not absurd to suppose them? thirdly, whether, upon inquiry, you find there is anything distinctly conceived or meant by the absolute or external existence of unperceiving substances? lastly, whether, the premises considered, it be not the wisest way to follow nature, trust your senses, and, laying aside all anxious thought about unknown natures or substances, admit with the vulgar those for real things which are perceived by the senses? hyl. for the present, i have no inclination to the answering part. i would much rather see how you can get over what follows. pray are not the objects perceived by the senses of one, likewise perceivable to others present? if there were a hundred more here, they would all see the garden, the trees, and flowers, as i see them. but they are not in the same manner affected with the ideas i frame in my imagination. does not this make a difference between the former sort of objects and the latter? phil. i grant it does. nor have i ever denied a difference between the objects of sense and those of imagination. but what would you infer from thence? you cannot say that sensible objects exist unperceived, because they are perceived by many. hyl. i own i can make nothing of that objection: but it hath led me into another. is it not your opinion that by our senses we perceive only the ideas existing in our minds? phil. it is. hyl. but the same idea which is in my mind cannot be in yours, or in any other mind. doth it not therefore follow, from your principles, that no two can see the same thing? and is not this highly, absurd? phil. if the term same be taken in the vulgar acceptation, it is certain (and not at all repugnant to the principles i maintain) that different persons may perceive the same thing; or the same thing or idea exist in different minds. words are of arbitrary imposition; and, since men are used to apply the word same where no distinction or variety is perceived, and i do not pretend to alter their perceptions, it follows that, as men have said before, several saw the same thing, so they may, upon like occasions, still continue to use the same phrase, without any deviation either from propriety of language, or the truth of things. but, if the term same be used in the acceptation of philosophers, who pretend to an abstracted notion of identity, then, according to their sundry definitions of this notion (for it is not yet agreed wherein that philosophic identity consists), it may or may not be possible for divers persons to perceive the same thing. but whether philosophers shall think fit to call a thing the same or no, is, i conceive, of small importance. let us suppose several men together, all endued with the same faculties, and consequently affected in like sort by their senses, and who had yet never known the use of language; they would, without question, agree in their perceptions. though perhaps, when they came to the use of speech, some regarding the uniformness of what was perceived, might call it the same thing: others, especially regarding the diversity of persons who perceived, might choose the denomination of different things. but who sees not that all the dispute is about a word? to wit, whether what is perceived by different persons may yet have the term same applied to it? or, suppose a house, whose walls or outward shell remaining unaltered, the chambers are all pulled down, and new ones built in their place; and that you should call this the same, and i should say it was not the same house.--would we not, for all this, perfectly agree in our thoughts of the house, considered in itself? and would not all the difference consist in a sound? if you should say, we differed in our notions; for that you super-added to your idea of the house the simple abstracted idea of identity, whereas i did not; i would tell you, i know not what you mean by the abstracted idea of identity; and should desire you to look into your own thoughts, and be sure you understood yourself.--why so silent, hylas? are you not yet satisfied men may dispute about identity and diversity, without any real difference in their thoughts and opinions, abstracted from names? take this farther reflexion with you: that whether matter be allowed to exist or no, the case is exactly the same as to the point in hand. for the materialists themselves acknowledge what we immediately perceive by our senses to be our own ideas. your difficulty, therefore, that no two see the same thing, makes equally against the materialists and me. hyl. ay, philonous, but they suppose an external archetype, to which referring their several ideas they may truly be said to perceive the same thing. phil. and (not to mention your having discarded those archetypes) so may you suppose an external archetype on my principles;--external, _i_ mean, to your own mind: though indeed it must be' supposed to exist in that mind which comprehends all things; but then, this serves all the ends of identity, as well as if it existed out of a mind. and i am sure you yourself will not say it is less intelligible. hyl. you have indeed clearly satisfied me--either that there is no difficulty at bottom in this point; or, if there be, that it makes equally against both opinions. phil. but that which makes equally against two contradictory opinions can be a proof against neither. hyl. i acknowledge it. but, after all, philonous, when i consider the substance of what you advance against scepticism, it amounts to no more than this: we are sure that we really see, hear, feel; in a word, that we are affected with sensible impressions. phil. and how are we concerned any farther? i see this cherry, i feel it, i taste it: and i am sure nothing cannot be seen, or felt, or tasted: it is therefore real. take away the sensations of softness, moisture, redness, tartness, and you take away the cherry, since it is not a being distinct from sensations. a cherry, i say, is nothing but a congeries of sensible impressions, or ideas perceived by various senses: which ideas are united into one thing (or have one name given them) by the mind, because they are observed to attend each other. thus, when the palate is affected with such a particular taste, the sight is affected with a red colour, the touch with roundness, softness, &c. hence, when i see, and feel, and taste, in such sundry certain manners, i am sure the cherry exists, or is real; its reality being in my opinion nothing abstracted from those sensations. but if by the word cherry, you mean an unknown nature, distinct from all those sensible qualities, and by its existence something distinct from its being perceived; then, indeed, i own, neither you nor i, nor any one else, can be sure it exists. hyl. but, what would you say, philonous, if i should bring the very same reasons against the existence of sensible things in a mind, which you have offered against their existing in a material substratum? phil. when i see your reasons, you shall hear what i have to say to them. hyl. is the mind extended or unextended? phil. unextended, without doubt. hyl. do you say the things you perceive are in your mind? phil. they are. hyl. again, have i not heard you speak of sensible impressions? phil. i believe you may. hyl. explain to me now, o philonous! how it is possible there should be room for all those trees and houses to exist in your mind. can extended things be contained in that which is unextended? or, are we to imagine impressions made on a thing void of all solidity? you cannot say objects are in your mind, as books in your study: or that things are imprinted on it, as the figure of a seal upon wax. in what sense, therefore, are we to understand those expressions? explain me this if you can: and i shall then be able to answer all those queries you formerly put to me about my substratum. phil. look you, hylas, when i speak of objects as existing in the mind, or imprinted on the senses, i would not be understood in the gross literal sense; as when bodies are said to exist in a place, or a seal to make an impression upon wax. my meaning is only that the mind comprehends or perceives them; and that it is affected from without, or by some being distinct from itself. this is my explication of your difficulty; and how it can serve to make your tenet of an unperceiving material substratum intelligible, i would fain know. hyl. nay, if that be all, i confess i do not see what use can be made of it. but are you not guilty of some abuse of language in this? phil. none at all. it is no more than common custom, which you know is the rule of language, hath authorised: nothing being more usual, than for philosophers to speak of the immediate objects of the understanding as things existing in the mind. 'nor is there anything in this but what is conformable to the general analogy of language; most part of the mental operations being signified by words borrowed from sensible things; as is plain in the terms comprehend, reflect, discourse, &c., which, being applied to the mind, must not be taken in their gross, original sense. hyl. you have, i own, satisfied me in this point. but there still remains one great difficulty, which i know not how you will get over. and, indeed, it is of such importance that if you could solve all others, without being able to find a solution for this, you must never expect to make me a proselyte to your principles. phil. let me know this mighty difficulty. hyl. the scripture account of the creation is what appears to me utterly irreconcilable with your notions. moses tells us of a creation: a creation of what? of ideas? no, certainly, but of things, of real things, solid corporeal substances. bring your principles to agree with this, and i shall perhaps agree with you. phil. moses mentions the sun, moon, and stars, earth and sea, plants and animals. that all these do really exist, and were in the beginning created by god, i make no question. if by ideas you mean fictions and fancies of the mind, then these are no ideas. if by ideas you mean immediate objects of the understanding, or sensible things, which cannot exist unperceived, or out of a mind, then these things are ideas. but whether you do or do not call them ideas, it matters little. the difference is only about a name. and, whether that name be retained or rejected, the sense, the truth, and reality of things continues the same. in common talk, the objects of our senses are not termed ideas, but things. call them so still: provided you do not attribute to them any absolute external existence, and i shall never quarrel with you for a word. the creation, therefore, i allow to have been a creation of things, of real things. neither is this in the least inconsistent with my principles, as is evident from what i have now said; and would have been evident to you without this, if you had not forgotten what had been so often said before. but as for solid corporeal substances, i desire you to show where moses makes any mention of them; and, if they should be mentioned by him, or any other inspired writer, it would still be incumbent on you to shew those words were not taken in the vulgar acceptation, for things falling under our senses, but in the philosophic acceptation, for matter, or an unknown quiddity, with an absolute existence. when you have proved these points, then (and not till then) may you bring the authority of moses into our dispute. hyl. it is in vain to dispute about a point so clear. i am content to refer it to your own conscience. are you not satisfied there is some peculiar repugnancy between the mosaic account of the creation and your notions? phil. if all possible sense which can be put on the first chapter of genesis may be conceived as consistently with my principles as any other, then it has no peculiar repugnancy with them. but there is no sense you may not as well conceive, believing as i do. since, besides spirits, all you conceive are ideas; and the existence of these i do not deny. neither do you pretend they exist without the mind. hyl. pray let me see any sense you can understand it in. phil. why, i imagine that if i had been present at the creation, i should have seen things produced into being--that is become perceptible--in the order prescribed by the sacred historian. i ever before believed the mosaic account of the creation, and now find no alteration in my manner of believing it. when things are said to begin or end their existence, we do not mean this with regard to god, but his creatures. all objects are eternally known by god, or, which is the same thing, have an eternal existence in his mind: but when things, before imperceptible to creatures, are, by a decree of god, perceptible to them, then are they said to begin a relative existence, with respect to created minds. upon reading therefore the mosaic account of the creation, i understand that the several parts of the world became gradually perceivable to finite spirits, endowed with proper faculties; so that, whoever such were present, they were in truth perceived by them. this is the literal obvious sense suggested to me by the words of the holy scripture: in which is included no mention, or no thought, either of substratum, instrument, occasion, or absolute existence. and, upon inquiry, i doubt not it will be found that most plain honest men, who believe the creation, never think of those things any more than i. what metaphysical sense you may understand it in, you only can tell. hyl. but, philonous, you do not seem to be aware that you allow created things, in the beginning, only a relative, and consequently hypothetical being: that is to say, upon supposition there were men to perceive them; without which they have no actuality of absolute existence, wherein creation might terminate. is it not, therefore, according to you, plainly impossible the creation of any inanimate creatures should precede that of man? and is not this directly contrary to the mosaic account? phil. in answer to that, i say, first, created beings might begin to exist in the mind of other created intelligences, beside men. you will not therefore be able to prove any contradiction between moses and my notions, unless you first shew there was no other order of finite created spirits in being, before man. i say farther, in case we conceive the creation, as we should at this time, a parcel of plants or vegetables of all sorts produced, by an invisible power, in a desert where nobody was present--that this way of explaining or conceiving it is consistent with my principles, since they deprive you of nothing, either sensible or imaginable; that it exactly suits with the common, natural, and undebauched notions of mankind; that it manifests the dependence of all things on god; and consequently hath all the good effect or influence, which it is possible that important article of our faith should have in making men humble, thankful, and resigned to their great creator. i say, moreover, that, in this naked conception of things, divested of words, there will not be found any notion of what you call the actuality of absolute existence. you may indeed raise a dust with those terms, and so lengthen our dispute to no purpose. but i entreat you calmly to look into your own thoughts, and then tell me if they are not a useless and unintelligible jargon. hyl. i own i have no very clear notion annexed to them. but what say you to this? do you not make the existence of sensible things consist in their being in a mind? and were not all things eternally in the mind of god? did they not therefore exist from all eternity, according to you? and how could that which was eternal be created in time? can anything be clearer or better connected than this? phil. and are not you too of opinion, that god knew all things from eternity? hyl. i am. phil. consequently they always had a being in the divine intellect. hyl. this i acknowledge. phil. by your own confession, therefore, nothing is new, or begins to be, in respect of the mind of god. so we are agreed in that point. hyl. what shall we make then of the creation? phil. may we not understand it to have been entirely in respect of finite spirits; so that things, with regard to us, may properly be said to begin their existence, or be created, when god decreed they should become perceptible to intelligent creatures, in that order and manner which he then established, and we now call the laws of nature? you may call this a relative, or hypothetical existence if you please. but, so long as it supplies us with the most natural, obvious, and literal sense of the mosaic history of the creation; so long as it answers all the religious ends of that great article; in a word, so long as you can assign no other sense or meaning in its stead; why should we reject this? is it to comply with a ridiculous sceptical humour of making everything nonsense and unintelligible? i am sure you cannot say it is for the glory of god. for, allowing it to be a thing possible and conceivable that the corporeal world should have an absolute existence extrinsical to the mind of god, as well as to the minds of all created spirits; yet how could this set forth either the immensity or omniscience of the deity, or the necessary and immediate dependence of all things on him? nay, would it not rather seem to derogate from those attributes? hyl. well, but as to this decree of god's, for making things perceptible, what say you, philonous? is it not plain, god did either execute that decree from all eternity, or at some certain time began to will what he had not actually willed before, but only designed to will? if the former, then there could be no creation, or beginning of existence, in finite things. if the latter, then we must acknowledge something new to befall the deity; which implies a sort of change: and all change argues imperfection. phil. pray consider what you are doing. is it not evident this objection concludes equally against a creation in any sense; nay, against every other act of the deity, discoverable by the light of nature? none of which can we conceive, otherwise than as performed in time, and having a beginning. god is a being of transcendent and unlimited perfections: his nature, therefore, is incomprehensible to finite spirits. it is not, therefore, to be expected, that any man, whether materialist or immaterialist, should have exactly just notions of the deity, his attributes, and ways of operation. if then you would infer anything against me, your difficulty must not be drawn from the inadequateness of our conceptions of the divine nature, which is unavoidable on any scheme; but from the denial of matter, of which there is not one word, directly or indirectly, in what you have now objected. hyl. i must acknowledge the difficulties you are concerned to clear are such only as arise from the non-existence of matter, and are peculiar to that notion. so far you are in the right. but i cannot by any means bring myself to think there is no such peculiar repugnancy between the creation and your opinion; though indeed where to fix it, i do not distinctly know. phil. what would you have? do i not acknowledge a twofold state of things--the one ectypal or natural, the other archetypal and eternal? the former was created in time; the latter existed from everlasting in the mind of god. is not this agreeable to the common notions of divines? or, is any more than this necessary in order to conceive the creation? but you suspect some peculiar repugnancy, though you know not where it lies. to take away all possibility of scruple in the case, do but consider this one point. either you are not able to conceive the creation on any hypothesis whatsoever; and, if so, there is no ground for dislike or complaint against any particular opinion on that score: or you are able to conceive it; and, if so, why not on my principles, since thereby nothing conceivable is taken away? you have all along been allowed the full scope of sense, imagination, and reason. whatever, therefore, you could before apprehend, either immediately or mediately by your senses, or by ratiocination from your senses; whatever you could perceive, imagine, or understand, remains still with you. if, therefore, the notion you have of the creation by other principles be intelligible, you have it still upon mine; if it be not intelligible, i conceive it to be no notion at all; and so there is no loss of it. and indeed it seems to me very plain that the supposition of matter, that is a thing perfectly unknown and inconceivable, cannot serve to make us conceive anything. and, i hope it need not be proved to you that if the existence of matter doth not make the creation conceivable, the creation's being without it inconceivable can be no objection against its non-existence. hyl. i confess, philonous, you have almost satisfied me in this point of the creation. phil. i would fain know why you are not quite satisfied. you tell me indeed of a repugnancy between the mosaic history and immaterialism: but you know not where it lies. is this reasonable, hylas? can you expect i should solve a difficulty without knowing what it is? but, to pass by all that, would not a man think you were assured there is no repugnancy between the received notions of materialists and the inspired writings? hyl. and so i am. phil. ought the historical part of scripture to be understood in a plain obvious sense, or in a sense which is metaphysical and out of the way? hyl. in the plain sense, doubtless. phil. when moses speaks of herbs, earth, water, &c. as having been created by god; think you not the sensible things commonly signified by those words are suggested to every unphilosophical reader? hyl. i cannot help thinking so. phil. and are not all ideas, or things perceived by sense, to be denied a real existence by the doctrine of the materialist? hyl. this i have already acknowledged. phil. the creation, therefore, according to them, was not the creation of things sensible, which have only a relative being, but of certain unknown natures, which have an absolute being, wherein creation might terminate? hyl. true. phil. is it not therefore evident the assertors of matter destroy the plain obvious sense of moses, with which their notions are utterly inconsistent; and instead of it obtrude on us i know not what; something equally unintelligible to themselves and me? hyl. i cannot contradict you. phil. moses tells us of a creation. a creation of what? of unknown quiddities, of occasions, or substratum? no, certainly; but of things obvious to the senses. you must first reconcile this with your notions, if you expect i should be reconciled to them. hyl. i see you can assault me with my own weapons. phil. then as to absolute existence; was there ever known a more jejune notion than that? something it is so abstracted and unintelligible that you have frankly owned you could not conceive it, much less explain anything by it. but allowing matter to exist, and the notion of absolute existence to be clear as light; yet, was this ever known to make the creation more credible? nay, hath it not furnished the atheists and infidels of all ages with the most plausible arguments against a creation? that a corporeal substance, which hath an absolute existence without the minds of spirits, should be produced out of nothing, by the mere will of a spirit, hath been looked upon as a thing so contrary to all reason, so impossible and absurd! that not only the most celebrated among the ancients, but even divers modern and christian philosophers have thought matter co-eternal with the deity. lay these things together, and then judge you whether materialism disposes men to believe the creation of things. hyl. i own, philonous, i think it does not. this of the creation is the last objection i can think of; and i must needs own it hath been sufficiently answered as well as the rest. nothing now remains to be overcome but a sort of unaccountable backwardness that i find in myself towards your notions. phil. when a man is swayed, he knows not why, to one side of the question, can this, think you, be anything else but the effect of prejudice, which never fails to attend old and rooted notions? and indeed in this respect i cannot deny the belief of matter to have very much the advantage over the contrary opinion, with men of a learned education. hyl. i confess it seems to be as you say. phil. as a balance, therefore, to this weight of prejudice, let us throw into the scale the great advantages that arise from the belief of immaterialism, both in regard to religion and human learning. the being of a god, and incorruptibility of the soul, those great articles of religion, are they not proved with the clearest and most immediate evidence? when i say the being of a god, i do not mean an obscure general cause of things, whereof we have no conception, but god, in the strict and proper sense of the word. a being whose spirituality, omnipresence, providence, omniscience, infinite power and goodness, are as conspicuous as the existence of sensible things, of which (notwithstanding the fallacious pretences and affected scruples of sceptics) there is no more reason to doubt than of our own being.--then, with relation to human sciences. in natural philosophy, what intricacies, what obscurities, what contradictions hath the belief of matter led men into! to say nothing of the numberless disputes about its extent, continuity, homogeneity, gravity, divisibility, &c.--do they not pretend to explain all things by bodies operating on bodies, according to the laws of motion? and yet, are they able to comprehend how one body should move another? nay, admitting there was no difficulty in reconciling the notion of an inert being with a cause, or in conceiving how an accident might pass from one body to another; yet, by all their strained thoughts and extravagant suppositions, have they been able to reach the mechanical production of any one animal or vegetable body? can they account, by the laws of motion, for sounds, tastes, smells, or colours; or for the regular course of things? have they accounted, by physical principles, for the aptitude and contrivance even of the most inconsiderable parts of the universe? but, laying aside matter and corporeal, causes, and admitting only the efficiency of an all-perfect mind, are not all the effects of nature easy and intelligible? if the phenomena are nothing else but ideas; god is a spirit, but matter an unintelligent, unperceiving being. if they demonstrate an unlimited power in their cause; god is active and omnipotent, but matter an inert mass. if the order, regularity, and usefulness of them can never be sufficiently admired; god is infinitely wise and provident, but matter destitute of all contrivance and design. these surely are great advantages in physics. not to mention that the apprehension of a distant deity naturally disposes men to a negligence in their moral actions; which they would be more cautious of, in case they thought him immediately present, and acting on their minds, without the interposition of matter, or unthinking second causes.--then in metaphysics: what difficulties concerning entity in abstract, substantial forms, hylarchic principles, plastic natures, substance and accident, principle of individuation, possibility of matter's thinking, origin of ideas, the manner how two independent substances so widely different as spirit and matter, should mutually operate on each other? what difficulties, i say, and endless disquisitions, concerning these and innumerable other the like points, do we escape, by supposing only spirits and ideas?--even the mathematics themselves, if we take away the absolute existence of extended things, become much more clear and easy; the most shocking paradoxes and intricate speculations in those sciences depending on the infinite divisibility of finite extension; which depends on that supposition--but what need is there to insist on the particular sciences? is not that opposition to all science whatsoever, that frenzy of the ancient and modern sceptics, built on the same foundation? or can you produce so much as one argument against the reality of corporeal things, or in behalf of that avowed utter ignorance of their natures, which doth not suppose their reality to consist in an external absolute existence? upon this supposition, indeed, the objections from the change of colours in a pigeon's neck, or the appearance of the broken oar in the water, must be allowed to have weight. but these and the like objections vanish, if we do not maintain the being of absolute external originals, but place the reality of things in ideas, fleeting indeed, and changeable;--however, not changed at random, but according to the fixed order of nature. for, herein consists that constancy and truth of things which secures all the concerns of life, and distinguishes that which is real from the irregular visions of the fancy. hyl. i agree to all you have now said, and must own that nothing can incline me to embrace your opinion more than the advantages i see it is attended with. i am by nature lazy; and this would be a mighty abridgment in knowledge. what doubts, what hypotheses, what labyrinths of amusement, what fields of disputation, what an ocean of false learning, may be avoided by that single notion of immaterialism! phil. after all, is there anything farther remaining to be done? you may remember you promised to embrace that opinion which upon examination should appear most agreeable to common sense and remote from scepticism. this, by your own confession, is that which denies matter, or the absolute existence of corporeal things. nor is this all; the same notion has been proved several ways, viewed in different lights, pursued in its consequences, and all objections against it cleared. can there be a greater evidence of its truth? or is it possible it should have all the marks of a true opinion and yet be false? hyl. i own myself entirely satisfied for the present in all respects. but, what security can i have that i shall still continue the same full assent to your opinion, and that no unthought-of objection or difficulty will occur hereafter? phil. pray, hylas, do you in other cases, when a point is once evidently proved, withhold your consent on account of objections or difficulties it may be liable to? are the difficulties that attend the doctrine of incommensurable quantities, of the angle of contact, of the asymptotes to curves, or the like, sufficient to make you hold out against mathematical demonstration? or will you disbelieve the providence of god, because there may be some particular things which you know not how to reconcile with it? if there are difficulties attending immaterialism, there are at the same time direct and evident proofs of it. but for the existence of matter there is not one proof, and far more numerous and insurmountable objections lie against it. but where are those mighty difficulties you insist on? alas! you know not where or what they are; something which may possibly occur hereafter. if this be a sufficient pretence for withholding your full assent, you should never yield it to any proposition, how free soever from exceptions, how clearly and solidly soever demonstrated. hyl. you have satisfied me, philonous. phil. but, to arm you against all future objections, do but consider: that which bears equally hard on two contradictory opinions can be proof against neither. whenever, therefore, any difficulty occurs, try if you can find a solution for it on the hypothesis of the materialists. be not deceived by words; but sound your own thoughts. and in case you cannot conceive it easier by the help of materialism, it is plain it can be no objection against immaterialism. had you proceeded all along by this rule, you would probably have spared yourself abundance of trouble in objecting; since of all your difficulties i challenge you to shew one that is explained by matter: nay, which is not more unintelligible with than without that supposition; and consequently makes rather against than for it. you should consider, in each particular, whether the difficulty arises from the non-existence of matter. if it doth not, you might as well argue from the infinite divisibility of extension against the divine prescience, as from such a difficulty against immaterialism. and yet, upon recollection, i believe you will find this to have been often, if not always, the case. you should likewise take heed not to argue on a petitio principii. one is apt to say--the unknown substances ought to be esteemed real things, rather than the ideas in our minds: and who can tell but the unthinking external substance may concur, as a cause or instrument, in the productions of our ideas? but is not this proceeding on a supposition that there are such external substances? and to suppose this, is it not begging the question? but, above all things, you should beware of imposing on yourself by that vulgar sophism which is called ignoratio elenchi. you talked often as if you thought i maintained the non-existence of sensible things. whereas in truth no one can be more thoroughly assured of their existence than i am. and it is you who doubt; i should have said, positively deny it. everything that is seen, felt, heard, or any way perceived by the senses, is, on the principles i embrace, a real being; but not on yours. remember, the matter you contend for is an unknown somewhat (if indeed it may be termed somewhat), which is quite stripped of all sensible qualities, and can neither be perceived by sense, nor apprehended by the mind. remember i say, that it is not any object which is hard or soft, hot or cold, blue or white, round or square, &c. for all these things i affirm do exist. though indeed i deny they have an existence distinct from being perceived; or that they exist out of all minds whatsoever. think on these points; let them be attentively considered and still kept in view. otherwise you will not comprehend the state of the question; without which your objections will always be wide of the mark, and, instead of mine, may possibly be directed (as more than once they have been) against your own notions. hyl. i must needs own, philonous, nothing seems to have kept me from agreeing with you more than this same mistaking the question. in denying matter, at first glimpse i am tempted to imagine you deny the things we see and feel: but, upon reflexion, find there is no ground for it. what think you, therefore, of retaining the name matter, and applying it to sensible things? this may be done without any change in your sentiments: and, believe me, it would be a means of reconciling them to some persons who may be more shocked at an innovation in words than in opinion. phil. with all my heart: retain the word matter, and apply it to the objects of sense, if you please; provided you do not attribute to them any subsistence distinct from their being perceived. i shall never quarrel with you for an expression. matter, or material substance, are terms introduced by philosophers; and, as used by them, imply a sort of independency, or a subsistence distinct from being perceived by a mind: but are never used by common people; or, if ever, it is to signify the immediate objects of sense. one would think, therefore, so long as the names of all particular things, with the terms sensible, substance, body, stuff, and the like, are retained, the word matter should be never missed in common talk. and in philosophical discourses it seems the best way to leave it quite out: since there is not, perhaps, any one thing that hath more favoured and strengthened the depraved bent of the mind towards atheism than the use of that general confused term. hyl. well but, philonous, since i am content to give up the notion of an unthinking substance exterior to the mind, i think you ought not to deny me the privilege of using the word matter as i please, and annexing it to a collection of sensible qualities subsisting only in the mind. i freely own there is no other substance, in a strict sense, than spirit. but i have been so long accustomed to the term matter that i know not how to part with it: to say, there is no matter in the world, is still shocking to me. whereas to say--there is no matter, if by that term be meant an unthinking substance existing without the mind; but if by matter is meant some sensible thing, whose existence consists in being perceived, then there is matter:--this distinction gives it quite another turn; and men will come into your notions with small difficulty, when they are proposed in that manner. for, after all, the controversy about matter in the strict acceptation of it, lies altogether between you and the philosophers: whose principles, i acknowledge, are not near so natural, or so agreeable to the common sense of mankind, and holy scripture, as yours. there is nothing we either desire or shun but as it makes, or is apprehended to make, some part of our happiness or misery. but what hath happiness or misery, joy or grief, pleasure or pain, to do with absolute existence; or with unknown entities, abstracted from all relation to us? it is evident, things regard us only as they are pleasing or displeasing: and they can please or displease only so far forth as they are perceived. farther, therefore, we are not concerned; and thus far you leave things as you found them. yet still there is something new in this doctrine. it is plain, i do not now think with the philosophers; nor yet altogether with the vulgar. i would know how the case stands in that respect; precisely, what you have added to, or altered in my former notions. phil. i do not pretend to be a setter-up of new notions. my endeavours tend only to unite, and place in a clearer light, that truth which was before shared between the vulgar and the philosophers:--the former being of opinion, that those things they immediately perceive are the real things; and the latter, that the things immediately perceived are ideas, which exist only in the mind. which two notions put together, do, in effect, constitute the substance of what i advance. hyl. i have been a long time distrusting my senses: methought i saw things by a dim light and through false glasses. now the glasses are removed and a new light breaks in upon my understanding. i am clearly convinced that i see things in their native forms, and am no longer in pain about their unknown natures or absolute existence. this is the state i find myself in at present; though, indeed, the course that brought me to it i do not yet thoroughly comprehend. you set out upon the same principles that academics, cartesians, and the like sects usually do; and for a long time it looked as if you were advancing their philosophical scepticism: but, in the end, your conclusions are directly opposite to theirs. phil. you see, hylas, the water of yonder fountain, how it is forced upwards, in a round column, to a certain height; at which it breaks, and falls back into the basin from whence it rose: its ascent, as well as descent, proceeding from the same uniform law or principle of gravitation. just so, the same principles which, at first view, lead to scepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense. a treatise concerning the principles of human knowledge by george berkeley ( - ) wherein the chief causes of error and difficulty in the sciences, with the grounds of scepticism, atheism, and irreligion, are inquired into. dedication to the right honourable thomas, earl of pembroke, &c., knight of the most noble order of the garter and one of the lords of her majesty's most honourable privy council. my lord, you will perhaps wonder that an obscure person, who has not the honour to be known to your lordship, should presume to address you in this manner. but that a man who has written something with a design to promote useful knowledge and religion in the world should make choice of your lordship for his patron, will not be thought strange by any one that is not altogether unacquainted with the present state of the church and learning, and consequently ignorant how great an ornament and support you are to both. yet, nothing could have induced me to make you this present of my poor endeavours, were i not encouraged by that candour and native goodness which is so bright a part in your lordship's character. i might add, my lord, that the extraordinary favour and bounty you have been pleased to show towards our society gave me hopes you would not be unwilling to countenance the studies of one of its members. these considerations determined me to lay this treatise at your lordship's feet, and the rather because i was ambitious to have it known that i am with the truest and most profound respect, on account of that learning and virtue which the world so justly admires in your lordship, my lord, your lordship's most humble and most devoted servant, george berkeley * * * * * contents preface introduction of the principles of human knowledge * * * * * preface what i here make public has, after a long and scrupulous inquiry, seemed to me evidently true and not unuseful to be known--particularly to those who are tainted with scepticism, or want a demonstration of the existence and immateriality of god, or the natural immortality of the soul. whether it be so or no i am content the reader should impartially examine; since i do not think myself any farther concerned for the success of what i have written than as it is agreeable to truth. but, to the end this may not suffer, i make it my request that the reader suspend his judgment till he has once at least read the whole through with that degree of attention and thought which the subject-matter shall seem to deserve. for, as there are some passages that, taken by themselves, are very liable (nor could it be remedied) to gross misinterpretation, and to be charged with most absurd consequences, which, nevertheless, upon an entire perusal will appear not to follow from them; so likewise, though the whole should be read over, yet, if this be done transiently, it is very probable my sense may be mistaken; but to a thinking reader, i flatter myself it will be throughout clear and obvious. as for the characters of novelty and singularity which some of the following notions may seem to bear, it is, i hope, needless to make any apology on that account. he must surely be either very weak, or very little acquainted with the sciences, who shall reject a truth that is capable of demonstration, for no other reason but because it is newly known, and contrary to the prejudices of mankind. thus much i thought fit to premise, in order to prevent, if possible, the hasty censures of a sort of men who are too apt to condemn an opinion before they rightly comprehend it. introduction . philosophy being nothing else but the study of wisdom and truth, it may with reason be expected that those who have spent most time and pains in it should enjoy a greater calm and serenity of mind, a greater clearness and evidence of knowledge, and be less disturbed with doubts and difficulties than other men. yet so it is, we see the illiterate bulk of mankind that walk the high-road of plain common sense, and are governed by the dictates of nature, for the most part easy and undisturbed. to them nothing that is familiar appears unaccountable or difficult to comprehend. they complain not of any want of evidence in their senses, and are out of all danger of becoming sceptics. but no sooner do we depart from sense and instinct to follow the light of a superior principle, to reason, meditate, and reflect on the nature of things, but a thousand scruples spring up in our minds concerning those things which before we seemed fully to comprehend. prejudices and errors of sense do from all parts discover themselves to our view; and, endeavouring to correct these by reason, we are insensibly drawn into uncouth paradoxes, difficulties, and inconsistencies, which multiply and grow upon us as we advance in speculation, till at length, having wandered through many intricate mazes, we find ourselves just where we were, or, which is worse, sit down in a forlorn scepticism. . the cause of this is thought to be the obscurity of things, or the natural weakness and imperfection of our understandings. it is said, the faculties we have are few, and those designed by nature for the support and comfort of life, and not to penetrate into the inward essence and constitution of things. besides, the mind of man being finite, when it treats of things which partake of infinity, it is not to be wondered at if it run into absurdities and contradictions, out of which it is impossible it should ever extricate itself, it being of the nature of infinite not to be comprehended by that which is finite. . but, perhaps, we may be too partial to ourselves in placing the fault originally in our faculties, and not rather in the wrong use we make of them. it is a hard thing to suppose that right deductions from true principles should ever end in consequences which cannot be maintained or made consistent. we should believe that god has dealt more bountifully with the sons of men than to give them a strong desire for that knowledge which he had placed quite out of their reach. this were not agreeable to the wonted indulgent methods of providence, which, whatever appetites it may have implanted in the creatures, doth usually furnish them with such means as, if rightly made use of, will not fail to satisfy them. upon the whole, i am inclined to think that the far greater part, if not all, of those difficulties which have hitherto amused philosophers, and blocked up the way to knowledge, are entirely owing to ourselves--that we have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see. . my purpose therefore is, to try if i can discover what those principles are which have introduced all that doubtfulness and uncertainty, those absurdities and contradictions, into the several sects of philosophy; insomuch that the wisest men have thought our ignorance incurable, conceiving it to arise from the natural dulness and limitation of our faculties. and surely it is a work well deserving our pains to make a strict inquiry concerning the first principles of human knowledge, to sift and examine them on all sides, especially since there may be some grounds to suspect that those lets and difficulties, which stay and embarrass the mind in its search after truth, do not spring from any darkness and intricacy in the objects, or natural defect in the understanding, so much as from false principles which have been insisted on, and might have been avoided. . how difficult and discouraging soever this attempt may seem, when i consider how many great and extraordinary men have gone before me in the like designs, yet i am not without some hopes--upon the consideration that the largest views are not always the clearest, and that he who is short--sighted will be obliged to draw the object nearer, and may, perhaps, by a close and narrow survey, discern that which had escaped far better eyes. . a chief source of error in all parts of knowledge.--in order to prepare the mind of the reader for the easier conceiving what follows, it is proper to premise somewhat, by way of introduction, concerning the nature and abuse of language. but the unravelling this matter leads me in some measure to anticipate my design, by taking notice of what seems to have had a chief part in rendering speculation intricate and perplexed, and to have occasioned innumerable errors and difficulties in almost all parts of knowledge. and that is the opinion that the mind has a power of framing abstract ideas or notions of things. he who is not a perfect stranger to the writings and disputes of philosophers must needs acknowledge that no small part of them are spent about abstract ideas. these are in a more especial manner thought to be the object of those sciences which go by the name of logic and metaphysics, and of all that which passes under the notion of the most abstracted and sublime learning, in all which one shall scarce find any question handled in such a manner as does not suppose their existence in the mind, and that it is well acquainted with them. . proper acceptation of abstraction.--it is agreed on all hands that the qualities or modes of things do never really exist each of them apart by itself, and separated from all others, but are mixed, as it were, and blended together, several in the same object. but, we are told, the mind being able to consider each quality singly, or abstracted from those other qualities with which it is united, does by that means frame to itself abstract ideas. for example, there is perceived by sight an object extended, coloured, and moved: this mixed or compound idea the mind resolving into its simple, constituent parts, and viewing each by itself, exclusive of the rest, does frame the abstract ideas of extension, colour, and motion. not that it is possible for colour or motion to exist without extension; but only that the mind can frame to itself by abstraction the idea of colour exclusive of extension, and of motion exclusive of both colour and extension. . of generalizing [note].--again, the mind having observed that in the particular extensions perceived by sense there is something common and alike in all, and some other things peculiar, as this or that figure or magnitude, which distinguish them one from another; it considers apart or singles out by itself that which is common, making thereof a most abstract idea of extension, which is neither line, surface, nor solid, nor has any figure or magnitude, but is an idea entirely prescinded from all these. so likewise the mind, by leaving out of the particular colours perceived by sense that which distinguishes them one from another, and retaining that only which is common to all, makes an idea of colour in abstract which is neither red, nor blue, nor white, nor any other determinate colour. and, in like manner, by considering motion abstractedly not only from the body moved, but likewise from the figure it describes, and all particular directions and velocities, the abstract idea of motion is framed; which equally corresponds to all particular motions whatsoever that may be perceived by sense. [note: vide reid, on the intellectual powers of man, essay v, chap iii. sec. , edit. ] . of compounding.--and as the mind frames to itself abstract ideas of qualities or modes, so does it, by the same precision or mental separation, attain abstract ideas of the more compounded beings which include several coexistent qualities. for example, the mind having observed that peter, james, and john resemble each other in certain common agreements of shape and other qualities, leaves out of the complex or compounded idea it has of peter, james, and any other particular man, that which is peculiar to each, retaining only what is common to all, and so makes an abstract idea wherein all the particulars equally partake--abstracting entirely from and cutting off all those circumstances and differences which might determine it to any particular existence. and after this manner it is said we come by the abstract idea of man, or, if you please, humanity, or human nature; wherein it is true there is included colour, because there is no man but has some colour, but then it can be neither white, nor black, nor any particular colour, because there is no one particular colour wherein all men partake. so likewise there is included stature, but then it is neither tall stature, nor low stature, nor yet middle stature, but something abstracted from all these. and so of the rest. moreover, their being a great variety of other creatures that partake in some parts, but not all, of the complex idea of man, the mind, leaving out those parts which are peculiar to men, and retaining those only which are common to all the living creatures, frames the idea of animal, which abstracts not only from all particular men, but also all birds, beasts, fishes, and insects. the constituent parts of the abstract idea of animal are body, life, sense, and spontaneous motion. by body is meant body without any particular shape or figure, there being no one shape or figure common to all animals, without covering, either of hair, or feathers, or scales, &c., nor yet naked: hair, feathers, scales, and nakedness being the distinguishing properties of particular animals, and for that reason left out of the abstract idea. upon the same account the spontaneous motion must be neither walking, nor flying, nor creeping; it is nevertheless a motion, but what that motion is it is not easy to conceive[note.]. [note: vide hobbes' tripos, ch. v. sect. .] . two objections to the existence of abstract ideas.--whether others have this wonderful faculty of abstracting their ideas, they best can tell: for myself, i find indeed i have a faculty of imagining, or representing to myself, the ideas of those particular things i have perceived, and of variously compounding and dividing them. i can imagine a man with two heads, or the upper parts of a man joined to the body of a horse. i can consider the hand, the eye, the nose, each by itself abstracted or separated from the rest of the body. but then whatever hand or eye i imagine, it must have some particular shape and colour. likewise the idea of man that i frame to myself must be either of a white, or a black, or a tawny, a straight, or a crooked, a tall, or a low, or a middle-sized man. i cannot by any effort of thought conceive the abstract idea above described. and it is equally impossible for me to form the abstract idea of motion distinct from the body moving, and which is neither swift nor slow, curvilinear nor rectilinear; and the like may be said of all other abstract general ideas whatsoever. to be plain, i own myself able to abstract in one sense, as when i consider some particular parts or qualities separated from others, with which, though they are united in some object, yet it is possible they may really exist without them. but i deny that i can abstract from one another, or conceive separately, those qualities which it is impossible should exist so separated; or that i can frame a general notion, by abstracting from particulars in the manner aforesaid--which last are the two proper acceptations of abstraction. and there are grounds to think most men will acknowledge themselves to be in my case. the generality of men which are simple and illiterate never pretend to abstract notions. it is said they are difficult and not to be attained without pains and study; we may therefore reasonably conclude that, if such there be, they are confined only to the learned. . i proceed to examine what can be alleged in defence of the doctrine of abstraction, and try if i can discover what it is that inclines the men of speculation to embrace an opinion so remote from common sense as that seems to be. there has been a late deservedly esteemed philosopher who, no doubt, has given it very much countenance, by seeming to think the having abstract general ideas is what puts the widest difference in point of understanding betwixt man and beast. "the having of general ideas," saith he, "is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain unto. for, it is evident we observe no foot-steps in them of making use of general signs for universal ideas; from which we have reason to imagine that they have not the faculty of abstracting, or making general ideas, since they have no use of words or any other general signs." and a little after: "therefore, i think, we may suppose that it is in this that the species of brutes are discriminated from men, and it is that proper difference wherein they are wholly separated, and which at last widens to so wide a distance. for, if they have any ideas at all, and are not bare machines (as some would have them), we cannot deny them to have some reason. it seems as evident to me that they do, some of them, in certain instances reason as that they have sense; but it is only in particular ideas, just as they receive them from their senses. they are the best of them tied up within those narrow bounds, and have not (as i think) the faculty to enlarge them by any kind of abstraction." essay on human understanding, ii. xi. and . i readily agree with this learned author, that the faculties of brutes can by no means attain to abstraction. but then if this be made the distinguishing property of that sort of animals, i fear a great many of those that pass for men must be reckoned into their number. the reason that is here assigned why we have no grounds to think brutes have abstract general ideas is, that we observe in them no use of words or any other general signs; which is built on this supposition--that the making use of words implies the having general ideas. from which it follows that men who use language are able to abstract or generalize their ideas. that this is the sense and arguing of the author will further appear by his answering the question he in another place puts: "since all things that exist are only particulars, how come we by general terms?" his answer is: "words become general by being made the signs of general ideas."--essay on human understanding, iv. iii. . but [note. ] it seems that a word becomes general by being made the sign, not of an abstract general idea, but of several particular ideas [note. ], any one of which it indifferently suggests to the mind. for example, when it is said "the change of motion is proportional to the impressed force," or that "whatever has extension is divisible," these propositions are to be understood of motion and extension in general; and nevertheless it will not follow that they suggest to my thoughts an idea of motion without a body moved, or any determinate direction and velocity, or that i must conceive an abstract general idea of extension, which is neither line, surface, nor solid, neither great nor small, black, white, nor red, nor of any other determinate colour. it is only implied that whatever particular motion i consider, whether it be swift or slow, perpendicular, horizontal, or oblique, or in whatever object, the axiom concerning it holds equally true. as does the other of every particular extension, it matters not whether line, surface, or solid, whether of this or that magnitude or figure. [note : "to this i cannot assent, being of opinion," edit of .] [note : of the same sort.] . existence of general ideas admitted.--by observing how ideas become general we may the better judge how words are made so. and here it is to be noted that i do not deny absolutely there are general ideas, but only that there are any abstract general ideas; for, in the passages we have quoted wherein there is mention of general ideas, it is always supposed that they are formed by abstraction, after the manner set forth in sections and . now, if we will annex a meaning to our words, and speak only of what we can conceive, i believe we shall acknowledge that an idea which, considered in itself, is particular, becomes general by being made to represent or stand for all other particular ideas of the same sort. to make this plain by an example, suppose a geometrician is demonstrating the method of cutting a line in two equal parts. he draws, for instance, a black line of an inch in length: this, which in itself is a particular line, is nevertheless with regard to its signification general, since, as it is there used, it represents all particular lines whatsoever; so that what is demonstrated of it is demonstrated of all lines, or, in other words, of a line in general. and, as that particular line becomes general by being made a sign, so the name line, which taken absolutely is particular, by being a sign is made general. and as the former owes its generality not to its being the sign of an abstract or general line, but of all particular right lines that may possibly exist, so the latter must be thought to derive its generality from the same cause, namely, the various particular lines which it indifferently denotes. [note.] [note: "i look upon this (doctrine) to be one of the greatest and most valuable discoveries that have been made of late years in the republic of letters."--treatise of human nature, book i, part i, sect. . also stewart's philosophy of the mind, part i, chapt. iv. sect. iii. p. .] . abstract general ideas necessary, according to locke.--to give the reader a yet clearer view of the nature of abstract ideas, and the uses they are thought necessary to, i shall add one more passage out of the essay on human understanding, (iv. vii. ) which is as follows: "abstract ideas are not so obvious or easy to children or the yet unexercised mind as particular ones. if they seem so to grown men it is only because by constant and familiar use they are made so. for, when we nicely reflect upon them, we shall find that general ideas are fictions and contrivances of the mind, that carry difficulty with them, and do not so easily offer themselves as we are apt to imagine. for example, does it not require some pains and skill to form the general idea of a triangle (which is yet none of the most abstract, comprehensive, and difficult); for it must be neither oblique nor rectangle, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and none of these at once? in effect, it is something imperfect that cannot exist, an idea wherein some parts of several different and inconsistent ideas are put together. it is true the mind in this imperfect state has need of such ideas, and makes all the haste to them it can, for the conveniency of communication and enlargement of knowledge, to both which it is naturally very much inclined. but yet one has reason to suspect such ideas are marks of our imperfection. at least this is enough to show that the most abstract and general ideas are not those that the mind is first and most easily acquainted with, nor such as its earliest knowledge is conversant about."--if any man has the faculty of framing in his mind such an idea of a triangle as is here described, it is in vain to pretend to dispute him out of it, nor would i go about it. all i desire is that the reader would fully and certainly inform himself whether he has such an idea or no. and this, methinks, can be no hard task for anyone to perform. what more easy than for anyone to look a little into his own thoughts, and there try whether he has, or can attain to have, an idea that shall correspond with the description that is here given of the general idea of a triangle, which is neither oblique nor rectangle, equilateral, equicrural nor scalenon, but all and none of these at once? . but they are not necessary for communication.--much is here said of the difficulty that abstract ideas carry with them, and the pains and skill requisite to the forming them. and it is on all hands agreed that there is need of great toil and labour of the mind, to emancipate our thoughts from particular objects, and raise them to those sublime speculations that are conversant about abstract ideas. from all which the natural consequence should seem to be, that so difficult a thing as the forming abstract ideas was not necessary for communication, which is so easy and familiar to all sorts of men. but, we are told, if they seem obvious and easy to grown men, it is only because by constant and familiar use they are made so. now, i would fain know at what time it is men are employed in surmounting that difficulty, and furnishing themselves with those necessary helps for discourse. it cannot be when they are grown up, for then it seems they are not conscious of any such painstaking; it remains therefore to be the business of their childhood. and surely the great and multiplied labour of framing abstract notions will be found a hard task for that tender age. is it not a hard thing to imagine that a couple of children cannot prate together of their sugar-plums and rattles and the rest of their little trinkets, till they have first tacked together numberless inconsistencies, and so framed in their minds abstract general ideas, and annexed them to every common name they make use of? . nor for the enlargement of knowledge.--nor do i think them a whit more needful for the enlargement of knowledge than for communication. it is, i know, a point much insisted on, that all knowledge and demonstration are about universal notions, to which i fully agree: but then it doth not appear to me that those notions are formed by abstraction in the manner premised--universality, so far as i can comprehend, not consisting in the absolute, positive nature or conception of anything, but in the relation it bears to the particulars signified or represented by it; by virtue whereof it is that things, names, or notions, being in their own nature particular, are rendered universal. thus, when i demonstrate any proposition concerning triangles, it is to be supposed that i have in view the universal idea of a triangle; which ought not to be understood as if i could frame an idea of a triangle which was neither equilateral, nor scalenon, nor equicrural; but only that the particular triangle i consider, whether of this or that sort it matters not, doth equally stand for and represent all rectilinear triangles whatsoever, and is in that sense universal. all which seems very plain and not to include any difficulty in it. . objection.--answer.--but here it will be demanded, how we can know any proposition to be true of all particular triangles, except we have first seen it demonstrated of the abstract idea of a triangle which equally agrees to all? for, because a property may be demonstrated to agree to some one particular triangle, it will not thence follow that it equally belongs to any other triangle, which in all respects is not the same with it. for example, having demonstrated that the three angles of an isosceles rectangular triangle are equal to two right ones, i cannot therefore conclude this affection agrees to all other triangles which have neither a right angle nor two equal sides. it seems therefore that, to be certain this proposition is universally true, we must either make a particular demonstration for every particular triangle, which is impossible, or once for all demonstrate it of the abstract idea of a triangle, in which all the particulars do indifferently partake and by which they are all equally represented. to which i answer, that, though the idea i have in view whilst i make the demonstration be, for instance, that of an isosceles rectangular triangle whose sides are of a determinate length, i may nevertheless be certain it extends to all other rectilinear triangles, of what sort or bigness soever. and that because neither the right angle, nor the equality, nor determinate length of the sides are at all concerned in the demonstration. it is true the diagram i have in view includes all these particulars, but then there is not the least mention made of them in the proof of the proposition. it is not said the three angles are equal to two right ones, because one of them is a right angle, or because the sides comprehending it are of the same length. which sufficiently shows that the right angle might have been oblique, and the sides unequal, and for all that the demonstration have held good. and for this reason it is that i conclude that to be true of any obliquangular or scalenon which i had demonstrated of a particular right--angled equicrural triangle, and not because i demonstrated the proposition of the abstract idea of a triangle and here it must be acknowledged that a man may consider a figure merely as triangular, without attending to the particular qualities of the angles, or relations of the sides. so far he may abstract; but this will never prove that he can frame an abstract, general, inconsistent idea of a triangle. in like manner we may consider peter so far forth as man, or so far forth as animal without framing the fore-mentioned abstract idea, either of man or of animal, inasmuch as all that is perceived is not considered. . advantage of investigating the doctrine of abstract general ideas.--it were an endless as well as an useless thing to trace the schoolmen, those great masters of abstraction, through all the manifold inextricable labyrinths of error and dispute which their doctrine of abstract natures and notions seems to have led them into. what bickerings and controversies, and what a learned dust have been raised about those matters, and what mighty advantage has been from thence derived to mankind, are things at this day too clearly known to need being insisted on. and it had been well if the ill effects of that doctrine were confined to those only who make the most avowed profession of it. when men consider the great pains, industry, and parts that have for so many ages been laid out on the cultivation and advancement of the sciences, and that notwithstanding all this the far greater part of them remains full of darkness and uncertainty, and disputes that are like never to have an end, and even those that are thought to be supported by the most clear and cogent demonstrations contain in them paradoxes which are perfectly irreconcilable to the understandings of men, and that, taking all together, a very small portion of them does supply any real benefit to mankind, otherwise than by being an innocent diversion and amusement--i say the consideration of all this is apt to throw them into a despondency and perfect contempt of all study. but this may perhaps cease upon a view of the false principles that have obtained in the world, amongst all which there is none, methinks, has a more wide and extended sway over the thoughts of speculative men than [note.] this of abstract general ideas. [note: "that we have been endeavouring to overthrow."--edit .] . i come now to consider the source of this prevailing notion, and that seems to me to be language. and surely nothing of less extent than reason itself could have been the source of an opinion so universally received. the truth of this appears as from other reasons so also from the plain confession of the ablest patrons of abstract ideas, who acknowledge that they are made in order to naming; from which it is a clear consequence that if there had been no such things as speech or universal signs there never had been any thought of abstraction. see iii. vi. , and elsewhere of the essay on human understanding. let us examine the manner wherein words have contributed to the origin of that mistake.--first [vide sect. xix.] then, it is thought that every name has, or ought to have, one only precise and settled signification, which inclines men to think there are certain abstract, determinate ideas that constitute the true and only immediate signification of each general name; and that it is by the mediation of these abstract ideas that a general name comes to signify any particular thing. whereas, in truth, there is no such thing as one precise and definite signification annexed to any general name, they all signifying indifferently a great number of particular ideas. all which doth evidently follow from what has been already said, and will clearly appear to anyone by a little reflexion. to this it will be objected that every name that has a definition is thereby restrained to one certain signification. for example, a triangle is defined to be a plain surface comprehended by three right lines, by which that name is limited to denote one certain idea and no other. to which i answer, that in the definition it is not said whether the surface be great or small, black or white, nor whether the sides are long or short, equal or unequal, nor with what angles they are inclined to each other; in all which there may be great variety, and consequently there is no one settled idea which limits the signification of the word triangle. it is one thing for to keep a name constantly to the same definition, and another to make it stand everywhere for the same idea; the one is necessary, the other useless and impracticable. . secondly, but, to give a farther account how words came to produce the doctrine of abstract ideas, it must be observed that it is a received opinion that language has no other end but the communicating our ideas, and that every significant name stands for an idea. this being so, and it being withal certain that names which yet are not thought altogether insignificant do not always mark out particular conceivable ideas, it is straightway concluded that they stand for abstract notions. that there are many names in use amongst speculative men which do not always suggest to others determinate, particular ideas, or in truth anything at all, is what nobody will deny. and a little attention will discover that it is not necessary (even in the strictest reasonings) significant names which stand for ideas should, every time they are used, excite in the understanding the ideas they are made to stand for--in reading and discoursing, names being for the most part used as letters are in algebra, in which, though a particular quantity be marked by each letter, yet to proceed right it is not requisite that in every step each letter suggest to your thoughts that particular quantity it was appointed to stand for.[note.] [note: language has become the source or origin of abstract general ideas on account of a twofold error.--( .) that every word has only one signification. ( .) that the only end of language is the communication of our ideas--ed.] . some of the ends of language.--besides, the communicating of ideas marked by words is not the chief and only end of language, as is commonly supposed. there are other ends, as the raising of some passion, the exciting to or deterring from an action, the putting the mind in some particular disposition--to which the former is in many cases barely subservient, and sometimes entirely omitted, when these can be obtained without it, as i think does not unfrequently happen in the familiar use of language. i entreat the reader to reflect with himself, and see if it doth not often happen, either in hearing or reading a discourse, that the passions of fear, love, hatred, admiration, disdain, and the like, arise immediately in his mind upon the perception of certain words, without any ideas coming between. at first, indeed, the words might have occasioned ideas that were fitting to produce those emotions; but, if i mistake not, it will be found that, when language is once grown familiar, the hearing of the sounds or sight of the characters is oft immediately attended with those passions which at first were wont to be produced by the intervention of ideas that are now quite omitted. may we not, for example, be affected with the promise of a good thing, though we have not an idea of what it is? or is not the being threatened with danger sufficient to excite a dread, though we think not of any particular evil likely to befal us, nor yet frame to ourselves an idea of danger in abstract? if any one shall join ever so little reflexion of his own to what has been said, i believe that it will evidently appear to him that general names are often used in the propriety of language without the speaker's designing them for marks of ideas in his own, which he would have them raise in the mind of the hearer. even proper names themselves do not seem always spoken with a design to bring into our view the ideas of those individuals that are supposed to be marked by them. for example, when a schoolman tells me "aristotle has said it," all i conceive he means by it is to dispose me to embrace his opinion with the deference and submission which custom has annexed to that name. and this effect is often so instantly produced in the minds of those who are accustomed to resign their judgment to authority of that philosopher, as it is impossible any idea either of his person, writings, or reputation should go before [note.]. innumerable examples of this kind may be given, but why should i insist on those things which every one's experience will, i doubt not, plentifully suggest unto him? [note: "so close and immediate a connection may custom establish betwixt the very word aristotle, and the motions of assent and reverence in the minds of some men."--edit .] . caution in the use of language necessary.--we have, i think, shown the impossibility of abstract ideas. we have considered what has been said for them by their ablest patrons; and endeavored to show they are of no use for those ends to which they are thought necessary. and lastly, we have traced them to the source from whence they flow, which appears evidently to be language.--it cannot be denied that words are of excellent use, in that by their means all that stock of knowledge which has been purchased by the joint labours of inquisitive men in all ages and nations may be drawn into the view and made the possession of one single person. but at the same time it must be owned that most parts of knowledge have been strangely perplexed and darkened by the abuse of words, and general ways of speech wherein they are delivered.[note .] since therefore words are so apt to impose on the understanding[note .], whatever ideas i consider, i shall endeavour to take them bare and naked into my view, keeping out of my thoughts so far as i am able, those names which long and constant use has so strictly united with them; from which i may expect to derive the following advantages: [note : "that it may almost be made a question, whether language has contributed more to the hindrance or advancement of the sciences."--edit .] [note : "i am resolved in my inquiries to make as little use of them as possibly i can."--edit .] . first, i shall be sure to get clear of all controversies purely verbal--the springing up of which weeds in almost all the sciences has been a main hindrance to the growth of true and sound knowledge. secondly, this seems to be a sure way to extricate myself out of that fine and subtle net of abstract ideas which has so miserably perplexed and entangled the minds of men; and that with this peculiar circumstance, that by how much the finer and more curious was the wit of any man, by so much the deeper was he likely to be ensnared and faster held therein. thirdly, so long as i confine my thoughts to my own ideas divested of words, i do not see how i can easily be mistaken. the objects i consider, i clearly and adequately know. i cannot be deceived in thinking i have an idea which i have not. it is not possible for me to imagine that any of my own ideas are alike or unlike that are not truly so. to discern the agreements or disagreements there are between my ideas, to see what ideas are included in any compound idea and what not, there is nothing more requisite than an attentive perception of what passes in my own understanding. . but the attainment of all these advantages doth presuppose an entire deliverance from the deception of words, which i dare hardly promise myself; so difficult a thing it is to dissolve an union so early begun, and confirmed by so long a habit as that betwixt words and ideas. which difficulty seems to have been very much increased by the doctrine of abstraction. for, so long as men thought abstract ideas were annexed to their words, it doth not seem strange that they should use words for ideas--it being found an impracticable thing to lay aside the word, and retain the abstract idea in the mind, which in itself was perfectly inconceivable. this seems to me the principal cause why those men who have so emphatically recommended to others the laying aside all use of words in their meditations, and contemplating their bare ideas, have yet failed to perform it themselves. of late many have been very sensible of the absurd opinions and insignificant disputes which grow out of the abuse of words. and, in order to remedy these evils, they advise well, that we attend to the ideas signified, and draw off our attention from the words which signify them. but, how good soever this advice may be they have given others, it is plain they could not have a due regard to it themselves, so long as they thought the only immediate use of words was to signify ideas, and that the immediate signification of every general name was a determinate abstract idea. . but, these being known to be mistakes, a man may with greater ease prevent his being imposed on by words. he that knows he has no other than particular ideas, will not puzzle himself in vain to find out and conceive the abstract idea annexed to any name. and he that knows names do not always stand for ideas will spare himself the labour of looking for ideas where there are none to be had. it were, therefore, to be wished that everyone would use his utmost endeavours to obtain a clear view of the ideas he would consider, separating from them all that dress and incumbrance of words which so much contribute to blind the judgment and divide the attention. in vain do we extend our view into the heavens and pry into the entrails of the earth, in vain do we consult the writings of learned men and trace the dark footsteps of antiquity--we need only draw the curtain of words, to hold the fairest tree of knowledge, whose fruit is excellent, and within the reach of our hand. . unless we take care to clear the first principles of knowledge from the embarras and delusion of words, we may make infinite reasonings upon them to no purpose; we may draw consequences from consequences, and be never the wiser. the farther we go, we shall only lose ourselves the more irrecoverably, and be the deeper entangled in difficulties and mistakes. whoever therefore designs to read the following sheets, i entreat him to make my words the occasion of his own thinking, and endeavour to attain the same train of thoughts in reading that i had in writing them. by this means it will be easy for him to discover the truth or falsity of what i say. he will be out of all danger of being deceived by my words, and i do not see how he can be led into an error by considering his own naked, undisguised ideas. of the principles of human knowledge . objects of human knowledge.--it is evident to any one who takes a survey of the objects of human knowledge, that they are either ideas actually imprinted on the senses; or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind; or lastly, ideas formed by help of memory and imagination--either compounding, dividing, or barely representing those originally perceived in the aforesaid ways. by sight i have the ideas of light and colours, with their several degrees and variations. by touch i perceive hard and soft, heat and cold, motion and resistance, and of all these more and less either as to quantity or degree. smelling furnishes me with odours; the palate with tastes; and hearing conveys sounds to the mind in all their variety of tone and composition. and as several of these are observed to accompany each other, they come to be marked by one name, and so to be reputed as one thing. thus, for example a certain colour, taste, smell, figure and consistence having been observed to go together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified by the name apple. other collections of ideas constitute a stone, a tree, a book, and the like sensible things--which as they are pleasing or disagreeable excite the passions of love, hatred, joy, grief, and so forth. . mind--spirit--soul.--but, besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of knowledge, there is likewise something which knows or perceives them, and exercises divers operations, as willing, imagining, remembering, about them. this perceiving, active being is what i call mind, spirit, soul, or myself. by which words i do not denote any one of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived--for the existence of an idea consists in being perceived. . how far the assent of the vulgar conceded.--that neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by the imagination, exist without the mind, is what everybody will allow. and it seems no less evident that the various sensations or ideas imprinted on the sense, however blended or combined together (that is, whatever objects they compose), cannot exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving them. i think an intuitive knowledge may be obtained of this by any one that shall attend to what is meant by the term exist, when applied to sensible things. the table i write on i say exists, that is, i see and feel it; and if i were out of my study i should say it existed--meaning thereby that if i was in my study i might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does perceive it.[note.] there was an odour, that is, it was smelt; there was a sound, that is, it was heard; a colour or figure, and it was perceived by sight or touch. this is all that i can understand by these and the like expressions. for as to what is said of the absolute existence of unthinking things without any relation to their being perceived, that seems perfectly unintelligible. their esse is percipi, nor is it possible they should have any existence out of the minds or thinking things which perceive them. [note: first argument in support of the author's theory.] . the vulgar opinion involves a contradiction.--it is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding. but, with how great an assurance and acquiescence soever this principle may be entertained in the world, yet whoever shall find in his heart to call it in question may, if i mistake not, perceive it to involve a manifest contradiction. for, what are the fore-mentioned objects but the things we perceive by sense? and what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? and is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these, or any combination of them, should exist unperceived? . cause of this prevalent error.--if we thoroughly examine this tenet it will, perhaps, be found at bottom to depend on the doctrine of abstract ideas. for can there be a nicer strain of abstraction than to distinguish the existence of sensible objects from their being perceived, so as to conceive them existing unperceived? light and colours, heat and cold, extension and figures--in a word the things we see and feel--what are they but so many sensations, notions, ideas, or impressions on the sense? and is it possible to separate, even in thought, any of these from perception? for my part, i might as easily divide a thing from itself. i may, indeed, divide in my thoughts, or conceive apart from each other, those things which, perhaps i never perceived by sense so divided. thus, i imagine the trunk of a human body without the limbs, or conceive the smell of a rose without thinking on the rose itself. so far, i will not deny, i can abstract--if that may properly be called abstraction which extends only to the conceiving separately such objects as it is possible may really exist or be actually perceived asunder. but my conceiving or imagining power does not extend beyond the possibility of real existence or perception. hence, as it is impossible for me to see or feel anything without an actual sensation of that thing, so is it impossible for me to conceive in my thoughts any sensible thing or object distinct from the sensation or perception of it.[note.] [note: "in truth the object and the sensation are the same thing, and cannot therefore be abstracted from each other--edit ."] . some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that a man need only open his eyes to see them. such i take this important one to be, viz., that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind, that their being (esse) is to be perceived or known; that consequently so long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some eternal spirit--it being perfectly unintelligible, and involving all the absurdity of abstraction, to attribute to any single part of them an existence independent of a spirit [note.]. to be convinced of which, the reader need only reflect, and try to separate in his own thoughts the being of a sensible thing from its being perceived. [note: "to make this appear with all the light and evidence of an axiom, it seems sufficient if i can but awaken the reflection of the reader, that he may take an impartial view of his own meaning, and in turn his thoughts upon the subject itself, free and disengaged from all embarrass of words and prepossession in favour of received mistakes."--edit ] . second argument.[note.]--from what has been said it follows there is not any other substance than spirit, or that which perceives. but, for the fuller proof of this point, let it be considered the sensible qualities are colour, figure, motion, smell, taste, etc., i.e. the ideas perceived by sense. now, for an idea to exist in an unperceiving thing is a manifest contradiction, for to have an idea is all one as to perceive; that therefore wherein colour, figure, and the like qualities exist must perceive them; hence it is clear there can be no unthinking substance or substratum of those ideas. [note: vide sect. iii. and xxv.] . objection.--answer.--but, say you, though the ideas themselves do not exist without the mind, yet there may be things like them, whereof they are copies or resemblances, which things exist without the mind in an unthinking substance. i answer, an idea can be like nothing but an idea; a colour or figure can be like nothing but another colour or figure. if we look but never so little into our thoughts, we shall find it impossible for us to conceive a likeness except only between our ideas. again, i ask whether those supposed originals or external things, of which our ideas are the pictures or representations, be themselves perceivable or no? if they are, then they are ideas and we have gained our point; but if you say they are not, i appeal to any one whether it be sense to assert a colour is like something which is invisible; hard or soft, like something which is intangible; and so of the rest. . the philosophical notion of matter involves a contradiction.--some there are who make a distinction betwixt primary and secondary qualities. by the former they mean extension, figure, motion, rest, solidity or impenetrability, and number; by the latter they denote all other sensible qualities, as colours, sounds, tastes, and so forth. the ideas we have of these they acknowledge not to be the resemblances of anything existing without the mind, or unperceived, but they will have our ideas of the primary qualities to be patterns or images of things which exist without the mind, in an unthinking substance which they call matter. by matter, therefore, we are to understand an inert, senseless substance, in which extension, figure, and motion do actually subsist. but it is evident from what we have already shown, that extension, figure, and motion are only ideas existing in the mind, and that an idea can be like nothing but another idea, and that consequently neither they nor their archetypes can exist in an unperceiving substance. hence, it is plain that the very notion of what is called matter or corporeal substance, involves a contradiction in it.[note.] [note: "insomuch that i should not think it necessary to spend more time in exposing its absurdity. but because the tenet of the existence of matter seems to have taken so deep a root in the minds of philosophers, and draws after it so many ill consequences, i choose rather to be thought prolix and tedious, than omit anything that might conduce to the full discovery and extirpation of the prejudice."--edit .] . argumentum ad hominem.--they who assert that figure, motion, and the rest of the primary or original qualities do exist without the mind in unthinking substances, do at the same time acknowledge that colours, sounds, heat cold, and suchlike secondary qualities, do not--which they tell us are sensations existing in the mind alone, that depend on and are occasioned by the different size, texture, and motion of the minute particles of matter. this they take for an undoubted truth, which they can demonstrate beyond all exception. now, if it be certain that those original qualities are inseparably united with the other sensible qualities, and not, even in thought, capable of being abstracted from them, it plainly follows that they exist only in the mind. but i desire any one to reflect and try whether he can, by any abstraction of thought, conceive the extension and motion of a body without all other sensible qualities. for my own part, i see evidently that it is not in my power to frame an idea of a body extended and moving, but i must withal give it some colour or other sensible quality which is acknowledged to exist only in the mind. in short, extension, figure, and motion, abstracted from all other qualities, are inconceivable. where therefore the other sensible qualities are, there must these be also, to wit, in the mind and nowhere else. . a second argument ad hominem.--again, great and small, swift and slow, are allowed to exist nowhere without the mind, being entirely relative, and changing as the frame or position of the organs of sense varies. the extension therefore which exists without the mind is neither great nor small, the motion neither swift nor slow, that is, they are nothing at all. but, say you, they are extension in general, and motion in general: thus we see how much the tenet of extended movable substances existing without the mind depends on the strange doctrine of abstract ideas. and here i cannot but remark how nearly the vague and indeterminate description of matter or corporeal substance, which the modern philosophers are run into by their own principles, resembles that antiquated and so much ridiculed notion of materia prima, to be met with in aristotle and his followers. without extension solidity cannot be conceived; since therefore it has been shown that extension exists not in an unthinking substance, the same must also be true of solidity. . that number is entirely the creature of the mind, even though the other qualities be allowed to exist without, will be evident to whoever considers that the same thing bears a different denomination of number as the mind views it with different respects. thus, the same extension is one, or three, or thirty-six, according as the mind considers it with reference to a yard, a foot, or an inch. number is so visibly relative, and dependent on men's understanding, that it is strange to think how any one should give it an absolute existence without the mind. we say one book, one page, one line, etc.; all these are equally units, though some contain several of the others. and in each instance, it is plain, the unit relates to some particular combination of ideas arbitrarily put together by the mind. . unity i know some will have to be a simple or uncompounded idea, accompanying all other ideas into the mind. that i have any such idea answering the word unity i do not find; and if i had, methinks i could not miss finding it: on the contrary, it should be the most familiar to my understanding, since it is said to accompany all other ideas, and to be perceived by all the ways of sensation and reflexion. to say no more, it is an abstract idea. . a third argument ad hominem.--i shall farther add, that, after the same manner as modern philosophers prove certain sensible qualities to have no existence in matter, or without the mind, the same thing may be likewise proved of all other sensible qualities whatsoever. thus, for instance, it is said that heat and cold are affections only of the mind, and not at all patterns of real beings, existing in the corporeal substances which excite them, for that the same body which appears cold to one hand seems warm to another. now, why may we not as well argue that figure and extension are not patterns or resemblances of qualities existing in matter, because to the same eye at different stations, or eyes of a different texture at the same station, they appear various, and cannot therefore be the images of anything settled and determinate without the mind? again, it is proved that sweetness is not really in the sapid thing, because the thing remaining unaltered the sweetness is changed into bitter, as in case of a fever or otherwise vitiated palate. is it not as reasonable to say that motion is not without the mind, since if the succession of ideas in the mind become swifter, the motion, it is acknowledged, shall appear slower without any alteration in any external object? . not conclusive as to extension.--in short, let any one consider those arguments which are thought manifestly to prove that colours and taste exist only in the mind, and he shall find they may with equal force be brought to prove the same thing of extension, figure, and motion. though it must be confessed this method of arguing does not so much prove that there is no extension or colour in an outward object, as that we do not know by sense which is the true extension or colour of the object. but the arguments foregoing plainly show it to be impossible that any colour or extension at all, or other sensible quality whatsoever, should exist in an unthinking subject without the mind, or in truth, that there should be any such thing as an outward object. . but let us examine a little the received opinion.--it is said extension is a mode or accident of matter, and that matter is the substratum that supports it. now i desire that you would explain to me what is meant by matter's supporting extension. say you, i have no idea of matter and therefore cannot explain it. i answer, though you have no positive, yet, if you have any meaning at all, you must at least have a relative idea of matter; though you know not what it is, yet you must be supposed to know what relation it bears to accidents, and what is meant by its supporting them. it is evident support cannot here be taken in its usual or literal sense--as when we say that pillars support a building; in what sense therefore must it be taken? [note.] [note: "for my part, i am not able to discover any sense at all that can be applicable to it."--edit .] . philosophical meaning of "material substance" divisible into two parts.--if we inquire into what the most accurate philosophers declare themselves to mean by material substance, we shall find them acknowledge they have no other meaning annexed to those sounds but the idea of being in general, together with the relative notion of its supporting accidents. the general idea of being appeareth to me the most abstract and incomprehensible of all other; and as for its supporting accidents, this, as we have just now observed, cannot be understood in the common sense of those words; it must therefore be taken in some other sense, but what that is they do not explain. so that when i consider the two parts or branches which make the signification of the words material substance, i am convinced there is no distinct meaning annexed to them. but why should we trouble ourselves any farther, in discussing this material substratum or support of figure and motion, and other sensible qualities? does it not suppose they have an existence without the mind? and is not this a direct repugnancy, and altogether inconceivable? . the existence of external bodies wants proof.--but, though it were possible that solid, figured, movable substances may exist without the mind, corresponding to the ideas we have of bodies, yet how is it possible for us to know this? either we must know it by sense or by reason. as for our senses, by them we have the knowledge only of our sensations, ideas, or those things that are immediately perceived by sense, call them what you will: but they do not inform us that things exist without the mind, or unperceived, like to those which are perceived. this the materialists themselves acknowledge. it remains therefore that if we have any knowledge at all of external things, it must be by reason, inferring their existence from what is immediately perceived by sense. but what reason can induce us to believe the existence of bodies without the mind, from what we perceive, since the very patrons of matter themselves do not pretend there is any necessary connexion betwixt them and our ideas? i say it is granted on all hands (and what happens in dreams, phrensies, and the like, puts it beyond dispute) that it is possible we might be affected with all the ideas we have now, though there were no bodies existing without resembling them. hence, it is evident the supposition of external bodies is not necessary for the producing our ideas; since it is granted they are produced sometimes, and might possibly be produced always in the same order, we see them in at present, without their concurrence. . the existence of external bodies affords no explication of the manner in which our ideas are produced.--but, though we might possibly have all our sensations without them, yet perhaps it may be thought easier to conceive and explain the manner of their production, by supposing external bodies in their likeness rather than otherwise; and so it might be at least probable there are such things as bodies that excite their ideas in our minds. but neither can this be said; for, though we give the materialists their external bodies, they by their own confession are never the nearer knowing how our ideas are produced; since they own themselves unable to comprehend in what manner body can act upon spirit, or how it is possible it should imprint any idea in the mind. hence it is evident the production of ideas or sensations in our minds can be no reason why we should suppose matter or corporeal substances, since that is acknowledged to remain equally inexplicable with or without this supposition. if therefore it were possible for bodies to exist without the mind, yet to hold they do so, must needs be a very precarious opinion; since it is to suppose, without any reason at all, that god has created innumerable beings that are entirely useless, and serve to no manner of purpose. . dilemma.--in short, if there were external bodies, it is impossible we should ever come to know it; and if there were not, we might have the very same reasons to think there were that we have now. suppose--what no one can deny possible--an intelligence without the help of external bodies, to be affected with the same train of sensations or ideas that you are, imprinted in the same order and with like vividness in his mind. i ask whether that intelligence has not all the reason to believe the existence of corporeal substances, represented by his ideas, and exciting them in his mind, that you can possibly have for believing the same thing? of this there can be no question--which one consideration were enough to make any reasonable person suspect the strength of whatever arguments be may think himself to have, for the existence of bodies without the mind. . were it necessary to add any further proof against the existence of matter after what has been said, i could instance several of those errors and difficulties (not to mention impieties) which have sprung from that tenet. it has occasioned numberless controversies and disputes in philosophy, and not a few of far greater moment in religion. but i shall not enter into the detail of them in this place, as well because i think arguments a posteriori are unnecessary for confirming what has been, if i mistake not, sufficiently demonstrated a priori, as because i shall hereafter find occasion to speak somewhat of them. . i am afraid i have given cause to think i am needlessly prolix in handling this subject. for, to what purpose is it to dilate on that which may be demonstrated with the utmost evidence in a line or two, to any one that is capable of the least reflexion? it is but looking into your own thoughts, and so trying whether you can conceive it possible for a sound, or figure, or motion, or colour to exist without the mind or unperceived. this easy trial may perhaps make you see that what you contend for is a downright contradiction. insomuch that i am content to put the whole upon this issue:--if you can but conceive it possible for one extended movable substance, or, in general, for any one idea, or anything like an idea, to exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving it, i shall readily give up the cause. and, as for all that compages of external bodies you contend for, i shall grant you its existence, though ( .) you cannot either give me any reason why you believe it exists [vide sect. lviii.], or ( .) assign any use to it when it is supposed to exist [vide sect. lx.]. i say, the bare possibility of your opinions being true shall pass for an argument that it is so. [note: i.e. although your argument be deficient in the two requisites of an hypothesis.--ed.] . but, say you, surely there is nothing easier than for me to imagine trees, for instance, in a park, or books existing in a closet, and nobody by to perceive them. i answer, you may so, there is no difficulty in it; but what is all this, i beseech you, more than framing in your mind certain ideas which you call books and trees, and the same time omitting to frame the idea of any one that may perceive them? but do not you yourself perceive or think of them all the while? this therefore is nothing to the purpose; it only shows you have the power of imagining or forming ideas in your mind: but it does not show that you can conceive it possible the objects of your thought may exist without the mind. to make out this, it is necessary that you conceive them existing unconceived or unthought of, which is a manifest repugnancy. when we do our utmost to conceive the existence of external bodies, we are all the while only contemplating our own ideas. but the mind taking no notice of itself, is deluded to think it can and does conceive bodies existing unthought of or without the mind, though at the same time they are apprehended by or exist in itself. a little attention will discover to any one the truth and evidence of what is here said, and make it unnecessary to insist on any other proofs against the existence of material substance. . the absolute existence of unthinking things are words without a meaning.--it is very obvious, upon the least inquiry into our thoughts, to know whether it is possible for us to understand what is meant by the absolute existence of sensible objects in themselves, or without the mind. to me it is evident those words mark out either a direct contradiction, or else nothing at all. and to convince others of this, i know no readier or fairer way than to entreat they would calmly attend to their own thoughts; and if by this attention the emptiness or repugnancy of those expressions does appear, surely nothing more is requisite for the conviction. it is on this therefore that i insist, to wit, that the absolute existence of unthinking things are words without a meaning, or which include a contradiction. this is what i repeat and inculcate, and earnestly recommend to the attentive thoughts of the reader. . third argument.[note: vide sect. iii. and vii.]--refutation of locke.--all our ideas, sensations, notions, or the things which we perceive, by whatsoever names they may be distinguished, are visibly inactive--there is nothing of power or agency included in them. so that one idea or object of thought cannot produce or make any alteration in another. to be satisfied of the truth of this, there is nothing else requisite but a bare observation of our ideas. for, since they and every part of them exist only in the mind, it follows that there is nothing in them but what is perceived: but whoever shall attend to his ideas, whether of sense or reflexion, will not perceive in them any power or activity; there is, therefore, no such thing contained in them. a little attention will discover to us that the very being of an idea implies passiveness and inertness in it, insomuch that it is impossible for an idea to do anything, or, strictly speaking, to be the cause of anything: neither can it be the resemblance or pattern of any active being, as is evident from sect. . whence it plainly follows that extension, figure, and motion cannot be the cause of our sensations. to say, therefore, that these are the effects of powers resulting from the configuration, number, motion, and size of corpuscles, must certainly be false. [note: vide sect. cii.] . cause of ideas.--we perceive a continual succession of ideas, some are anew excited, others are changed or totally disappear. there is therefore some cause of these ideas, whereon they depend, and which produces and changes them. that this cause cannot be any quality or idea or combination of ideas, is clear from the preceding section. it must therefore be a substance; but it has been shown that there is no corporeal or material substance: it remains therefore that the cause of ideas is an incorporeal active substance or spirit. . no idea of spirit.--a spirit is one simple, undivided, active being--as it perceives ideas it is called the understanding, and as it produces or otherwise operates about them it is called the will. hence there can be no idea formed of a soul or spirit; for all ideas whatever, being passive and inert (vide sect. ), they cannot represent unto us, by way of image or likeness, that which acts. a little attention will make it plain to any one, that to have an idea which shall be like that active principle of motion and change of ideas is absolutely impossible. such is the nature of spirit, or that which acts, that it cannot be of itself perceived, but only by the effects which it produceth. if any man shall doubt of the truth of what is here delivered, let him but reflect and try if he can frame the idea of any power or active being, and whether he has ideas of two principal powers, marked by the names will and understanding, distinct from each other as well as from a third idea of substance or being in general, with a relative notion of its supporting or being the subject of the aforesaid powers--which is signified by the name soul or spirit. this is what some hold; but, so far as i can see, the words will [note: "understanding, mind."--edit .], soul, spirit, do not stand for different ideas, or, in truth, for any idea at all, but for something which is very different from ideas, and which, being an agent, cannot be like unto, or represented by, any idea whatsoever. though it must be owned at the same time that we have some notion of soul, spirit, and the operations of the mind: such as willing, loving, hating--inasmuch as we know or understand the meaning of these words. . i find i can excite ideas in my mind at pleasure, and vary and shift the scene as oft as i think fit. it is no more than willing, and straightway this or that idea arises in my fancy; and by the same power it is obliterated and makes way for another. this making and unmaking of ideas doth very properly denominate the mind active. thus much is certain and grounded on experience; but when we think of unthinking agents or of exciting ideas exclusive of volition, we only amuse ourselves with words. . ideas of sensation differ from those of reflection or memory.--but, whatever power i may have over my own thoughts, i find the ideas actually perceived by sense have not a like dependence on my will. when in broad daylight i open my eyes, it is not in my power to choose whether i shall see or no, or to determine what particular objects shall present themselves to my view; and so likewise as to the hearing and other senses; the ideas imprinted on them are not creatures of my will. there is therefore some other will or spirit that produces them. . laws of nature.--the ideas of sense are more strong, lively, and distinct than those of the imagination; they have likewise a steadiness, order, and coherence, and are not excited at random, as those which are the effects of human wills often are, but in a regular train or series, the admirable connexion whereof sufficiently testifies the wisdom and benevolence of its author. now the set rules or established methods wherein the mind we depend on excites in us the ideas of sense, are called the laws of nature; and these we learn by experience, which teaches us that such and such ideas are attended with such and such other ideas, in the ordinary course of things. . knowledge of them necessary for the conduct of worldly affairs.--this gives us a sort of foresight which enables us to regulate our actions for the benefit of life. and without this we should be eternally at a loss; we could not know how to act anything that might procure us the least pleasure, or remove the least pain of sense. that food nourishes, sleep refreshes, and fire warms us; that to sow in the seed-time is the way to reap in the harvest; and in general that to obtain such or such ends, such or such means are conducive--all this we know, not by discovering any necessary connexion between our ideas, but only by the observation of the settled laws of nature, without which we should be all in uncertainty and confusion, and a grown man no more know how to manage himself in the affairs of life than an infant just born. . and yet this consistent uniform working, which so evidently displays the goodness and wisdom of that governing spirit whose will constitutes the laws of nature, is so far from leading our thoughts to him, that it rather sends them a wandering after second causes. for, when we perceive certain ideas of sense constantly followed by other ideas and we know this is not of our own doing, we forthwith attribute power and agency to the ideas themselves, and make one the cause of another, than which nothing can be more absurd and unintelligible. thus, for example, having observed that when we perceive by sight a certain round luminous figure we at the same time perceive by touch the idea or sensation called heat, we do from thence conclude the sun to be the cause of heat. and in like manner perceiving the motion and collision of bodies to be attended with sound, we are inclined to think the latter the effect of the former. . of real things and ideas or chimeras.--the ideas imprinted on the senses by the author of nature are called real things; and those excited in the imagination being less regular, vivid, and constant, are more properly termed ideas, or images of things, which they copy and represent. but then our sensations, be they never so vivid and distinct, are nevertheless ideas, that is, they exist in the mind, or are perceived by it, as truly as the ideas of its own framing. the ideas of sense are allowed to have more reality in them, that is, to be more ( )strong, ( )orderly, and ( )coherent than the creatures of the mind; but this is no argument that they exist without the mind. they are also ( )less dependent on the spirit [note: vide sect. xxix.--note.], or thinking substance which perceives them, in that they are excited by the will of another and more powerful spirit; yet still they are ideas, and certainly no idea, whether faint or strong, can exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving it. . first general objection.--answer.--before we proceed any farther it is necessary we spend some time in answering objections which may probably be made against the principles we have hitherto laid down. in doing of which, if i seem too prolix to those of quick apprehensions, i hope it may be pardoned, since all men do not equally apprehend things of this nature, and i am willing to be understood by every one. first, then, it will be objected that by the foregoing principles all that is real and substantial in nature is banished out of the world, and instead thereof a chimerical scheme of ideas takes place. all things that exist, exist only in the mind, that is, they are purely notional. what therefore becomes of the sun, moon and stars? what must we think of houses, rivers, mountains, trees, stones; nay, even of our own bodies? are all these but so many chimeras and illusions on the fancy? to all which, and whatever else of the same sort may be objected, i answer, that by the principles premised we are not deprived of any one thing in nature. whatever we see, feel, hear, or anywise conceive or understand remains as secure as ever, and is as real as ever. there is a rerum natura, and the distinction between realities and chimeras retains its full force. this is evident from sect. , , and , where we have shown what is meant by real things in opposition to chimeras or ideas of our own framing; but then they both equally exist in the mind, and in that sense they are alike ideas. . the existence of matter, as understood by philosophers, denied.[vide sect. lxxxiv.]--i do not argue against the existence of any one thing that we can apprehend either by sense or reflexion. that the things i see with my eyes and touch with my hands do exist, really exist, i make not the least question. the only thing whose existence we deny is that which philosophers call matter or corporeal substance. and in doing of this there is no damage done to the rest of mankind, who, i dare say, will never miss it. the atheist indeed will want the colour of an empty name to support his impiety; and the philosophers may possibly find they have lost a great handle for trifling and disputation. . readily explained.--if any man thinks this detracts from the existence or reality of things, he is very far from understanding what has been premised in the plainest terms i could think of. take here an abstract of what has been said:--there are spiritual substances, minds, or human souls, which will or excite ideas in themselves at pleasure; but these are faint, weak, and unsteady in respect of others they perceive by sense--which, being impressed upon them according to certain rules or laws of nature, speak themselves the effects of a mind more powerful and wise than human spirits. these latter are said to have more reality in them than the former:--by which is meant that they are more affecting, orderly, and distinct, and that they are not fictions of the mind perceiving them. and in this sense the sun that i see by day is the real sun, and that which i imagine by night is the idea of the former. in the sense here given of reality it is evident that every vegetable, star, mineral, and in general each part of the mundane system, is as much a real being by our principles as by any other. whether others mean anything by the term reality different from what i do, i entreat them to look into their own thoughts and see. . the philosophic, not the vulgar substance, taken away.--i will be urged that thus much at least is true, to wit, that we take away all corporeal substances. to this my answer is, that if the word substance be taken in the vulgar sense--for a combination of sensible qualities, such as extension, solidity, weight, and the like--this we cannot be accused of taking away: but if it be taken in a philosophic sense--for the support of accidents or qualities without the mind--then indeed i acknowledge that we take it away, if one may be said to take away that which never had any existence, not even in the imagination. . but, say you, it sounds very harsh to say we eat and drink ideas, and are clothed with ideas. i acknowledge it does so--the word idea not being used in common discourse to signify the several combinations of sensible qualities which are called things; and it is certain that any expression which varies from the familiar use of language will seem harsh and ridiculous. but this doth not concern the truth of the proposition, which in other words is no more than to say, we are fed and clothed with those things which we perceive immediately by our senses. the hardness or softness, the colour, taste, warmth, figure, or suchlike qualities, which combined together constitute the several sorts of victuals and apparel, have been shown to exist only in the mind that perceives them; and this is all that is meant by calling them ideas; which word if it was as ordinarily used as thing, would sound no harsher nor more ridiculous than it. i am not for disputing about the propriety, but the truth of the expression. if therefore you agree with me that we eat and drink and are clad with the immediate objects of sense, which cannot exist unperceived or without the mind, i shall readily grant it is more proper or conformable to custom that they should be called things rather than ideas. . the term idea preferable to thing.--if it be demanded why i make use of the word idea, and do not rather in compliance with custom call them things. i answer, i do it for two reasons:--first, because the term thing in contra-distinction to idea, is generally supposed to denote somewhat existing without the mind; secondly, because thing has a more comprehensive signification than idea, including spirit or thinking things as well as ideas. since therefore the objects of sense exist only in the mind, and are withal thoughtless and inactive, i chose to mark them by the word idea, which implies those properties. . the evidence of the senses not discredited.--but, say what we can, some one perhaps may be apt to reply, he will still believe his senses, and never suffer any arguments, how plausible soever, to prevail over the certainty of them. be it so; assert the evidence of sense as high as you please, we are willing to do the same. that what i see, hear, and feel doth exist, that is to say, is perceived by me, i no more doubt than i do of my own being. but i do not see how the testimony of sense can be alleged as a proof for the existence of anything which is not perceived by sense. we are not for having any man turn sceptic and disbelieve his senses; on the contrary, we give them all the stress and assurance imaginable; nor are there any principles more opposite to scepticism than those we have laid down [note.], as shall be hereafter clearly shown. [note: they extirpate the very root of scepticism, "the fallacy of the senses."--ed.] . second objection.--answer.--secondly, it will be objected that there is a great difference betwixt real fire for instance, and the idea of fire, betwixt dreaming or imagining oneself burnt, and actually being so: if you suspect it to be only the idea of fire which you see, do but put your hand into it and you will be convinced with a witness. this and the like may be urged in opposition to our tenets. to all which the answer is evident from what has been already said; and i shall only add in this place, that if real fire be very different from the idea of fire, so also is the real pain that it occasions very different from the idea of the same pain, and yet nobody will pretend that real pain either is, or can possibly be, in an unperceiving thing, or without the mind, any more than its idea. . third objection.--answer.--thirdly, it will be objected that we see things actually without or at distance from us, and which consequently do not exist in the mind; it being absurd that those things which are seen at the distance of several miles should be as near to us as our own thoughts. in answer to this, i desire it may be considered that in a dream we do oft perceive things as existing at a great distance off, and yet for all that, those things are acknowledged to have their existence only in the mind. . but, for the fuller clearing of this point, it may be worth while to consider how it is that we perceive distance and things placed at a distance by sight. for, that we should in truth see external space, and bodies actually existing in it, some nearer, others farther off, seems to carry with it some opposition to what has been said of their existing nowhere without the mind. the consideration of this difficulty it was that gave birth to my "essay towards a new theory of vision," which was published not long since, wherein it is shown ( ) that distance or outness is neither immediately of itself perceived by sight, nor yet apprehended or judged of by lines and angles, or anything that has a necessary connexion with it; but ( ) that it is only suggested to our thoughts by certain visible ideas and sensations attending vision, which in their own nature have no manner of similitude or relation either with distance or things placed at a distance; but, by a connexion taught us by experience, they come to signify and suggest them to us, after the same manner that words of any language suggest the ideas they are made to stand for; insomuch that a man born blind and afterwards made to see, would not, at first sight, think the things he saw to be without his mind, or at any distance from him. see sect. of the fore-mentioned treatise. . the ideas of sight and touch make two species entirely distinct and heterogeneous. the former are marks and prognostics of the latter. that the proper objects of sight neither exist without mind, nor are the images of external things, was shown even in that treatise. though throughout the same the contrary be supposed true of tangible objects--not that to suppose that vulgar error was necessary for establishing the notion therein laid down, but because it was beside my purpose to examine and refute it in a discourse concerning vision. so that in strict truth the ideas of sight, when we apprehend by them distance and things placed at a distance, do not suggest or mark out to us things actually existing at a distance, but only admonish us what ideas of touch will be imprinted in our minds at such and such distances of time, and in consequence of such or such actions. it is, i say, evident from what has been said in the foregoing parts of this treatise, and in sect. and elsewhere of the essay concerning vision, that visible ideas are the language whereby the governing spirit on whom we depend informs us what tangible ideas he is about to imprint upon us, in case we excite this or that motion in our own bodies. but for a fuller information in this point i refer to the essay itself. . fourth objection, from perpetual annihilation and creation.--answer.--fourthly, it will be objected that from the foregoing principles it follows things are every moment annihilated and created anew. the objects of sense exist only when they are perceived; the trees therefore are in the garden, or the chairs in the parlour, no longer than while there is somebody by to perceive them. upon shutting my eyes all the furniture in the room is reduced to nothing, and barely upon opening them it is again created. in answer to all which, i refer the reader to what has been said in sect. , , &c., and desire he will consider whether he means anything by the actual existence of an idea distinct from its being perceived. for my part, after the nicest inquiry i could make, i am not able to discover that anything else is meant by those words; and i once more entreat the reader to sound his own thoughts, and not suffer himself to be imposed on by words. if he can conceive it possible either for his ideas or their archetypes to exist without being perceived, then i give up the cause; but if he cannot, he will acknowledge it is unreasonable for him to stand up in defence of he knows not what, and pretend to charge on me as an absurdity the not assenting to those propositions which at bottom have no meaning in them. . argumentum ad hominem.--it will not be amiss to observe how far the received principles of philosophy are themselves chargeable with those pretended absurdities. ( ) it is thought strangely absurd that upon closing my eyelids all the visible objects around me should be reduced to nothing; and yet is not this what philosophers commonly acknowledge, when they agree on all hands that light and colours, which alone are the proper and immediate objects of sight, are mere sensations that exist no longer than they are perceived? ( )again, it may to some perhaps seem very incredible that things should be every moment creating, yet this very notion is commonly taught in the schools. for the schoolmen, though they acknowledge the existence of matter, and that the whole mundane fabric is framed out of it, are nevertheless of opinion that it cannot subsist without the divine conservation, which by them is expounded to be a continual creation. . ( ) further, a little thought will discover to us that though we allow the existence of matter or corporeal substance, yet it will unavoidably follow, from the principles which are now generally admitted, that the particular bodies, of what kind soever, do none of them exist whilst they are not perceived. for, it is evident from sect. ii and the following sections, that the matter philosophers contend for is an incomprehensible somewhat, which has none of those particular qualities whereby the bodies falling under our senses are distinguished one from another. ( ) but, to make this more plain, it must be remarked that the infinite divisibility of matter is now universally allowed, at least by the most approved and considerable philosophers, who on the received principles demonstrate it beyond all exception. hence, it follows there is an infinite number of parts in each particle of matter which are not perceived by sense. the reason therefore that any particular body seems to be of a finite magnitude, or exhibits only a finite number of parts to sense, is, not because it contains no more, since in itself it contains an infinite number of parts, but because the sense is not acute enough to discern them. in proportion therefore as the sense is rendered more acute, it perceives a greater number of parts in the object, that is, the object appears greater, and its figure varies, those parts in its extremities which were before unperceivable appearing now to bound it in very different lines and angles from those perceived by an obtuser sense. and at length, after various changes of size and shape, when the sense becomes infinitely acute the body shall seem infinite. during all which there is no alteration in the body, but only in the sense. each body therefore, considered in itself, is infinitely extended, and consequently void of all shape or figure. from which it follows that, though we should grant the existence of matter to be never so certain, yet it is withal as certain, the materialists themselves are by their own principles forced to acknowledge, that neither the particular bodies perceived by sense, nor anything like them, exists without the mind. matter, i say, and each particle thereof, is according to them infinite and shapeless, and it is the mind that frames all that variety of bodies which compose the visible world, any one whereof does not exist longer than it is perceived. . if we consider it, the objection proposed in sect. will not be found reasonably charged on the principles we have premised, so as in truth to make any objection at all against our notions. for, though we hold indeed the objects of sense to be nothing else but ideas which cannot exist unperceived; yet we may not hence conclude they have no existence except only while they are perceived by us, since there may be some other spirit that perceives them though we do not. wherever bodies are said to have no existence without the mind, i would not be understood to mean this or that particular mind, but all minds whatsoever. it does not therefore follow from the foregoing principles that bodies are annihilated and created every moment, or exist not at all during the intervals between our perception of them. . fifth objection.--answer.--fifthly, it may perhaps be objected that if extension and figure exist only in the mind, it follows that the mind is extended and figured; since extension is a mode or attribute which (to speak with the schools) is predicated of the subject in which it exists. i answer, ( ) those qualities are in the mind only as they are perceived by it--that is, not by way of mode or attribute, but only by way of idea; and it no more follows the soul or mind is extended, because extension exists in it alone, than it does that it is red or blue, because those colours are on all hands acknowledged to exist in it, and nowhere else. ( ) as to what philosophers say of subject and mode, that seems very groundless and unintelligible. for instance, in this proposition "a die is hard, extended, and square," they will have it that the word die denotes a subject or substance, distinct from the hardness, extension, and figure which are predicated of it, and in which they exist. this i cannot comprehend: to me a die seems to be nothing distinct from those things which are termed its modes or accidents. and, to say a die is hard, extended, and square is not to attribute those qualities to a subject distinct from and supporting them, but only an explication of the meaning of the word die. . sixth objection, from natural philosophy.--answer.--sixthly, you will say there have been a great many things explained by matter and motion; take away these and you destroy the whole corpuscular philosophy, and undermine those mechanical principles which have been applied with so much success to account for the phenomena. in short, whatever advances have been made, either by ancient or modern philosophers, in the study of nature do all proceed on the supposition that corporeal substance or matter doth really exist. to this i answer that there is not any one phenomenon explained on that supposition which may not as well be explained without it, as might easily be made appear by an induction of particulars. to explain the phenomena, is all one as to show why, upon such and such occasions, we are affected with such and such ideas. but ( ) how matter should operate on a spirit, or produce any idea in it, is what no philosopher will pretend to explain; it is therefore evident there can be no use of matter in natural philosophy. besides, ( ) they who attempt to account for things do it not by corporeal substance, but by figure, motion, and other qualities, which are in truth no more than mere ideas, and, therefore, cannot be the cause of anything, as has been already shown. see sect. . . seventh objection.--answer.--seventhly, it will upon this be demanded whether it does not seem absurd to take away natural causes, and ascribe everything to the immediate operation of spirits? we must no longer say upon these principles that fire heats, or water cools, but that a spirit heats, and so forth. would not a man be deservedly laughed at, who should talk after this manner? i answer, he would so; in such things we ought to think with the learned, and speak with the vulgar. they who to demonstration are convinced of the truth of the copernican system do nevertheless say "the sun rises," "the sun sets," or "comes to the meridian"; and if they affected a contrary style in common talk it would without doubt appear very ridiculous. a little reflexion on what is here said will make it manifest that the common use of language would receive no manner of alteration or disturbance from the admission of our tenets. . in the ordinary affairs of life, any phrases may be retained, so long as they excite in us proper sentiments, or dispositions to act in such a manner as is necessary for our well-being, how false soever they may be if taken in a strict and speculative sense. nay, this is unavoidable, since, propriety being regulated by custom, language is suited to the received opinions, which are not always the truest. hence it is impossible, even in the most rigid, philosophic reasonings, so far to alter the bent and genius of the tongue we speak, as never to give a handle for cavillers to pretend difficulties and inconsistencies. but, a fair and ingenuous reader will collect the sense from the scope and tenor and connexion of a discourse, making allowances for those inaccurate modes of speech which use has made inevitable. . as to the opinion that there are no corporeal causes, this has been heretofore maintained by some of the schoolmen, as it is of late by others among the modern philosophers, who though they allow matter to exist, yet will have god alone to be the immediate efficient cause of all things. these men saw that amongst all the objects of sense there was none which had any power or activity included in it; and that by consequence this was likewise true of whatever bodies they supposed to exist without the mind, like unto the immediate objects of sense. but then, that they should suppose an innumerable multitude of created beings, which they acknowledge are not capable of producing any one effect in nature, and which therefore are made to no manner of purpose, since god might have done everything as well without them: this i say, though we should allow it possible, must yet be a very unaccountable and extravagant supposition. . eighth objection.--twofold answer.--in the eighth place, the universal concurrent assent of mankind may be thought by some an invincible argument in behalf of matter, or the existence of external things. must we suppose the whole world to be mistaken? and if so, what cause can be assigned of so widespread and predominant an error? i answer, first, that, upon a narrow inquiry, it will not perhaps be found so many as is imagined do really believe the existence of matter or things without the mind. strictly speaking, to believe that which involves a contradiction, or has no meaning in it, is impossible; and whether the foregoing expressions are not of that sort, i refer it to the impartial examination of the reader. in one sense, indeed, men may be said to believe that matter exists, that is, they act as if the immediate cause of their sensations, which affects them every moment, and is so nearly present to them, were some senseless unthinking being. but, that they should clearly apprehend any meaning marked by those words, and form thereof a settled speculative opinion, is what i am not able to conceive. this is not the only instance wherein men impose upon themselves, by imagining they believe those propositions which they have often heard, though at bottom they have no meaning in them. . but secondly, though we should grant a notion to be never so universally and steadfastly adhered to, yet this is weak argument of its truth to whoever considers what a vast number of prejudices and false opinions are everywhere embraced with the utmost tenaciousness, by the unreflecting (which are the far greater) part of mankind. there was a time when the antipodes and motion of the earth were looked upon as monstrous absurdities even by men of learning: and if it be considered what a small proportion they bear to the rest of mankind, we shall find that at this day those notions have gained but a very inconsiderable footing in the world. . ninth objection.--answer.--but it is demanded that we assign a cause of this prejudice, and account for its obtaining in the world. to this i answer, that men knowing they perceived several ideas, whereof they themselves were not the authors--as not being excited from within nor depending on the operation of their wills--this made them maintain those ideas, or objects of perception had an existence independent of and without the mind, without ever dreaming that a contradiction was involved in those words. but, philosophers having plainly seen that the immediate objects of perception do not exist without the mind, they in some degree corrected the mistake of the vulgar; but at the same time run into another which seems no less absurd, to wit, that there are certain objects really existing without the mind, or having a subsistence distinct from being perceived, of which our ideas are only images or resemblances, imprinted by those objects on the mind. and this notion of the philosophers owes its origin to the same cause with the former, namely, their being conscious that they were not the authors of their own sensations, which they evidently knew were imprinted from without, and which therefore must have some cause distinct from the minds on which they are imprinted. . but why they should suppose the ideas of sense to be excited in us by things in their likeness, and not rather have recourse to spirit which alone can act, may be accounted for, first, because they were not aware of the repugnancy there is, ( ) as well in supposing things like unto our ideas existing without, as in ( ) attributing to them power or activity. secondly, because the supreme spirit which excites those ideas in our minds, is not marked out and limited to our view by any particular finite collection of sensible ideas, as human agents are by their size, complexion, limbs, and motions. and thirdly, because his operations are regular and uniform. whenever the course of nature is interrupted by a miracle, men are ready to own the presence of a superior agent. but, when we see things go on in the ordinary course they do not excite in us any reflexion; their order and concatenation, though it be an argument of the greatest wisdom, power, and goodness in their creator, is yet so constant and familiar to us that we do not think them the immediate effects of a free spirit; especially since inconsistency and mutability in acting, though it be an imperfection, is looked on as a mark of freedom. . tenth objection.--answer.--tenthly, it will be objected that the notions we advance are inconsistent with several sound truths in philosophy and mathematics. for example, the motion of the earth is now universally admitted by astronomers as a truth grounded on the clearest and most convincing reasons. but, on the foregoing principles, there can be no such thing. for, motion being only an idea, it follows that if it be not perceived it exists not; but the motion of the earth is not perceived by sense. i answer, that tenet, if rightly understood, will be found to agree with the principles we have premised; for, the question whether the earth moves or no amounts in reality to no more than this, to wit, whether we have reason to conclude, from what has been observed by astronomers, that if we were placed in such and such circumstances, and such or such a position and distance both from the earth and sun, we should perceive the former to move among the choir of the planets, and appearing in all respects like one of them; and this, by the established rules of nature which we have no reason to mistrust, is reasonably collected from the phenomena. . we may, from the experience we have had of the train and succession of ideas in our minds, often make, i will not say uncertain conjectures, but sure and well--grounded predictions concerning the ideas we shall be affected with pursuant to a great train of actions, and be enabled to pass a right judgment of what would have appeared to us, in case we were placed in circumstances very different from those we are in at present. herein consists the knowledge of nature, which may preserve its use and certainty very consistently with what has been said. it will be easy to apply this to whatever objections of the like sort may be drawn from the magnitude of the stars, or any other discoveries in astronomy or nature. . eleventh objection.--in the eleventh place, it will be demanded to what purpose serves that curious organization of plants, and the animal mechanism in the parts of animals; might not vegetables grow, and shoot forth leaves of blossoms, and animals perform all their motions as well without as with all that variety of internal parts so elegantly contrived and put together; which, being ideas, have nothing powerful or operative in them, nor have any necessary connexion with the effects ascribed to them? if it be a spirit that immediately produces every effect by a fiat or act of his will, we must think all that is fine and artificial in the works, whether of man or nature, to be made in vain. by this doctrine, though an artist has made the spring and wheels, and every movement of a watch, and adjusted them in such a manner as he knew would produce the motions he designed, yet he must think all this done to no purpose, and that it is an intelligence which directs the index, and points to the hour of the day. if so, why may not the intelligence do it, without his being at the pains of making the movements and putting them together? why does not an empty case serve as well as another? and how comes it to pass that whenever there is any fault in the going of a watch, there is some corresponding disorder to be found in the movements, which being mended by a skilful hand all is right again? the like may be said of all the clockwork of nature, great part whereof is so wonderfully fine and subtle as scarce to be discerned by the best microscope. in short, it will be asked, how, upon our principles, any tolerable account can be given, or any final cause assigned of an innumerable multitude of bodies and machines, framed with the most exquisite art, which in the common philosophy have very apposite uses assigned them, and serve to explain abundance of phenomena? . answer.--to all which i answer, first, that though there were some difficulties relating to the administration of providence, and the uses by it assigned to the several parts of nature, which i could not solve by the foregoing principles, yet this objection could be of small weight against the truth and certainty of those things which may be proved a priori, with the utmost evidence and rigor of demonstration. secondly, but neither are the received principles free from the like difficulties; for, it may still be demanded to what end god should take those roundabout methods of effecting things by instruments and machines, which no one can deny might have been effected by the mere command of his will without all that apparatus; nay, if we narrowly consider it, we shall find the objection may be retorted with greater force on those who hold the existence of those machines without of mind; for it has been made evident that solidity, bulk, figure, motion, and the like have no activity or efficacy in them, so as to be capable of producing any one effect in nature. see sect. . whoever therefore supposes them to exist (allowing the supposition possible) when they are not perceived does it manifestly to no purpose; since the only use that is assigned to them, as they exist unperceived, is that they produce those perceivable effects which in truth cannot be ascribed to anything but spirit. . (fourthly.)--but, to come nigher the difficulty, it must be observed that though the fabrication of all those parts and organs be not absolutely necessary to the producing any effect, yet it is necessary to the producing of things in a constant regular way according to the laws of nature. there are certain general laws that run through the whole chain of natural effects; these are learned by the observation and study of nature, and are by men applied as well to the framing artificial things for the use and ornament of life as to the explaining various phenomena--which explication consists only in showing the conformity any particular phenomenon has to the general laws of nature, or, which is the same thing, in discovering the uniformity there is in the production of natural effects; as will be evident to whoever shall attend to the several instances wherein philosophers pretend to account for appearances. that there is a great and conspicuous use in these regular constant methods of working observed by the supreme agent has been shown in sect. . and it is no less visible that a particular size, figure, motion, and disposition of parts are necessary, though not absolutely to the producing any effect, yet to the producing it according to the standing mechanical laws of nature. thus, for instance, it cannot be denied that god, or the intelligence that sustains and rules the ordinary course of things, might if he were minded to produce a miracle, cause all the motions on the dial-plate of a watch, though nobody had ever made the movements and put them in it: but yet, if he will act agreeably to the rules of mechanism, by him for wise ends established and maintained in the creation, it is necessary that those actions of the watchmaker, whereby he makes the movements and rightly adjusts them, precede the production of the aforesaid motions; as also that any disorder in them be attended with the perception of some corresponding disorder in the movements, which being once corrected all is right again. . it may indeed on some occasions be necessary that the author of nature display his overruling power in producing some appearance out of the ordinary series of things. such exceptions from the general rules of nature are proper to surprise and awe men into an acknowledgement of the divine being; but then they are to be used but seldom, otherwise there is a plain reason why they should fail of that effect. besides, god seems to choose the convincing our reason of his attributes by the works of nature, which discover so much harmony and contrivance in their make, and are such plain indications of wisdom and beneficence in their author, rather than to astonish us into a belief of his being by anomalous and surprising events. . to set this matter in a yet clearer light, i shall observe that what has been objected in sect. amounts in reality to no more than this:--ideas are not anyhow and at random produced, there being a certain order and connexion between them, like to that of cause and effect; there are also several combinations of them made in a very regular and artificial manner, which seem like so many instruments in the hand of nature that, being hid as it were behind the scenes, have a secret operation in producing those appearances which are seen on the theatre of the world, being themselves discernible only to the curious eye of the philosopher. but, since one idea cannot be the cause of another, to what purpose is that connexion? and, since those instruments, being barely inefficacious perceptions in the mind, are not subservient to the production of natural effects, it is demanded why they are made; or, in other words, what reason can be assigned why god should make us, upon a close inspection into his works, behold so great variety of ideas so artfully laid together, and so much according to rule; it not being credible that he would be at the expense (if one may so speak) of all that art and regularity to no purpose. . to all which my answer is, first, that the connexion of ideas does not imply the relation of cause and effect, but only of a mark or sign with the thing signified. the fire which i see is not the cause of the pain i suffer upon my approaching it, but the mark that forewarns me of it. in like manner the noise that i hear is not the effect of this or that motion or collision of the ambient bodies, but the sign thereof. secondly, the reason why ideas are formed into machines, that is, artificial and regular combinations, is the same with that for combining letters into words. that a few original ideas may be made to signify a great number of effects and actions, it is necessary they be variously combined together. and, to the end their use be permanent and universal, these combinations must be made by rule, and with wise contrivance. by this means abundance of information is conveyed unto us, concerning what we are to expect from such and such actions and what methods are proper to be taken for the exciting such and such ideas; which in effect is all that i conceive to be distinctly meant when it is said that, by discerning a figure, texture, and mechanism of the inward parts of bodies, whether natural or artificial, we may attain to know the several uses and properties depending thereon, or the nature of the thing. . proper employment of the natural philosopher.--hence, it is evident that those things which, under the notion of a cause co-operating or concurring to the production of effects, are altogether inexplicable, and run us into great absurdities, may be very naturally explained, and have a proper and obvious use assigned to them, when they are considered only as marks or signs for our information. and it is the searching after and endeavouring to understand those signs instituted by the author of nature, that ought to be the employment of the natural philosopher; and not the pretending to explain things by corporeal causes, which doctrine seems to have too much estranged the minds of men from that active principle, that supreme and wise spirit "in whom we live, move, and have our being." . twelfth objection.--answer.--in the twelfth place, it may perhaps be objected that--though it be clear from what has been said that there can be no such thing as an inert, senseless, extended, solid, figured, movable substance existing without the mind, such as philosophers describe matter--yet, if any man shall leave out of his idea of matter the positive ideas of extension, figure, solidity and motion, and say that he means only by that word an inert, senseless substance, that exists without the mind or unperceived, which is the occasion of our ideas, or at the presence whereof god is pleased to excite ideas in us: it doth not appear but that matter taken in this sense may possibly exist. in answer to which i say, first, that it seems no less absurd to suppose a substance without accidents, than it is to suppose accidents without a substance. but secondly, though we should grant this unknown substance may possibly exist, yet where can it be supposed to be? that it exists not in the mind is agreed; and that it exists not in place is no less certain--since all place or extension exists only in the mind, as has been already proved. it remains therefore that it exists nowhere at all. . matter supports nothing, an argument against its existence.--let us examine a little the description that is here given us of matter. it neither acts, nor perceives, nor is perceived; for this is all that is meant by saying it is an inert, senseless, unknown substance; which is a definition entirely made up of negatives, excepting only the relative notion of its standing under or supporting. but then it must be observed that it supports nothing at all, and how nearly this comes to the description of a nonentity i desire may be considered. but, say you, it is the unknown occasion, at the presence of which ideas are excited in us by the will of god. now, i would fain know how anything can be present to us, which is neither perceivable by sense nor reflexion, nor capable of producing any idea in our minds, nor is at all extended, nor has any form, nor exists in any place. the words "to be present," when thus applied, must needs be taken in some abstract and strange meaning, and which i am not able to comprehend. . again, let us examine what is meant by occasion. so far as i can gather from the common use of language, that word signifies either the agent which produces any effect, or else something that is observed to accompany or go before it in the ordinary course of things. but when it is applied to matter as above described, it can be taken in neither of those senses; for matter is said to be passive and inert, and so cannot be an agent or efficient cause. it is also unperceivable, as being devoid of all sensible qualities, and so cannot be the occasion of our perceptions in the latter sense: as when the burning my finger is said to be the occasion of the pain that attends it. what therefore can be meant by calling matter an occasion? the term is either used in no sense at all, or else in some very distant from its received signification. . you will perhaps say that matter, though it be not perceived by us, is nevertheless perceived by god, to whom it is the occasion of exciting ideas in our minds. for, say you, since we observe our sensations to be imprinted in an orderly and constant manner, it is but reasonable to suppose there are certain constant and regular occasions of their being produced. that is to say, that there are certain permanent and distinct parcels of matter, corresponding to our ideas, which, though they do not excite them in our minds, or anywise immediately affect us, as being altogether passive and unperceivable to us, they are nevertheless to god, by whom they art perceived, as it were so many occasions to remind him when and what ideas to imprint on our minds; that so things may go on in a constant uniform manner. . in answer to this, i observe that, as the notion of matter is here stated, the question is no longer concerning the existence of a thing distinct from spirit and idea, from perceiving and being perceived; but whether there are not certain ideas of i know not what sort, in the mind of god which are so many marks or notes that direct him how to produce sensations in our minds in a constant and regular method--much after the same manner as a musician is directed by the notes of music to produce that harmonious train and composition of sound which is called a tune, though they who hear the music do not perceive the notes, and may be entirely ignorant of them. but, this notion of matter seems too extravagant to deserve a confutation. besides, it is in effect no objection against what we have advanced, viz. that there is no senseless unperceived substance. . the order of our perceptions shows the goodness of god, but affords no proof of the existence of matter.--if we follow the light of reason, we shall, from the constant uniform method of our sensations, collect the goodness and wisdom of the spirit who excites them in our minds; but this is all that i can see reasonably concluded from thence. to me, i say, it is evident that the being of a spirit infinitely wise, good, and powerful is abundantly sufficient to explain all the appearances of nature. but, as for inert, senseless matter, nothing that i perceive has any the least connexion with it, or leads to the thoughts of it. and i would fain see any one explain any the meanest phenomenon in nature by it, or show any manner of reason, though in the lowest rank of probability, that he can have for its existence, or even make any tolerable sense or meaning of that supposition. for, as to its being an occasion, we have, i think, evidently shown that with regard to us it is no occasion. it remains therefore that it must be, if at all, the occasion to god of exciting ideas in us; and what this amounts to we have just now seen. . it is worth while to reflect a little on the motives which induced men to suppose the existence of material substance; that so having observed the gradual ceasing and expiration of those motives or reasons, we may proportionably withdraw the assent that was grounded on them. first, therefore, it was thought that colour, figure, motion, and the rest of the sensible qualities or accidents, did really exist without the mind; and for this reason it seemed needful to suppose some unthinking substratum or substance wherein they did exist, since they could not be conceived to exist by themselves. afterwards, in process of time, men being convinced that colours, sounds, and the rest of the sensible, secondary qualities had no existence without the mind, they stripped this substratum or material substance of those qualities, leaving only the primary ones, figure, motion, and suchlike, which they still conceived to exist without the mind, and consequently to stand in need of a material support. but, it having been shown that none even of these can possibly exist otherwise than in a spirit or mind which perceives them it follows that we have no longer any reason to suppose the being of matter; nay, that it is utterly impossible there should be any such thing, so long as that word is taken to denote an unthinking substratum of qualities or accidents wherein they exist without the mind. . but though it be allowed by the materialists themselves that matter was thought of only for the sake of supporting accidents, and, the reason entirely ceasing, one might expect the mind should naturally, and without any reluctance at all, quit the belief of what was solely grounded thereon; yet the prejudice is riveted so deeply in our thoughts, that we can scarce tell how to part with it, and are therefore inclined, since the thing itself is indefensible, at least to retain the name, which we apply to i know not what abstracted and indefinite notions of being, or occasion, though without any show of reason, at least so far as i can see. for, what is there on our part, or what do we perceive, amongst all the ideas, sensations, notions which are imprinted on our minds, either by sense or reflexion, from whence may be inferred the existence of an inert, thoughtless, unperceived occasion? and, on the other hand, on the part of an all-sufficient spirit, what can there be that should make us believe or even suspect he is directed by an inert occasion to excite ideas in our minds? . absurdity of contending for the existence of matter as the occasion of ideas.--it is a very extraordinary instance of the force of prejudice, and much to be lamented, that the mind of man retains so great a fondness, against all the evidence of reason, for a stupid thoughtless somewhat, by the interposition whereof it would as it were screen itself from the providence of god, and remove it farther off from the affairs of the world. but, though we do the utmost we can to secure the belief of matter, though, when reason forsakes us, we endeavour to support our opinion on the bare possibility of the thing, and though we indulge ourselves in the full scope of an imagination not regulated by reason to make out that poor possibility, yet the upshot of all is, that there are certain unknown ideas in the mind of god; for this, if anything, is all that i conceive to be meant by occasion with regard to god. and this at the bottom is no longer contending for the thing, but for the name. . whether therefore there are such ideas in the mind of god, and whether they may be called by the name matter, i shall not dispute. but, if you stick to the notion of an unthinking substance or support of extension, motion, and other sensible qualities, then to me it is most evidently impossible there should be any such thing, since it is a plain repugnancy that those qualities should exist in or be supported by an unperceiving substance. . that a substratum not perceived, may exist, unimportant.--but, say you, though it be granted that there is no thoughtless support of extension and the other qualities or accidents which we perceive, yet there may perhaps be some inert, unperceiving substance or substratum of some other qualities, as incomprehensible to us as colours are to a man born blind, because we have not a sense adapted to them. but, if we had a new sense, we should possibly no more doubt of their existence than a blind man made to see does of the existence of light and colours. i answer, first, if what you mean by the word matter be only the unknown support of unknown qualities, it is no matter whether there is such a thing or no, since it no way concerns us; and i do not see the advantage there is in disputing about what we know not what, and we know not why. . but, secondly, if we had a new sense it could only furnish us with new ideas or sensations; and then we should have the same reason against their existing in an unperceiving substance that has been already offered with relation to figure, motion, colour and the like. qualities, as has been shown, are nothing else but sensations or ideas, which exist only in a mind perceiving them; and this is true not only of the ideas we are acquainted with at present, but likewise of all possible ideas whatsoever. . but, you will insist, what if i have no reason to believe the existence of matter? what if i cannot assign any use to it or explain anything by it, or even conceive what is meant by that word? yet still it is no contradiction to say that matter exists, and that this matter is in general a substance, or occasion of ideas; though indeed to go about to unfold the meaning or adhere to any particular explication of those words may be attended with great difficulties. i answer, when words are used without a meaning, you may put them together as you please without danger of running into a contradiction. you may say, for example, that twice two is equal to seven, so long as you declare you do not take the words of that proposition in their usual acceptation but for marks of you know not what. and, by the same reason, you may say there is an inert thoughtless substance without accidents which is the occasion of our ideas. and we shall understand just as much by one proposition as the other. . in the last place, you will say, what if we give up the cause of material substance, and stand to it that matter is an unknown somewhat--neither substance nor accident, spirit nor idea, inert, thoughtless, indivisible, immovable, unextended, existing in no place. for, say you, whatever may be urged against substance or occasion, or any other positive or relative notion of matter, has no place at all, so long as this negative definition of matter is adhered to. i answer, you may, if so it shall seem good, use the word "matter" in the same sense as other men use "nothing," and so make those terms convertible in your style. for, after all, this is what appears to me to be the result of that definition, the parts whereof when i consider with attention, either collectively or separate from each other, i do not find that there is any kind of effect or impression made on my mind different from what is excited by the term nothing. . you will reply, perhaps, that in the fore-said definition is included what doth sufficiently distinguish it from nothing--the positive abstract idea of quiddity, entity, or existence. i own, indeed, that those who pretend to the faculty of framing abstract general ideas do talk as if they had such an idea, which is, say they, the most abstract and general notion of all; that is, to me, the most incomprehensible of all others. that there are a great variety of spirits of different orders and capacities, whose faculties both in number and extent are far exceeding those the author of my being has bestowed on me, i see no reason to deny. and for me to pretend to determine by my own few, stinted narrow inlets of perception, what ideas the inexhaustible power of the supreme spirit may imprint upon them were certainly the utmost folly and presumption--since there may be, for aught that i know, innumerable sorts of ideas or sensations, as different from one another, and from all that i have perceived, as colours are from sounds. but, how ready soever i may be to acknowledge the scantiness of my comprehension with regard to the endless variety of spirits and ideas that may possibly exist, yet for any one to pretend to a notion of entity or existence, abstracted from spirit and idea, from perceived and being perceived, is, i suspect, a downright repugnancy and trifling with words.--it remains that we consider the objections which may possibly be made on the part of religion. . objections derived from the scriptures answered.--some there are who think that, though the arguments for the real existence of bodies which are drawn from reason be allowed not to amount to demonstration, yet the holy scriptures are so clear in the point as will sufficiently convince every good christian that bodies do really exist, and are something more than mere ideas; there being in holy writ innumerable facts related which evidently suppose the reality of timber and stone, mountains and rivers, and cities, and human bodies. to which i answer that no sort of writings whatever, sacred or profane, which use those and the like words in the vulgar acceptation, or so as to have a meaning in them, are in danger of having their truth called in question by our doctrine. that all those things do really exist, that there are bodies, even corporeal substances, when taken in the vulgar sense, has been shown to be agreeable to our principles; and the difference betwixt things and ideas, realities and chimeras, has been distinctly explained. see sect. , , , , &c. and i do not think that either what philosophers call matter, or the existence of objects without the mind, is anywhere mentioned in scripture. . no objection as to language tenable.--again, whether there can be or be not external things, it is agreed on all hands that the proper use of words is the marking our conceptions, or things only as they are known and perceived by us; whence it plainly follows that in the tenets we have laid down there is nothing inconsistent with the right use and significancy of language, and that discourse, of what kind soever, so far as it is intelligible, remains undisturbed. but all this seems so manifest, from what has been largely set forth in the premises, that it is needless to insist any farther on it. . but, secondly it will be urged that miracles do, at least, lose much of their stress and import by our principles. what must we think of moses' rod? was it not really turned into a serpent; or was there only a change of ideas in the minds of the spectators? and, can it be supposed that our saviour did no more at the marriage-feast in cana than impose on the sight, and smell, and taste of the guests, so as to create in them the appearance or idea only of wine? the same may be said of all other miracles; which, in consequence of the foregoing principles, must be looked upon only as so many cheats, or illusions of fancy. to this i reply, that the rod was changed into a real serpent, and the water into real wine. that this does not in the least contradict what i have elsewhere said will be evident from sect. and . but this business of real and imaginary has been already so plainly and fully explained, and so often referred to, and the difficulties about it are so easily answered from what has gone before, that it were an affront to the reader's understanding to resume the explication of it in its place. i shall only observe that if at table all who were present should see, and smell, and taste, and drink wine, and find the effects of it, with me there could be no doubt of its reality; so that at bottom the scruple concerning real miracles has no place at all on ours, but only on the received principles, and consequently makes rather for than against what has been said. . consequences of the preceding tenets.--having done with the objections, which i endeavoured to propose in the clearest light, and gave them all the force and weight i could, we proceed in the next place to take a view of our tenets in their consequences. some of these appear at first sight--as that several difficult and obscure questions, on which abundance of speculation has been thrown away, are entirely banished from philosophy. "whether corporeal substance can think," "whether matter be infinitely divisible," and "how it operates on spirit"--these and like inquiries have given infinite amusement to philosophers in all ages; but depending on the existence of matter, they have no longer any place on our principles. many other advantages there are, as well with regard to religion as the sciences, which it is easy for any one to deduce from what has been premised; but this will appear more plainly in the sequel. . the removal of matter gives certainty to knowledge.--from the principles we have laid down it follows human knowledge may naturally be reduced to two heads--that of ideas and that of spirits. of each of these i shall treat in order. and first as to ideas or unthinking things. our knowledge of these has been very much obscured and confounded, and we have been led into very dangerous errors, by supposing a twofold existence of the objects of sense--the one intelligible or in the mind, the other real and without the mind; whereby unthinking things are thought to have a natural subsistence of their own distinct from being perceived by spirits. this, which, if i mistake not, has been shown to be a most groundless and absurd notion, is the very root of scepticism; for, so long as men thought that real things subsisted without the mind, and that their knowledge was only so far forth real as it was conformable to real things, it follows they could not be certain they had any real knowledge at all. for how can it be known that the things which are perceived are conformable to those which are not perceived, or exist without the mind? . colour, figure, motion, extension, and the like, considered only as so many sensations in the mind, are perfectly known, there being nothing in them which is not perceived. but, if they are looked on as notes or images, referred to things or archetypes existing without the mind, then are we involved all in scepticism. we see only the appearances, and not the real qualities of things. what may be the extension, figure, or motion of anything really and absolutely, or in itself, it is impossible for us to know, but only the proportion or relation they bear to our senses. things remaining the same, our ideas vary, and which of them, or even whether any of them at all, represent the true quality really existing in the thing, it is out of our reach to determine. so that, for aught we know, all we see, hear, and feel may be only phantom and vain chimera, and not at all agree with the real things existing in rerum natura. all this scepticism follows from our supposing a difference between things and ideas, and that the former have a subsistence without the mind or unperceived. it were easy to dilate on this subject, and show how the arguments urged by sceptics in all ages depend on the supposition of external objects. . if there be external matter, neither the nature nor existence of things can be known.--so long as we attribute a real existence to unthinking things, distinct from their being perceived, it is not only impossible for us to know with evidence the nature of any real unthinking being, but even that it exists. hence it is that we see philosophers distrust their senses, and doubt of the existence of heaven and earth, of everything they see or feel, even of their own bodies. and, after all their labour and struggle of thought, they are forced to own we cannot attain to any self-evident or demonstrative knowledge of the existence of sensible things. but, all this doubtfulness, which so bewilders and confounds the mind and makes philosophy ridiculous in the eyes of the world, vanishes if we annex a meaning to our words, and not amuse ourselves with the terms "absolute," "external," "exist," and such-like, signifying we know not what. i can as well doubt of my own being as of the being of those things which i actually perceive by sense; it being a manifest contradiction that any sensible object should be immediately perceived by sight or touch, and at the same time have no existence in nature, since the very existence of an unthinking being consists in being perceived. . of thing or being.--nothing seems of more importance towards erecting a firm system of sound and real knowledge, which may be proof against the assaults of scepticism, than to lay the beginning in a distinct explication of what is meant by thing, reality, existence; for in vain shall we dispute concerning the real existence of things, or pretend to any knowledge thereof, so long as we have not fixed the meaning of those words. thing or being is the most general name of all; it comprehends under it two kinds entirely distinct and heterogeneous, and which have nothing common but the name. viz. spirits and ideas. the former are active, indivisible substances: the latter are inert, fleeting, dependent beings, which subsist not by themselves, but are supported by, or exist in minds or spiritual substances. we comprehend our own existence by inward feeling or reflexion, and that of other spirits by reason. we may be said to have some knowledge or notion of our own minds, of spirits and active beings, whereof in a strict sense we have not ideas. in like manner, we know and have a notion of relations between things or ideas--which relations are distinct from the ideas or things related, inasmuch as the latter may be perceived by us without our perceiving the former. to me it seems that ideas, spirits, and relations are all in their respective kinds the object of human knowledge and subject of discourse; and that the term idea would be improperly extended to signify everything we know or have any notion of. . external things either imprinted by or perceived by some other mind.--ideas imprinted on the senses are real things, or do really exist; this we do not deny, but we deny they can subsist without the minds which perceive them, or that they are resemblances of any archetypes existing without the mind; since the very being of a sensation or idea consists in being perceived, and an idea can be like nothing but an idea. again, the things perceived by sense may be termed external, with regard to their origin--in that they are not generated from within by the mind itself, but imprinted by a spirit distinct from that which perceives them. sensible objects may likewise be said to be "without the mind" in another sense, namely when they exist in some other mind; thus, when i shut my eyes, the things i saw may still exist, but it must be in another mind. . sensible qualities real.--it were a mistake to think that what is here said derogates in the least from the reality of things. it is acknowledged, on the received principles, that extension, motion, and in a word all sensible qualities have need of a support, as not being able to subsist by themselves. but the objects perceived by sense are allowed to be nothing but combinations of those qualities, and consequently cannot subsist by themselves. thus far it is agreed on all hand. so that in denying the things perceived by sense an existence independent of a substance of support wherein they may exist, we detract nothing from the received opinion of their reality, and are guilty of no innovation in that respect. all the difference is that, according to us, the unthinking beings perceived by sense have no existence distinct from being perceived, and cannot therefore exist in any other substance than those unextended indivisible substances or spirits which act and think and perceive them; whereas philosophers vulgarly hold that the sensible qualities do exist in an inert, extended, unperceiving substance which they call matter, to which they attribute a natural subsistence, exterior to all thinking beings, or distinct from being perceived by any mind whatsoever, even the eternal mind of the creator, wherein they suppose only ideas of the corporeal substances created by him; if indeed they allow them to be at all created. . objections of atheists overturned.--for, as we have shown the doctrine of matter or corporeal substance to have been the main pillar and support of scepticism, so likewise upon the same foundation have been raised all the impious schemes of atheism and irreligion. nay, so great a difficulty has it been thought to conceive matter produced out of nothing, that the most celebrated among the ancient philosophers, even of those who maintained the being of a god, have thought matter to be uncreated and co-eternal with him. how great a friend material substance has been to atheists in all ages were needless to relate. all their monstrous systems have so visible and necessary a dependence on it that, when this corner-stone is once removed, the whole fabric cannot choose but fall to the ground, insomuch that it is no longer worth while to bestow a particular consideration on the absurdities of every wretched sect of atheists. . and of fatalists also.--that impious and profane persons should readily fall in with those systems which favour their inclinations, by deriding immaterial substance, and supposing the soul to be divisible and subject to corruption as the body; which exclude all freedom, intelligence, and design from the formation of things, and instead thereof make a self--existent, stupid, unthinking substance the root and origin of all beings; that they should hearken to those who deny a providence, or inspection of a superior mind over the affairs of the world, attributing the whole series of events either to blind chance or fatal necessity arising from the impulse of one body or another--all this is very natural. and, on the other hand, when men of better principles observe the enemies of religion lay so great a stress on unthinking matter, and all of them use so much industry and artifice to reduce everything to it, methinks they should rejoice to see them deprived of their grand support, and driven from that only fortress, without which your epicureans, hobbists, and the like, have not even the shadow of a pretence, but become the most cheap and easy triumph in the world. . of idolators.--the existence of matter, or bodies unperceived, has not only been the main support of atheists and fatalists, but on the same principle doth idolatry likewise in all its various forms depend. did men but consider that the sun, moon, and stars, and every other object of the senses are only so many sensations in their minds, which have no other existence but barely being perceived, doubtless they would never fall down and worship their own ideas, but rather address their homage to that eternal invisible mind which produces and sustains all things. . and socinians.--the same absurd principle, by mingling itself with the articles of our faith, has occasioned no small difficulties to christians. for example, about the resurrection, how many scruples and objections have been raised by socinians and others? but do not the most plausible of them depend on the supposition that a body is denominated the same, with regard not to the form or that which is perceived by sense, but the material substance, which remains the same under several forms? take away this material substance, about the identity whereof all the dispute is, and mean by body what every plain ordinary person means by that word, to wit, that which is immediately seen and felt, which is only a combination of sensible qualities or ideas, and then their most unanswerable objections come to nothing. . summary of the consequences of expelling matter.--matter being once expelled out of nature drags with it so many sceptical and impious notions, such an incredible number of disputes and puzzling questions, which have been thorns in the sides of divines as well as philosophers, and made so much fruitless work for mankind, that if the arguments we have produced against it are not found equal to demonstration (as to me they evidently seem), yet i am sure all friends to knowledge, peace, and religion have reason to wish they were. . beside the external existence of the objects of perception, another great source of errors and difficulties with regard to ideal knowledge is the doctrine of abstract ideas, such as it has been set forth in the introduction. the plainest things in the world, those we are most intimately acquainted with and perfectly know, when they are considered in an abstract way, appear strangely difficult and incomprehensible. time, place, and motion, taken in particular or concrete, are what everybody knows, but, having passed through the hands of a metaphysician, they become too abstract and fine to be apprehended by men of ordinary sense. bid your servant meet you at such a time in such a place, and he shall never stay to deliberate on the meaning of those words; in conceiving that particular time and place, or the motion by which he is to get thither, he finds not the least difficulty. but if time be taken exclusive of all those particular actions and ideas that diversify the day, merely for the continuation of existence or duration in abstract, then it will perhaps gravel even a philosopher to comprehend it. . dilemma.--for my own part, whenever i attempt to frame a simple idea of time, abstracted from the succession of ideas in my mind, which flows uniformly and is participated by all beings, i am lost and embrangled in inextricable difficulties. i have no notion of it at all, only i hear others say it is infinitely divisible, and speak of it in such a manner as leads me to entertain odd thoughts of my existence; since that doctrine lays one under an absolute necessity of thinking, either that he passes away innumerable ages without a thought, or else that he is annihilated every moment of his life, both which seem equally absurd. time therefore being nothing, abstracted from the sucession of ideas in our minds, it follows that the duration of any finite spirit must be estimated by the number of ideas or actions succeeding each other in that same spirit or mind. hence, it is a plain consequence that the soul always thinks; and in truth whoever shall go about to divide in his thoughts, or abstract the existence of a spirit from its cogitation, will, i believe, find it no easy task. . so likewise when we attempt to abstract extension and motion from all other qualities, and consider them by themselves, we presently lose sight of them, and run into great extravagances. all which depend on a twofold abstraction; first, it is supposed that extension, for example, may be abstracted from all other sensible qualities; and secondly, that the entity of extension may be abstracted from its being perceived. but, whoever shall reflect, and take care to understand what he says, will, if i mistake not, acknowledge that all sensible qualities are alike sensations and alike real; that where the extension is, there is the colour, too, i.e., in his mind, and that their archetypes can exist only in some other mind; and that the objects of sense are nothing but those sensations combined, blended, or (if one may so speak) concreted together; none of all which can be supposed to exist unperceived. . what it is for a man to be happy, or an object good, every one may think he knows. but to frame an abstract idea of happiness, prescinded from all particular pleasure, or of goodness from everything that is good, this is what few can pretend to. so likewise a man may be just and virtuous without having precise ideas of justice and virtue. the opinion that those and the like words stand for general notions, abstracted from all particular persons and actions, seems to have rendered morality very difficult, and the study thereof of small use to mankind. and in effect the doctrine of abstraction has not a little contributed towards spoiling the most useful parts of knowledge. . of natural philosophy and mathematics.--the two great provinces of speculative science conversant about ideas received from sense, are natural philosophy and mathematics; with regard to each of these i shall make some observations. and first i shall say somewhat of natural philosophy. on this subject it is that the sceptics triumph. all that stock of arguments they produce to depreciate our faculties and make mankind appear ignorant and low, are drawn principally from this head, namely, that we are under an invincible blindness as to the true and real nature of things. this they exaggerate, and love to enlarge on. we are miserably bantered, say they, by our senses, and amused only with the outside and show of things. the real essence, the internal qualities and constitution of every the meanest object, is hid from our view; something there is in every drop of water, every grain of sand, which it is beyond the power of human understanding to fathom or comprehend. but, it is evident from what has been shown that all this complaint is groundless, and that we are influenced by false principles to that degree as to mistrust our senses, and think we know nothing of those things which we perfectly comprehend. . one great inducement to our pronouncing ourselves ignorant of the nature of things is the current opinion that everything includes within itself the cause of its properties; or that there is in each object an inward essence which is the source whence its discernible qualities flow, and whereon they depend. some have pretended to account for appearances by occult qualities, but of late they are mostly resolved into mechanical causes, to wit, the figure, motion, weight, and suchlike qualities, of insensible particles; whereas, in truth, there is no other agent or efficient cause than spirit, it being evident that motion, as well as all other ideas, is perfectly inert. see sect. . hence, to endeavour to explain the production of colours or sounds, by figure, motion, magnitude, and the like, must needs be labour in vain. and accordingly we see the attempts of that kind are not at all satisfactory. which may be said in general of those instances wherein one idea or quality is assigned for the cause of another. i need not say how many hypotheses and speculations are left out, and how much the study of nature is abridged by this doctrine. . attraction signifies the effect, not the manner or cause.--the great mechanical principle now in vogue is attraction. that a stone falls to the earth, or the sea swells towards the moon, may to some appear sufficiently explained thereby. but how are we enlightened by being told this is done by attraction? is it that that word signifies the manner of the tendency, and that it is by the mutual drawing of bodies instead of their being impelled or protruded towards each other? but, nothing is determined of the manner or action, and it may as truly (for aught we know) be termed "impulse," or "protrusion," as "attraction." again, the parts of steel we see cohere firmly together, and this also is accounted for by attraction; but, in this as in the other instances, i do not perceive that anything is signified besides the effect itself; for as to the manner of the action whereby it is produced, or the cause which produces it, these are not so much as aimed at. . indeed, if we take a view of the several phenomena, and compare them together, we may observe some likeness and conformity between them. for example, in the falling of a stone to the ground, in the rising of the sea towards the moon, in cohesion, crystallization, etc, there is something alike, namely, an union or mutual approach of bodies. so that any one of these or the like phenomena may not seem strange or surprising to a man who has nicely observed and compared the effects of nature. for that only is thought so which is uncommon, or a thing by itself, and out of the ordinary course of our observation. that bodies should tend towards the centre of the earth is not thought strange, because it is what we perceive every moment of our lives. but, that they should have a like gravitation towards the centre of the moon may seem odd and unaccountable to most men, because it is discerned only in the tides. but a philosopher, whose thoughts take in a larger compass of nature, having observed a certain similitude of appearances, as well in the heavens as the earth, that argue innumerable bodies to have a mutual tendency towards each other, which he denotes by the general name "attraction," whatever can be reduced to that he thinks justly accounted for. thus he explains the tides by the attraction of the terraqueous globe towards the moon, which to him does not appear odd or anomalous, but only a particular example of a general rule or law of nature. . if therefore we consider the difference there is betwixt natural philosophers and other men, with regard to their knowledge of the phenomena, we shall find it consists not in an exacter knowledge of the efficient cause that produces them--for that can be no other than the will of a spirit--but only in a greater largeness of comprehension, whereby analogies, harmonies, and agreements are discovered in the works of nature, and the particular effects explained, that is, reduced to general rules, see sect. , which rules, grounded on the analogy and uniformness observed in the production of natural effects, are most agreeable and sought after by the mind; for that they extend our prospect beyond what is present and near to us, and enable us to make very probable conjectures touching things that may have happened at very great distances of time and place, as well as to predict things to come; which sort of endeavour towards omniscience is much affected by the mind. . caution as to the use of analogies.--but we should proceed warily in such things, for we are apt to lay too great stress on analogies, and, to the prejudice of truth, humour that eagerness of the mind whereby it is carried to extend its knowledge into general theorems. for example, in the business of gravitation or mutual attraction, because it appears in many instances, some are straightway for pronouncing it universal; and that to attract and be attracted by every other body is an essential quality inherent in all bodies whatsoever. whereas it is evident the fixed stars have no such tendency towards each other; and, so far is that gravitation from being essential to bodies that in some instances a quite contrary principle seems to show itself; as in the perpendicular growth of plants, and the elasticity of the air. there is nothing necessary or essential in the case, but it depends entirely on the will of the governing spirit, who causes certain bodies to cleave together or tend towards each other according to various laws, whilst he keeps others at a fixed distance; and to some he gives a quite contrary tendency to fly asunder just as he sees convenient. . after what has been premised, i think we may lay down the following conclusions. first, it is plain philosophers amuse themselves in vain, when they inquire for any natural efficient cause, distinct from a mind or spirit. secondly, considering the whole creation is the workmanship of a wise and good agent, it should seem to become philosophers to employ their thoughts (contrary to what some hold) about the final causes of things; and i confess i see no reason why pointing out the various ends to which natural things are adapted, and for which they were originally with unspeakable wisdom contrived, should not be thought one good way of accounting for them, and altogether worthy a philosopher. thirdly, from what has been premised no reason can be drawn why the history of nature should not still be studied, and observations and experiments made, which, that they are of use to mankind, and enable us to draw any general conclusions, is not the result of any immutable habitudes or relations between things themselves, but only of god's goodness and kindness to men in the administration of the world. see sect. and fourthly, by a diligent observation of the phenomena within our view, we may discover the general laws of nature, and from them deduce the other phenomena; i do not say demonstrate, for all deductions of that kind depend on a supposition that the author of nature always operates uniformly, and in a constant observance of those rules we take for principles: which we cannot evidently know. . three analogies.--those men who frame general rules from the phenomena and afterwards derive the phenomena from those rules, seem to consider signs rather than causes. a man may well understand natural signs without knowing their analogy, or being able to say by what rule a thing is so or so. and, as it is very possible to write improperly, through too strict an observance of general grammar rules; so, in arguing from general laws of nature, it is not impossible we may extend the analogy too far, and by that means run into mistakes. . as in reading other books a wise man will choose to fix his thoughts on the sense and apply it to use, rather than lay them out in grammatical remarks on the language; so, in perusing the volume of nature, it seems beneath the dignity of the mind to affect an exactness in reducing each particular phenomenon to general rules, or showing how it follows from them. we should propose to ourselves nobler views, namely, to recreate and exalt the mind with a prospect of the beauty, order. extent, and variety of natural things: hence, by proper inferences, to enlarge our notions of the grandeur, wisdom, and beneficence of the creator; and lastly, to make the several parts of the creation, so far as in us lies, subservient to the ends they were designed for, god's glory, and the sustentation and comfort of ourselves and fellow-creatures. . the best key for the aforesaid analogy or natural science will be easily acknowledged to be a certain celebrated treatise of mechanics. in the entrance of which justly admired treatise, time, space, and motion are distinguished into absolute and relative, true and apparent, mathematical and vulgar; which distinction, as it is at large explained by the author, does suppose these quantities to have an existence without the mind; and that they are ordinarily conceived with relation to sensible things, to which nevertheless in their own nature they bear no relation at all. . as for time, as it is there taken in an absolute or abstracted sense, for the duration or perseverance of the existence of things, i have nothing more to add concerning it after what has been already said on that subject. sect. and . for the rest, this celebrated author holds there is an absolute space, which, being unperceivable to sense, remains in itself similar and immovable; and relative space to be the measure thereof, which, being movable and defined by its situation in respect of sensible bodies, is vulgarly taken for immovable space. place he defines to be that part of space which is occupied by any body; and according as the space is absolute or relative so also is the place. absolute motion is said to be the translation of a body from absolute place to absolute place, as relative motion is from one relative place to another. and, because the parts of absolute space do not fall under our senses, instead of them we are obliged to use their sensible measures, and so define both place and motion with respect to bodies which we regard as immovable. but, it is said in philosophical matters we must abstract from our senses, since it may be that none of those bodies which seem to be quiescent are truly so, and the same thing which is moved relatively may be really at rest; as likewise one and the same body may be in relative rest and motion, or even moved with contrary relative motions at the same time, according as its place is variously defined. all which ambiguity is to be found in the apparent motions, but not at all in the true or absolute, which should therefore be alone regarded in philosophy. and the true as we are told are distinguished from apparent or relative motions by the following properties.--first, in true or absolute motion all parts which preserve the same position with respect of the whole, partake of the motions of the whole. secondly, the place being moved, that which is placed therein is also moved; so that a body moving in a place which is in motion doth participate the motion of its place. thirdly, true motion is never generated or changed otherwise than by force impressed on the body itself. fourthly, true motion is always changed by force impressed on the body moved. fifthly, in circular motion barely relative there is no centrifugal force, which, nevertheless, in that which is true or absolute, is proportional to the quantity of motion. . motion, whether real or apparent, relative.--but, notwithstanding what has been said, i must confess it does not appear to me that there can be any motion other than relative; so that to conceive motion there must be at least conceived two bodies, whereof the distance or position in regard to each other is varied. hence, if there was one only body in being it could not possibly be moved. this seems evident, in that the idea i have of motion doth necessarily include relation. . apparent motion denied.--but, though in every motion it be necessary to conceive more bodies than one, yet it may be that one only is moved, namely, that on which the force causing the change in the distance or situation of the bodies, is impressed. for, however some may define relative motion, so as to term that body moved which changes its distance from some other body, whether the force or action causing that change were impressed on it or no, yet as relative motion is that which is perceived by sense, and regarded in the ordinary affairs of life, it should seem that every man of common sense knows what it is as well as the best philosopher. now, i ask any one whether, in his sense of motion as he walks along the streets, the stones he passes over may be said to move, because they change distance with his feet? to me it appears that though motion includes a relation of one thing to another, yet it is not necessary that each term of the relation be denominated from it. as a man may think of somewhat which does not think, so a body may be moved to or from another body which is not therefore itself in motion. . as the place happens to be variously defined, the motion which is related to it varies. a man in a ship may be said to be quiescent with relation to the sides of the vessel, and yet move with relation to the land. or he may move eastward in respect of the one, and westward in respect of the other. in the common affairs of life men never go beyond the earth to define the place of any body; and what is quiescent in respect of that is accounted absolutely to be so. but philosophers, who have a greater extent of thought, and juster notions of the system of things, discover even the earth itself to be moved. in order therefore to fix their notions they seem to conceive the corporeal world as finite, and the utmost unmoved walls or shell thereof to be the place whereby they estimate true motions. if we sound our own conceptions, i believe we may find all the absolute motion we can frame an idea of to be at bottom no other than relative motion thus defined. for, as has been already observed, absolute motion, exclusive of all external relation, is incomprehensible; and to this kind of relative motion all the above-mentioned properties, causes, and effects ascribed to absolute motion will, if i mistake not, be found to agree. as to what is said of the centrifugal force, that it does not at all belong to circular relative motion, i do not see how this follows from the experiment which is brought to prove it. see philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, in schol. def. viii. for the water in the vessel at that time wherein it is said to have the greatest relative circular motion, has, i think, no motion at all; as is plain from the foregoing section. . for, to denominate a body moved it is requisite, first, that it change its distance or situation with regard to some other body; and secondly, that the force occasioning that change be applied to it. if either of these be wanting, i do not think that, agreeably to the sense of mankind, or the propriety of language, a body can be said to be in motion. i grant indeed that it is possible for us to think a body which we see change its distance from some other to be moved, though it have no force applied to it (in which sense there may be apparent motion), but then it is because the force causing the change of distance is imagined by us to be applied or impressed on that body thought to move; which indeed shows we are capable of mistaking a thing to be in motion which is not, and that is all. . any idea of pure space relative.--from what has been said it follows that the philosophic consideration of motion does not imply the being of an absolute space, distinct from that which is perceived by sense and related bodies; which that it cannot exist without the mind is clear upon the same principles that demonstrate the like of all other objects of sense. and perhaps, if we inquire narrowly, we shall find we cannot even frame an idea of pure space exclusive of all body. this i must confess seems impossible, as being a most abstract idea. when i excite a motion in some part of my body, if it be free or without resistance, i say there is space; but if i find a resistance, then i say there is body; and in proportion as the resistance to motion is lesser or greater, i say the space is more or less pure. so that when i speak of pure or empty space, it is not to be supposed that the word "space" stands for an idea distinct from or conceivable without body and motion--though indeed we are apt to think every noun substantive stands for a distinct idea that may be separated from all others; which has occasioned infinite mistakes. when, therefore, supposing all the world to be annihilated besides my own body, i say there still remains pure space, thereby nothing else is meant but only that i conceive it possible for the limbs of my body to be moved on all sides without the least resistance, but if that, too, were annihilated then there could be no motion, and consequently no space. some, perhaps, may think the sense of seeing doth furnish them with the idea of pure space; but it is plain from what we have elsewhere shown, that the ideas of space and distance are not obtained by that sense. see the essay concerning vision. . what is here laid down seems to put an end to all those disputes and difficulties that have sprung up amongst the learned concerning the nature of pure space. but the chief advantage arising from it is that we are freed from that dangerous dilemma, to which several who have employed their thoughts on that subject imagine themselves reduced, to wit, of thinking either that real space is god, or else that there is something beside god which is eternal, uncreated, infinite, indivisible, immutable. both which may justly be thought pernicious and absurd notions. it is certain that not a few divines, as well as philosophers of great note, have, from the difficulty they found in conceiving either limits or annihilation of space, concluded it must be divine. and some of late have set themselves particularly to show the incommunicable attributes of god agree to it. which doctrine, how unworthy soever it may seem of the divine nature, yet i do not see how we can get clear of it, so long as we adhere to the received opinions. . the errors arising from the doctrines of abstraction and external material existences, influence mathematical reasonings.--hitherto of natural philosophy: we come now to make some inquiry concerning that other great branch of speculative knowledge, to wit, mathematics. these, how celebrated soever they may be for their clearness and certainty of demonstration, which is hardly anywhere else to be found, cannot nevertheless be supposed altogether free from mistakes, if in their principles there lurks some secret error which is common to the professors of those sciences with the rest of mankind. mathematicians, though they deduce their theorems from a great height of evidence, yet their first principles are limited by the consideration of quantity: and they do not ascend into any inquiry concerning those transcendental maxims which influence all the particular sciences, each part whereof, mathematics not excepted, does consequently participate of the errors involved in them. that the principles laid down by mathematicians are true, and their way of deduction from those principles clear and incontestible, we do not deny; but, we hold there may be certain erroneous maxims of greater extent than the object of mathematics, and for that reason not expressly mentioned, though tacitly supposed throughout the whole progress of that science; and that the ill effects of those secret unexamined errors are diffused through all the branches thereof. to be plain, we suspect the mathematicians are as well as other men concerned in the errors arising from the doctrine of abstract general ideas, and the existence of objects without the mind. . arithmetic has been thought to have for its object abstract ideas of number; of which to understand the properties and mutual habitudes, is supposed no mean part of speculative knowledge. the opinion of the pure and intellectual nature of numbers in abstract has made them in esteem with those philosophers who seem to have affected an uncommon fineness and elevation of thought. it has set a price on the most trifling numerical speculations which in practice are of no use, but serve only for amusement; and has therefore so far infected the minds of some, that they have dreamed of mighty mysteries involved in numbers, and attempted the explication of natural things by them. but, if we inquire into our own thoughts, and consider what has been premised, we may perhaps entertain a low opinion of those high flights and abstractions, and look on all inquiries, about numbers only as so many difficiles nugae, so far as they are not subservient to practice, and promote the benefit of life. . unity in abstract we have before considered in sect. , from which and what has been said in the introduction, it plainly follows there is not any such idea. but, number being defined a "collection of units," we may conclude that, if there be no such thing as unity or unit in abstract, there are no ideas of number in abstract denoted by the numeral names and figures. the theories therefore in arithmetic, if they are abstracted from the names and figures, as likewise from all use and practice, as well as from the particular things numbered, can be supposed to have nothing at all for their object; hence we may see how entirely the science of numbers is subordinate to practice, and how jejune and trifling it becomes when considered as a matter of mere speculation. . however, since there may be some who, deluded by the specious show of discovering abstracted verities, waste their time in arithmetical theorems and problems which have not any use, it will not be amiss if we more fully consider and expose the vanity of that pretence; and this will plainly appear by taking a view of arithmetic in its infancy, and observing what it was that originally put men on the study of that science, and to what scope they directed it. it is natural to think that at first, men, for ease of memory and help of computation, made use of counters, or in writing of single strokes, points, or the like, each whereof was made to signify an unit, i.e., some one thing of whatever kind they had occasion to reckon. afterwards they found out the more compendious ways of making one character stand in place of several strokes or points. and, lastly, the notation of the arabians or indians came into use, wherein, by the repetition of a few characters or figures, and varying the signification of each figure according to the place it obtains, all numbers may be most aptly expressed; which seems to have been done in imitation of language, so that an exact analogy is observed betwixt the notation by figures and names, the nine simple figures answering the nine first numeral names and places in the former, corresponding to denominations in the latter. and agreeably to those conditions of the simple and local value of figures, were contrived methods of finding, from the given figures or marks of the parts, what figures and how placed are proper to denote the whole, or vice versa. and having found the sought figures, the same rule or analogy being observed throughout, it is easy to read them into words; and so the number becomes perfectly known. for then the number of any particular things is said to be known, when we know the name of figures (with their due arrangement) that according to the standing analogy belong to them. for, these signs being known, we can by the operations of arithmetic know the signs of any part of the particular sums signified by them; and, thus computing in signs (because of the connexion established betwixt them and the distinct multitudes of things whereof one is taken for an unit), we may be able rightly to sum up, divide, and proportion the things themselves that we intend to number. . in arithmetic, therefore, we regard not the things, but the signs, which nevertheless are not regarded for their own sake, but because they direct us how to act with relation to things, and dispose rightly of them. now, agreeably to what we have before observed of words in general (sect. , introd.) it happens here likewise that abstract ideas are thought to be signified by numeral names or characters, while they do not suggest ideas of particular things to our minds. i shall not at present enter into a more particular dissertation on this subject, but only observe that it is evident from what has been said, those things which pass for abstract truths and theorems concerning numbers, are in reality conversant about no object distinct from particular numeral things, except only names and characters, which originally came to be considered on no other account but their being signs, or capable to represent aptly whatever particular things men had need to compute. whence it follows that to study them for their own sake would be just as wise, and to as good purpose as if a man, neglecting the true use or original intention and subserviency of language, should spend his time in impertinent criticisms upon words, or reasonings and controversies purely verbal. . from numbers we proceed to speak of extension, which, considered as relative, is the object of geometry. the infinite divisibility of finite extension, though it is not expressly laid down either as an axiom or theorem in the elements of that science, yet is throughout the same everywhere supposed and thought to have so inseparable and essential a connexion with the principles and demonstrations in geometry, that mathematicians never admit it into doubt, or make the least question of it. and, as this notion is the source from whence do spring all those amusing geometrical paradoxes which have such a direct repugnancy to the plain common sense of mankind, and are admitted with so much reluctance into a mind not yet debauched by learning; so it is the principal occasion of all that nice and extreme subtilty which renders the study of mathematics so difficult and tedious. hence, if we can make it appear that no finite extension contains innumerable parts, or is infinitely divisible, it follows that we shall at once clear the science of geometry from a great number of difficulties and contradictions which have ever been esteemed a reproach to human reason, and withal make the attainment thereof a business of much less time and pains than it hitherto has been. . every particular finite extension which may possibly be the object of our thought is an idea existing only in the mind, and consequently each part thereof must be perceived. if, therefore, i cannot perceive innumerable parts in any finite extension that i consider, it is certain they are not contained in it; but, it is evident that i cannot distinguish innumerable parts in any particular line, surface, or solid, which i either perceive by sense, or figure to myself in my mind: wherefore i conclude they are not contained in it. nothing can be plainer to me than that the extensions i have in view are no other than my own ideas; and it is no less plain that i cannot resolve any one of my ideas into an infinite number of other ideas, that is, that they are not infinitely divisible. if by finite extension be meant something distinct from a finite idea, i declare i do not know what that is, and so cannot affirm or deny anything of it. but if the terms "extension," "parts," &c., are taken in any sense conceivable, that is, for ideas, then to say a finite quantity or extension consists of parts infinite in number is so manifest a contradiction, that every one at first sight acknowledges it to be so; and it is impossible it should ever gain the assent of any reasonable creature who is not brought to it by gentle and slow degrees, as a converted gentile to the belief of transubstantiation. ancient and rooted prejudices do often pass into principles; and those propositions which once obtain the force and credit of a principle, are not only themselves, but likewise whatever is deducible from them, thought privileged from all examination. and there is no absurdity so gross, which, by this means, the mind of man may not be prepared to swallow. . he whose understanding is possessed with the doctrine of abstract general ideas may be persuaded that (whatever be thought of the ideas of sense) extension in abstract is infinitely divisible. and one who thinks the objects of sense exist without the mind will perhaps in virtue thereof be brought to admit that a line but an inch long may contain innumerable parts--really existing, though too small to be discerned. these errors are grafted as well in the minds of geometricians as of other men, and have a like influence on their reasonings; and it were no difficult thing to show how the arguments from geometry made use of to support the infinite divisibility of extension are bottomed on them. at present we shall only observe in general whence it is the mathematicians are all so fond and tenacious of that doctrine. . it has been observed in another place that the theorems and demonstrations in geometry are conversant about universal ideas (sect. , introd.); where it is explained in what sense this ought to be understood, to wit, the particular lines and figures included in the diagram are supposed to stand for innumerable others of different sizes; or, in other words, the geometer considers them abstracting from their magnitude--which does not imply that he forms an abstract idea, but only that he cares not what the particular magnitude is, whether great or small, but looks on that as a thing different to the demonstration. hence it follows that a line in the scheme but an inch long must be spoken of as though it contained ten thousand parts, since it is regarded not in itself, but as it is universal; and it is universal only in its signification, whereby it represents innumerable lines greater than itself, in which may be distinguished ten thousand parts or more, though there may not be above an inch in it. after this manner, the properties of the lines signified are (by a very usual figure) transferred to the sign, and thence, through mistake, though to appertain to it considered in its own nature. . because there is no number of parts so great but it is possible there may be a line containing more, the inch-line is said to contain parts more than any assignable number; which is true, not of the inch taken absolutely, but only for the things signified by it. but men, not retaining that distinction in their thoughts, slide into a belief that the small particular line described on paper contains in itself parts innumerable. there is no such thing as the ten--thousandth part of an inch; but there is of a mile or diameter of the earth, which may be signified by that inch. when therefore i delineate a triangle on paper, and take one side not above an inch, for example, in length to be the radius, this i consider as divided into , or , parts or more; for, though the ten-thousandth part of that line considered in itself is nothing at all, and consequently may be neglected without an error or inconveniency, yet these described lines, being only marks standing for greater quantities, whereof it may be the ten--thousandth part is very considerable, it follows that, to prevent notable errors in practice, the radius must be taken of , parts or more. . lines which are infinitely divisible.--from what has been said the reason is plain why, to the end any theorem become universal in its use, it is necessary we speak of the lines described on paper as though they contained parts which really they do not. in doing of which, if we examine the matter thoroughly, we shall perhaps discover that we cannot conceive an inch itself as consisting of, or being divisible into, a thousand parts, but only some other line which is far greater than an inch, and represented by it; and that when we say a line is infinitely divisible, we must mean a line which is infinitely great. what we have here observed seems to be the chief cause why, to suppose the infinite divisibility of finite extension has been thought necessary in geometry. . the several absurdities and contradictions which flowed from this false principle might, one would think, have been esteemed so many demonstrations against it. but, by i know not what logic, it is held that proofs a posteriori are not to be admitted against propositions relating to infinity, as though it were not impossible even for an infinite mind to reconcile contradictions; or as if anything absurd and repugnant could have a necessary connexion with truth or flow from it. but, whoever considers the weakness of this pretence will think it was contrived on purpose to humour the laziness of the mind which had rather acquiesce in an indolent scepticism than be at the pains to go through with a severe examination of those principles it has ever embraced for true. . of late the speculations about infinities have run so high, and grown to such strange notions, as have occasioned no small scruples and disputes among the geometers of the present age. some there are of great note who, not content with holding that finite lines may be divided into an infinite number of parts, do yet farther maintain that each of those infinitesimals is itself subdivisible into an infinity of other parts or infinitesimals of a second order, and so on ad infinitum. these, i say, assert there are infinitesimals of infinitesimals of infinitesimals, &c., without ever coming to an end; so that according to them an inch does not barely contain an infinite number of parts, but an infinity of an infinity of an infinity ad infinitum of parts. others there be who hold all orders of infinitesimals below the first to be nothing at all; thinking it with good reason absurd to imagine there is any positive quantity or part of extension which, though multiplied infinitely, can never equal the smallest given extension. and yet on the other hand it seems no less absurd to think the square, cube or other power of a positive real root, should itself be nothing at all; which they who hold infinitesimals of the first order, denying all of the subsequent orders, are obliged to maintain. . objection of mathematicians.--answer.--have we not therefore reason to conclude they are both in the wrong, and that there is in effect no such thing as parts infinitely small, or an infinite number of parts contained in any finite quantity? but you will say that if this doctrine obtains it will follow the very foundations of geometry are destroyed, and those great men who have raised that science to so astonishing a height, have been all the while building a castle in the air. to this it may be replied that whatever is useful in geometry, and promotes the benefit of human life, does still remain firm and unshaken on our principles; that science considered as practical will rather receive advantage than any prejudice from what has been said. but to set this in a due light may be the proper business of another place. for the rest, though it should follow that some of the more intricate and subtle parts of speculative mathematics may be pared off without any prejudice to truth, yet i do not see what damage will be thence derived to mankind. on the contrary, i think it were highly to be wished that men of great abilities and obstinate application would draw off their thoughts from those amusements, and employ them in the study of such things as lie nearer the concerns of life, or have a more direct influence on the manners. . second objection of mathematicians.--answer.--if it be said that several theorems undoubtedly true are discovered by methods in which infinitesimals are made use of, which could never have been if their existence included a contradiction in it; i answer that upon a thorough examination it will not be found that in any instance it is necessary to make use of or conceive infinitesimal parts of finite lines, or even quantities less than the minimum sensible; nay, it will be evident this is never done, it being impossible. . if the doctrine were only an hypothesis it should be respected for its consequences.--by what we have premised, it is plain that very numerous and important errors have taken their rise from those false principles which were impugned in the foregoing parts of this treatise; and the opposites of those erroneous tenets at the same time appear to be most fruitful principles, from whence do flow innumerable consequences highly advantageous to true philosophy, as well as to religion. particularly matter, or the absolute existence of corporeal objects, has been shown to be that wherein the most avowed and pernicious enemies of all knowledge, whether human or divine, have ever placed their chief strength and confidence. and surely, if by distinguishing the real existence of unthinking things from their being perceived, and allowing them a subsistance of their own out of the minds of spirits, no one thing is explained in nature, but on the contrary a great many inexplicable difficulties arise; if the supposition of matter is barely precarious, as not being grounded on so much as one single reason; if its consequences cannot endure the light of examination and free inquiry, but screen themselves under the dark and general pretence of "infinites being incomprehensible"; if withal the removal of this matter be not attended with the least evil consequence; if it be not even missed in the world, but everything as well, nay much easier conceived without it; if, lastly, both sceptics and atheists are for ever silenced upon supposing only spirits and ideas, and this scheme of things is perfectly agreeable both to reason and religion: methinks we may expect it should be admitted and firmly embraced, though it were proposed only as an hypothesis, and the existence of matter had been allowed possible, which yet i think we have evidently demonstrated that it is not. . true it is that, in consequence of the foregoing principles, several disputes and speculations which are esteemed no mean parts of learning, are rejected as useless. but, how great a prejudice soever against our notions this may give to those who have already been deeply engaged, and make large advances in studies of that nature, yet by others we hope it will not be thought any just ground of dislike to the principles and tenets herein laid down, that they abridge the labour of study, and make human sciences far more clear, compendious and attainable than they were before. . having despatched what we intended to say concerning the knowledge of ideas, the method we proposed leads us in the next place to treat of spirits--with regard to which, perhaps, human knowledge is not so deficient as is vulgarly imagined. the great reason that is assigned for our being thought ignorant of the nature of spirits is our not having an idea of it. but, surely it ought not to be looked on as a defect in a human understanding that it does not perceive the idea of spirit, if it is manifestly impossible there should be any such idea. and this if i mistake not has been demonstrated in section ; to which i shall here add that a spirit has been shown to be the only substance or support wherein unthinking beings or ideas can exist; but that this substance which supports or perceives ideas should itself be an idea or like an idea is evidently absurd. . objection.--answer.--it will perhaps be said that we want a sense (as some have imagined) proper to know substances withal, which, if we had, we might know our own soul as we do a triangle. to this i answer, that, in case we had a new sense bestowed upon us, we could only receive thereby some new sensations or ideas of sense. but i believe nobody will say that what he means by the terms soul and substance is only some particular sort of idea or sensation. we may therefore infer that, all things duly considered, it is not more reasonable to think our faculties defective, in that they do not furnish us with an idea of spirit or active thinking substance, than it would be if we should blame them for not being able to comprehend a round square. . from the opinion that spirits are to be known after the manner of an idea or sensation have risen many absurd and heterodox tenets, and much scepticism about the nature of the soul. it is even probable that this opinion may have produced a doubt in some whether they had any soul at all distinct from their body since upon inquiry they could not find they had an idea of it. that an idea which is inactive, and the existence whereof consists in being perceived, should be the image or likeness of an agent subsisting by itself, seems to need no other refutation than barely attending to what is meant by those words. but, perhaps you will say that though an idea cannot resemble a spirit in its thinking, acting, or subsisting by itself, yet it may in some other respects; and it is not necessary that an idea or image be in all respects like the original. . i answer, if it does not in those mentioned, it is impossible it should represent it in any other thing. do but leave out the power of willing, thinking, and perceiving ideas, and there remains nothing else wherein the idea can be like a spirit. for, by the word spirit we mean only that which thinks, wills, and perceives; this, and this alone, constitutes the signification of the term. if therefore it is impossible that any degree of those powers should be represented in an idea, it is evident there can be no idea of a spirit. . but it will be objected that, if there is no idea signified by the terms soul, spirit, and substance, they are wholly insignificant, or have no meaning in them. i answer, those words do mean or signify a real thing, which is neither an idea nor like an idea, but that which perceives ideas, and wills, and reasons about them. what i am myself, that which i denote by the term i, is the same with what is meant by soul or spiritual substance. if it be said that this is only quarreling at a word, and that, since the immediately significations of other names are by common consent called ideas, no reason can be assigned why that which is signified by the name spirit or soul may not partake in the same appellation. i answer, all the unthinking objects of the mind agree in that they are entirely passive, and their existence consists only in being perceived; whereas a soul or spirit is an active being, whose existence consists, not in being perceived, but in perceiving ideas and thinking. it is therefore necessary, in order to prevent equivocation and confounding natures perfectly disagreeing and unlike, that we distinguish between spirit and idea. see sect. . . our idea of spirit.--in a large sense, indeed, we may be said to have an idea or rather a notion of spirit; that is, we understand the meaning of the word, otherwise we could not affirm or deny anything of it. moreover, as we conceive the ideas that are in the minds of other spirits by means of our own, which we suppose to be resemblances of them; so we know other spirits by means of our own soul--which in that sense is the image or idea of them; it having a like respect to other spirits that blueness or heat by me perceived has to those ideas perceived by another. . the natural immortality of the soul is a necessary consequence of the foregoing doctrine.--it must not be supposed that they who assert the natural immortality of the soul are of opinion that it is absolutely incapable of annihilation even by the infinite power of the creator who first gave it being, but only that it is not liable to be broken or dissolved by the ordinary laws of nature or motion. they indeed who hold the soul of man to be only a thin vital flame, or system of animal spirits, make it perishing and corruptible as the body; since there is nothing more easily dissipated than such a being, which it is naturally impossible should survive the ruin of the tabernacle wherein it is enclosed. and this notion has been greedily embraced and cherished by the worst part of mankind, as the most effectual antidote against all impressions of virtue and religion. but it has been made evident that bodies, of what frame or texture soever, are barely passive ideas in the mind, which is more distant and heterogeneous from them than light is from darkness. we have shown that the soul is indivisible, incorporeal, unextended, and it is consequently incorruptible. nothing can be plainer than that the motions, changes, decays, and dissolutions which we hourly see befall natural bodies (and which is what we mean by the course of nature) cannot possibly affect an active, simple, uncompounded substance; such a being therefore is indissoluble by the force of nature; that is to say, "the soul of man is naturally immortal." . after what has been said, it is, i suppose, plain that our souls are not to be known in the same manner as senseless, inactive objects, or by way of idea. spirits and ideas are things so wholly different, that when we say "they exist," "they are known," or the like, these words must not be thought to signify anything common to both natures. there is nothing alike or common in them: and to expect that by any multiplication or enlargement of our faculties we may be enabled to know a spirit as we do a triangle, seems as absurd as if we should hope to see a sound. this is inculcated because i imagine it may be of moment towards clearing several important questions, and preventing some very dangerous errors concerning the nature of the soul. we may not, i think, strictly be said to have an idea of an active being, or of an action, although we may be said to have a notion of them. i have some knowledge or notion of my mind, and its acts about ideas, inasmuch as i know or understand what is meant by these words. what i know, that i have some notion of. i will not say that the terms idea and notion may not be used convertibly, if the world will have it so; but yet it conduceth to clearness and propriety that we distinguish things very different by different names. it is also to be remarked that, all relations including an act of the mind, we cannot so properly be said to have an idea, but rather a notion of the relations and habitudes between things. but if, in the modern way, the word idea is extended to spirits, and relations, and acts, this is, after all, an affair of verbal concern. . it will not be amiss to add, that the doctrine of abstract ideas has had no small share in rendering those sciences intricate and obscure which are particularly conversant about spiritual things. men have imagined they could frame abstract notions of the powers and acts of the mind, and consider them prescinded as well from the mind or spirit itself, as from their respective objects and effects. hence a great number of dark and ambiguous terms, presumed to stand for abstract notions, have been introduced into metaphysics and morality, and from these have grown infinite distractions and disputes amongst the learned. . but, nothing seems more to have contributed towards engaging men in controversies and mistakes with regard to the nature and operations of the mind, than the being used to speak of those things in terms borrowed from sensible ideas. for example, the will is termed the motion of the soul; this infuses a belief that the mind of man is as a ball in motion, impelled and determined by the objects of sense, as necessarily as that is by the stroke of a racket. hence arise endless scruples and errors of dangerous consequence in morality. all which, i doubt not, may be cleared, and truth appear plain, uniform, and consistent, could but philosophers be prevailed on to retire into themselves, and attentively consider their own meaning. . knowledge of spirits not immediate.--from what has been said, it is plain that we cannot know the existence of other spirits otherwise than by their operations, or the ideas by them excited in us. i perceive several motions, changes, and combinations of ideas, that inform me there are certain particular agents, like myself, which accompany them and concur in their production. hence, the knowledge i have of other spirits is not immediate, as is the knowledge of my ideas; but depending on the intervention of ideas, by me referred to agents or spirits distinct from myself, as effects or concomitant signs. . but, though there be some things which convince us human agents are concerned in producing them; yet it is evident to every one that those things which are called the works of nature, that is, the far greater part of the ideas or sensations perceived by us, are not produced by, or dependent on, the wills of men. there is therefore some other spirit that causes them; since it is repugnant that they should subsist by themselves. see sect. . but, if we attentively consider the constant regularity, order, and concatenation of natural things, the surprising magnificence, beauty, and perfection of the larger, and the exquisite contrivance of the smaller parts of creation, together with the exact harmony and correspondence of the whole, but above all the never-enough-admired laws of pain and pleasure, and the instincts or natural inclinations, appetites, and passions of animals; i say if we consider all these things, and at the same time attend to the meaning and import of the attributes one, eternal, infinitely wise, good, and perfect, we shall clearly perceive that they belong to the aforesaid spirit, "who works all in all," and "by whom all things consist." . the existence of god more evident than that of man.--hence, it is evident that god is known as certainly and immediately as any other mind or spirit whatsoever distinct from ourselves. we may even assert that the existence of god is far more evidently perceived than the existence of men; because the effects of nature are infinitely more numerous and considerable than those ascribed to human agents. there is not any one mark that denotes a man, or effect produced by him, which does not more strongly evince the being of that spirit who is the author of nature. for, it is evident that in affecting other persons the will of man has no other object than barely the motion of the limbs of his body; but that such a motion should be attended by, or excite any idea in the mind of another, depends wholly on the will of the creator. he alone it is who, "upholding all things by the word of his power," maintains that intercourse between spirits whereby they are able to perceive the existence of each other. and yet this pure and clear light which enlightens every one is itself invisible. . it seems to be a general pretence of the unthinking herd that they cannot see god. could we but see him, say they, as we see a man, we should believe that he is, and believing obey his commands. but alas, we need only open our eyes to see the sovereign lord of all things, with a more full and clear view than we do any one of our fellow--creatures. not that i imagine we see god (as some will have it) by a direct and immediate view; or see corporeal things, not by themselves, but by seeing that which represents them in the essence of god, which doctrine is, i must confess, to me incomprehensible. but i shall explain my meaning;--a human spirit or person is not perceived by sense, as not being an idea; when therefore we see the colour, size, figure, and motions of a man, we perceive only certain sensations or ideas excited in our own minds; and these being exhibited to our view in sundry distinct collections, serve to mark out unto us the existence of finite and created spirits like ourselves. hence it is plain we do not see a man--if by man is meant that which lives, moves, perceives, and thinks as we do--but only such a certain collection of ideas as directs us to think there is a distinct principle of thought and motion, like to ourselves, accompanying and represented by it. and after the same manner we see god; all the difference is that, whereas some one finite and narrow assemblage of ideas denotes a particular human mind, whithersoever we direct our view, we do at all times and in all places perceive manifest tokens of the divinity: everything we see, hear, feel, or anywise perceive by sense, being a sign or effect of the power of god; as is our perception of those very motions which are produced by men. . it is therefore plain that nothing can be more evident to any one that is capable of the least reflexion than the existence of god, or a spirit who is intimately present to our minds, producing in them all that variety of ideas or sensations which continually affect us, on whom we have an absolute and entire dependence, in short "in whom we live, and move, and have our being." that the discovery of this great truth, which lies so near and obvious to the mind, should be attained to by the reason of so very few, is a sad instance of the stupidity and inattention of men, who, though they are surrounded with such clear manifestations of the deity, are yet so little affected by them that they seem, as it were, blinded with excess of light. . objection on behalf of nature.--answer.--but you will say, has nature no share in the production of natural things, and must they be all ascribed to the immediate and sole operation of god? i answer, if by nature is meant only the visible series of effects or sensations imprinted on our minds, according to certain fixed and general laws, then it is plain that nature, taken in this sense, cannot produce anything at all. but, if by nature is meant some being distinct from god, as well as from the laws of nature, and things perceived by sense, i must confess that word is to me an empty sound without any intelligible meaning annexed to it. nature, in this acceptation, is a vain chimera, introduced by those heathens who had not just notions of the omnipresence and infinite perfection of god. but, it is more unaccountable that it should be received among christians, professing belief in the holy scriptures, which constantly ascribe those effects to the immediate hand of god that heathen philosophers are wont to impute to nature. "the lord he causeth the vapours to ascend; he maketh lightnings with rain; he bringeth forth the wind out of his treasures." jerem. . . "he turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night." amos, . . "he visiteth the earth, and maketh it soft with showers: he blesseth the springing thereof, and crowneth the year with his goodness; so that the pastures are clothed with flocks, and the valleys are covered over with corn." see psalm . but, notwithstanding that this is the constant language of scripture, yet we have i know not what aversion from believing that god concerns himself so nearly in our affairs. fain would we suppose him at a great distance off, and substitute some blind unthinking deputy in his stead, though (if we may believe saint paul) "he be not far from every one of us." . objection to the hand of god being the immediate cause, threefold.--answer.--it will, i doubt not, be objected that the slow and gradual methods observed in the production of natural things do not seem to have for their cause the immediate hand of an almighty agent. besides, monsters, untimely births, fruits blasted in the blossom, rains falling in desert places, miseries incident to human life, and the like, are so many arguments that the whole frame of nature is not immediately actuated and superintended by a spirit of infinite wisdom and goodness. but the answer to this objection is in a good measure plain from sect. ; it being visible that the aforesaid methods of nature are absolutely necessary, in order to working by the most simple and general rules, and after a steady and consistent manner; which argues both the wisdom and goodness of god. such is the artificial contrivance of this mighty machine of nature that, whilst its motions and various phenomena strike on our senses, the hand which actuates the whole is itself unperceivable to men of flesh and blood. "verily" (saith the prophet) "thou art a god that hidest thyself." isaiah, . . but, though the lord conceal himself from the eyes of the sensual and lazy, who will not be at the least expense of thought, yet to an unbiased and attentive mind nothing can be more plainly legible than the intimate presence of an all-wise spirit, who fashions, regulates and sustains the whole system of beings. it is clear, from what we have elsewhere observed, that the operating according to general and stated laws is so necessary for our guidance in the affairs of life, and letting us into the secret of nature, that without it all reach and compass of thought, all human sagacity and design, could serve to no manner of purpose; it were even impossible there should be any such faculties or powers in the mind. see sect. . which one consideration abundantly outbalances whatever particular inconveniences may thence arise. . we should further consider that the very blemishes and defects of nature are not without their use, in that they make an agreeable sort of variety, and augment the beauty of the rest of the creation, as shades in a picture serve to set off the brighter and more enlightened parts. we would likewise do well to examine whether our taxing the waste of seeds and embryos, and accidental destruction of plants and animals, before they come to full maturity, as an imprudence in the author of nature, be not the effect of prejudice contracted by our familiarity with impotent and saving mortals. in man indeed a thrifty management of those things which he cannot procure without much pains and industry may be esteemed wisdom. but, we must not imagine that the inexplicably fine machine of an animal or vegetable costs the great creator any more pains or trouble in its production than a pebble does; nothing being more evident than that an omnipotent spirit can indifferently produce everything by a mere fiat or act of his will. hence, it is plain that the splendid profusion of natural things should not be interpreted weakness or prodigality in the agent who produces them, but rather be looked on as an argument of the riches of his power. . as for the mixture of pain or uneasiness which is in the world, pursuant to the general laws of nature, and the actions of finite, imperfect spirits, this, in the state we are in at present, is indispensably necessary to our well-being. but our prospects are too narrow. we take, for instance, the idea of some one particular pain into our thoughts, and account it evil; whereas, if we enlarge our view, so as to comprehend the various ends, connexions, and dependencies of things, on what occasions and in what proportions we are affected with pain and pleasure, the nature of human freedom, and the design with which we are put into the world; we shall be forced to acknowledge that those particular things which, considered in themselves, appear to be evil, have the nature of good, when considered as linked with the whole system of beings. . atheism and manicheism would have few supporters if mankind were in general attentive.--from what has been said, it will be manifest to any considering person, that it is merely for want of attention and comprehensiveness of mind that there are any favourers of atheism or the manichean heresy to be found. little and unreflecting souls may indeed burlesque the works of providence, the beauty and order whereof they have not capacity, or will not be at the pains, to comprehend; but those who are masters of any justness and extent of thought, and are withal used to reflect, can never sufficiently admire the divine traces of wisdom and goodness that shine throughout the economy of nature. but what truth is there which shineth so strongly on the mind that by an aversion of thought, a wilful shutting of the eyes, we may not escape seeing it? is it therefore to be wondered at, if the generality of men, who are ever intent on business or pleasure, and little used to fix or open the eye of their mind, should not have all that conviction and evidence of the being of god which might be expected in reasonable creatures? . we should rather wonder that men can be found so stupid as to neglect, than that neglecting they should be unconvinced of such an evident and momentous truth. and yet it is to be feared that too many of parts and leisure, who live in christian countries, are, merely through a supine and dreadful negligence, sunk into atheism. since it is downright impossible that a soul pierced and enlightened with a thorough sense of the omnipresence, holiness, and justice of that almighty spirit should persist in a remorseless violation of his laws. we ought, therefore, earnestly to meditate and dwell on those important points; that so we may attain conviction without all scruple "that the eyes of the lord are in every place beholding the evil and the good; that he is with us and keepeth us in all places whither we go, and giveth us bread to eat and raiment to put on"; that he is present and conscious to our innermost thoughts; and that we have a most absolute and immediate dependence on him. a clear view of which great truths cannot choose but fill our hearts with an awful circumspection and holy fear, which is the strongest incentive to virtue, and the best guard against vice. . for, after all, what deserves the first place in our studies is the consideration of god and our duty; which to promote, as it was the main drift and design of my labours, so shall i esteem them altogether useless and ineffectual if, by what i have said, i cannot inspire my readers with a pious sense of the presence of god; and, having shown the falseness or vanity of those barren speculations which make the chief employment of learned men, the better dispose them to reverence and embrace the salutary truths of the gospel, which to know and to practice is the highest perfection of human nature. transcriber's note: every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including inconsistencies in hyphenation. it seems that the italic typeface used in this book did not have an ae ligature. names of genera and higher taxonomic groups are not capitalized in the printed book: they have bee left unchanged. some changes have been made. they are listed at the end of the text. italic text has been marked with _underscores_. oe ligatures have been expanded. the riddle of the universe [illustration: ernst haeckel] the riddle of the universe _at the close of the nineteenth century_ by ernst haeckel (ph.d., m.d., ll.d., sc.d., and professor at the university of jena) author of "the history of creation" "the evolution of man" etc. translated by joseph mccabe [illustration] harper & brothers publishers new york and london copyright, , by harper & brothers. _all rights reserved._ contents page author's preface v translator's preface xi chapter i the nature of the problem chapter ii our bodily frame chapter iii our life chapter iv our embryonic development chapter v the history of our species chapter vi the nature of the soul chapter vii psychic gradations chapter viii the embryology of the soul chapter ix the phylogeny of the soul chapter x consciousness chapter xi the immortality of the soul chapter xii the law of substance chapter xiii the evolution of the world chapter xiv the unity of nature chapter xv god and the world chapter xvi knowledge and belief chapter xvii science and christianity chapter xviii our monistic religion chapter xix our monistic ethics chapter xx solution of the world-problems conclusion index author's preface the present study of the monistic philosophy is intended for thoughtful readers of every condition who are united in an honest search for the truth. an intensification of this effort of man to attain a knowledge of the truth is one of the most salient features of the nineteenth century. that is easily explained, in the first place, by the immense progress of science, especially in its most important branch, the history of humanity; it is due, in the second place, to the open contradiction that has developed during the century between science and the traditional "revelation"; and, finally, it arises from the inevitable extension and deepening of the rational demand for an elucidation of the innumerable facts that have been recently brought to light, and for a fuller knowledge of their causes. unfortunately, this vast progress of empirical knowledge in our "century of science" has not been accompanied by a corresponding advancement of its theoretical interpretation--that higher knowledge of the causal nexus of individual phenomena which we call philosophy. we find, on the contrary, that the abstract and almost wholly metaphysical science which has been taught in our universities for the last hundred years under the name of "philosophy" is far from assimilating our hard-earned treasures of experimental research. on the other hand, we have to admit, with equal regret, that most of the representatives of what is called "exact science" are content with the special care of their own narrow branches of observation and experiment, and deem superfluous the deeper study of the universal connection of the phenomena they observe--that is, philosophy. while these pure empiricists "do not see the wood for the trees," the metaphysicians, on the other hand, are satisfied with the mere picture of the wood, and trouble not about its individual trees. the idea of a "philosophy of nature," to which both those methods of research, the empirical and the speculative, naturally converge, is even yet contemptuously rejected by large numbers of representatives of both tendencies. this unnatural and fatal opposition between science and philosophy, between the results of experience and of thought, is undoubtedly becoming more and more onerous and painful to thoughtful people. that is easily proved by the increasing spread of the immense popular literature of "natural philosophy" which has sprung up in the course of the last half-century. it is seen, too, in the welcome fact that, in spite of the mutual aversion of the scientific observer and the speculative philosopher, nevertheless eminent thinkers from both camps league themselves in a united effort to attain the solution of that highest object of inquiry which we briefly denominate the "world-riddles." the studies of these "world-riddles" which i offer in the present work cannot reasonably claim to give a perfect solution of them; they merely offer to a wide circle of readers a critical inquiry into the problem, and seek to answer the question as to how nearly we have approached that solution at the present day. what stage in the attainment of truth have we actually arrived at in this closing year of the nineteenth century? what progress have we really made during its course towards that immeasurably distant goal? the answer which i give to these great questions must, naturally, be merely subjective and only partly correct; for my knowledge of nature and my ability to interpret its objective reality are limited, as are those of every man. the one point that i can claim for it, and which, indeed, i must ask of my strongest opponents, is that my monistic philosophy is sincere from beginning to end--it is the complete expression of the conviction that has come to me, after many years of ardent research into nature and unceasing reflection, as to the true basis of its phenomena. for fully half a century has my mind's work proceeded, and i now, in my sixty-sixth year, may venture to claim that it is mature; i am fully convinced that this "ripe fruit" of the tree of knowledge will receive no important addition and suffer no substantial modification during the brief spell of life that remains to me. i presented all the essential and distinctive elements of my monistic and genetic philosophy thirty-three years ago, in my _general morphology of organisms_, a large and laborious work, which has had but a limited circulation. it was the first attempt to apply in detail the newly established theory of evolution to the whole science of organic forms. in order to secure the acceptance of at least one part of the new thought which it contained, and to kindle a wider interest in the greatest advancement of knowledge that our century has witnessed, i published my _natural history of creation_ two years afterwards. as this less complicated work, in spite of its great defects, ran into nine large editions and twelve different translations, it has contributed not a little to the spread of monistic views. the same may be said of the less known _anthropogeny_[ ] ( ), in which i set myself the difficult task of rendering the most important facts of the theory of man's descent accessible and intelligible to the general reader; the fourth, enlarged, edition of that work appeared in . in the paper which i read at the fourth international congress of zoology at cambridge, in , on "our present knowledge of the descent of man"[ ] (a seventh edition of which appeared in ), i treated certain significant and particularly valuable advances which this important branch of anthropology has recently made. other isolated questions of our modern natural philosophy, which are peculiarly interesting, have been dealt with in my _collected popular lectures on the subject of evolution_ ( ). finally, i have briefly presented the broad principles of my monistic philosophy and its relation to the dominant faith in my _confession of faith of a man of science: monism as a connecting link between religion and science_[ ] ( , eighth edition, ). the present work on _the riddle of the universe_ is the continuation, confirmation, and integration of the views which i have urged for a generation in the aforesaid volumes. it marks the close of my studies on the monistic conception of the universe. the earlier plan, which i projected many years ago, of constructing a complete "system of monistic philosophy" on the basis of evolution will never be carried into effect now. my strength is no longer equal to the task, and many warnings of approaching age urge me to desist. indeed, i am wholly a child of the nineteenth century, and with its close i draw the line under my life's work. the vast extension of human knowledge which has taken place during the present century, owing to a happy division of labor, makes it impossible to-day to range over all its branches with equal thoroughness, and to show their essential unity and connection. even a genius of the highest type, having an equal command of every branch of science, and largely endowed with the artistic faculty of comprehensive presentation, would be incapable of setting forth a complete view of the cosmos in the space of a moderate volume. my own command of the various branches of science is uneven and defective, so that i can attempt no more than to sketch the general plan of such a world-picture, and point out the pervading unity of its parts, however imperfect be the execution. thus it is that this work on the world-enigma has something of the character of a sketch-book, in which studies of unequal value are associated. as the material of the book was partly written many years ago, and partly produced for the first time during the last few years, the composition is, unfortunately, uneven at times; repetitions, too, have proved unavoidable. i trust those defects will be overlooked. in taking leave of my readers, i venture the hope that, through my sincere and conscientious work--in spite of its faults, of which i am not unconscious--i have contributed a little towards the solution of the great enigma. amid the clash of theories, i trust that i have indicated to many a reader who is absorbed in the zealous pursuit of purely rational knowledge that path which, it is my firm conviction, alone leads to the truth--the path of empirical investigation and of the monistic philosophy which is based upon it. ernst haeckel. jena, germany. preface the hour is close upon us when we shall commence our retrospect of one of the most wonderful sections of time that was ever measured by the sweep of the earth. already the expert is at work, dissecting out and studying his particular phase of that vast world of thought and action we call the nineteenth century. art, literature, commerce, industry, politics, ethics--all have their high interpreters among us; but in the chance of life it has fallen out that there is none to read aright for us, in historic retrospect, what after ages will probably regard as the most salient feature of the nineteenth century--the conflict of theology with philosophy and science. the pens of our huxleys, and tyndalls, and darwins lie where they fell; there is none left in strength among us to sum up the issues of that struggle with knowledge and sympathy. in these circumstances it has been thought fitting that we should introduce to english readers the latest work of professor haeckel. germany, as the reader will quickly perceive, is witnessing the same strange reaction of thought that we see about us here in england, yet _die welträthsel_ found an immediate and very extensive circle of readers. one of the most prominent zoologists of the century, professor haeckel, has a unique claim to pronounce with authority, from the scientific side, on what is known as "the conflict of science and religion." in the contradictory estimates that are urged on us--for the modern ecclesiastic is as emphatic in his assurance that the conflict has ended favorably to theology as the rationalist is with his counter-assertion--the last words of one of the leading combatants of the second half of the century, still, happily, in full vigor of mind, will be heard with respect and close attention. a glance at the index of the work suffices to indicate its comprehensive character. the judgment of the distinguished scientist cannot fail to have weight on all the topics included; yet the reader will soon discover a vein of exceptionally interesting thought in the chapters on evolution. the evolution of the human body is no longer a matter of serious dispute. it has passed the first two tribunals--those of theology and of an _à priori_ philosophy--and is only challenged at the third and last--that of empirical proof--by the decorative heads of scientific bodies and a few isolated thinkers. "_apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto._" but the question of the evolution of the human mind, or soul, has been successfully divorced from that of the body. roman catholic advanced theologians, whose precise terminology demanded a clear position, admit the latter and deny the former categorically. other theologians, and many philosophers, have still a vague notion that the evidence for the one does not impair their sentimental objection to the other. dr. haeckel's work summarizes the evidence for the evolution of mind in a masterly and profoundly interesting fashion. it seems impossible to follow his broad survey of the psychic world, from protist to man, without bearing away a conviction of the natural origin of every power and content of the human soul. translator. _october, ._ the riddle of the universe chapter i the nature of the problem the condition of civilization and of thought at the close of the nineteenth century--progress of our knowledge of nature, of the organic and inorganic sciences--the law of substance and the law of evolution--progress of technical science and of applied chemistry--stagnancy in other departments of life: legal and political administration, education, and the church--conflict of reason and dogma--anthropism--cosmological perspective--cosmological theorems--refutation of the delusion of man's importance--number of "world-riddles"--criticism of the "seven" enigmas--the way to solve them--function of the senses and of the brain--induction and deduction--reason, sentiment, and revelation--philosophy and science--experience and speculation--dualism and monism the close of the nineteenth century offers one of the most remarkable spectacles to the thoughtful observer. all educated people are agreed that it has in many respects immeasurably outstripped its predecessors, and has achieved tasks that were deemed impracticable at its commencement. an entirely new character has been given to the whole of our modern civilization, not only by our astounding theoretical progress in sound knowledge of nature, but also by the remarkably fertile practical application of that knowledge in technical science, industry, commerce, and so forth. on the other hand, however, we have made little or no progress in moral and social life, in comparison with earlier centuries; at times there has been serious reaction. and from this obvious conflict there have arisen, not only an uneasy sense of dismemberment and falseness, but even the danger of grave catastrophes in the political and social world. it is, then, not merely the right, but the sacred duty, of every honorable and humanitarian thinker to devote himself conscientiously to the settlement of that conflict, and to warding off the dangers that it brings in its train. in our conviction this can only be done by a courageous effort to attain the truth, and by the formation of a clear view of the world--a view that shall be based on truth and conformity to reality. if we recall to mind the imperfect condition of science at the beginning of the century, and compare this with the magnificent structure of its closing years, we are compelled to admit that marvellous progress has been made during its course. every single branch of science can boast that it has, especially during the latter half of the century, made numerous acquisitions of the utmost value. both in our microscopic knowledge of the little and in our telescopic investigation of the great we have attained an invaluable insight that seemed inconceivable a hundred years ago. improved methods of microscopic and biological research have not only revealed to us an invisible world of living things in the kingdom of the protists, full of an infinite wealth of forms, but they have taught us to recognize in the tiny cell the all-pervading "elementary organism" of whose social communities--the tissues--the body of every multicellular plant and animal, even that of man, is composed. this anatomical knowledge is of extreme importance; and it is supplemented by the embryological discovery that each of the higher multicellular organisms is developed out of one simple cell, the impregnated ovum. the "cellular theory," which has been founded on that discovery, has given us the first true interpretation of the physical, chemical, and even the psychological processes of life--those mysterious phenomena for whose explanation it had been customary to postulate a supernatural "vital force" or "immortal soul." moreover, the true character of disease has been made clear and intelligible to the physician for the first time by the cognate science of cellular pathology. the discoveries of the nineteenth century in the inorganic world are no less important. physics has made astounding progress in every section of its province--in optics and acoustics, in magnetism and electricity, in mechanics and thermo-dynamics; and, what is still more important, it has proved the unity of the forces of the entire universe. the mechanical theory of heat has shown how intimately they are connected, and how each can, in certain conditions, transform itself directly into another. spectral analysis has taught us that the same matter which enters into the composition of all bodies on earth, including its living inhabitants, builds up the rest of the planets, the sun, and the most distant stars. astro-physics has considerably enlarged our cosmic perspective in revealing to us, in the immeasurable depths of space, millions of circling spheres larger than our earth, and, like it, in endless transformation, in an eternal rhythm of life and death. chemistry has introduced us to a multitude of new substances, all of which arise from the combination of a few (about seventy) elements that are incapable of further analysis; some of them play a most important part in every branch of life. it has been shown that one of these elements--carbon--is the remarkable substance that effects the endless variety of organic syntheses, and thus may be considered "the chemical basis of life." all the particular advances, however, of physics and chemistry yield in theoretical importance to the discovery of the great law which brings them all to one common focus, the "law of substance." as this fundamental cosmic law establishes the eternal persistence of matter and force, their unvarying constancy throughout the entire universe, it has become the pole-star that guides our monistic philosophy through the mighty labyrinth to a solution of the world-problem. since we intend to make a general survey of the actual condition of our knowledge of nature and its progress during the present century in the following chapters, we shall delay no longer with the review of its particular branches. we would only mention one important advance, which was contemporary with the discovery of the law of substance, and which supplements it--the establishment of the theory of evolution. it is true that there were philosophers who spoke of the evolution of things a thousand years ago; but the recognition that such a law dominates the entire universe, and that the world is nothing else than an eternal "evolution of substance," is a fruit of the nineteenth century. it was not until the second half of this century that it attained to perfect clearness and a universal application. the immortal merit of establishing the doctrine on an empirical basis, and pointing out its world-wide application, belongs to the great scientist charles darwin; he it was who, in , supplied a solid foundation for the theory of descent, which the able french naturalist jean lamarck had already sketched in its broad outlines in , and the fundamental idea of which had been almost prophetically enunciated in by germany's greatest poet and thinker, wolfgang goethe. in that theory we have the key to "the question of all questions," to the great enigma of "the place of man in nature," and of his natural development. if we are in a position to-day to recognize the sovereignty of the law of evolution--and, indeed, of a monistic evolution--in every province of nature, and to use it, in conjunction with the law of substance, for a simple interpretation of all natural phenomena, we owe it chiefly to those three distinguished naturalists; they shine as three stars of the first magnitude amid all the great men of the century. this marvellous progress in a theoretical knowledge of nature has been followed by a manifold practical application in every branch of civilized life. if we are to-day in the "age of commerce," if international trade and communication have attained dimensions beyond the conception of any previous age, if we have transcended the limits of space and time by our telegraph and telephone, we owe it, in the first place, to the technical advancement of physics, especially in the application of steam and electricity. if, in photography, we can, with the utmost ease, compel the sunbeam to create for us in a moment's time a correct picture of any object we like; if we have made enormous progress in agriculture, and in a variety of other pursuits; if, in surgery, we have brought an infinite relief to human pain by our chloroform and morphia, our antiseptics and serous therapeutics, we owe it all to applied chemistry. but it is so well known how much we have surpassed all earlier centuries through these and other scientific discoveries that we need linger over the question no longer. while we look back with a just pride on the immense progress of the nineteenth century in a knowledge of nature and in its practical application, we find, unfortunately, a very different and far from agreeable picture when we turn to another and not less important province of modern life. to our great regret we must endorse the words of alfred wallace: "compared with our astounding progress in physical science and its practical application, our system of government, of administrative justice, and of national education, and our entire social and moral organization, remain in a state of barbarism." to convince ourselves of the truth of this grave indictment we need only cast an unprejudiced glance at our public life, or look into the mirror that is daily offered to us by the press, the organ of public sentiment. we begin our review with justice, the _fundamentum regnorum_. no one can maintain that its condition to-day is in harmony with our advanced knowledge of man and the world. not a week passes in which we do not read of judicial decisions over which every thoughtful man shakes his head in despair; many of the decisions of our higher and lower courts are simply unintelligible. we are not referring in the treatment of this particular "world-problem" to the fact that many modern states, in spite of their paper constitutions, are really governed with absolute despotism, and that many who occupy the bench give judgment less in accordance with their sincere conviction than with wishes expressed in higher quarters. we readily admit that the majority of judges and counsel decide conscientiously, and err simply from human frailty. most of their errors, indeed, are due to defective preparation. it is popularly supposed that these are just the men of highest education, and that on that very account they have the preference in nominations to different offices. however, this famed "legal education" is for the most part rather of a formal and technical character. they have but a superficial acquaintance with that chief and peculiar object of their activity, the human organism, and its most important function, the mind. that is evident from the curious views as to the liberty of the will, responsibility, etc., which we encounter daily. i once told an eminent jurist that the tiny spherical ovum from which every man is developed is as truly endowed with life as the embryo of two, or seven, or even nine months; he laughed incredulously. most of the students of jurisprudence have no acquaintance with anthropology, psychology, and the doctrine of evolution--the very first requisites for a correct estimate of human nature. they have "no time" for it; their time is already too largely bespoken for an exhaustive study of beer and wine and for the noble art of fencing. the rest of their valuable study-time is required for the purpose of learning some hundreds of paragraphs of law books, a knowledge of which is supposed to qualify the jurist for any position whatever in our modern civilized community. we shall touch but lightly on the unfortunate province of politics, for the unsatisfactory condition of the modern political world is only too familiar. in a great measure its evils are due to the fact that most of our officials are jurists--that is, men of high technical education, but utterly devoid of that thorough knowledge of human nature which is only obtained by the study of comparative anthropology and the monistic psychology--men without an acquaintance with those social relations of which we find the earlier types in comparative zoology and the theory of evolution, in the cellular theory, and the study of the protists. we can only arrive at a correct knowledge of the structure and life of the social body, the state, through a scientific knowledge of the structure and life of the individuals who compose it, and the cells of which they are in turn composed. if our political rulers and our "representatives of the people" possessed this invaluable biological and anthropological knowledge, we should not find our journals so full of the sociological blunders and political nonsense which at present are far from adorning our parliamentary reports, and even many of our official documents. worst of all is it when the modern state flings itself into the arms of the reactionary church, and when the narrow-minded self-interest of parties and the infatuation of short-sighted party-leaders lend their support to the hierarchy. then are witnessed such sad scenes as the german reichstag puts before our eyes even at the close of the nineteenth century. we have the spectacle of the educated german people in the power of the ultramontane centre, under the rule of the roman papacy, which is its bitterest and most dangerous enemy. then superstition and stupidity reign instead of right and reason. never will our government improve until it casts off the fetters of the church and raises the views of the citizens on man and the world to a higher level by a general scientific education. that does not raise the question of any special form of constitution. whether a monarchy or a republic be preferable, whether the constitution should be aristocratic or democratic, are subordinate questions in comparison with the supreme question: shall the modern civilized state be spiritual or secular? shall it be _theocratic_--ruled by the irrational formulæ of faith and by clerical despotism--or _nomocratic_--under the sovereignty of rational laws and civic right? the first task is to kindle a rational interest in our youth, and to uplift our citizens and free them from superstition. that can only be achieved by a timely reform of our schools. our education of the young is no more in harmony with modern scientific progress than our legal and political world. physical science, which is so much more important than all other sciences, and which, properly understood, really embraces all the so-called moral sciences, is still regarded as a mere accessory in our schools, if not treated as the cinderella of the curriculum. most of our teachers still give the most prominent place to that dead learning which has come down from the cloistral schools of the middle ages. in the front rank we have grammatical gymnastics and an immense waste of time over a "thorough knowledge" of classics and of the history of foreign nations. ethics, the most important object of practical philosophy, is entirely neglected, and its place is usurped by the ecclesiastical creed. faith must take precedence over knowledge--not that scientific faith which leads to a monistic religion, but the irrational superstition that lays the foundation of a perverted christianity. the valuable teaching of modern cosmology and anthropology, of biology and evolution, is most inadequately imparted, if not entirely unknown, in our higher schools; while the memory is burdened with a mass of philological and historical facts which are utterly useless, either from the point of view of theoretical education or for the practical purposes of life. moreover, the antiquated arrangements and the distribution of faculties in the universities are just as little in harmony with the point we have reached in monistic science as the curriculum of the primary and secondary schools. the climax of the opposition to modern education and its foundation, advanced natural philosophy, is reached, of course, in the church. we are not speaking here of ultramontane papistry, nor of the orthodox evangelical tendencies, which do not fall far short of it in ignorance and in the crass superstition of their dogmas. we are imagining ourselves for the moment to be in the church of a liberal protestant minister, who has a good average education, and who finds room for "the rights of reason" by the side of his faith. there, besides excellent moral teaching, which is in perfect harmony with our own monistic ethics, and humanitarian discussion of which we cordially approve, we hear ideas on the nature of god, of the world, of man, and of life which are directly opposed to all scientific experience. it is no wonder that physicists and chemists, doctors and philosophers, who have made a thorough study of nature, refuse a hearing to such preachers. our theologians and our politicians are just as ignorant as our philosophers and our jurists of that elementary knowledge of nature which is based on the monistic theory of evolution, and which is already far exceeded in the triumph of our modern learning. from this opposition, which we can only briefly point out at present, there arise grave conflicts in our modern life which urgently demand a settlement. our modern education, the outcome of our great advance in knowledge, has a claim upon every department of public and private life; it would see humanity raised, by the instrumentality of reason, to that higher grade of culture, and, consequently, to that better path towards happiness which has been opened out to us by the progress of modern science. that aim, however, is vigorously opposed by the influential parties who would detain the mind in the exploded views of the middle ages with regard to the most important problems of life; they linger in the fold of traditional dogma, and would have reason prostrate itself before their "higher revelation." that is the condition of things, to a very large extent, in theology and philosophy, in sociology and jurisprudence. it is not that the motives of the latter are to be attributed, as a rule, to pure self-interest; they spring partly from ignorance of the facts, and partly from an indolent acquiescence in tradition. the most dangerous of the three great enemies of reason and knowledge is not malice; but ignorance, or, perhaps, indolence. the gods themselves still strive in vain against these two latter influences when they have happily vanquished the first. one of the main supports of that reactionary system is still what we may call "anthropism." i designate by this term "that powerful and world-wide group of erroneous opinions which opposes the human organism to the whole of the rest of nature, and represents it to be the preordained end of the organic creation, an entity essentially distinct from it, a godlike being." closer examination of this group of ideas shows it to be made up of three different dogmas, which we may distinguish as the _anthropocentric_, the _anthropomorphic_, and the _anthropolatrous_.[ ] i. the _anthropocentric_ dogma culminates in the idea that man is the preordained centre and aim of all terrestrial life--or, in a wider sense, of the whole universe. as this error is extremely conducive to man's interest, and as it is intimately connected with the creation-myth of the three great mediterranean religions, and with the dogmas of the mosaic, christian, and mohammedan theologies, it still dominates the greater part of the civilized world. ii. the _anthropomorphic_ dogma is likewise connected with the creation-myth of the three aforesaid religions, and of many others. it likens the creation and control of the world by god to the artificial creation of a talented engineer or mechanic, and to the administration of a wise ruler. god, as creator, sustainer, and ruler of the world, is thus represented after a purely human fashion in his thought and work. hence it follows, in turn, that man is godlike. "god made man to his own image and likeness." the older, naïve mythology is pure "homotheism," attributing human shape, flesh, and blood to the gods. it is more intelligible than the modern mystic theosophy that adores a personal god as an invisible--properly speaking, gaseous--being, yet makes him think, speak, and act in human fashion; it gives us the paradoxical picture of a "gaseous vertebrate." iii. the _anthropolatric_ dogma naturally results from this comparison of the activity of god and man; it ends in the apotheosis of the human organism. a further result is the belief in the personal immortality of the soul, and the dualistic dogma of the twofold nature of man, whose "immortal soul" is conceived as but the temporary inhabitant of the mortal frame. thus these three anthropistic dogmas, variously adapted to the respective professions of the different religions, came at length to be vested with an extraordinary importance, and proved the source of the most dangerous errors. the anthropistic view of the world which springs from them is in irreconcilable opposition to our monistic system; indeed, it is at once disproved by our new cosmological perspective. not only the three anthropistic dogmas, but many other notions of the dualistic philosophy and orthodox religion, are found to be untenable as soon as we regard them critically from the cosmological perspective of our monistic system. we understand by that the comprehensive view of the universe which we have from the highest point of our monistic interpretation of nature. from that stand-point we see the truth of the following "cosmological theorems," most of which, in our opinion, have already been amply demonstrated: ( ) the universe, or the cosmos, is eternal, infinite, and illimitable. ( ) its substance, with its two attributes (matter and energy), fills infinite space, and is in eternal motion. ( ) this motion runs on through infinite time as an unbroken development, with a periodic change from life to death, from evolution to devolution. ( ) the innumerable bodies which are scattered about the space-filling ether all obey the same "law of substance;" while the rotating masses slowly move towards their destruction and dissolution in one part of space others are springing into new life and development in other quarters of the universe. ( ) our sun is one of these unnumbered perishable bodies, and our earth is one of the countless transitory planets that encircle them. ( ) our earth has gone through a long process of cooling before water, in liquid form (the first condition of organic life), could settle thereon. ( ) the ensuing biogenetic process, the slow development and transformation of countless organic forms, must have taken many millions of years--considerably over a hundred.[ ] ( ) among the different kinds of animals which arose in the later stages of the biogenetic process on earth the vertebrates have far outstripped all other competitors in the evolutionary race. ( ) the most important branch of the vertebrates, the mammals, were developed later (during the triassic period) from the lower amphibia and the reptilia. ( ) the most perfect and most highly developed branch of the class mammalia is the order of primates, which first put in an appearance, by development from the lowest prochoriata, at the beginning of the tertiary period--at least three million years ago. ( ) the youngest and most perfect twig of the branch primates is man, who sprang from a series of manlike apes towards the end of the tertiary period. ( ) consequently, the so-called "history of the world"--that is, the brief period of a few thousand years which measures the duration of civilization--is an evanescently short episode in the long course of organic evolution, just as this, in turn, is merely a small portion of the history of our planetary system; and as our mother-earth is a mere speck in the sunbeam in the illimitable universe, so man himself is but a tiny grain of protoplasm in the perishable framework of organic nature. nothing seems to me better adapted than this magnificent cosmological perspective to give us the proper standard and the broad outlook which we need in the solution of the vast enigmas that surround us. it not only clearly indicates the true place of man in nature, but it dissipates the prevalent illusion of man's supreme importance, and the arrogance with which he sets himself apart from the illimitable universe, and exalts himself to the position of its most valuable element. this boundless presumption of conceited man has misled him into making himself "the image of god," claiming an "eternal life" for his ephemeral personality, and imagining that he possesses unlimited "freedom of will." the ridiculous imperial folly of caligula is but a special form of man's arrogant assumption of divinity. only when we have abandoned this untenable illusion, and taken up the correct cosmological perspective, can we hope to reach the solution of the "riddles of the universe." the uneducated member of a civilized community is surrounded with countless enigmas at every step, just as truly as the savage. their number, however, decreases with every stride of civilization and of science; and the monistic philosophy is ultimately confronted with but one simple and comprehensive enigma--the "problem of substance." still, we may find it useful to include a certain number of problems under that title. in the famous speech which emil du bois-reymond delivered in , in the leibnitz session of the berlin academy of sciences, he distinguished seven world-enigmas, which he enumerated as follows: ( ) the nature of matter and force. ( ) the origin of motion. ( ) the origin of life. ( ) the (apparently preordained) orderly arrangement of nature. ( ) the origin of simple sensation and consciousness. ( ) rational thought, and the origin of the cognate faculty, speech. ( ) the question of the freedom of the will. three of these seven enigmas are considered by the orator of the berlin academy to be entirely transcendental and insoluble--they are the first, second, and fifth; three others (the third, fourth, and sixth) he considers to be capable of solution, though extremely difficult; as to the seventh and last "world-enigma," the freedom of the will, which is the one of the greatest practical importance, he remains undecided. as my monism differs materially from that of the berlin orator, and as his idea of the "seven great enigmas" has been very widely accepted, it may be useful to indicate their true position at once. in my opinion, the three transcendental problems ( , , and ) are settled by our conception of substance (_vide_ chap. xii.); the three which he considers difficult, though soluble, ( , , and ), are decisively answered by our modern theory of evolution; the seventh and last, the freedom of the will, is not an object for critical, scientific inquiry at all, for it is a pure dogma, based on an illusion, and has no real existence. the means and methods we have chosen for attaining the solution of the great enigma do not differ, on the whole, from those of all purely scientific investigation--firstly, experience; secondly, inference. scientific experience comes to us by observation and experiment, which involve the activity of our sense-organs in the first place, and, secondly, of the inner sense-centres in the cortex of the brain. the microscopic elementary organs of the former are the sense-cells; of the latter, groups of ganglionic cells. the experiences which we derive from the outer world by these invaluable instruments of our mental life are then moulded into ideas by other parts of the brain, and these, in their turn, are united in a chain of reasoning by association. the construction of this chain may take place in two different ways, which are, in my opinion, equally valuable and indispensable: _induction_ and _deduction_. the higher cerebral operations, the construction of complicated chains of reasoning, abstraction, the formation of concepts, the completion of the perceptive faculty by the plastic faculty of the imagination--in a word, consciousness, thought, and speculation--are functions of the ganglionic cells of the cortex of the brain, just like the preceding simpler mental functions. we unite them all in the supreme concept of _reason_.[ ] by reason only can we attain to a correct knowledge of the world and a solution of its great problems. reason is man's highest gift, the only prerogative that essentially distinguishes him from the lower animals. nevertheless, it has only reached this high position by the progress of culture and education, by the development of knowledge. the uneducated man and the savage are just as little (or just as much) "rational" as our nearest relatives among the mammals (apes, dogs, elephants, etc.). yet the opinion still obtains in many quarters that, besides our godlike reason, we have two further (and even surer!) methods of receiving knowledge--emotion and revelation. we must at once dispose of this dangerous error. emotion has nothing whatever to do with the attainment of truth. that which we prize under the name of "emotion" is an elaborate activity of the brain, which consists of feelings of like and dislike, motions of assent and dissent, impulses of desire and aversion. it may be influenced by the most diverse activities of the organism, by the cravings of the senses and the muscles, the stomach, the sexual organs, etc. the interests of truth are far from promoted by these conditions and vacillations of emotion; on the contrary, such circumstances often disturb that reason which alone is adapted to the pursuit of truth, and frequently mar its perceptive power. no cosmic problem is solved, or even advanced, by the cerebral function we call emotion. and the same must be said of the so-called "revelation," and of the "truths of faith" which it is supposed to communicate; they are based entirely on a deception, consciously or unconsciously, as we shall see in the sixteenth chapter. we must welcome as one of the most fortunate steps in the direction of a solution of the great cosmic problems the fact that of recent years there is a growing tendency to recognize the two paths which alone lead thereto--_experience_ and _thought_, or _speculation_--to be of equal value, and mutually complementary. philosophers have come to see that pure speculation--such, for instance, as plato and hegel employed for the construction of their _idealist_ systems--does not lead to knowledge of reality. on the other hand, scientists have been convinced that mere experience--such as bacon and mill, for example, made the basis of their _realist_ systems--is insufficient of itself for a complete philosophy. for these two great paths of knowledge, sense-experience and rational thought, are two distinct cerebral functions; the one is elaborated by the sense-organs and the inner sense-centres, the other by the thought-centres, the great "centres of association in the cortex of the brain," which lie between the sense-centres. (cf. cc. vii. and x.) true knowledge is only acquired by combining the activity of the two. nevertheless, there are still many philosophers who would construct the world out of their own inner consciousness, and who reject our empirical science precisely because they have no knowledge of the real world. on the other hand, there are many scientists who still contend that the sole object of science is "the knowledge of facts, the objective investigation of isolated phenomena"; that "the age of philosophy" is past, and science has taken its place.[ ] this one-sided over-estimation of experience is as dangerous an error as the converse exaggeration of the value of speculation. both channels of knowledge are mutually indispensable. the greatest triumphs of modern science--the cellular theory, the dynamic theory of heat, the theory of evolution, and the law of substance--are _philosophic achievements_; not, however, the fruit of pure speculation, but of an antecedent experience of the widest and most searching character. at the commencement of the nineteenth century the great idealistic poet, schiller, gave his counsel to both groups of combatants, the philosophers and the scientists: "does strife divide your efforts--no union bless your toil? will truth e'er be delivered if ye your forces rend?" since then the situation has, happily, been profoundly modified; while both schools, in their different paths, have pressed onward towards the same high goal, they have recognized their common aspiration, and they draw nearer to a knowledge of the truth in mutual covenant. at the end of the nineteenth century we have returned to that monistic attitude which our greatest realistic poet, goethe, had recognized from its very commencement to be alone correct and fruitful.[ ] all the different philosophical tendencies may, from the point of view of modern science, be ranged in two antagonistic groups; they represent either a _dualistic_ or a _monistic_ interpretation of the cosmos. the former is usually bound up with teleological and idealistic dogmas, the latter with mechanical and realistic theories. dualism, in the widest sense, breaks up the universe into two entirely distinct substances--the material world and an immaterial god, who is represented to be its creator, sustainer, and ruler. monism, on the contrary (likewise taken in its widest sense), recognizes one sole substance in the universe, which is at once "god and nature"; body and spirit (or matter and energy) it holds to be inseparable. the extramundane god of dualism leads necessarily to theism; and the intra-mundane god of the monist leads to pantheism. the different ideas of _monism_ and _materialism_, and likewise the essentially distinct tendencies of theoretical and practical materialism, are still very frequently confused. as this and other similar cases of confusion of ideas are very prejudicial, and give rise to innumerable errors, we shall make the following brief observations, in order to prevent misunderstanding: i. pure monism is identical neither with the theoretical materialism that denies the existence of spirit, and dissolves the world into a heap of dead atoms, nor with the theoretical spiritualism (lately entitled "energetic" spiritualism by ostwald) which rejects the notion of matter, and considers the world to be a specially arranged group of "energies" or immaterial natural forces. ii. on the contrary, we hold, with goethe, that "matter cannot exist and be operative without spirit, nor spirit without matter." we adhere firmly to the pure, unequivocal monism of spinoza: matter, or infinitely extended substance, and spirit (or energy), or sensitive and thinking substance, are the two fundamental attributes or principal properties of the all-embracing divine essence of the world, the universal substance. (cf. chap. xii.) chapter ii our bodily frame fundamental importance of anatomy--human anatomy--hippocrates, aristotle, galen, vesalius--comparative anatomy--georges cuvier--johannes müller--karl gegenbaur--histology--the cellular theory--schleiden and schwann--kölliker--virchow--man a vertebrate, a tetrapod, a mammal, a placental, a primate--prosimiæ and simiæ--the catarrhinæ--papiomorphic and anthropomorphic apes--essential likeness of man and the ape in corporal structure all biological research, all investigation into the forms and vital activities of organisms, must first deal with the visible body, in which the morphological and physiological phenomena are observed. this fundamental rule holds good for man just as much as for all other living things. moreover, the inquiry must not confine itself to mere observation of the outer form; it must penetrate to the interior, and study both the general plan and the minute details of the structure. the science which pursues this fundamental investigation in the broadest sense is anatomy. the first stimulus to an inquiry into the human frame arose, naturally, in medicine. as it was usually practised by the priests in the older civilizations, we may assume that these highest representatives of the education of the time had already acquired a certain amount of anatomical knowledge two thousand years before christ, or even earlier. we do not, however, find more exact observations, founded on the dissection of mammals, and applied, by analogy, to the human frame, until we come to the greek scientists of the sixth and fifth centuries before christ--empedocles (of agrigentum) and democritus (of abdera), and especially the most famous physician of classic antiquity, hippocrates (of cos). it was from these and other sources that the great aristotle, the renowned "father of natural history," equally comprehensive as investigator and philosopher, derived his first knowledge. after him only one anatomist of any consequence is found in antiquity, the greek physician claudius galenus (of pergamus), who developed a wealthy practice in rome in the second century after christ, under the emperor marcus aurelius. all these ancient anatomists acquired their knowledge, as a rule, not by the dissection of the human body itself--which was then sternly forbidden--but by a study of the bodies of the animals which most closely resembled man, especially the apes; they were all, indeed, comparative anatomists. the triumph of christianity and its mystic theories meant retrogression to anatomy, as it did to all the other sciences. the popes were resolved above all things to detain humanity in ignorance; they rightly deemed a knowledge of the human organism to be a dangerous source of enlightenment as to our true nature. during the long period of thirteen centuries the writings of galen were almost the only source of human anatomy, just as the works of aristotle were for the whole of natural history. it was not until the sixteenth century, when the spiritual tyranny of the papacy was broken by the reformation, and the geocentric theory, so intimately connected with papal doctrine, was destroyed by the new cosmic system of copernicus, that the knowledge of the human frame entered upon a new period of progress. the great anatomists, vesalius (of brussels), and eustachius and fallopius (of modena), advanced the knowledge of our bodily structure so much by their own thorough investigations that little remained for their numerous followers to do, with regard to the more obvious phenomena, except the substantiation of details. andreas vesalius, as courageous as he was talented and indefatigable, was the pioneer of the movement; he completed in his twenty-eighth year ( ) that great and systematic work _de humani corporis fabrica_; he gave to the whole of human anatomy a new and independent scope and a more solid foundation. on that account he was, at a later date, at madrid--where he was physician to charles v. and philip ii.--condemned to death by the inquisition as a magician. he only escaped by undertaking a pilgrimage to jerusalem; in returning he suffered shipwreck on the isle of zante, and died there in misery and destitution. the great merit of the nineteenth century, as far as our knowledge of the human frame is concerned, lies in the founding of two new lines of research of immense importance--comparative anatomy and histology, or microscopic anatomy. the former was intimately associated with human anatomy from the very beginning; indeed, it had to supply the place of the latter so long because the dissection of human corpses was a crime visited with capital punishment--that was the case even in the fifteenth century! but the many anatomists of the next three centuries devoted themselves mainly to a more accurate study of the human organism. the elaborate science which we now call comparative anatomy was born in the year , when the great french zoologist georges cuvier (a native of mömpelgard, in alsace) published his profound _leçons sur l'anatomie comparée_, and endeavored to formulate, for the first time, definite laws as to the organism of man and the beasts. while his predecessors--among whom was goethe in --had mainly contented themselves with comparing the skeleton of man with those of other animals, cuvier's broader vision took in the whole of the animal organization. he distinguished therein four great and mutually independent types: vertebrata, articulata, mollusca, and radiata. this advance was of extreme consequence for our "question of all questions," since it clearly brought out the fact that man belonged to the vertebral type, and differed fundamentally from all the other types. it is true that the keen-sighted linné had already, in his _systema natuae_, made a great step in advance by assigning man a definite place in the class of mammals; he had even drawn up the three groups of half-apes, apes, and men (_lemur_, _simia_, and _homo_) in the order of primates. but his keen, systematic mind was not furnished with that profound empirical foundation, supplied by comparative anatomy, which cuvier was the first to attain. further developments were added by the great comparative anatomists of our own century--friedrich meckel (halle), johannes müller (berlin), richard owen, t. huxley, and karl gegenbaur (jena, subsequently heidelberg). the last-named, in applying the evolutionary theory, which darwin had just established, to comparative anatomy, raised his science to the front rank of biological studies. the numerous comparative anatomical works of gegenbaur are, like his well-known _manual of human anatomy_, equally distinguished by a thorough empirical acquaintance with their immense multitudes of facts, and by a comprehensive control of his material, and its philosophic appreciation in the evolutionary sense. his recent _comparative anatomy of the vertebrata_ establishes the solid foundation on which our conviction of the vertebral character of man in every aspect is chiefly based. microscopic anatomy has been developed, in the course of the present century, in a very different fashion from comparative anatomy. at the beginning of the century ( ) a french physician, bichat, made an attempt to dissect the organs of the human body into their finer constituents by the aid of the microscope, and to show the connection of these various _tissues_ (_hista_, or _tela_). this first attempt led to little result, because the scientist was ignorant of the one common element of all the different tissues. this was first discovered ( ) in the shape of the _cell_, in the plant world, by matthias schleiden, and immediately afterwards proved to be the same in the animal world by theodor schwann, the pupil and assistant of johannes müller at berlin. two other distinguished pupils of this great master, who are still living, albert kölliker and rudolph virchow, took up the cellular theory, and the theory of tissues which is founded on it, in the sixties, and applied them to the human organism in all its details, both in health and disease; they proved that, in man and all other animals, every tissue is made up of the same microscopic particles, the _cells_, and these "elementary organisms" are the real, self-active citizens which, in combinations of millions, constitute the "cellular state," our body. all these cells spring from one simple cell, the _cytula_, or impregnated ovum, by continuous subdivision. the general structure and combination of the tissues are the same in man as in the other vertebrates. among these the mammals, the youngest and most highly developed class take precedence, in virtue of certain special features which were acquired late. such are, for instance, the microscopic texture of the hair, of the glands of the skin, and of the breasts, and the corpuscles of the blood, which are quite peculiar to mammals, and different from those of the other vertebrates; man, even in these finest histological relations, is a _true mammal_. the microscopic researches of albert kölliker and franz leydig (at würzburg) not only enlarged our knowledge of the finer structure of man and the beasts in every direction, but they were especially important in the light of their connection with the evolution of the cell and the tissue; they confirmed the great theory of carl theodor siebold ( ) that the lowest animals, the infusoria and the rhizopods, are unicellular organisms. our whole frame, both in its general plan and its detailed structure, presents the characteristic type of the vertebrates. this most important and most highly developed group in the animal world was first recognized in its natural unity in by the great lamarck; he embraced under that title the four higher animal groups of linné--mammals, birds, amphibia, and fishes. to these he opposed the two lower classes, insects and worms, as invertebrates. cuvier ( ) established the unity of the vertebrate type on a firmer basis by his comparative anatomy. it is quite true that all the vertebrates, from the fish up to man, agree in every essential feature; they all have a firm internal skeleton, a framework of cartilage and bone, consisting principally of a vertebral column and a skull; the advanced construction of the latter presents many variations, but, on the whole, all may be reduced to the same fundamental type. further, in all vertebrates the "organ of the mind," the central nervous system, in the shape of a spinal cord and a brain, lies at the back of this axial skeleton. moreover, what we said of its bony environment, the skull, is also true of the brain--the instrument of consciousness and all the higher functions of the mind; its construction and size present very many variations in detail, but its general characteristic structure remains always the same. we meet the same phenomenon when we compare the rest of our organs with those of the other vertebrates; everywhere, in virtue of heredity, the original plan and the relative distribution of the organs remain the same, although, through adaptation to different environments, the size and the structure of particular sections offer considerable variation. thus we find that in all cases the blood circulates in two main blood-vessels, of which one--the aorta--passes over the intestine, and the other--the principal vein--passes underneath, and that by the broadening out of the latter in a very definite spot a heart has arisen; this "ventral heart" is just as characteristic of all vertebrates as the "dorsal heart" is of the articulata and mollusca. equally characteristic of all vertebrates is the early division of the intestinal tube into a "head-gut" (or gill-gut), which serves in respiration, and a "body-gut" (or liver-gut), which co-operates with the liver in digestion; so are, likewise, the ramification of the muscular system, the peculiar structure of the urinary and sexual organs, and so forth. in all these anatomical relations _man is a true vertebrate_. aristotle gave the name of four-footed, or tetrapoda, to all the higher warm-blooded animals which are distinguished by the possession of two pairs of legs. the category was enlarged subsequently, and its title changed into the latin "quadrupeda," when cuvier proved that even "two-legged" birds and men are really "four-footed"; he showed that the internal skeleton of the four legs in all the higher land-vertebrates, from the amphibia up to man, was originally constructed after the same pattern out of a definite number of members. the "arm" of man and the "wing" of bats and birds have the same typical skeleton as the foreleg of the animals which are conspicuously "four-footed." the anatomical unity of the fully developed skeleton in the four limbs of all tetrapods is very important. in order to appreciate it fully one has only to compare carefully the skeleton of a salamander or a frog with that of a monkey or a man. one perceives at once that the humeral zone in front and the pelvic zone behind are made up of the same principal parts as in the rest of the quadrupeds. we find in all cases that the first section of the leg proper consists of one strong marrow-bone (the _humerus_, in the forearm; the _femur_, behind); the second part, on the contrary, originally always consists of two bones (the _ulna_ and _radius_, in front; the _fibula_ and _tibia_, behind). when we further compare the developed structure of the foot proper we are surprised to find that the small bones of which it is made up are also similarly arranged and distributed in every case: in the front limb the three groups of bones of the forefoot (or "hand") correspond in all classes of the tetrapoda: ( ) the _carpus_, ( ) the _metacarpus_, ( ) the five fingers (_digiti anteriores_); in the rear limb, similarly, we have always the same three osseous groups of the hind foot: ( ) the _tarsus_, ( ) the _metatarsus_, and ( ) the five toes (_digiti posteriores_). it was a very difficult task to reduce all these little bones to one primitive type, and to establish the equivalence (or homology) of the separate parts in all cases; they present extreme variations of form and construction in detail, sometimes being partly fused together and losing their individuality. this great task was first successfully achieved by the most eminent comparative anatomist of our day, karl gegenbaur. he pointed out, in his _researches into the comparative anatomy of the vertebrata_ ( ), how this characteristic "five-toed leg" of the land tetrapods originally (not before the carboniferous period) arose out of the radiating fin (the breast-fin, or the belly-fin) of the ancient fishes. he had also, in his famous _researches into the skull of the vertebrata_ ( ), deduced the younger skull of the tetrapods from the oldest cranial form among the fishes, that of the shark. it is especially remarkable that the original number of the toes (five) on each of the four feet, which first appeared in the old amphibia of the carboniferous period, has, in virtue of a strict heredity, been preserved even to the present day in man. also, naturally and harmoniously, the typical construction of the joints, ligaments, muscles, and nerves of the two pairs of legs has, in the main, remained the same as in the rest of the "four-footed." in all these important relations _man is a true tetrapod_. the mammals are the youngest and most advanced class of the vertebrates. it is true they are derived from the older class of amphibia, like birds and reptiles: yet they are distinguished from all the other tetrapods by a number of very striking anatomical features. externally, there is the clothing of the skin with hair, and the possession of two kinds of skin glands--the sweat glands and the sebaceous glands. a local development of these glands on the abdominal skin gave rise (probably during the triassic period) to the organ which is especially characteristic of the class, and from which it derives its name--the _mammarium_. this important instrument of lactation is made up of milk glands (_mammae_) and the "mammar-pouches" (folds of the abdominal skin); in its development the teats appear, through which the young mammal sucks its mother's milk. in internal structure the most remarkable feature is the possession of a complete diaphragm, a muscular wall which, in all mammals--and _only_ in mammals--separates the thoracic from the abdominal cavity; in all other vertebrates there is no such separation. the skull of mammals is distinguished by a number of remarkable formations, especially in the maxillary apparatus (the upper and lower jaws, and the temporal bones). moreover, the brain, the olfactory organ, the heart, the lungs, the internal and external sexual organs, the kidneys, and other parts of the body present special peculiarities, both in general and detailed structure, in the mammals; all these, taken collectively, point unequivocally to an early derivation of the mammals from the older groups of the reptiles and amphibia, which must have taken place, at the latest, in the triassic period--at least twelve million years ago! in all these important characteristics _man is a true mammal_. the numerous orders ( - ) which modern systematic zoology distinguishes in the class of mammals had been arranged in (by blainville) in three natural groups, which still hold good as sub-classes: ( ) the monotrema, ( ) the marsupialia, and ( ) the placentalia. these three sub-classes not only differ in the important respect of bodily structure and development, but they correspond, also, to three different historical stages in the formation of the class, as we shall see later on. the monotremes of the triassic period were followed by the marsupials of the jurassic, and these by the placentals of the cretaceous. man belongs to this, the youngest, sub-class; for he presents in his organization all the features which distinguish the placentals from the marsupials and the still older monotremes. first of all, there is the peculiar organ which gives a name to the placentals--the _placenta_. it serves the purpose of nourishing the young mammal embryo for a long time during its enclosure in the mother's womb; it consists of blood-bearing tufts which grow out of the chorion surrounding the embryo, and penetrate corresponding cavities in the mucous membrane of the maternal uterus; the delicate skin between the two structures is so attenuated in this spot that the nutriment in the mother's blood can pass directly into the blood of the child. this excellent contrivance for nourishing the embryo, which makes its first appearance at a somewhat late date, gives the foetus the opportunity of a longer maintenance and a higher development in the protecting womb; it is wanting in the _implacentalia_, the two older sub-classes of the marsupials and the monotremes. there are, likewise, other anatomical features, particularly the higher development of the brain and the absence of the marsupial bone, which raise the placentals above all their implacental ancestors. in all these important particulars _man is a true placental_. the very varied sub-class of the placentals has been recently subdivided into a great number of orders; they are usually put at from ten to sixteen, but when we include the important extinct forms which have been recently discovered the number runs up to from twenty to twenty-six. in order to facilitate the study of these numerous orders, and to obtain a deeper insight into their kindred construction, it is very useful to form them into great natural groups, which i have called "legions." in my latest attempt[ ] to arrange the advanced system of placentals in phylogenetic order i have substituted eight of these legions for the twenty-six orders, and shown that these may be reduced to four main groups. these, in turn, are traceable to one common ancestral group of all the placentals, their fossil ancestors, the _prochoriata_ of the cretaceous period. these are directly connected with the marsupial ancestors of the jurassic period. we will only specify here, as the most important living representatives of these four main groups, the rodentia, the ungulata, the carnivora, and the primates. to the legion of the primates belong the prosimiæ (half-apes), the simiæ (real apes), and man. all the members of these three orders agree in many important features, and are at the same time distinguished by these features from the other twenty-three orders of placentals. they are especially conspicuous for the length of their bones, which were originally adapted to their arboreal manner of life. their hands and feet are five-fingered, and the long fingers are excellently suited for grasping and embracing the branches of trees; they are provided, either partially or completely, with nails, but have no claws. the dentition is complete, containing all four classes--incisors, canine, premolars, and molars. primates are also distinguished from all the other placentals by important features in the special construction of the skull and the brain; and these are the more striking in proportion to their development and the lateness of their appearance in the history of the earth. in all these important anatomical features our human organism agrees with that of all the other primates: _man is a true primate_. an impartial and thorough comparison of the bodily structure of the primates forces us to distinguish two orders in this most advanced legion of the mammalia--half-apes (_prosimiae_ or _hemipitheci_) and apes (_simiae_ or _pitheci_). the former seem in every respect to be the lower and older, the latter to be the higher and younger order. the womb of the half-ape is still double, or two-horned, as it is in all the other mammals. in the true ape, on the contrary, the right and left wombs have completely amalgamated; they blend into a pear-shaped womb, which the human mother possesses besides the ape. in the skull of the apes, just as in that of man, the orbits of the eyes are completely separated from the temporal cavities by an osseous partition; in the _prosimiae_ this is either entirely wanting or very imperfect. finally, the cerebrum of the _prosimia_ is either quite smooth or very slightly furrowed, and proportionately small; that of the true ape is much larger, and the gray bed especially, the organ of higher psychic activity, is much more developed; the characteristic convolutions and furrows appear on its surface exactly in proportion as the ape approaches to man. in these and other important respects, particularly in the construction of the face and the hands, _man presents all the anatomical marks of a true ape_. the extensive order of apes was divided by geoffroi, in , into two sub-orders, which are still universally accepted in systematic zoology--new world and old world monkeys, according to the hemisphere they respectively inhabit. the american "new world" monkeys are called _platyrrhinae_ (flat-nosed); their nose is flat, and the nostrils divergent, with a broad partition. the "old world" monkeys, on the contrary, are called collectively _catarrhinae_ (narrow-nosed); their nostrils point downward, like man's, and the dividing cartilage is narrow. a further difference between the two groups is that the tympanum is superficial in the _platyrrhinae_, but lies deeper, inside the petrous bone, in the _catarrhinae_; in the latter a long and narrow bony passage has been formed, while in the former it is still short and wide, or even altogether wanting. finally, we have a much more important and decisive difference between the two groups in the circumstance that all the old world monkeys have the same teeth as man--_i. e._, twenty deciduous and thirty-two permanent teeth (two incisors, one canine, two premolars, and three molars in each half of the jaw). the new world monkeys, on the other hand, have an additional premolar in each half-jaw, or thirty-six teeth altogether. the fact that these anatomical differences of the two simian groups are universal and conspicuous, and that they harmonize with their geographical distribution in the two hemispheres, fully authorizes a sharp systematic division of the two, as well as the phylogenetic conclusion that for a very long period (for more than a million years) the two sub-orders have been developing quite independently of each other in the western and eastern hemispheres. that is a most important point in view of the genealogy of our race; for man bears all the marks of a _true catarrhina_; he has descended from some extinct member of this sub-order in the old world. the numerous types of _catarrhinae_ which still survive in asia and africa have been formed into two sections for some time--the tailed, doglike apes (the _cynopitheci_) and the tailless, manlike apes (the _anthropomorpha_). the latter are much nearer to man than the former, not only in the absence of a tail and in the general build of the body (especially of the head), but also on account of certain features which are unimportant in themselves but very significant in their constancy. the sacrum of the anthropoid ape, like that of man, is made up of the fusion of five vertebræ; that of the _cynopithecus_ consists of three (more rarely four) sacral vertebræ. the premolar teeth of the _cynopitheci_ are greater in length than breadth; those of the _anthropomorpha_ are broader than they are long; and the first molar has four protuberances in the former, five in the latter. furthermore, the outer incisor of the lower jaw is broader than the inner one in the manlike apes and man; in the doglike ape it is the smaller. finally, there is a special significance in the fact, established by selenka in , that the anthropoid apes share with man the peculiar structure of the discoid _placenta_, the _decidua reflexa_, and the pedicle of the allantois. in fact, even a superficial comparison of the bodily structure of the _anthropomorpha_ which still survive makes it clear that both the asiatic (the orang-outang and the gibbous ape) and the african (the gorilla and chimpanzee) representatives of this group are nearer to man in build than any of the _cynopitheci_. under the latter group we include the dog-faced papiomorpha, the baboon, and the long-tailed monkey, at a very low stage. the anatomical difference between these low papiomorpha and the most highly developed anthropoid apes is greater in every respect, whatever organ we take for comparison, than the difference between the latter and man. this instructive fact was established with great penetration by the anatomist robert hartmann, in his work on _the anthropoid apes_;[ ] he proposed to divide the order of _simiae_ in a new way--namely, into the two great groups of _primaria_ (man and the anthropoid ape) and the _simiae_ proper, or _pitheci_ (the rest of the catarrhinæ and all the platyrrhinæ). in any case, we have a clear proof of _the close affinity of man and the anthropoid ape_. thus comparative anatomy proves to the satisfaction of every unprejudiced and critical student the significant fact that the body of man and that of the anthropoid ape are not only peculiarly similar, but they are practically one and the same in every important respect. the same two hundred bones, in the same order and structure, make up our inner skeleton; the same three hundred muscles effect our movements; the same hair clothes our skin; the same groups of ganglionic cells build up the marvellous structure of our brain; the same four chambered heart is the central pulsometer in our circulation; the same thirty-two teeth are set in the same order in our jaws; the same salivary, hepatic, and gastric glands compass our digestive process; the same reproductive organs insure the maintenance of our race. it is true that we find, on close examination, certain minor differences in point of size and shape in most of the organs of man and the ape; but we discover the same, or similar, differences between the higher and lower races of men, when we make a careful comparison--even, in fact, in a minute comparison of the various individuals of our own race. we find no two persons who have exactly the same size and form of nose, ears, eyes, and so forth. one has only to compare attentively these special features in many different persons in any large company to convince one's self of the astonishing diversity of their construction and the infinite variability of specific forms. not infrequently even two sisters are so much unlike as to make their origin from the same parents almost incredible. yet all these individual variations do not weaken the significance of the fundamental similarity of structure; they are traceable to certain minute differences in the growth of the individual features. chapter iii our life development of physiology in antiquity and the middle ages: galen--experiment and vivisection--discovery of the circulation of the blood by harvey--vitalism: haller--teleological and vitalistic conception of life--mechanical and monistic view of the physiological processes--comparative physiology in the nineteenth century: johannes müller--cellular physiology: max verworn--cellular pathology: virchow--mammal physiology--similarity of all vital activity in man and the ape it is only in the nineteenth century that our knowledge of human life has attained the dignity of a genuine, independent science; during the course of the century it has developed into one of the highest, most interesting, and most important branches of knowledge. this "science of the vital functions," physiology, had, it is true, been regarded at a much earlier date as a desirable, if not a necessary, condition of success in medical treatment, and had been constantly associated with anatomy, the science of the structure of the body. but it was only much later, and much more slowly, than the latter that it could be thoroughly studied, as it had to contend with much more serious difficulties. the idea of life, as the opposite of death, naturally became the subject of speculation at a very early age. in the living man, just as in other living animals, there were certain peculiar changes, especially movements, which were wanting in lifeless nature: spontaneous locomotion, the beat of the heart, the drawing of the breath, speech, and so forth. but the discrimination of such "organic movements" from similar phenomena in inorganic bodies was by no means easy, and was frequently impossible; the flowing stream, the flickering flame, the rushing wind, the falling rock, seemed to man to exhibit the same movements. it was quite natural that primitive man should attribute an independent life to these "dead" bodies. he knew no more of the real sources of movement in the one case than in the other. we find the earliest scientific observations on the nature of man's vital functions (as well as on his structure) in the greek natural philosophers and physicians of the sixth and fifth centuries before christ. the best collection of the physiological facts which were known at that time is to be found in the _natural history_ of aristotle; a great number of his assertions were probably taken from democritus and hippocrates. the school of the latter had already made attempts to explain the mystery; it postulated as the ultimate source of life in man and the beasts a volatile "spirit of life" (pneuma); and erasistratus ( b.c.) already drew a distinction between the lower and the higher "spirit of life," the _pneuma zoticon_ in the heart and the _pneuma psychicon_ in the brain. the credit of gathering these scattered truths into unity, and of making the first attempt at a systematic physiology, belongs to the great greek physician galen; we have already recognized in him the first great anatomist of antiquity (cf. p. ). in his researches into the organs of the body he never lost sight of the question of their vital activity, their functions; and even in this direction he proceeded by the same comparative method, taking for his principal study the animals which approach nearest to man. whatever he learned from these he applied directly to man. he recognized the value of physiological experiment; in his vivisection of apes, dogs, and swine he made a number of interesting experiments. vivisection has been made the object of a violent attack in recent years, not only by the ignorant and narrow-minded, but by theological enemies of knowledge and by perfervid sentimentalists; it is, however, one of the _indispensable_ methods of research into the nature of life, and has given us invaluable information on the most important questions. this was recognized by galen seventeen hundred years ago. galen reduces all the different functions of the body to three groups, which correspond to the three forms of the _pneuma_, or vital spirit. the _pneuma psychicon_--the soul--which resides in the brain and nerves, is the cause of thought, sensation, and will (voluntary movement); the _pneuma zoticon_--the heart--is responsible for the beat of the heart, the pulse, and the temperature; the _pneuma physicon_, seated in the liver, is the source of the so-called vegetative functions, digestion and assimilation, growth and reproduction. he especially emphasized the renewal of the blood in the lungs, and expressed a hope that we should some day succeed in isolating the permanent element in the atmosphere--the _pneuma_, as he calls it--which is taken into the blood in respiration. more than fifteen centuries elapsed before this _pneuma_--oxygen--was discovered by lavoisier. in human physiology, as well as in anatomy, the great system of galen was for thirteen centuries the _codex aureus_, the inviolable source of all knowledge. the influence of christianity, so fatal to scientific culture, raised the same insuperable obstacles in this as in every other branch of secular knowledge. not a single scientist appeared from the third to the sixteenth century who dared to make independent research into man's vital activity, and transcend the limits of the galenic system. it was not until the sixteenth century that experiments were made in that direction by a number of distinguished physicians and anatomists (paracelsus, servetus, vesalius, and others). in harvey published his great discovery of the circulation of the blood, and showed that the heart is a pump, which drives the red stream unceasingly through the connected system of arteries and veins by a rhythmic, unconscious contraction of its muscles. not less important were harvey's researches into the procreation of animals, as a result of which he formulated the well-known law: "every living thing comes from an egg" (_omne vivum ex ovo_). the powerful impetus which harvey gave to physiological observation and experiment led to a great number of discoveries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. these were co-ordinated for the first time by the learned albrecht haller about the middle of the last century; in his great work, _elementa physiologiae_, he established the inherent importance of the science, independently of its relation to practical medicine. in postulating, however, a special "sensitive force or sensibility" for neural action, and a special "irritability" for muscular movement, haller gave strong support to the erroneous idea of a specific "vital force" (_vis vitalis_). for more than a century afterwards, from the middle of the eighteenth until the middle of the nineteenth century, medicine and (especially) physiology were dominated by the old idea that a certain number of the vital processes may be traced to physical and chemical causes, but that others are the outcome of a special vital force which is independent of physical agencies. however much scientists differed in their conceptions of its nature and its relation to the "soul," they were all agreed as to its independence of, and essential distinction from, the chemico-physical forces of ordinary "matter"; it was a self-contained force (_archaeus_), unknown in inorganic nature, which compelled ordinary forces into its service. not only the distinctly psychical activity, the sensibility of the nerves and the irritability of the muscles, but even the phenomena of sense activity, of reproduction, and of development seemed so wonderful and so mysterious in their sources that it was impossible to attribute them to simple physical and chemical processes. as the free activity of the vital force was purposive and conscious, it led, in philosophy, to a complete _teleology_; especially did this seem indisputable when even the "critical" philosopher kant had acknowledged, in his famous critique of the teleological position, that, though the mind's authority to give a mechanical interpretation of all phenomena is theoretically unlimited, yet its actual capacity for such interpretation does not extend to the phenomena of organic life; here we are compelled to have recourse to a _purposive_--therefore _supernatural_--principle. this divergence of the _vital_ phenomena from the _mechanical_ processes of life became, naturally, more conspicuous as science advanced in the chemical and physical explanation of the latter. the circulation of the blood and a number of other phenomena could be traced to mechanical agencies; respiration and digestion were attributable to chemical processes like those we find in inorganic nature. on the other hand, it seemed impossible to do this with the wonderful performances of the nerves and muscles, and with the characteristic life of the mind; the co-ordination of all the different forces in the life of the individual seemed also beyond such a mechanical interpretation. hence there arose a complete physiological dualism--an essential distinction was drawn between inorganic and organic nature, between mechanical and vital processes, between material force and life force, between the body and the soul. at the beginning of the nineteenth century this vitalism was firmly established in france by louis dumas, and in germany by reil. alexander humboldt had already published a poetical presentation of it in , in his narrative of the _legend of rhodes_; it is repeated, with critical notes, in his _views of nature_. in the first half of the seventeenth century the famous philosopher descartes, starting from harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood, put forward the idea that the body of man, like that of other animals, is merely an intricate machine, and that its movements take place under the same mechanical laws as the movements of an automaton of human construction. it is true that descartes, at the same time, claimed for man the exclusive possession of a perfectly independent, immaterial soul, and held that its subjective experience, thought, was the only thing in the world of which we have direct and certain cognizance ("_cogito, ergo sum_"). yet this dualism did not prevent him from doing much to advance our knowledge of the mechanical life processes in detail. borelli followed ( ) with a reduction of the movements of the animal body to purely physical laws, and sylvius endeavored, about the same time, to give a purely chemical explanation of the phenomena of digestion and respiration; the former founded the _iatromechanical_, the latter the _iatrochemical_, school of medicine. however, these rational tendencies towards a natural, mechanical explanation of the phenomena of life did not attain to a universal acceptance and application; in the course of the eighteenth century they fell entirely away before the advance of teleological vitalism. the final disproof of the latter and a return to mechanism only became possible with the happy growth of the new science of comparative physiology in the forties of the present century. our knowledge of the vital functions, like our knowledge of the structure of the human body, was originally obtained, for the most part, not by direct observation of the human organism itself, but by a study of the more closely related animals among the vertebrates, especially the mammals. in this sense the very earliest beginning of human anatomy and physiology was "comparative." but the distinct science of "comparative physiology," which embraces the whole sphere of life phenomena, from the lowest animal up to man, is a triumph of the nineteenth century. its famous creator was johannes müller, of berlin (born, the son of a shoemaker, at coblentz, in ). for fully twenty-five years--from to --this most versatile and most comprehensive biologist of our age evinced an activity at the berlin university, as professor and investigator, which is only comparable with the associated work of haller and cuvier. nearly every one of the great biologists who have taught and worked in germany for the last sixty years was, directly or indirectly, a pupil of johannes müller. starting from the anatomy and physiology of man, he soon gathered all the chief groups of the higher and lower animals within his sphere of comparison. as, moreover, he compared the structure of extinct animals with the living, and the healthy organism with the diseased, endeavoring to bring together all the phenomena of life in a truly philosophic fashion, he attained a biological knowledge far in advance of his predecessors. the most valuable fruit of these comprehensive studies of johannes müller was his _manual of human physiology_. this classical work contains much more than the title indicates; it is the sketch of a comprehensive "comparative biology." it is still unsurpassed in respect of its contents and range of investigation. in particular, we find the methods of observation and experiment applied in it as masterfully as the philosophic processes of induction and deduction. müller was originally a vitalist, like all the physiologists of his time. nevertheless, the current idea of a vital force took a novel form in his speculations, and gradually transformed itself into the very opposite. for he attempted to explain the phenomena of life mechanically in every department of physiology. his "transfigured" vital force was not _above_ the physical and chemical laws of the rest of nature but entirely bound up with them. it was, in a word, nothing more than life itself--that is, the sum of all the movements which we perceive in the living organism. he sought especially to give them the same mechanical interpretation in the life of the senses and of the mind as in the working of the muscles; the same in the phenomena of circulation, respiration, and digestion as in generation and development. müller's success was chiefly due to the fact that he always began with the simplest life phenomena of the lowest animals, and followed them step by step in their gradual development up to the very highest, to man. in this his method of _critical comparison_ proved its value both from the physiological and from the anatomical point of view. johannes müller is, moreover, the only great scientist who has equally cultivated these two branches of research, and combined them with equal brilliancy. immediately after his death his vast scientific kingdom fell into four distinct provinces, which are now nearly always represented by four or more chairs--human and comparative anatomy, pathological anatomy, physiology, and the history of evolution. this sudden division of müller's immense realm of learning in has been compared to the dissolution of the empire which alexander the great had consolidated and ruled. among the many pupils of johannes müller who, either during his lifetime or after his death, labored hard for the advancement of the various branches of biology, one of the most fortunate--if not the most important--was theodor schwann. when the able botanist schleiden, in , indicated the cell as the common elementary organ of all plants, and proved that all the different tissues of the plant are merely combinations of cells, johannes müller recognized at once the extraordinary possibilities of this important discovery. he himself sought to point out the same composition in various tissues of the animal body--for instance, in the spinal cord of vertebrates--and thus led his pupil, schwann, to extend the discovery to all the animal tissues. this difficult task was accomplished by schwann in his _microscopic researches into the accordance in the structure and growth of plants and animals_ ( ). thus was the foundation laid of the "cellular theory," the profound importance of which, both in physiology and anatomy, has become clearer and more widely recognized in each subsequent year. moreover, it was shown by two other pupils of johannes müller that the activity of all organisms is, in the ultimate analysis, the activity of the components of their tissues, the microscopic cells--these were the able physiologist ernst brücke, of vienna, and the distinguished histologist albert kölliker, of würzburg. brücke correctly denominated the cells the "elementary organisms," and showed that, in the body of man and of all other animals, they are the only actual, independent factors of the life process. kölliker earned special distinction, not only in the construction of the whole science of histology, but particularly by showing that the animal ovum and its products are simple cells. still, however widely the immense importance of the cellular theory for all biological research was acknowledged, the "cellular physiology" which is based on it only began an independent development very recently. in this max verworn (of jena) earned a twofold distinction. in his _psycho-physiological studies of the protistae_ ( ) he showed, as a result of an ingenious series of experimental researches, that the "theory of a cell-soul" which i put forward in [ ] is completely established by an accurate study of the unicellular protozoa, and that "the psychic phenomena of the protistæ form the bridge which unites the chemical processes of inorganic nature with the mental life of the highest animals." verworn has further developed these views, and based them on the modern theory of evolution, in his _general physiology_. this distinguished work returns to the comprehensive point of view of johannes müller, in opposition to the one-sided and narrow methods of those modern physiologists who think to discover the nature of the vital phenomena by the exclusive aid of chemical and physical experiments. verworn showed that it is only by müller's comparative method and by a profound study of the physiology of the cell that we can reach the higher stand-point which will give us a comprehensive survey of the wonderful realm of the phenomena of life. only thus do we become convinced that the vital processes in man are subject to the same physical and chemical laws as those of all other animals. the fundamental importance of the cellular theory for all branches of biology was made clear in the second half of the nineteenth century, not only by the rapid progress of morphology and physiology, but also by the entire reform of that biological science which has always been deemed most important on account of its relation to practical medicine--pathology, or the science of disease. many even of the older physicians were convinced that human diseases were natural phenomena, like all other manifestations of life, and should be studied scientifically, like other vital functions. particular schools of medicine--the iatrophysical and the iatrochemical--had already, in the seventeenth century, attempted to trace the sources of disease to certain physical and chemical changes. however, the imperfect condition of science at that period precluded any lasting results of these efforts. many of the older theories, which sought the nature of disease in supernatural and mystical causes, were almost universally accepted down to the middle of the nineteenth century. it was then that rudolf virchow, another pupil of müller, conceived the happy idea of transferring the cellular theory from the healthy to the diseased organism; he sought in the more minute metamorphoses of the diseased cells and the tissues they composed the true source of those larger changes which, in the form of disease, threaten the living organism with peril and death. especially during the seven years of his professorship at würzburg ( - ) virchow pursued his great task with such brilliant results that his _cellular pathology_ (published in ) turned, at one stroke, the whole of pathology and the dependent science of practical medicine into new and eminently fruitful paths. this reform of medicine is significant for our present purpose in that it led us to a monistic and purely scientific conception of disease. in sickness, no less than in health, man is subject to the same eternal "iron laws" of physics and chemistry as all the rest of the organic world. among the numerous classes of animals which modern zoology distinguishes the mammals occupy a pre-eminent position, not only on morphological grounds, but also for physiological reasons. as man belongs to the class of mammals (see p. ) by every portion of his frame, we must expect him to share his characteristic functions with the rest of the mammals. such we find to be the case. the circulation of the blood and respiration are accomplished in man under precisely the same laws and in the same manner as in all the other mammals--_and in these alone_; they are determined by the peculiar structure of their heart and lungs. in mammals only is all the arterial blood conducted from the left ventricle of the heart to the body by one, the _left_, branch of the aorta, while in birds it passes along the _right_ branch, and in reptiles along both branches. the blood of mammals is distinguished from that of any other vertebrate by the circumstance that its red cells have lost their nucleus (by reversion). the respiratory movements are effected largely by the diaphragm in this class of animals alone, because only in them does it form a complete partition between the pectoral and abdominal cavities. special importance, however, in this highest class of animals, attaches to the production of milk in the breasts (_mammae_), and to the peculiar method of the rearing of the young, which entails the supplying of the offspring with the mother's milk. as this nutritive process reacts most powerfully on the other vital functions, and the maternal affection of mammals must have arisen from this intimate form of rearing, the name of the class justly reminds us of its great importance. in millions of pictures, most of them produced by painters of the highest rank, the "madonna with the child" is revered as the purest and noblest type of maternal love--the instinct which is found in its extreme form in the exaggerated tenderness of the mother-ape. as the apes approach nearest to man of all the mammals in point of structure, we shall expect to hear the same of their vital functions; and that we find to be the case. everybody knows how closely the habits, the movements, the sense activity, the mental life, and the parental customs of apes resemble those of man. scientific physiology proves the same significant resemblance in other less familiar processes, particularly in the working of the heart, the division of the breasts, and the sexual life. in the latter connection it is especially noteworthy that the mature females of many kinds of apes suffer a periodical discharge of blood from the womb, which corresponds to the menstruation of the human female. the secretion of the milk in the glands and the suctorial process also take place in the female ape in precisely the same fashion as in women. finally, it is of especial interest that the speech of apes seems on physiological comparison to be a stage in the formation of articulate human speech. among living apes there is an indian species which is musical; the _hylobates syndactylus_ sings a full octave in perfectly pure, harmonious half-tones. no impartial philologist can hesitate any longer to admit that our elaborate rational language has been slowly and gradually developed out of the imperfect speech of our pliocene simian ancestors. chapter iv our embryonic development the older embryology--the theory of preformation--the theory of scatulation: haller and leibnitz--the theory of epigenesis: c. f. wolff--the theory of germinal layers: carl ernst baer--discovery of the human ovum: remak, kölliker--the egg-cell and the sperm-cell--the theory of the gastræa--protozoa and metazoa--the ova and the spermatozoa: oscar hertwig--conception--embryonic development in man--uniformity of the vertebrate embryo--the germinal membranes in man--the amnion, the serolemma, and the allantois--the formation of the placenta and the "after-birth"--the _decidua_ and the _funiculus umbilicalis_--the discoid placenta of man and the ape comparative ontogeny, or the science of the development of the individual animal, is a child of the nineteenth century in even a truer sense than comparative anatomy and physiology. how is the child formed in the mother's womb? how do animals evolve from ova? how does the plant come forth from the seed? these pregnant questions have occupied the thoughtful mind for thousands of years. yet it is only seventy years since the embryologist baer pointed out the correct means and methods for penetrating into the mysteries of embryonic life; it is only forty years since darwin, by his reform of the theory of descent, gave us the key which should open the long-closed door, and lead to a knowledge of embryonic agencies. as i have endeavored to give a complete, popular presentation of this very interesting but difficult study in the first section of my _anthropogeny_, i will confine myself here to a brief survey and discussion of the most important phenomena. let us first cast a historical glance at the older ontogeny, and the theory of preformation which is connected with it. the classical works of aristotle, the many-sided "father of science," are the oldest known scientific sources of embryology, as we found them to be for comparative anatomy. not only in his great natural history, but also in a special small work, _five books on the generation and development of animals_, the great philosopher gives us a host of interesting facts, adding many observations on their significance; it was not until our own days that many of them were fully appreciated, and, indeed, we may say, discovered afresh. naturally, many fables and errors are mixed up with them; it was all that was known at that time of the hidden growth of the human germ. yet during the long space of the next two thousand years the slumbering science made no further progress. it was not until the commencement of the seventeenth century that there was a renewal of activity. in the italian anatomist fabricius ab aquapendente published at padua the first pictures and descriptions of the embryos of man and some of the higher animals; in the famous marcello malpighi, of bologna, a distinguished pioneer alike in zoology and botany, published the first consistent exposition of the growth of the chick in the hatched egg. all these older scientists were possessed with the idea that the complete body, with all its parts, was already contained in the ovum of animals, only it was so minute and transparent that it could not be detected; that, therefore, the whole development was nothing more than a _growth_, or an "unfolding," of the parts that were already "infolded" (_involutae_). this erroneous notion, almost universally accepted until the beginning of the present century, is called the "preformation theory"; sometimes it is called the "evolution theory" (in the literal sense of "unfolding"); but the latter title is accepted by modern scientists for the very different theory of "transformation." closely connected with the preformation theory, and as a logical consequence of it, there arose in the last century a further theory which keenly interested all thoughtful biologists--the curious "theory of scatulation." as it was thought that the outline of the entire organism, with all its parts, was present in the egg, the ovary of the embryo had to be supposed to contain the ova of the following generation; these, again, the ova of the next, and so on _in infinitum_! on that basis the distinguished physiologist haller calculated that god had created together, years ago--on the sixth day of his creatorial labors--the germs of , , , men, and ingeniously packed them all in the ovary of our venerable mother eve. even the gifted philosopher leibnitz fully accepted this conclusion, and embodied it in his monadist theory; and as, on his theory, soul and body are in eternal, inseparable companionship, the consequence had to be accepted for the soul; "the souls of men have existed in organized bodies in their ancestors from adam downward--that is, from the very beginning of things." in the month of november, , a young doctor of twenty-six years, caspar friedrich wolff (son of a berlin tailor), published his dissertation for the degree at halle, under the title, _theoria generationis_. supported by a series of most laborious and painstaking observations, he proved the entire falsity of the dominant theories of preformation and scatulation. in the hatched egg there is at first no trace of the coming chick and its organs; instead of it we find on top of the yolk a small, circular, white disk. this thin "germinal disk" becomes gradually round, and then breaks up into four folds, lying upon each other, which are the rudiments of the four chief systems of organs--the nervous system above, the muscular system underneath, the vascular system (with the heart), and, finally, the alimentary canal. thus, as wolff justly remarked, the embryonic development does not consist in an unfolding of the preformed organs, but in a series of new constructions; it is a true _epigenesis_. one part arises after another, and all make their appearance in a simple form, which is very different from the later structure. this only appears after a series of most remarkable formations. although this great discovery--one of the most important of the eighteenth century--could be directly proved by a verification of the facts wolff had observed, and although the "theory of generation" which was founded on it was in reality not a theory at all, but a simple fact, it met with no sympathy whatever for half a century. it was particularly retarded by the high authority of haller, who fought it strenuously with the dogmatic assertion that "there is no such thing as development: no part of the animal body is formed before another; all were created together." wolff, who had to go to st. petersburg, was long in his grave before the forgotten facts he had observed were discovered afresh by oken at jena, in . after wolff's "epigenesis theory" had been established by oken and neckel (whose important work on the development of the alimentary canal was translated from latin into german), a number of young german scientists devoted themselves eagerly to more accurate embryological research. the most important and successful of these was carl ernst baer. his principal work appeared in , with the title, _history of the development of animals: observations and reflections_. not only the phenomena of the formation of the germ are clearly illustrated and fully described in it, but it adds a number of very pregnant speculations. in particular, the form of the embryo of man and the mammals is correctly presented, and the vastly different development of the lower invertebrate animals is also considered. the two leaflike layers which appear in the round germ disk of the higher vertebrates first divide, according to baer, into two further layers, and these four germinal layers are transformed into four tubes, which represent the fundamental organs--the skin layer, the muscular layer, the vascular layer, and the mucous layer. then, by very complicated evolutionary processes, the later organs arise, in substantially the same manner, in man and all the other vertebrates. the three chief groups of invertebrates, which in their turn differ widely from each other, have a very different development. one of the most important of baer's many discoveries was the finding of the human ovum. up to that time the little vesicles which are found in great numbers in the human ovary and in that of all other mammals had been taken for the ova. baer was the first to prove, in , that the real ova are enclosed in these vesicles--the "graafian follicles"--and much smaller, being tiny spheres - th inch in diameter, visible to the naked eye as minute specks under favorable conditions. he discovered likewise that from this tiny ovum of the mammal there develops first a characteristic germ globule, a hollow sphere with liquid contents, the wall of which forms the slender germinal membrane, or blastoderm. ten years after baer had given a firm foundation to embryological science by his theory of germ layers a new task confronted it on the establishment of the cellular theory in . what is the relation of the ovum and the layers which arise from it to the tissues and cells which compose the fully developed organism? the correct answer to this difficult question was given about the middle of this century by two distinguished pupils of johannes müller--robert remak, of berlin, and albert kölliker, of würzburg. they showed that the ovum is at first one simple cell, and that the many germinal globules, or granules, which arise from it by repeated segmentation, are also simple cells. from this mulberry-like group of cells are constructed first the germinal layers, and subsequently by differentiation, or division of labor, all the different organs. kölliker has the further merit of showing that the seminal fluid of male animals is also a mass of microscopic cells. the active pin-shaped "seed-animalcules," or _spermatozoa_, in it are merely ciliated cells, as i first proved in the case of the seed-filaments of the sponge in . thus it was proved that both the materials of generation, the male sperm and the female ova, fell in with the cellular theory. that was a discovery of which the great philosophic significance was not appreciated until a much later date, on a close study of the phenomena of conception in . all the older studies in embryonic development concern man and the higher vertebrates, especially the embryonic bird, since hens' eggs are the largest and most convenient objects for investigation, and are plentiful enough to facilitate experiment; we can hatch them in the incubator, as well as by the natural function of the hen, and so observe from hour to hour, during the space of three weeks, the whole series of formations, from the simple germ cell to the complete organism. even baer had only been able to gather from such observations the fact that the different classes of vertebrates agreed in the characteristic form of the germ layers and the growth of particular organs. in the innumerable classes of invertebrates, on the other hand--that is, in the great majority of animals--the embryonic development seemed to run quite a different course, and most of them seemed to be altogether without true germinal layers. it was not until about the middle of the century that such layers were found in some of the invertebrates. huxley, for instance, found them in the medusæ in , and kölliker in the cephalopods in . particularly important was the discovery of kowalewsky ( ) that the lowest vertebrate--the lancelot, or amphioxus--is developed in just the same manner (and a very original fashion it is) as an invertebrate, apparently quite remote, tunicate, the sea-squirt, or ascidian. even in some of the worms, the radiata and the articulata, a similar formation of the germinal layers was pointed out by the same observer. i myself was then (since ) occupied with the embryology of the sponges, corals, medusæ, and siphonophoræ, and, as i found the same formation of two primary germ layers everywhere in these lowest classes of multicellular animals, i came to the conclusion that this important embryonic feature is common to the entire animal world. the circumstance that in the sponges and the cnidaria (polyps, medusæ, etc.) the body consists for a long time, sometimes throughout life, merely of two simple layers of cells, seemed to me especially significant. huxley had already ( ) compared these, in the case of the medusæ, with the two primary germinal layers of the vertebrates. on the ground of these observations and comparisons i then, in , in my _philosophy of the calcispongiae_, published the "theory of the gastræa," of which the following are the essential points: i. the whole animal world falls into two essentially different groups, the unicellular primitive animals (protozoa) and the multicellular animals with complex tissues (metazoa). the entire organism of the protozoon (the rhizopods of the infusoria) remains throughout life a single simple cell (or occasionally a loose colony of cells without the formation of tissue, a _coenobium_). the organism of the metazoon, on the contrary, is only unicellular at the commencement, and is subsequently built up of a number of cells which form tissues. ii. hence the method of reproduction and development is very different in each of these great categories of animals. the protozoa usually multiply by _non-sexual_ means, by fission, gemmation, or spores; they have no real ova and no sperm. the metazoa, on the contrary, are divided into male and female sexes, and generally propagate sexually, by means of true ova, which are fertilized by the male sperm. iii. hence, further, true germinal layers, and the tissues which are formed from them, are found only in the metazoa; they are entirely wanting in the protozoa. iv. in all the metazoa only two primary layers appear at first, and these have always the same essential significance; from the _outer_ layer the external skin and the nervous system are developed; from the _inner_ layer are formed the alimentary canal and all the other organs. v. i called the germ, which always arises first from the impregnated ovum, and which consists of these two primary layers, the "gut-larva," or the _gastrula_; its cup-shaped body with the two layers encloses originally a simple digestive cavity, the primitive gut (the _progaster_ or _archenteron_), and its simple opening is the primitive mouth (the _prostoma_ or _blastoporus_). these are the earliest organs of the multicellular body, and the two cell layers of its enclosing wall, simple epithelia, are its earliest tissues; all the other organs and tissues are a later and secondary growth from these. vi. from this similarity, or _homology_, of the gastrula in all classes of compound animals i drew the conclusion, in virtue of the biogenetic law (p. ), that all the metazoa come originally from one simple ancestral form, the _gastraea_, and that this ancient (laurentian), long-extinct form had the structure and composition of the actual gastrula, in which it is preserved by heredity. vii. this phylogenetic conclusion, based on the comparison of ontogenetic facts, is confirmed by the circumstance that there are several of these gastræades still in existence (_gastraemaria_, _cyemaria_, _physemaria_, etc.), and also some ancient forms of other animal groups whose organization is very little higher (the _olynthus_ of the sponges, the _hydra_, or common fresh-water polyp, of the cnidaria, the _convoluta_ and other cryptocæla, or worms of the simplest type, of the _platodes_). viii. in the further development of the various tissue-forming animals from the gastrula we have to distinguish two principal groups. the earlier and _lower_ types (the _coelenteria_ or _acoelomia_) have no body cavity, no vent, and no blood; such is the case with the gastræades, sponges, cnidaria, and platodes. the later and _higher_ types (the _caelomaria_ or _bilateria_), on the other hand, have a true body cavity, and generally blood and a vent; to these we must refer the worms and the higher types of animals which were evolved from these later on, the echinodermata, mollusca, articulata, tunicata, and vertebrata. those are the main points of my "gastræa theory"; i have since enlarged the first sketch of it (given in ), and have endeavored to substantiate it in a series of "studies on the gastræa theory" ( - ). although it was almost universally rejected at first, and fiercely combated for ten years by many authorities, it is now (and has been for the last fifteen years) accepted by nearly all my colleagues. let us now see what far-reaching consequences follow from it, and from the evolution of the germ, especially with regard to our great question, "the place of man in nature." the human ovum, like that of all other animals, is a single cell, and this tiny globular egg cell (about the th of an inch in diameter) has just the same characteristic appearance as that of all other viviparous organisms. the little ball of protoplasm is surrounded by a thick, transparent, finely reticulated membrane, called the _zona pellucida_; even the little, globular, germinal vesicle (the cell-nucleus), which is enclosed in the protoplasm (the cell-body), is of the same size and the same qualities as in the rest of the mammals. the same applies to the active spermatozoa of the male, the minute, threadlike, ciliated cells of which millions are found in every drop of the seminal fluid; on account of their lifelike movements they were previously taken to be forms of life, as the name indicates (spermatozoa--sperm animals). moreover, the origin of both these important sexual cells in their respective organs is the same in man as in the other mammals; both the ova in the ovary of the female and the spermatozoa in the spermarium of the male arise in the same fashion--they always come from cells, which are originally derived from the coelous epithelium, the layer of cells which clothes the cavity of the body. the most important moment in the life of every man, as in that of all other complex animals, is the moment in which he begins his individual existence; it is the moment when the sexual cells of both parents meet and coalesce for the formation of a single simple cell. this new cell, the impregnated egg cell, is the individual stem cell (the _cytula_), the continued segmentation of which produces the cells of the germinal layers and the gastrula. with the formation of this cytula, hence in the process of conception itself, the existence of the personality, the independent individual, commences. this ontogenic fact is supremely important, for the most far-reaching conclusions may be drawn from it. in the first place, we have a clear perception that man, like all the other complex animals, inherits all his personal characteristics, bodily and mental, from his parents; and, further, we come to the momentous conclusion that the new personality which arises thus can lay no claim to "immortality." hence the minute processes of conception and sexual generation are of the first importance. we are, however, only familiar with their details since , when oscar hertwig, my pupil and fellow-traveller at that time, began his researches into the impregnation of the egg of the sea-urchin at ajaccio, in corsica. the beautiful capital of the island in which napoleon the great was born, in , was also the spot in which the mysteries of animal conception were carefully studied for the first time in their most important aspects. hertwig found that the one essential element in conception is the coalescence of the two sexual cells and their nuclei. only one out of the millions of male ciliated cells which press round the ovum penetrates to its nucleus. the nuclei of both cells, of the spermatozoon and of the ovum, drawn together by a mysterious force, which we take to be a chemical sense-activity, related to smell, approach each other and melt into one. thus, by the sensitive perception of the sexual nuclei, following upon a kind of "erotic chemicotropism," a new cell is formed, which unites in itself the inherited qualities of both parents; the nucleus of the spermatozoon conveys the paternal features, the nucleus of the ovum those of the mother, to the stem cell, from which the child is to be developed. that applies both to the bodily and to the mental characteristics. the formation of the germinal layers by the repeated division of the stem cell, the growth of the gastrula and of the later germ structures which succeed it, take place in man in just the same manner as in the other higher mammals, under the peculiar conditions which differentiate this group from the lower vertebrates. in the earlier stages of development these special characters of the placentalia are not to be detected. the significant embryonic or larval form of the chordula, which succeeds the gastrula, has substantially the same structure in all vertebrates; a simple straight rod, the dorsal cord, lies lengthways along the main axis of the shield-shaped body--the "embryonic shield"; above the cord the spinal marrow develops out of the outer germinal layer, while the gut makes its appearance underneath. then, on both sides, to the right and left of the axial rod, appear the segments of the "pro-vertebræ" and the outlines of the muscular plates, with which the formation of the members of the vertebrate body begins. the gill-clefts appear on either side of the fore-gut; they are the openings of the gullet, through which, in our primitive fish-ancestors, the water which had entered at the mouth for breathing purposes made its exit at the sides of the head. by a tenacious heredity these gill-clefts, which have no meaning except for our fish-like aquatic ancestors, are still preserved in the embryo of man and all the other vertebrates. they disappear after a time. even after the five vesicles of the embryonic brain appear in the head, and the rudiments of the eyes and ears at the sides, and after the legs sprout out at the base of the fish-like embryo, in the form of two roundish, flat buds, the foetus is still so like that of other vertebrates that it is indistinguishable from them. the substantial similarity in outer form and inner structure which characterizes the embryo of man and other vertebrates in this early stage of development is an embryological fact of the first importance; from it, by the fundamental law of biogeny, we may draw the most momentous conclusions. there is but one explanation of it--heredity from a common parent form. when we see that, at a certain stage, the embryos of man and the ape, the dog and the rabbit, the pig and the sheep, although recognizable as higher vertebrates, cannot be distinguished from each other, the fact can only be elucidated by assuming a common parentage. and this explanation is strengthened when we follow the subsequent divergence of these embryonic forms. the nearer two animals are in their bodily structure, and, therefore, in the scheme of nature, so much the longer do we find their embryos to retain this resemblance, and so much the closer do they approach each other in the ancestral tree of their respective group, so much the closer is their genetic relationship. hence it is that the embryos of man and the anthropoid ape retain the resemblance much later, at an advanced stage of development, when their distinction from the embryos of other mammals can be seen at a glance. i have illustrated this significant fact by a juxtaposition of corresponding stages in the development of a number of different vertebrates in my _natural history of creation_ and in my _anthropogeny_. the great phylogenetic significance of the resemblance we have described is seen, not only in the comparison of the embryos of vertebrates, but also in the comparison of their protective membranes. all vertebrates of the three higher classes--reptiles, birds, and mammals--are distinguished from the lower classes by the possession of certain special foetal membranes, the amnion and the serolemma. the embryo is enclosed in these membranes, or bags, which are full of water, and is thus protected from pressure or shock. this provident arrangement probably arose during the permian period, when the oldest reptiles, the _proreptilia_, the common ancestors of all the amniotes (animals with an _amnion_), completely adapted themselves to a life on land. their direct ancestors, the amphibia, and the fishes are devoid of these foetal membranes; they would have been superfluous to these inhabitants of the water. with the inheritance of these protective coverings are closely connected two other changes in the amniotes: firstly, the entire disappearance of the gills (while the gill arches and clefts continue to be inherited as "rudimentary organs"); secondly, the construction of the _allantois_. this vesicular bag, filled with water, grows out of the hind-gut in the embryo of all the amniotes, and is nothing else than an enlargement of the bladder of their amphibious ancestors. from its innermost and inferior section is formed subsequently the permanent bladder of the amniotes, while the larger outer part shrivels up. usually this has an important part to play for a long time as the respiratory organ of the embryo, a number of large blood-vessels spreading out over its inner surface. the formation of the membranes, the amnion and the serolemma, and of the allantois, is just the same, and is effected by the same complicated process of growth, in man as in all the other amniotes; _man is a true amniote_. the nourishment of the foetus in the maternal womb is effected, as is well known, by a peculiar organ, richly supplied with blood at its surface, called the _placenta_. this important nutritive organ is a spongy, round disk, from six to eight inches in diameter, about an inch thick, and one or two pounds in weight; it is separated after the birth of the child, and issues as the "after-birth." the placenta consists of two very different parts, the foetal and the maternal part. the latter contains highly developed sinuses, which retain the blood conveyed to them by the arteries of the mother. on the other hand, the foetal placenta is formed by innumerable branching tufts or villi, which grow out of the outer surface of the allantois, and derive their blood from the umbilical vessels. the hollow, blood-filled villi of the foetal placenta protrude into the sinuses of the maternal placenta, and the slender membrane between the two is so attenuated that it offers no impediment to the direct interchange of material through the nutritive blood-stream (by osmosis). in the older and lower groups of the placentals the entire surface of the chorion is covered with a number of short villi; these "chorion-villi" take the form of pit-like depressions of the mucous membrane of the mother, and are easily detached at birth. that happens in most of the ungulata (the sow, camel, mare, etc.), the cetacea, and the prosimiæ; these "mallo-placentalia" (with a _diffuse_ placenta) have been denominated the _indeciduata_. the same formation is present in man and the other placentals in the beginning. it is soon modified, however, as the villi on one part of the chorion are withdrawn; while on the other part they grow proportionately stronger, and unite intimately with the mucous membrane of the womb. it is in consequence of this intimate blending that a portion of the uterus is detached at birth, and carried away with loss of blood. this detachable membrane--the _decidua_--is a characteristic of the higher placentalia, which have, consequently, been grouped under the title of _deciduata_; to that category belong the carnassia, rodentia, simiæ, and man. in the carnassia and some of the ungulata (the elephant, for instance) the placenta takes the form of a girdle, hence they are known as the _zonoplacentalia_; in the rodentia, the insectivora (the mole and the hedge-hog), the apes, and man, it takes the form of a disk. even ten years ago the majority of embryologists thought that man was distinguished by certain peculiarities in the form of the placenta--namely, by the possession of what is called the _decidua reflexa_, and by a special formation of the umbilical chord which unites the _decidua_ to the foetus. it was supposed that the rest of the placentals, including the apes, were without these special embryonic structures. the _funiculus umbilicalis_ is a smooth, cylindrical cord, from sixteen to twenty-three inches long, and as thick as the little finger. it forms the connecting link between the foetus and the maternal placenta, since it conducts the nutritive vessels from the body of the foetus to the placenta; it comprises, besides, the pedicle of the allantois and the yelk-sac. the yelk-sac in the human case forms the greater portion of the germinal vesicle during the third week of gestation; but it shrivels up afterwards so that it was formerly entirely missed in the mature foetus. yet it remains all the time in a rudimentary condition, and may be detected even after birth as the little umbilical vesicle. moreover, even the vesicular structure of the allantois disappears at an early stage in the human case; with a deflection of the amnion, it gives rise to the pedicle. we cannot enter here into a discussion of the complicated anatomical and embryological relations of these structures. i have described and illustrated them in my _anthropogeny_ (twenty-third chapter). the opponents of evolution still appealed to these "special features" of human embryology, which were supposed to distinguish man from all the other mammals, even so late as ten years ago. but in emil selenka proved that the same features are found in the anthropoid apes, especially in the orang (_satyrus_), while the lower apes are without them. thus huxley's pithecometra thesis was substantiated once more: "the differences between man and the great apes are not so great as are those between the manlike apes and the lower monkeys." the supposed "evidences _against_ the near blood-relationship of man and the apes" proved, on a closer examination of the real circumstances, to be strong reasons in favor of it. every scientist who penetrates with open eyes into this dark but profoundly interesting labyrinth of our embryonic development, and who is competent to compare it critically with that of the rest of the mammals, will find in it a most important aid towards the elucidation of the descent of our species. for the various stages of our embryonic development, in the character of _palingenetic_ phenomena of heredity, cast a brilliant light on the corresponding stages of our ancestral tree, in accordance with the great law of biogeny. but even the _cenogenetic_ phenomena of adaptation, the formation of the temporary foetal organs--the characteristic foetal membranes, and especially the placenta--gives us sufficiently definite indications of our _close genetic relationship with the primates_. chapter v the history of our species origin of man--mythical history of creation--moses and linné--the creation of permanent species--the catastrophic theory: cuvier--transformism: goethe--theory of descent: lamarck--theory of selection: darwin--evolution (phylogeny)--ancestral trees--general morphology--natural history of creation--systematic phylogeny--fundamental law of biogeny--anthropogeny--descent of man from the ape--pithecoid theory--the fossil pithecanthropus of dubois the youngest of the great branches of the living tree of biology is the science we call biological evolution, or _phylogeny_. it came into existence much later, and under much more difficult circumstances, than its natural sister, embryonic evolution or _ontogeny_. the object of the latter was to attain a knowledge of the mysterious processes by which the individual organism, plant or animal, developed from the egg. phylogeny has to answer the much more obscure and difficult question: "what is the origin of the different organic species of plants and animals?" ontogeny (embryology and metamorphism) could follow the empirical method of direct observation in the solution of its not remote problem; it needed but to follow, day by day and hour by hour, the visible changes which the foetus experiences during a brief period in the course of its development from the ovum. much more difficult was the remote problem of phylogeny; for the slow processes of gradual construction, which effect the rise of new species of animals and plants, go on imperceptibly during thousands and even millions of years. their direct observation is possible only within very narrow limits; the vast majority of these historical processes can only be known by direct inference--by critical reflection, and by a comparative use of empirical sciences which belong to very different fields of thought, palæontology, ontogeny, and morphology. to this we must add the immense opposition which was everywhere made to biological evolution on account of the close connection between questions of organic creation and supernatural myths and religious dogmas. for these reasons it can easily be understood how it is that the scientific existence of a true theory of origins was only secured, amid fierce controversy, in the course of the last forty years. every serious attempt that was made before the beginning of the nineteenth century to solve the problem of the origin of species lost its way in the mythological labyrinth of the supernatural stories of creation. the efforts of a few distinguished thinkers to emancipate themselves from this tyranny and attain to a naturalistic interpretation proved unavailing. a great variety of creation myths arose in connection with their religion in all the ancient civilized nations. during the middle ages triumphant christendom naturally arrogated to itself the sole right of pronouncing on the question; and, the bible being the basis of the structure of the christian religion, the whole story of creation was taken from the book of genesis. even carl linné, the famous swedish scientist, started from that basis when, in , in his classical _systema naturae_, he made the first attempt at a systematic arrangement, nomenclature, and classification of the innumerable objects in nature. as the best practical aid in that attempt he introduced the well-known double or binary nomenclature; to each kind of animals and plants he gave a particular specific name, and added to it the wider-reaching name of the genus. a _genus_ served to unite the nearest related _species_; thus, for instance, linné grouped under the genus "dog" (_canis_), as different species, the house-dog (_canis familiaris_), the jackal (_canis aureus_), the wolf (_canis lupus_) the fox (_canis vulpes_), etc. this binary nomenclature immediately proved of such great practical assistance that it was universally accepted, and is still always followed in zoological and botanical classification. but the theoretical dogma which linné himself connected with his practical idea of species was fraught with the gravest peril to science. the first question which forced itself on the mind of the thoughtful scientist was the question as to the nature of the concept of species, its contents, and its range. and the creator of the idea answered this fundamental question by a naïve appeal to the dominant mosaic legend of creation: "_species tot sunt diversae, quot diversas formas ab initio creavit infinitum ens_"--(there are just so many distinct species as there were distinct types created in the beginning by the infinite). this theosophic dogma cut short all attempt at a natural explanation of the origin of species. linné was acquainted only with the plant and animal worlds that exist to-day; he had no suspicion of the much more numerous extinct species which had peopled the earth with their varying forms in the earlier period of its development. it was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that we were introduced to these fossil animals by cuvier. in his famous work on the fossil bones of the four-footed vertebrates he gave ( ) the first correct description and true interpretation of many of these fossil remains. he showed, too, that a series of very different animal populations have succeeded each other in the various stages of the earth's history. since cuvier held firmly to linné's idea of the absolute permanency of species, he thought their origin could only be explained by the supposition that a series of great cataclysms and new creations had marked the history of the globe; he imagined that all living creatures were destroyed at the commencement of each of these terrestrial revolutions, and an entirely new population was created at its close. although this "catastrophic theory" of cuvier's led to the most absurd consequences, and was nothing more than a bald faith in miracles, it obtained almost universal recognition, and reigned triumphant until the coming of darwin. it is easy to understand that these prevalent ideas of the absolute unchangeability and supernatural creation of organic species could not satisfy the more penetrating thinkers. we find several eminent minds already, in the second half of the last century, busy with the attempt to find a natural explanation of the "problem of creation." pre-eminent among them was the great german poet and philosopher, wolfgang goethe, who, by his long and assiduous study of morphology, obtained, more than a hundred years ago, a clear insight into the intimate connection of all organic forms, and a firm conviction of a common natural origin. in his famed _metamorphosis of plants_ ( ) he derived all the different species of plants from one primitive type, and all their different organs from one primitive organ--the leaf. in his vertebral theory of the skull he endeavored to prove that the skulls of the vertebrates--including man--were all alike made up of certain groups of bones, arranged in a definite structure, and that these bones are nothing else than transformed vertebræ. it was his penetrating study of comparative osteology that led goethe to a firm conviction of the unity of the animal organization; he had recognized that the human skeleton is framed on the same fundamental type as that of all other vertebrates--"built on a primitive plan that only deviates more or less to one side or other in its very constant features, and still develops and refashions itself daily." this remodelling, or transformation, is brought about, according to goethe, by the constant interaction of two powerful constructive forces--a centripetal force within the organism, the "tendency to specification," and a centrifugal force without, the tendency to variation, or the "idea of metamorphosis"; the former corresponds to what we now call heredity, the latter to the modern idea of adaptation. how deeply goethe had penetrated into their character by these philosophic studies of the "construction and reconstruction of organic natures," and how far, therefore, he must be considered the most important precursor of darwin and lamarck,[ ] may be gathered from the interesting passages from his works which i have collected in the fourth chapter of my _natural history of creation_. these evolutionary ideas of goethe, however, like analogous ideas of kant, owen, treviranus, and other philosophers of the commencement of the century (which we have quoted in the above work), did not amount to more than certain general conclusions. they had not that great lever which the "natural history of creation" needed for its firm foundation on a criticism of the dogma of fixed species; this lever was first supplied by lamarck. the first thorough attempt at a scientific establishment of transformism was made at the beginning of the nineteenth century by the great french scientist jean lamarck, the chief opponent of his colleague, cuvier, at paris. he had already, in , in his _observations on living organisms_, expressed the new ideas as to the mutability and formation of species, which he thoroughly established in in the two volumes of his profound work, _philosophie zoologique_. in this work he first gave expression to the correct idea, in opposition to the prevalent dogma of fixed species, that the organic "species" is an _artificial abstraction_, a concept of only relative value, like the wider-ranging concepts of genus, family, order, and class. he went on to affirm that all species are changeable, and have arisen from older species in the course of very long periods of time. the common parent forms from which they have descended were originally very simple and lowly organisms. the first and oldest of them arose by abiogenesis. while the type is preserved by _heredity_ in the succession of generations, _adaptation_, on the other hand, effects a constant modification of the species by change of habits and the exercise of the various organs. even our human organism has arisen in the same natural manner, by gradual transformation, from a group of pithecoid mammals. for all these phenomena--indeed, for all phenomena both in nature and in the mind--lamarck takes exclusively mechanical, physical, and chemical activities to be the true efficient causes. his magnificent _philosophie zoologique_ contains all the elements of a purely monistic system of nature on the basis of evolution. i have fully treated these achievements of lamarck in the fourth chapter of my _anthropogeny_, and in the fourth chapter of the _natural history of creation_. science had now to wait until this great effort to give a scientific foundation to the theory of evolution should shatter the dominant myth of a "specific creation, and open out the path of natural" development. in this respect lamarck was not more successful in resisting the conservative authority of his great opponent, cuvier, than was his colleague and sympathizer, geoffrey st. hilaire, twenty years later. the famous controversies which he had with cuvier in the parisian academy in ended with the complete triumph of the latter. i have elsewhere fully described these conflicts, in which goethe took so lively an interest. the great expansion which the study of biology experienced at that time, the abundance of interesting discoveries in comparative anatomy and physiology, the establishment of the cellular theory, and the progress of ontogeny, gave zoologists and botanists so overwhelming a flood of welcome material to deal with that the difficult and obscure question of the origin of species was easily forgotten for a time. people rested content with the old dogma of creation. even when charles lyell refuted cuvier's extraordinary "catastrophic theory" in his _principles of geology_, in , and vindicated a natural, continuous evolution for the inorganic structure of our planet, his simple principle of continuity found no one to apply it to the inorganic world. the rudiments of a natural phylogeny which were buried in lamarck's works were as completely forgotten as the germ of a natural ontogeny which caspar friedrich wolff had given fifty years earlier in his _theory of generation_. in both cases a full half-century elapsed before the great idea of a natural development won a fitting recognition. only when darwin (in ) approached the solution of the problem from a different side altogether, and made a happy use of the rich treasures of empirical knowledge which had accumulated in the mean time, did men begin to think once more of lamarck as his great precursor. the unparalleled success of charles darwin is well known. it shows him to-day, at the close of the century, to have been, if not the greatest, at least the most effective of its distinguished scientists. no other of the many great thinkers of our time has achieved so magnificent, so thorough, and so far-reaching a success with a single classical work as darwin did in with his famous _origin of species_. it is true that the reform of comparative anatomy and physiology by johannes müller had inaugurated a new and fertile epoch for the whole of biology, that the establishment of the cellular theory by schleiden and schwann, the reform of ontogeny by baer, and the formulation of the law of substance by robert mayer and helmholtz were scientific facts of the first importance; but no one of them has had so profound an influence on the whole structure of human knowledge as darwin's theory of the natural origin of species. for it at once gave us the solution of the mystic "problem of creation," the great "question of all questions"--the problem of the true character and origin of man himself. if we compare the two great founders of transformism, we find in lamarck a preponderant inclination to _deduction_, and to forming a completely monistic scheme of nature; in darwin we have a predominant application of _induction_, and a prudent concern to establish the different parts of the theory of selection as firmly as possible on a basis of observation and experiment. while the french scientist far outran the then limits of empirical knowledge, and rather sketched the programme of future investigation, the english empiricist was mainly preoccupied about securing a unifying principle of interpretation for a mass of empirical knowledge which had hitherto accumulated without being understood. we can thus understand how it was that the success of darwin was just as overwhelming as that of lamarck was evanescent. darwin, however, had not only the signal merit of bringing all the results of the various biological sciences to a common focus in the principle of descent, and thus giving them a harmonious interpretation, but he also discovered, in the principle of selection, that direct cause of transformation which lamarck had missed. in applying, as a practical breeder, the experience of artificial selection to organisms in a state of nature, and in recognizing in the "struggle for life" the selective principle of natural selection, darwin created his momentous "theory of selection," which is what we properly call darwinism. one of the most pressing of the many important tasks which darwin proposed to modern biology was the reform of the zoological and botanical system. since the innumerable species of animals and plants were not created by a supernatural miracle, but evolved by natural processes, their ancestral tree is their "natural system." the first attempt to frame a system in this sense was made by myself in , in my _general morphology of organisms_. the first volume of this work ("general anatomy") dealt with the "mechanical science of the developed forms"; the second volume ("general evolution") was occupied with the science of the "developing forms." the systematic introduction to the latter formed a "genealogical survey of the natural system of organisms." until that time the term "evolution" had been taken to mean exclusively, both in zoology and botany, the development of individual organisms--embryology, or metamorphic science. i established the opposite view, that this history of the embryo (ontogeny) must be completed by a second, equally valuable, and closely connected branch of thought--the history of the race (phylogeny). both these branches of evolutionary science are, in my opinion, in the closest causal connection; this arises from the reciprocal action of the laws of heredity and adaptation; it has a precise and comprehensive expression in my "fundamental law of biogeny." as the new views i had put forward in my _general morphology_ met with very little notice, and still less acceptance, from my scientific colleagues, in spite of their severely scientific setting, i thought i would make the most important of them accessible to a wider circle of informed readers by a smaller work, written in a more popular style. this was done in , in _the natural history of creation_ (a series of popular scientific lectures on evolution in general, and the systems of darwin, goethe, and lamarck in particular). if the success of my _general morphology_ was far below my reasonable anticipation, that of _the natural history of creation_ went far beyond it. in a period of thirty years nine editions and twelve different translations of it have appeared. in spite of its great defects, the book has contributed much to the popularization of the main ideas of modern evolution. still, i could only give the barest outlines in it of my chief object, the phylogenetic construction of a natural system. i have, therefore, given the complete proof, which is wanting in the earlier work, of the phylogenetic system in a subsequent larger work, my _systematic phylogeny_ (outlines of a natural system of organisms on the basis of their specific development). the first volume of it deals with the protists and plants ( ), the second with the invertebrate animals ( ), the third with the vertebrates ( ). the ancestral tree of both the smaller and the larger groups is carried on in this work as far as my knowledge of the three great "ancestral documents"--palæontology, ontogeny, and morphology--qualified me to extend it. i had already, in my _general morphology_ (at the end of the fifth book), described the close causative connection which exists, in my opinion, between the two branches of organic evolution as one of the most important ideas of transformism, and i had framed a precise formula for it in a number of "theses on the causal nexus of biontic and phyletic development": "_ontogenesis is a brief and rapid recapitulation of phylogenesis_, determined by the physiological functions of heredity (generation) and adaptation (maintenance)." darwin himself had emphasized the great significance of his theory for the elucidation of embryology in , and fritz müller had endeavored to prove it as regards the crustacea in the able little work, _facts and arguments for darwin_ ( ). my own task has been to prove the universal application and the fundamental importance of the biogenetic law in a series of works, especially in the _biology of the calcispongiae_ ( ), and in _studies on the gastraea theory_ ( - ). the theory of the homology of the germinal layers and of the relations of _palingenesis_ to _cenogenesis_ which i have exposed in them has been confirmed subsequently by a number of works of other zoologists. that theory makes it possible to follow nature's law of unity in the innumerable variations of animal embryology; it gives us for their ancestral history a common derivation from a simple primitive stem form. the far-seeing founder of the theory of descent, lamarck, clearly recognized in that it was of universal application; that even man himself, the most highly developed of the mammals, is derived from the same stem as all the other mammals; and that this in its turn belongs to the same older branch of the ancestral tree as the rest of the vertebrates. he had even indicated the agencies by which it might be possible to explain man's descent from the apes as the nearest related mammals. darwin, who was, naturally, of the same conviction, purposely avoided this least acceptable consequence of his theory in his chief work in , and put it forward for the first time in his _descent of man_ in . in the mean time ( ) huxley had very ably discussed this most important consequence of evolution in his famous _place of man in nature_. with the aid of comparative anatomy and ontogeny, and the support of the facts of palæontology, huxley proved that the "descent of man from the ape" is a necessary consequence of darwinism, and that no other scientific explanation of the origin of the human race is possible. of the same opinion was karl gegenbaur, the most distinguished representative of comparative anatomy, who lifted his science to a higher level by a consistent and ingenious application of the theory of descent. as a further consequence of the "pithecoid theory" (the theory of the descent of man from the ape) there now arose the difficult task of investigating, not only the nearest related mammal ancestors of man in the tertiary epoch, but also the long series of the older animal ancestors which had lived in earlier periods of the earth's history and been developed in the course of countless millions of years. i had made a start with the hypothetical solution of this great historic problem in my _general morphology_; a further development of it appeared in in my _anthropogeny_ (first section, origin of the individual; second section, origin of the race). the fourth, enlarged, edition of this work ( ) contains that theory of the development of man which approaches nearest, in my own opinion, to the still remote truth, in the light of our present knowledge of the documentary evidence. i was especially preoccupied in its composition to use the three empirical "documents"--palæontology, ontogeny, and morphology (or comparative anatomy)--as evenly and harmoniously as possible. it is true that my hypotheses were in many cases supplemented and corrected in detail by later phylogenetic research; yet i am convinced that the ancestral tree of human origin which i have sketched therein is substantially correct. for the historical succession of vertebrate fossils corresponds completely with the morphological evolutionary scale which is revealed to us by comparative anatomy and ontogeny. after the silurian fishes come the _dipnoi_ of the devonian period--the carboniferous amphibia, the permian reptilia, and the mesozoic mammals. of these, again, the lowest forms, the monotremes, appear first in the triassic period, the marsupials in the jurassic, and then the oldest placentals in the cretaceous. of the placentals, in turn, the first to appear in the oldest tertiary period (the eocene) are the lowest primates, the prosimiæ, which are followed by the simiæ in the miocene. of the catarrhinæ, the cynopitheci precede the anthropomorpha; from one branch of the latter, during the pliocene period, arises the ape-man without speech (the _pithecanthropus alalus_); and from him descends, finally, speaking man. the chain of our earlier invertebrate ancestors is much more difficult to investigate and much less safe than this tree of our vertebrate predecessors; we have no fossilized relics of their soft, boneless structures, so palæontology can give us no assistance in this case. the evidence of comparative anatomy and ontogeny, therefore, becomes all the more important. since the human embryo passes through the same _chordula_-stage as the germs of all other vertebrates, since it evolves, similarly, out of two germinal layers of a _gastrula_, we infer, in virtue of the biogenetic law, the early existence of corresponding ancestral forms--vermalia, gastræada, etc. most important of all is the fact that the human embryo, like that of all other animals, arises originally from a single cell; for this "stem-cell" (_cytula_)--the impregnated egg cell--points indubitably to a corresponding unicellular ancestor, a primitive, laurentian protozoon. for the purpose of our monistic philosophy, however, it is a matter of comparative indifference how the succession of our animal predecessors may be confirmed in detail. sufficient for us, as an incontestable historical fact, is the important thesis that man descends immediately from the ape, and secondarily from a long series of lower vertebrates. i have laid stress on the logical proof of this "pithecometra-thesis" in the seventh book of the _general morphology_: "the thesis that man has been evolved from lower vertebrates, and immediately from the _simiae_, is a special inference which results with absolute necessity from the general inductive law of the theory of descent." for the definitive proof and establishment of this fundamental pithecometra-thesis the palæontological discoveries of the last thirty years are of the greatest importance; in particular, the astonishing discoveries of a number of extinct mammals of the tertiary period have enabled us to draw up clearly in its main outlines the evolutionary history of this most important class of animals, from the lowest oviparous monotremes up to man. the four chief groups of the placentals, the heterogeneous legions of the carnassia, the rodentia, the ungulata, and the primates, seem to be separated by profound gulfs, when we confine our attention to their representatives of to-day. but these gulfs are completely bridged, and the sharp distinctions of the four legions are entirely lost, when we compare their extinct predecessors of the tertiary period, and when we go back into the eocene twilight of history, in the oldest part of the tertiary period--at least three million years ago. there we find the great sub-class of the placentals, which to-day comprises more than two thousand five hundred species, represented by only a small number of little, insignificant "proplacentals"; and in these _prochoriata_ the characters of the four divergent legions are so intermingled and toned down that we cannot in reason do other than consider them as the precursors of those features. the oldest carnassia (the _ictopsales_), the oldest rodentia (the _esthonychales_), the oldest ungulata (the _condylarthrales_) and the oldest primates (the _lemuravales_), all have the same fundamental skeletal structure, and the same typical dentition of the primitive placentals, consisting of forty-four teeth (three incisors, one canine, four premolars, and three molars in each half of the jaw); all are characterized by the small size and the imperfect structure of the brain (especially of its chief part, the cortex, which does not become a true "organ of thought" until later on in the miocene and pliocene representatives); they have all short legs and five-toed, flat-soled feet (_plantigrada_). in many cases among these oldest placentals of the eocene period it was very difficult to say at first whether they should be classed with the carnassia, rodentia, ungulata, or primates; so very closely, even to confusion, do these four groups of the placentals, which diverge so widely afterwards, approach each other at that time. their common origin from a single ancestral group follows incontestably. these _prochoriata_ lived in the preceding cretaceous period (more than three million years ago), and were probably developed in the jurassic period from a group of insectivorous marsupials (_amphitheria_) by the formation of a primitive _placenta diffusa_, a placenta of the simplest type. but the most important of all the recent palaeontological discoveries which have served to elucidate the origin of the placentals relate to our own stem, the legion of primates. formerly fossil remains of the primates were very scarce. even cuvier, the great founder of palaeontology, maintained until his last day ( ) that there were no fossilized primates; he had himself, it is true, described the skull of an eocene prosimiæ (_adapis_), but he had wrongly classed it with the ungulata. however, during the last twenty years a fair number of well-preserved fossilized skeletons of prosimiæ and simiæ have been discovered; in them we find all the chief intermediate members which complete the connecting chain of ancestors from the oldest prosimiæ to man. the most famous and most interesting of these discoveries is the fossil ape-man of java, the much-talked-of _pithecanthropus erectus_, found by a dutch military doctor, eugen dubois, in . it is in truth the much-sought "missing link," supposed to be wanting in the chain of primates, which stretches unbroken from the lowest catarrhinæ to the highest-developed man. i have dealt exhaustively with the significance of this discovery in the paper which i read on august , , at the fourth international zoological congress at cambridge.[ ] the palæontologist, who knows the conditions of the formation and preservation of fossils, will think the discovery of the pithecanthropus an unusually lucky accident. the apes, being arboreal, seldom came into the circumstances (unless they happened to fall into the water) which would secure the preservation and petrifaction of their skeleton. thus, by the discovery of this fossil man-monkey of java the descent of man from the ape has become just as clear and certain from the palæontological side as it was previously from the evidence of comparative anatomy and ontogeny. we now have all the principal documents which tell the history of our race. chapter vi the nature of the soul fundamental importance of psychology--its definition and methods--divergence of views thereon--dualistic and monistic psychology--relation to the law of substance--confusion of ideas--psychological metamorphoses: kant, virchow, du bois-reymond--methods of research of psychic science--introspective method (self-observation)--exact method (psycho-physics)--comparative method (animal psychology)--psychological change of principles: wundt--folk-psychology and ethnography: bastian--ontogenetic psychology: preyer--phylogenetic psychology: darwin, romanes the phenomena which are comprised under the title of the "life of the soul," or the psychic activity, are, on the one hand, the most important and interesting, on the other the most intricate and problematical, of all the phenomena we are acquainted with. as the knowledge of nature, the object of the present philosophic study, is itself a part of the life of the soul, and as anthropology, and even cosmology, presuppose a correct knowledge of the "psyche," we may regard psychology, the scientific study of the soul, both as the foundation and the postulate of all other sciences. from another point of view it is itself a part of philosophy, or physiology, or anthropology. the great difficulty of establishing it on a naturalistic basis arises from the fact that psychology, in turn, presupposes a correct acquaintance with the human organism, especially the brain, the chief organ of psychic activity. the great majority of "psychologists" have little or no acquaintance with these anatomical foundations of the soul, and thus it happens that in no other science do we find such contradictions and untenable notions as to its proper meaning and its essential object as are current in psychology. this confusion has become more and more palpable during the last thirty years, in proportion as the immense progress of anatomy and physiology has increased our knowledge of the structure and the functions of the chief psychic organ. what we call the soul is, in my opinion, a natural phenomenon; i therefore consider psychology to be a branch of natural science--a section of physiology. consequently, i must emphatically assert from the commencement that we have no different methods of research for that science than for any of the others; we have in the first place observation and experiment, in the second place the theory of evolution, and in the third place metaphysical speculation, which seek to penetrate as far as possible into the cryptic nature of the phenomena by inductive and deductive reasoning. however, with a view to a thorough appreciation of the question, we must first of all put clearly before the reader the antithesis of the dualistic and the monistic theories. the prevailing conception of the psychic activity, which we contest, considers soul and body to be two distinct entities. these two entities can exist independently of each other; there is no intrinsic necessity for their union. the organized body is a mortal, material nature, chemically composed of living protoplasm and its compounds (plasma-products). the soul, on the other hand, is an immortal, immaterial being, a spiritual agent, whose mysterious activity is entirely incomprehensible to us. this trivial conception is, as such, spiritualistic, and its contradictory is, in a certain sense, materialistic. it is, at the same time, supernatural and transcendental, since it affirms the existence of forces which can exist and operate without a material basis; it rests on the assumption that outside of and beyond nature there is a "spiritual," immaterial world, of which we have no experience, and of which we can learn nothing by natural means. this hypothetical "spirit world," which is supposed to be entirely independent of the material universe, and on the assumption of which the whole artificial structure of the dualistic system is based, is purely a product of poetic imagination; the same must be said of the parallel belief in the "immortality of the soul," the scientific impossibility of which we must prove more fully later on (chap. xi.). if the beliefs which prevail in these credulous circles had a sound foundation, the phenomena they relate to could not be subject to the "law of substance"; moreover, this single exception to the highest law of the cosmos must have appeared very late in the history of the organic world, since it only concerns the "soul" of man and of the higher animals. the dogma of "free will," another essential element of the dualistic psychology, is similarly irreconcilable with the universal law of substance. our own naturalistic conception of the psychic activity sees in it a group of vital phenomena, which are dependent on a definite material substratum, like all other phenomena. we shall give to this material basis of all psychic activity, without which it is inconceivable, the provisional name of "psychoplasm"; and for this good reason--that chemical analysis proves it to be a body of the group we call protoplasmic bodies the albuminoid carbon-combinations which are at the root of all vital processes. in the higher animals, which have a nervous system and sense-organs, "neuroplasm," the nerve-material, has been differentiated out of psychoplasm. our conception is, in this sense, materialistic. it is at the same time empirical and naturalistic, for our scientific experience has never yet taught us the existence of forces that can dispense with a material substratum, or of a spiritual world over and above the realm of nature. like all other natural phenomena, the psychic processes are subject to the supreme, all-ruling law of substance; not even in this province is there a single exception to this highest cosmological law (compare chap. xii.). the phenomena of the lowly psychic life of the unicellular protist and the plant, and of the lowest animal forms--their irritability, their reflex movements, their sensitiveness and instinct of self-preservation--are directly determined by physiological action in the protoplasm of their cells--that is, by physical and chemical changes which are partly due to heredity and partly to adaptation. and we must say just the same of the higher psychic activity of the higher animals and man, of the formation of ideas and concepts, of the marvellous phenomena of reason and consciousness; for the latter have been phylogenetically evolved from the former, and it is merely a higher degree of integration or centralization, of association or combination of functions which were formerly isolated, that has elevated them in this manner. the first task of every science is the clear definition of the object it has to investigate. in no science, however, is this preliminary task so difficult as in psychology; and this circumstance is the more remarkable since logic, the science of defining, is itself a part of psychology. when we compare all that has been said by the most distinguished philosophers and scientists of all ages on the fundamental idea of psychology, we find ourselves in a perfect chaos of contradictory notions. what, really, is the "soul"? what is its relation to the "mind"? what is the inner meaning of "consciousness"? what is the difference between "sensation" and "sentiment"? what is "instinct"? what is the meaning of "free will"? what is "presentation"? what is the difference between "intellect" and "reason"? what is the true nature of "emotion"? what is the relation between all these "psychic phenomena" and the "body"? the answers to these and many other cognate questions are infinitely varied; not only are the views of the most eminent thinkers on these questions widely divergent, but even the same scientific authority has often completely changed his views in the course of his psychological development. indeed, this "psychological metamorphosis" of so many thinkers has contributed not a little to the _colossal confusion of ideas_ which prevails in psychology more than in any other branch of knowledge. the most interesting example of such an entire change of objective and subjective psychological opinions is found in the case of the most influential leader of german philosophy, immanuel kant. the young, severely _critical_ kant came to the conclusion that the three great buttresses of mysticism--"god, freedom, and immortality"--were untenable in the light of "pure reason"; the older, _dogmatic_ kant found that these three great hallucinations were postulates of "practical reason," and were, as such, indispensable. the more the distinguished modern school of "neokantians" urges a "return to kant" as the only possible salvation from the frightful jumble of modern metaphysics, the more clearly do we perceive the undeniable and fatal contradiction between the fundamental opinions of the young and the older kant. we shall return to this point later on. other interesting examples of this change of views are found in two of the most famous living scientists, r. virchow and e. du bois-reymond; the metamorphoses of their fundamental views on psychology cannot be overlooked, as both these berlin biologists have played a most important part at germany's greatest university for more than forty years, and have, therefore, directly and indirectly, had a most profound influence on the modern mind. rudolph virchow, the eminent founder of cellular pathology, was a _pure monist_ in the best days of his scientific activity, about the middle of the century; he passed at that time as one of the most distinguished representatives of the newly awakened _materialism_, which appeared in , especially through two famous works, almost contemporaneous in appearance--ludwig büchner's _matter and force_ and carl vogt's _superstition and science_. virchow published his general biological views on the vital processes in man--which he takes to be purely mechanical natural phenomena--in a series of distinguished papers in the first volumes of the _archiv für pathologische anatomie_, which he founded. the most important of these articles, and the one in which he most clearly expresses his monistic views of that period, is that on "the tendencies towards unity in scientific medicine" ( ). it was certainly not without careful thought, and a conviction of its philosophic value, that virchow put this "medical confession of faith" at the head of his _collected essays on scientific medicine_ in . he defended in it, clearly and definitely, the fundamental principles of monism, which i am presenting here with a view to the solution of the world-problem; he vindicated the exclusive title of empirical science, of which the only reliable sources are sense and brain activity; he vigorously attacked anthropological dualism, the alleged "revelation," and the transcendental philosophy, with their two methods--"faith and anthropomorphism." above all, he emphasized the monistic character of anthropology, the inseparable connection of spirit and body, of force and matter. "i am convinced," he exclaims, at the end of his preface, "that i shall never find myself compelled to deny the thesis of _the unity_ of human nature." unhappily, this "conviction" proved to be a grave error. twenty-eight years afterwards virchow represented the diametrically opposite view; it is to be found in the famous speech on "the liberty of science in modern states," which he delivered at the scientific congress at munich in , and which contains attacks that i have repelled in my _free science and free teaching_ ( ). in emil du bois-reymond we find similar contradictions with regard to the most important and fundamental theses of philosophy. the more completely the distinguished orator of the berlin academy had defended the main principles of the monistic philosophy, the more he had contributed to the refutation of vitalism and the transcendental view of life, so much the louder was the triumphant cry of our opponents when in , in his famous _ignorabimus-speech_, he spoke of consciousness as an insoluble problem, and opposed it to the other functions of the brain as a supernatural phenomenon. i return to the point in the tenth chapter. the peculiar character of many of the psychic phenomena, especially of consciousness, necessitates certain modifications of our ordinary scientific methods. we have, for instance, to associate with the customary _objective_, external observation, the _introspective_ method, the _subjective_, internal observation which scrutinizes our own personality in the mirror of consciousness. the majority of psychologists have started from this "certainty of the ego": "_cogito ergo sum_," as descartes said--i think, therefore i am. let us first cast a glance at this way of inquiry, and then deal with the second, complementary, method. by far the greater part of the theories of the soul which have been put forward during the last two thousand years or more are based on introspective inquiry--that is, on "self-observation," and on the conclusions which we draw from the association and criticism of these subjective experiences. introspection is the only possible method of inquiry for an important section of psychology, especially for the study of consciousness. hence this cerebral function occupies a special position, and has been a more prolific source of philosophic error than any of the others (cf. chap. x.). it is, however, most unsatisfactory, and it leads to entirely false or incomplete notions, to take this self-observation of the mind to be the chief, or, especially, to be the only source of mental science, as has happened in the case of many and distinguished philosophers. a great number of the principal psychic phenomena, particularly the activity of the senses and speech, can only be studied in the same way as every other vital function of the organism--that is, firstly, by a thorough anatomical study of their organs, and, secondly, by an exact physiological analysis of the functions which depend on them. in order, however, to complete this external study of the mental life, and to supplement the results of _internal_ observation, one needs a thorough knowledge of human anatomy, histology, ontogeny, and physiology. most of our so-called "psychologists" have little or no knowledge of these indispensable foundations of anthropology; they are, therefore, incompetent to pronounce on the character even of their own "soul." it must be remembered, too, that the distinguished personality of one of these psychologists usually offers a specimen of an educated mind of the highest civilized races; it is the last link of a long ancestral chain, and the innumerable older and inferior links are indispensable for its proper understanding. hence it is that most of the psychological literature of the day is so much waste paper. the introspective method is certainly extremely valuable and indispensable; still it needs the constant co-operation and assistance of the other methods. in proportion as the various branches of the human tree of knowledge have developed during the century, and the methods of the different sciences have been perfected, the desire has grown to make them _exact_; that is, to make the study of phenomena as purely empirical as possible, and to formulate the laws that result as clearly as the circumstances permit--if possible, _mathematically_. the latter is, however, only feasible in a small province of human knowledge, especially in those sciences in which there is question of measurable quantities; in mathematics, in the first place, and to a greater or less extent in astronomy, mechanics, and a great part of physics and chemistry. hence these studies are called "exact sciences" in the narrower sense. it is, however, productive only of error to call all the physical sciences _exact_, and oppose them to the historical, mental, and moral sciences. the greater part of physical science can no more be treated as an _exact_ science than history can; this is especially true of biology and of its subsidiary branch, psychology. as psychology is a part of physiology, it must, as a general rule, follow the chief methods of that science. it must establish the facts of psychic activity by empirical methods as much as possible, by observation and experiment, and it must then gather the laws of the mind by inductive and deductive inferences from its observations, and formulate them with the utmost distinctness. but, for obvious reasons, it is rarely possible to formulate them mathematically. such a procedure is only profitable in one section of the physiology of the senses; it is not practicable in the greater part of cerebral physiology. one small section of physiology, which seems amenable to the "exact" method of investigation, has been carefully studied for the last twenty years and raised to the position of a separate science under the title of _psycho-physics_. its founders, the physiologists theodor fechner and ernst heinrich weber, first of all closely investigated the dependence of sensations on the external stimuli that act on the organs of sense, and particularly the quantitative relation between the strength of the stimulus and the intensity of the sensation. they found that a certain minimum strength of stimulus is requisite for the excitement of a sensation, and that a given stimulus must be varied to a definite amount before there is any perceptible change in the sensation. for the highest sensations (of sight, hearing, and pressure) the law holds good that their variations are proportionate to the changes in the strength of the stimulus. from this empirical "law of weber" fechner inferred, by mathematical operations, his "fundamental law of psycho-physics," according to which the intensity of a sensation increases in arithmetical progression, the strength of the stimulus in geometrical progression. however, fechner's law and other psycho-physical laws are frequently contested, and their "exactness" is called into question. in any case modern psycho-physics has fallen far short of the great hopes with which it was greeted twenty years ago; the field of its applicability is extremely limited. one important result of its work is that it has proved the application of physical laws in one, if only a small, branch of the life of the "soul"--an application which was long ago postulated on principle by the materialist psychology for the whole province of mental life. in this, as in many other branches of physiology, the "exact" method has proved inadequate and of little service. it is the ideal to aim at everywhere, but it is unattainable in most cases. much more profitable are the comparative and genetic methods. the striking resemblance of man's psychic activity to that of the higher animals--especially our nearest relatives among the mammals--is a familiar fact. most uncivilized races still make no material distinction between the two sets of mental processes, as the well-known animal fables, the old legends, and the idea of the transmigration of souls prove. even most of the philosophers of classical antiquity shared the same conviction, and discovered no essential qualitative difference, but merely a quantitative one, between the soul of man and that of the brute. plato himself, who was the first to draw a fundamental distinction between soul and body, made one and the same soul (or "idea") pass through a number of animal and human bodies in his theory of metempsychosis. it was christianity, intimately connecting faith in immortality with faith in god, that emphasized the essential difference of the immortal soul of man from the mortal soul of the brute. in the dualistic philosophy the idea prevailed principally through the influence of descartes ( ); he contended that man alone had a true "soul," and, consequently, sensation and free will, and that the animals were mere automata, or machines, without will or sensibility. ever since the majority of psychologists--including even kant--have entirely neglected the mental life of the brute, and restricted psychological research to man: human psychology, mainly introspective, dispensed with the fruitful comparative method, and so remained at that lower point of view which human morphology took before cuvier raised it to the position of a "philosophic science" by the foundation of comparative anatomy. scientific interest in the psychic activity of the brute was revived in the second half of the last century, in connection with the advance of systematic zoology and physiology. a strong impulse was given to it by the work of reimarus: "general observations on the instincts of animals" (hamburg, ). at the same time a deeper scientific investigation had been facilitated by the thorough reform of physiology by johannes müller. this distinguished biologist, having a comprehensive knowledge of the whole field of organic nature, of morphology, and of physiology, introduced the "exact methods" of observation and experiment into the whole province of physiology, and, with consummate skill, combined them with the comparative methods. he applied them, not only to mental life in the broader sense (to speech, senses, and brain-action), but to all the other phenomena of life. the sixth book of his _manual of human physiology_ treats specially of the life of the soul, and contains eighty pages of important psychological observations. during the last forty years a great number of works on comparative animal psychology have appeared, principally occasioned by the great impulse which darwin gave in by his work on _the origin of species_, and by the application of the idea of evolution to the province of psychology. the more important of these works we owe to romanes and sir j. lubbock, in england; to w. wundt, l. büchner, g. schneider, fritz schultze, and karl groos, in germany; to alfred espinas and e. jourdan, in france; and to tito vignoli, in italy. in germany, wilhelm wundt, of leipzig, is considered to be the ablest living psychologist; he has the inestimable advantage over most other philosophers of a thorough zoological, anatomical, and physiological education. formerly assistant and pupil of helmholtz, wundt had early accustomed himself to follow the application of the laws of physics and chemistry through the whole field of physiology, and, consequently, in the sense of johannes müller, in _psychology_, as a subsection of the latter. starting from this point of view, wundt published his valuable "lectures on human and animal psychology" in . he proved, as he himself tells us in the preface, that the theatre of the most important psychic processes is in the "unconscious soul," and he affords us "a view of the mechanism which, in the unconscious background of the soul, manipulates the impressions which arise from the external stimuli." what seems to me, however, of special importance and value in wundt's work is that he "extends the law of the persistence of force for the first time to the psychic world, and makes use of a series of facts of electro-physiology by way of demonstration." thirty years afterwards ( ) wundt published a second, much abridged and entirely modified, edition of his work. the important principles of the first edition are entirely abandoned in the second, and the monistic is exchanged for a purely dualistic stand-point. wundt himself says in the preface to the second edition that he has emancipated himself from the fundamental errors of the first, and that he "learned many years ago to consider the work a sin of his youth"; it "weighed on him as a kind of crime, from which he longed to free himself as soon as possible." in fact, the most important systems of psychology are completely opposed to each other in the two editions of wundt's famous _observations_. in the first edition he is purely monistic and materialistic, in the second edition purely dualistic and spiritualistic. in the one psychology is treated as a _physical_ science, on the same laws as the whole of physiology, of which it is only a part; thirty years afterwards he finds psychology to be a _spiritual_ science, with principles and objects entirely different from those of physical science. this conversion is most clearly expressed in his principle of psycho-physical parallelism, according to which "every psychic event has a corresponding physical change"; but the two are completely independent, and are not in any natural causal connection. this complete dualism of body and soul, of nature and mind, naturally gave the liveliest satisfaction to the prevailing school-philosophy, and was acclaimed by it as an important advance, especially seeing that it came from a distinguished scientist who had previously adhered to the opposite system of monism. as i myself continue, after more than forty years' study, in this "narrow" position, and have not been able to free myself from it in spite of all my efforts, i must naturally consider the "youthful sin" of the young physiologist wundt to be a correct knowledge of nature, and energetically defend it against the antagonistic view of the old philosopher wundt. this entire change of philosophical principles, which we find in wundt, as we found it in kant, virchow, du bois-reymond, karl ernst baer, and others, is very interesting. in their youth these able and talented scientists embrace the whole field of biological research in a broad survey, and make strenuous efforts to find a unifying, natural basis for their knowledge; in their later years they have found that this is not completely attainable, and so they entirely abandon the idea. in extenuation of these psychological metamorphoses they can, naturally, plead that in their youth they overlooked the difficulties of the great task, and misconceived the true goal; with the maturer judgment of age and the accumulation of experience they were convinced of their errors, and discovered the true path to the source of truth. on the other hand, it is possible to think that great scientists approach their task with less prejudice and more energy in their earlier years--that their vision is clearer and their judgment purer; the experiences of later years sometimes have the effect, not of enriching, but of disturbing, the mind, and with old age there comes a gradual decay of the brain, just as happens in all other organs. in any case, this change of views is in itself an instructive psychological fact; because, like many other forms of change of opinion, it shows that the highest psychic functions are subject to profound individual changes in the course of life, like all the other vital processes. for the profitable construction of comparative psychology it is extremely important not to confine the critical comparison to man and the brute in general, but to put side by side the innumerable gradations of their mental activity. only thus can we attain a clear knowledge of the long scale of psychic development which runs unbroken from the lowest, unicellular forms of life up to the mammals, and to man at their head. but even within the limits of our own race such gradations are very noticeable, and the ramifications of the "psychic ancestral tree" are very numerous. the psychic difference between the crudest savage of the lowest grade and the most perfect specimen of the highest civilization is colossal--much greater than is commonly supposed. by the due appreciation of this fact, especially in the latter half of the century, the "anthropology of the uncivilized races" (waitz) has received a strong support, and comparative ethnography has come to be considered extremely important for psychological purposes. unfortunately, the enormous quantity of raw material of this science has not yet been treated in a satisfactory critical manner. what confused and mystic ideas still prevail in this department may be seen, for instance, in the _völkergedanke_ of the famous traveller, adolf bastian, who, though a prolific writer, merely turns out a hopeless mass of uncritical compilation and confused speculation. the most neglected of all psychological methods, even up to the present day, is the evolution of the soul; yet this little-frequented path is precisely the one that leads us most quickly and securely through the gloomy primeval forest of psychological prejudices, dogmas, and errors, to a clear insight into many of the chief psychic problems. as i did in the other branch of organic evolution, i again put before the reader the two great branches of the science which i differentiated in --ontogeny and phylogeny. the ontogeny, or embryonic development, of the soul, individual or biontic psychogeny, investigates the gradual and hierarchic development of the soul in the individual, and seeks to learn the laws by which it is controlled. for a great part of the life of the mind a good deal has been done in this direction for centuries; rational pedagogy must have set itself the task at an early date of the theoretical study of the gradual development and formative capacity of the young mind that was committed to it for education and formation. most pedagogues, however, were idealistic or dualistic philosophers, and so they went to work with all the prejudices of the spiritualistic psychology. it is only in the last few decades that this dogmatic tendency has been largely superseded even in the school by scientific methods; we now find a greater concern to apply the chief laws of evolution even in the discussion of the soul of the child. the raw material of the child's soul is already qualitatively determined by _heredity_ from parents and ancestors; education has the noble task of bringing it to a perfect maturity by intellectual instruction and moral training--that is, by _adaptation_. wilhelm preyer was the first to lay the foundation of our knowledge of the early psychic development in his interesting work on _the mind of the child_. much is still to be done in the study of the later stages and metamorphoses of the individual soul, and once more the correct, critical application of the biogenetic law is proving a guiding star to the scientific mind. a new and fertile epoch of higher development dawned for psychology and all other biological sciences when charles darwin applied the principles of evolution to them forty years ago. the seventh chapter of his epoch-making work on _the origin of species_ is devoted to instinct. it contains the valuable proof that the instincts of animals are subject, like all other vital processes, to the general laws of historic development. the special instincts of particular species were formed by _adaptation_, and the modifications thus acquired were handed on to posterity by _heredity_; in their formation and preservation natural selection plays the same part as in the transformation of every other physiological function. darwin afterwards developed this fundamental thought in a number of works, showing that the same laws of "mental evolution" hold good throughout the entire organic world, not less in man than in the brute, and even in the plant. hence the unity of the organic world, which is revealed by the common origin of its members, applies also to the entire province of psychic life, from the simplest unicellular organism up to man. to george romanes we owe the further development of darwin's psychology and its special application to the different sections of psychic activity. unfortunately, his premature decease prevented the completion of the great work which was to reconstruct every section of comparative psychology on the lines of monistic evolution. the two volumes of this work which were completed are among the most valuable productions of psychological literature. for, conformably to the principles of our modern monistic research, his first care was to collect and arrange all the important facts which have been empirically established in the field of comparative psychology in the course of centuries; in the second place, these facts are tested with an _objective criticism_, and systematically distributed; finally, such rational conclusions are drawn from them on the chief general questions of psychology as are in harmony with the fundamental principles of modern monism. the first volume of romanes's work bears the title of _mental evolution in the animal world_; it presents, in natural connection, the entire length of the chain of psychic evolution in the animal world, from the simplest sensations and instincts of the lowest animals to the elaborate phenomena of consciousness and reason in the highest. it contains also a number of extracts from a manuscript which darwin left "on instinct," and a complete collection of all that he wrote in the province of psychology. the second and more important volume of romanes's work treats of "mental evolution in man and the origin of human faculties." the distinguished psychologist gives a convincing proof in it "that the psychological barrier between man and the brute has been overcome." man's power of conceptual thought and of abstraction has been gradually evolved from the non-conceptual stages of thought and ideation in the nearest related mammals. man's highest mental powers--reason, speech, and conscience--have arisen from the lower stages of the same faculties in our primate ancestors (the simiæ and prosimiæ). man has no single mental faculty which is his exclusive prerogative. his whole psychic life differs from that of the nearest related mammals only in degree, and not in kind; quantitatively, not qualitatively. i recommend those of my readers who are interested in these momentous questions of psychology to study the profound work of romanes. i am completely at one with him and darwin in almost all their views and convictions. wherever an apparent discrepancy is found between these authors and my earlier productions, it is either a case of imperfect expression on my part or an unimportant difference in application of principle. for the rest, it is characteristic of this "science of ideas" that the most eminent philosophers hold entirely antagonistic views on its fundamental notions. chapter vii psychic gradations psychological unity of organic nature--material basis of the soul: psychoplasm--scale of sensation--scale of movement--scale of reflex action--simple and compound reflex action--reflex action and consciousness--scale of perception--unconscious and conscious perception--scale of memory--unconscious and conscious memory--association of perceptions--instinct--primary and secondary instincts--scale of reason--language--emotion and passion--the will--freedom of the will the great progress which psychology has made, with the assistance of evolution, in the latter half of the century culminates in the recognition of _the psychological unity of the organic world_. comparative psychology, in co-operation with the ontogeny and phylogeny of the _psyche_, has enforced the conviction that organic life in all its stages, from the simplest unicellular protozoon up to man, springs from the same elementary forces of nature, from the physiological functions of sensation and movement. the future task of scientific psychology, therefore, is not, as it once was, the exclusively subjective and introspective analysis of the highly developed mind of a philosopher, but the objective, comparative study of the long gradation by which man has slowly arisen through a vast series of lower animal conditions. this great task of separating the different steps in the psychological ladder, and proving their unbroken phylogenetic connection, has only been seriously attempted during the last ten years, especially in the splendid work of romanes. we must confine ourselves here to a brief discussion of a few of the general questions which that gradation has suggested. all the phenomena of the psychic life are, without exception, bound up with certain material changes in the living substance of the body, the _protoplasm_. we have given to that part of the protoplasm which seems to be the indispensable substratum of psychic life the name of _psychoplasm_ (the "soul-substance," in the monistic sense); in other words, we do not attribute any peculiar "essence" to it, but we consider the _psyche_ to be merely _a collective idea of all the psychic functions of protoplasm_. in this sense the "soul" is merely a physiological abstraction like "assimilation" or "generation." in man and the higher animals, in accordance with the division of labor of the organs and tissues, the psychoplasm is a differentiated part of the nervous system, the _neuroplasm_ of the ganglionic cells and their fibres. in the lower animals, however, which have no special nerves and organs of sense, and in the plants, the psychoplasm has not yet reached an independent differentiation. finally, in the unicellular protists, the psychoplasm is identified either with the whole of the living protoplasm of the simple cell or with a portion of it. in all cases, in the lowest as well as the highest stages of the psychological hierarchy, a certain chemical composition and a certain physical activity of the psychoplasm are indispensable before the "soul" can function or act. that is equally true of the elementary psychic function of the plasmatic sensation and movement of the protozoa, and of the complex functions of the sense-organs and the brain in the higher animals and man. the activity of the psychoplasm, which we call the "soul," is always connected with metabolism. all living organisms, without exception, are sensitive; they are influenced by the condition of their environment, and react thereon by certain modifications in their own structure. light and heat, gravity and electricity, mechanical processes and chemical action in the environment, act as _stimuli_ on the sensitive psychoplasm, and effect changes in its molecular composition. we may distinguish the following five chief stages of this sensibility: i. at the lowest stage of organization the _whole psychoplasm_, as such, is sensitive, and reacts on the stimuli from without; that is the case with the lowest protists, with many plants, and with some of the most rudimentary animals. ii. at the second stage very simple and undiscriminating _sense-organs_ begin to appear on the surface of the organism, in the form of protoplasmic filaments and pigment spots, the forerunners of the nerves of touch and the eyes; these are found in some of the higher protists and in many of the lower animals and plants. iii. at the third stage _specific organs_ of sense, each with a peculiar adaptation, have arisen by differentiation out of these rudimentary processes: there are the chemical instruments of smell and taste, and the physical organs of touch, temperature, hearing, and sight. the "specific energy" of these sense-organs is not an original inherent property of theirs, but has been gained by functional adaptation and progressive heredity. iv. the fourth stage is characterized by the _centralization_ or integration of the _nervous system_, and, consequently, of sensation; by the association of the previously isolated or localized sensations presentations arise, though they still remain unconscious. that is the condition of many both of the lower and the higher animals. v. finally, at the fifth stage, the highest psychic function, _conscious perception_, is developed by the mirroring of the sensations in a central part of the nervous system, as we find in man and the higher vertebrates, and probably in some of the higher invertebrates, notably the articulata. all living organisms without exception have the faculty of _spontaneous movement_, in contradistinction to the rigidity and inertia of unorganized substances (_e.g._, crystals); in other words, certain changes of place of the particles occur in the living psychoplasm from internal causes, which have their source in its own chemical composition. these active vital movements are partly discovered by direct observation and partly only known indirectly, by inference from their effects. we may distinguish five stages of them. i. at the lowest stage of organic life, in the chromacea, and many protophyta and lower metaphyta, we perceive only those _movements of growth_ which are common to all organisms. they are usually so slow that they cannot be directly observed; they have to be inferred from their results--from the change in size and form of the growing organism. ii. many protists, particularly unicellular algæ of the groups of diatomacea and desmidiacea, accomplish a kind of creeping or swimming motion by _secretion_, by ejecting a slimy substance at one side. iii. other organisms which float in water--for instance, many of the radiolaria, siphonophora, ktenophora, and others--ascend and descend by altering their _specific gravity_, sometimes by osmosis, sometimes by the separation or squeezing-out of air. iv. many plants, especially the sensitive plants (mimosa) and other papilionacea, effect movements of their leaves or other organs by _change of pressure_--that is, they alter the strain of the protoplasm, and, consequently, its pressure on the enclosing elastic walls of the cells. v. the most important of all organic movements are the _phenomena of contraction_--_i.e._, changes of form at the surface of the organism, which are dependent on a twofold displacement of their elements; they always involve two different conditions or phases of motion--contraction and expansion. four different forms of this plasmatic contraction may be enumerated: (_a_) amoeboid movement (in rhizopods, blood-cells, pigment-cells, etc.). (_b_) a similar flow of protoplasm within enclosed cells. (_c_) vibratory motion (ciliary movements) in infusoria, spermatozoa, ciliated epithelial cells. (_d_) muscular movement (in most animals). the elementary psychic activity that arises from the combination of sensation and movement is called _reflex_ (in the widest sense), reflective function, or _reflex action_. the movement--no matter what kind it is--seems in this case to be the immediate result of the _stimulus_ which evoked the sensation; it has, on that account, been called stimulated motion in its simplest form (in the protists). all living protoplasm has this feature of irritability. any physical or chemical change in the environment may, in certain circumstances, act as a stimulus on the psychoplasm, and elicit or "release" a movement. we shall see later on how this important physical concept of "releasing" directly connects the simplest organic reflex actions with similar mechanical phenomena of movement in the inorganic world (for instance, in the explosion of powder by a spark, or of dynamite by a blow). we may distinguish the following seven stages in the scale of reflex action: i. at the lowest stage of organization, in the lowest protists, the stimuli of the outer world (heat, light, electricity, etc.) cause in the indifferent protoplasm only those indispensable movements of growth and nutrition which are common to all organisms, and are absolutely necessary for their preservation. that is also the case in most of the plants. ii. in the case of many freely moving protists (especially the amoeba, the heliozoon, and the rhizopod) the stimuli from without produce on every spot of the unprotected surface of the unicellular organism external movements which take the form of changes of shape, and sometimes changes of place (amoeboid movement, pseudopod formation, the extension and withdrawal of what look like feet); these indefinite, variable processes of the protoplasm are not yet permanent organs. in the same way, general organic irritability takes the form of indeterminate reflex action in the sensitive plants and the lowest metazoa; in many multicellular organisms the stimuli may be conducted from one cell to another, as all the cells are connected by fine fibres. iii. many protists, especially the more highly developed protozoa, produce on their unicellular body two little organs of the simplest character--an organ of touch and an organ of movement. both these instruments are direct external projections of protoplasm; the stimulus, which alights on the first, is immediately conducted to the other by the psychoplasm of the unicellular body, and causes it to contract. this phenomenon is particularly easy to observe, and even produce experimentally, in many of the stationary infusoria (for instance, the _poteriodendron_ among the flagellata, and the _vorticella_ among the ciliata). the faintest stimulus that touches the extremely sensitive hairs, or _cilia_, at the free end of the cells, immediately causes a contraction of a thread-like stalk at the other, fixed end. this phenomenon is known as a "simple reflex arch." iv. these phenomena of the unicellular organism of the infusoria lead on to the interesting mechanism of the neuro-muscular cells, which we find in the multicellular body of many of the lower metazoa, especially in the cnidaria (polyps and corals). each single neuro-muscular cell is a "unicellular reflex organ"; it has on its surface a sensitive spot, and a motor muscular fibre inside at the opposite end; the latter contracts as soon as the former is stimulated. v. in other cnidaria, notably in the free swimming medusæ--which are closely related to the stationary polyps--the simple neuro-muscular cell becomes two different cells, connected by a filament; an external _sense-cell_ (in the outer skin) and an internal _muscular cell_ (under the skin). in this _bicellular reflex organ_ the one cell is the rudimentary organ of sensation, the other of movement; the connecting bridge of the psychoplasmic filament conducts the stimulus from one to the other. vi. the most important step in the gradual construction of the reflex mechanism is the division into three cells; in the place of the simple connecting bridge we spoke of there appears a third independent cell, the _soul-cell_, or ganglionic cell; with it appears also a new psychic function, _unconscious presentation_, which has its seat in this cell. the stimulus is first conducted from the sensitive cell to this intermediate presentative or psychic cell, and then issued from this to the motor muscular cell as a mandate of movement. these _tricellular reflex organs_ are preponderantly developed in the great majority of the invertebrates. vii. instead of this arrangement we find in most of the vertebrates a _quadricellular reflex organ_, two distinct "soul-cells," instead of one, being inserted between the sensitive cell and the motor cell. the external stimulus, in this case, is first conducted centripetally to the sensitive cell (the sensible psychic cell), from this to the _will-cell_ (the motor psychic cell), and from this, finally, to the contractile muscular cell. when many such reflex organs combine and new psychic cells are interposed we have the intricate reflex mechanism of man and the higher vertebrates. the important distinction which we make, in morphology and physiology, between unicellular and multicellular organisms holds good for their elementary psychic activity, reflex action. in the unicellular protists (both the plasmodomous primitive plants, or _protophyta_, and the plasmophagous primitive animals, or _protozoa_) the whole physical process of reflex action takes place in the protoplasm of one single cell; their "cell-soul" seems to be a unifying function of the psychoplasm of which the various phases only begin to be seen separately when the differentiation of special organs sets in. the second stage of psychic activity, compound reflex action, begins with the cenobitic protists (_v.g._, the volvox and the carchesium). the innumerable social cells, which make up this cell-community or coenobium, are always more or less connected, often directly connected by filamentous bridges of protoplasm. a stimulus that alights on one or more cells of the community is communicated to the rest by means of the connecting fibres, and may produce a general contraction. this connection is found, also, in the tissues of the multicellular animals and plants. it was erroneously believed at one time that the cells of vegetal tissue were completely isolated from each other, but we have now discovered fine filaments of protoplasm throughout, which penetrate the thick membranes of the cells, and maintain a material and psychological communication between their living plasmic contents. that is the explanation of the mimosa: when the tread of the passer-by shakes the root of the plant, the stimulus is immediately conveyed to all the cells, and causes a general contraction of its tender leaves and a drooping of the stems. an important and universal feature of all reflex phenomena is the absence of consciousness. for reasons which we shall give in the tenth chapter we only admit the presence of consciousness in man and the higher animals, not in plants, the lower animals, and the protists; consequently all stimulated movements in the latter must be regarded as reflex--that is, all movements which are not _spontaneous_, not the outcome of internal causes (impulsive and automatic movements).[ ] it is different with the higher animals which have developed a centralized nervous system and elaborate sense-organs. in these cases consciousness has been gradually evolved from the psychic reflex activity, and now conscious, voluntary action appears, in opposition to the still continuing reflex action below. however, we must distinguish two different processes, as we did in the question of instinct--primary and secondary reflex action. primary reflex actions are those which have never reached the stage of consciousness in phyletic development, and thus preserve the primitive character (by heredity from lower animal forms). secondary reflex actions are those which were conscious, voluntary actions in our ancestors, but which afterwards became unconscious from habit or the lapse of consciousness. it is impossible to draw a hard and fast line in such cases between conscious and unconscious psychic function. older psychologists (herbart, for instance) considered "presentation" to be the fundamental psychic phenomenon, from which all the others are derived. modern comparative psychology endorses this view in so far as it relates to the idea of _unconscious_ presentation; but it considers _conscious_ presentation to be a secondary phenomenon of mental life, which is entirely wanting in plants and the lower animals, and is only developed in the higher animals. among the many contradictory definitions which psychologists have given of "presentation," we think the best is that which makes it consist in an internal picture of the external object which is given us in sensation--an "idea," in the broader sense. we may distinguish the following four stages in the rising scale of presentative function: i. _cellular presentation._--at the lowest stages we find presentation to be a general physiological property of psychoplasm; even in the simplest unicellular protist sensations may leave a permanent trace in the psychoplasm, and these may be reproduced by memory. in more than four thousand kinds of radiolaria, which i have described, every single species is distinguished by special, hereditary skeletal structure. the construction of this specific, and often highly elaborate, skeleton by a cell of the simplest description (generally globular) is only intelligible when we attribute the faculty of presentation, and, indeed, of a special reproduction of the plastic "feeling of distance," to the constructive protoplasm--as i have pointed out in my _psychology of the radiolaria_.[ ] ii. _histionic presentation._--in the coenobia or cell-colonies of the social protists, and still better in the tissues of plants and lower, nerveless animals (sponges, polyps, etc.), we find the second stage of unconscious presentation, which consists of the common psychic activity of a number of closely connected cells. if a single stimulus may, instead of simply spending itself in the reflex movement of an organ (the leaf of a plant, for instance, or the arm of a polyp), leave a permanent impression, which can be spontaneously reproduced later on, we are bound to assume, in explaining the phenomenon, a histionic presentation, dependent on the psychoplasm of the associated tissue-cells. iii. _unconscious presentation in the ganglionic cells._--this third and higher stage of presentation is the commonest form the function takes in the animal world; it seems to be a localization of presentation in definite "soul-cells." in its simplest form it appears at the sixth stage of reflex action, when the tricellular reflex organ arises: the seat of presentation is then the intermediate psychic cell, which is interposed between the sensitive cell and the muscular cell. with the increasing development of the animal nervous system and its progressive differentiation and integration, this unconscious presentation also rises to higher stages. iv. _conscious presentation in the cerebral cells._--with the highest stage of development of the animal organization consciousness arises, as a special function of a certain central organ of the nervous system. as the presentations are conscious, and as special parts of the brain arise for the association of these conscious presentations, the organism is qualified for those highest psychic functions which we call thought and reflection, intellect and reason. although the tracing of the phyletic barrier between the older, unconscious, and the younger, conscious, presentation is extremely difficult, we can affirm, with some degree of probability, that the evolution of the latter from the former was _polyphyletic_; because we find conscious and rational thought, not only in the highest forms of the vertebrate stem (man, mammals, birds, and a part of the lower vertebrates), but also in the most highly developed representatives of other animal groups (ants and other insects, spiders and the higher crabs among the articulata, cephalopods among the mollusca). the evolutionary scale of memory is closely connected with that of presentation; this extremely important function of the psychoplasm--the condition of all further psychic development--consists essentially in the _reproduction of presentations_. the impressions in the bioplasm, which the stimulus produced as sensations, and which became presentations in remaining, are revived by memory; they pass from potentiality to actuality. the latent potential energy of the psychoplasm is transformed into kinetic energy. we may distinguish four stages in the upward development of memory, corresponding to the four stages of presentation. i. _cellular memory._--thirty years ago ewald hering showed "memory to be a general property of organized matter" in a thoughtful work, and indicated the great significance of this function, "to which we owe almost all that we are and have." six years later, in my work on _the perigenesis of the plastidule, or the undulatory origin of the parts of life: an experiment in the mechanical explanation of elementary evolutionary processes_, i developed these ideas, and endeavored to base them on the principles of evolution. i have attempted to show in that work that unconscious memory is a universal and very important function of all _plastidules_; that is, of those hypothetical molecules, or groups of molecules, which naegeli has called _micellae_, others _bioplasts_, and so forth. only _living_ plastidules, as individual molecules of the active protoplasm, are reproductive, and so gifted with memory; that is the chief difference between the organic and inorganic worlds. it might be stated thus: "heredity is the memory of the plastidule, while variability is its comprehension." the elementary memory of the unicellular protist is made up of the molecular memory of the plastidules or _micellae_, of which its living cell-body is constructed. as regards the extraordinary performances of unconscious memory in these unicellular protists, nothing could be more instructive than the infinitely varied and regular formation of their defensive apparatus, their shells and skeletons; in particular, the diatomes and cosmaria among the protophytes, and the radiolaria and thalamophora among the protozoa, afford an abundance of most interesting illustrations. in many thousand species of these protists the specific form which is inherited is _relatively constant_, and proves the fidelity of their unconscious cellular memory. ii. _histionic memory._--equally interesting examples of the second stage of memory, the unconscious memory of tissues, are found in the heredity of the individual organs of plants and the lower, nerveless animals (sponges, etc.). this second stage seems to be _a reproduction of the histionic presentations_, that association of cellular presentations which sets in with the formation of coenobia in the social protists. iii. in the same way we must regard the third stage, the unconscious memory of those animals which have a nervous system, as a reproduction of the corresponding "unconscious presentations" which are stored up in certain ganglionic cells. in most of the lower animals all memory is unconscious. moreover, even in man and the higher animals, to whom we must ascribe consciousness, the daily acts of unconscious memory are much more numerous and varied than those of the conscious faculty; we shall easily convince ourselves of that if we make an impartial study of a thousand unconscious acts we perform daily out of habit, and without thinking of them, in walking, speaking, writing, eating, and so forth. iv. conscious memory, which is the work of certain brain-cells in man and the higher animals, is an "internal mirroring" of very late development, the highest outcome of the same psychic reproduction of presentations which were mere unconscious processes in the ganglionic cells of our lower animal ancestors. the concatenation of presentations--usually called the association of ideas--also runs through a long scale, from the lowest to the highest stages. this, too, is originally and predominantly unconscious ("instinct"); only in the higher classes of animals does it gradually become conscious ("reason"). the psychic results of this "association of ideas" are extremely varied; still, a very long, unbroken line of gradual development connects the simplest unconscious association of the lowest protist with the elaborate conscious chain of ideas of the civilized man. the _unity of consciousness_ in man is given as its highest consequence (hume, condillac). all higher mental activity becomes more perfect in proportion as the normal association extends to more numerous presentations, and in proportion to the order which is imposed on them by the "criticism of pure reason." in dreams, where this criticism is absent, the association of the reproduced impressions often takes the wildest forms. even in the work of the poetic imagination, which constructs new groups of images by varying the association of the impressions received, and in hallucinations, etc., they are often most unnaturally arranged, and seem to the prosaic observer to be perfectly irrational. this is especially true of supernatural "forms of belief," the apparitions of spiritism, and the fantastic notions of the transcendental dualist philosophy; though it is precisely these _abnormal associations_ of "faith" and of "revelation" that have often been deemed the greatest treasures of the human mind (cf. chap. xvi.). the antiquated psychology of the middle ages (which, however, still numbers many adherents) considered the mental life of man and that of the brute to be two entirely different phenomena; the one it attributed to "reason," the other to "instinct." in harmony with the traditional story of creation, it was assumed that each animal species had received a definite, unconscious psychic force from the creator at its formation, and that this instinct of each species was just as unchangeable as its bodily structure. lamarck proved the untenableness of this error in by establishing the theory of descent, and darwin completely demolished it in . he proved the following important theses with the aid of his theory of selection: . the instincts of species show individual differences, and are just as subject to modification under the law of _adaptation_ as the morphological features of their bodily structure. . these modifications (generally arising from a change of habits) are partly transmitted to offspring by _heredity_, and thus accumulate and are accentuated in the course of generations. . _selection_, both artificial and natural, singles out certain of these inherited modifications of the psychic activity; it preserves the most useful and rejects the least adaptive. . the _divergence_ of psychic character which thus arises leads, in the course of generations, to the formation of new instincts, just as the divergence of morphological character gives rise to new species. darwin's theory of instinct is now accepted by most biologists; romanes has treated it so ably, and so greatly expanded it in his distinguished work on _mental evolution in the animal world_, that i need merely refer to it here. i will only venture the brief statement that, in my opinion, there are instincts in _all_ organisms--in all the protists and plants as well as in all the animals and in man; though in the latter they tend to disappear in proportion as reason makes progress at their expense. the two chief classes of instincts to be differentiated are the primary and secondary. primary instincts are the common lower impulses which are unconscious and inherent in the psychoplasm from the commencement of organic life; especially the impulses to self-preservation (by defence and maintenance) and to the preservation of the species (by generation and the care of the young). both these fundamental instincts of organic life, _hunger_ and _love_, sprang up originally in perfect unconsciousness, without any co-operation of the intellect or reason. it is otherwise with the _secondary_ instincts. these were due originally to an intelligent adaptation, to rational thought and resolution, and to purposive conscious action. gradually, however, they became so automatic that this "other nature" acted unconsciously, and, even through the action of heredity, seemed to be "innate" in subsequent generations. the consciousness and deliberation which originally accompanied these particular instincts of the higher animals and man have died away in the course of the life of the plastidules (as in "abridged heredity"). the unconscious purposive actions of the higher animals (for instance, their mechanical instincts) thus come to appear in the light of innate impulses. we have to explain in the same way the origin of the "_à priori_ ideas" of man; they were originally formed empirically by his predecessors.[ ] in the superficial psychological treatises which ignore the mental activity of animals and attribute to man only a "true soul," we find him credited also with the exclusive possession of reason and consciousness. this is another trivial error (still to be found in many a manual, nevertheless) which the comparative psychology of the last forty years has entirely dissipated. the higher vertebrates (especially those mammals which are most nearly related to man) have just as good a title to "reason" as man himself, and within the limits of the animal world there is the same long chain of the gradual development of reason as in the case of humanity. the difference between the reason of a goethe, a kant, a lamarck, or a darwin, and that of the lowest savage, a veddah, an akka, a native australian, or a patagonian, is much greater than the graduated difference between the reason of the latter and that of the most "rational" mammals, the anthropoid apes, or even the papiomorpha, the dog, or the elephant. this important thesis has been convincingly proved by the thoroughly critical comparative work of romanes and others. we shall not, therefore, attempt to cover that ground here, nor to enlarge on the distinction between the reason and the intellect; as to the meaning and limits of these concepts philosophic experts give the most contradictory definitions, as they do on so many other fundamental questions of psychology. in general it may be said that the process of the formation of concepts, which is common to both these cerebral functions, is confined to the narrower circle of concrete, proximate associations in the intellect, but reaches out to the wider circle of abstract, more comprehensive groups of associations in the work of reason. in the long gradation which connects the reflex actions and the instincts of the lower animals with the reason of the highest, intellect precedes the latter. and there is the fact, of great importance to our whole psychological treatise, that even these highest of our mental faculties are just as much subject to the laws of heredity and adaptation as are their respective organs; flechsig pointed out in that the "organs of thought," in man and the higher mammals, are those parts of the cortex of the brain which lie between the four inner sense-centres (cf. chapters x. and xi.). the higher grade of development of ideas, of intellect and reason, which raises man so much above the brute, is intimately connected with the rise of language. still here also we have to recognize a long chain of evolution which stretches unbroken from the lowest to the highest stages. speech is no more an exclusive prerogative of man than reason. in the wider sense, it is a common feature of all the higher gregarious animals, at least of all the articulata and the vertebrates, which live in communities or herds; they need it for the purpose of understanding each other and communicating their impressions. this is effected either by touch or by signs, or by sounds having a definite meaning. the song of the bird or of the anthropoid ape (_hylobates_), the bark of the dog, the neigh of the horse, the chirp of the cricket, the cry of the cicada, are all specimens of animal speech. only in man, however, has that articulate conceptual speech developed which has enabled his reason to attain such high achievements. comparative philology, one of the most interesting sciences that has arisen during the century, has shown that the numerous elaborate languages of the different nations have been slowly and gradually evolved from a few simple primitive tongues (wilhelm humboldt, bopp, schleicher, steinthal, and others). august schleicher, of jena, in particular, has proved that the historical development of language takes place under the same phylogenetic laws as the evolution of other physiological faculties and their organs. romanes ( ) has expanded this proof, and amply demonstrated that human speech, also, differs from that of the brute only in _degree_ of development, not in essence and kind. the important group of psychic activities which we embrace under the name of "emotion" plays a conspicuous part both in theoretical and practical psychology. from our point of view they have a peculiar importance from the fact that we clearly see in them the direct connection of cerebral functions with other physiological functions (the beat of the heart, sense-action, muscular movement, etc.); they, therefore, prove the unnatural and untenable character of the philosophy which would essentially dissociate psychology from physiology. all the external expressions of emotional life which we find in man are also present in the higher animals (especially in the anthropoid ape and the dog); however varied their development may be, they are all derived from the two elementary functions of the _psyche_, sensation and motion, and from their combination in reflex action and presentation. to the province of sensation, in a wide sense, we must attribute the feeling of _like_ and _dislike_ which determines the emotion; while the corresponding _desire_ and _aversion_ (love and hatred), the effort to attain what is liked and avoid what is disliked, belong to the category of movement. "attraction" and "repulsion" seem to be the sources of _will_, that momentous element of the soul which determines the character of the individual. the _passions_, which play so important a part in the psychic life of man, are but intensifications of emotion. romanes has recently shown that these also are common to man and the brute. even at the lowest stage of organic life we find in all the protists those elementary feelings of like and dislike, revealing themselves in what are called their _tropisms_, in the striving after light and darkness, heat or cold, and in their different relations to positive and negative electricity. on the other hand, we find at the highest stage of psychic life, in civilized man, those finer shades of emotion, of delight and disgust, of love and hatred, which are the mainsprings of civilization and the inexhaustible sources of poetry. yet a connecting chain of all conceivable gradations unites the most primitive elements of feeling in the psychoplasm of the unicellular protist with the highest forms of passion that rule in the ganglionic cells of the cortex of the human brain. that the latter are absolutely amenable to physical laws was proved long ago by the great spinoza in his famous _statics of emotion_. the notion of _will_ has as many different meanings and definitions as most other psychological notions--presentation, soul, mind, and so forth. sometimes will is taken in the widest sense as a _cosmic attribute_, as in the "world as will and presentation" of schopenhauer; sometimes it is taken in its narrowest sense as an _anthropological attribute_, the exclusive prerogative of man--as descartes taught, for instance, who considered the brute to be a mere machine, without will or sensation. in the ordinary use of the term, _will_ is derived from the phenomenon of voluntary movement, and is thus regarded as a psychic attribute of most animals. but when we examine the will in the light of comparative physiology and evolution, we find--as we do in the case of sensation--that it is a universal property of living psychoplasm. the automatic and the reflex movements which we observe everywhere, even in the unicellular protists, seem to be the outcome of inclinations which are inseparably connected with the very idea of life. even in the plants and lowest animals these inclinations, or tropisms, seem to be the joint outcome of the inclinations of all the combined individual cells. but when the "tricellular reflex organ" arises (page ), and a third independent cell--the "psychic," or "ganglionic," cell--is interposed between the sense-cell and the motor cell, we have an independent elementary organ of will. in the lower animals, however, this will remains _unconscious_. it is only when consciousness arises in the higher animals, as the subjective mirror of the objective, though internal, processes in the neuroplasm of the psychic cells, that the will reaches that highest stage which likens it in character to the human will, and which, in the case of man, assumes in common parlance the predicate of "liberty." its free dominion and action become more and more deceptive as the muscular system and the sense-organs develop with a free and rapid locomotion, entailing a correlative evolution of the brain and the organs of thought. the question of the liberty of the will is the one which has more than any other cosmic problem occupied the time of thoughtful humanity, the more so that in this case the great philosophic interest of the question was enhanced by the association of most momentous consequences for practical philosophy--for ethics, education, law, and so forth. emil du bois-reymond, who treats it as the seventh and last of his "seven cosmic problems," rightly says of the question: "affecting everybody, apparently accessible to everybody, intimately involved in the fundamental conditions of human society, vitally connected with religious belief, this question has been of immeasurable importance in the history of civilization. there is probably no other object of thought on which the modern library contains so many dusty folios that will never again be opened." the importance of the question is also seen in the fact that kant put it in the same category with the questions of the immortality of the soul and belief in god. he called these three great questions the indispensable "postulates of practical reason," though he had already clearly shown them to have no reality whatever in the light of _pure_ reason. the most remarkable fact in connection with this fierce and confused struggle over the freedom of the will is, perhaps, that it has been theoretically rejected, not only by the greatest critical philosophers, but even by their extreme opponents, and yet it is still affirmed to be self-evident by the majority of people. some of the first teachers of the christian churches--such as st. augustine and calvin--rejected the freedom of the will as decisively as the famous leaders of pure materialism, holbach in the eighteenth and büchner in the nineteenth century. christian theologians deny it, because it is irreconcilable with their belief in the omnipotence of god and in predestination. god, omnipotent and omniscient, saw and willed all things from eternity--he must, consequently, have predetermined the conduct of man. if man, with his free will, were to act otherwise than god had ordained, god would not be all-mighty and all-knowing. in the same sense leibnitz, too, was an unconditional determinist. the monistic scientists of the last century, especially laplace, defended determinism as a consequence of their mechanical view of life. the great struggle between the determinist and the indeterminist, between the opponent and the sustainer of the freedom of the will, has ended to-day, after more than two thousand years, completely in favor of the determinist. the human will has no more freedom than that of the higher animals, from which it differs only in degree, not in kind. in the last century the dogma of liberty was fought with general philosophic and cosmological arguments. the nineteenth century has given us very different weapons for its definitive destruction--the powerful weapons which we find in the arsenal of comparative physiology and evolution. we now know that each act of the will is as fatally determined by the organization of the individual and as dependent on the momentary condition of his environment as every other psychic activity. the character of the inclination was determined long ago by _heredity_ from parents and ancestors; the determination to each particular act is an instance of _adaptation_ to the circumstances of the moment wherein the strongest motive prevails, according to the laws which govern the statics of emotion. ontogeny teaches us to understand the evolution of the will in the individual child. phylogeny reveals to us the historical development of the will within the ranks of our vertebrate ancestors. chapter viii the embryology of the soul importance of ontogeny to psychology--development of the child-soul--commencement of existence of the individual soul--the storing of the soul--mythology of the origin of the soul--physiology of the origin of the soul--elementary processes in conception--coalescence of the ovum and the spermatozoon--cell-love--heredity of the soul from parents and ancestors--its physiological nature as the mechanics of the protoplasm--blending of souls (psychic amphigony)--reversion, psychological atavism--the biogenetic law in psychology--palingenetic repetition and cenogenetic modification--embryonic and post-embryonic psychogeny the human soul--whatever we may hold as to its nature--undergoes a continual development throughout the life of the individual. this ontogenetic fact is of fundamental importance in our monistic psychology, though the "professional" psychologists pay little or no attention to it. since the embryology of the individual is, on baer's principle--and in accordance with the universal belief of modern biologists--the "true torch-bearer for all research into the organic body," it will afford us a reliable light on the momentous problems of its psychic activity. although, however, this "embryology of the soul" is so important and interesting, it has hitherto met with the consideration it deserves only within a very narrow circle. until recently teachers were almost the only ones to occupy themselves with a part of the problem; since their avocation compelled them to assist and supervise the formation of the psychic activity in the child, they were bound to take a theoretical interest, also, in the psychogenetic facts that came under their notice. however, these teachers, for the most part, both in recent and in earlier times, were dominated by the current dualistic psychology--in so far as they reflected at all; and they were totally ignorant of the important facts of comparative psychology, and unacquainted with the structure and function of the brain. moreover, their observations only extended to children in their school-days, or in the years immediately preceding. the remarkable phenomena which the individual psychogeny of the child offers in its earliest years, and which are the joy and admiration of all thoughtful parents, were scarcely ever made the subject of serious scientific research. wilhelm preyer was the pioneer of this study in his interesting work on _the mind of the child_ ( ). to obtain a perfectly clear knowledge of the matter, however, we must go further back still; we must commence at the first appearance of the soul in the impregnated ovum. the origin of the human individual--body and soul--was still wrapped in complete mystery at the beginning of the nineteenth century. caspar friedrich wolff had, it is true, discovered the true character of embryonic development in , in his _theoria generationis_, and proved with the confidence of a critical observer that there is a true _epigenesis_--_i.e._, a series of very remarkable formative processes--in the evolution of the foetus from the simple ovum. but the physiologists of the time, with the famous albert haller at their head, flatly refused to entertain these empirical truths, which may be directly proved by microscopic observation, and clung to the old dogma of "preformation." this theory assumed that in the human ovum--and in the egg of all other animals--the organism was already present, or "preformed," in all its parts; the "evolution" of the embryo consisted literally in an "unfolding" (_evolutio_) of the folded organs. one curious consequence of this error was the theory of _scatulation_, which we have mentioned on p. ; since the ovary had to be admitted to be present in the embryo of the woman, it was also necessary to suppose that the germs of the next generation were already formed in it, and so on _in infinitum_. opposed to this dogma of the "ovulists" was the equally erroneous notion of the "animalculists"; the latter held that the germ was not really in the female ovum, but in the paternal element, and that the store of succeeding generations was to be sought in the spermatozoa. leibnitz consistently applied this theory of scatulation to the human soul; he denied that either soul or body had a real development (_epigenesis_), and said in his _theodicy_: "thus i consider that the souls which are destined one day to become human exist in the seed, like those of other species; that they have existed in our ancestors as far back as adam--that is, since the beginning of the world--in the forms of organized bodies." similar notions prevailed in biology and philosophy until the third decade of the present century, when the reform of embryology by baer gave them their death blow. in the province of psychology, however, they still find many adherents; they form one group of the many curious mystical ideas which give us a living illustration of the ontogeny of the soul. the more accurate knowledge which we have recently obtained, through comparative ethnology, of the various forms of myths of ancient and modern uncivilized races, is also of great interest in psychogeny. still, it would take us too far from our purpose if we were to enter into it with any fulness here; we must refer the reader to adalbert svoboda's excellent work on _forms of faith_ ( ). in respect of their scientific and poetical contents, we may arrange all pertinent _psychogenetic myths_ in the following five groups: i. the myth of transmigration.--the soul lived formerly in the body of another animal, and passed from this into a human body. the egyptian priests, for instance, taught that the human soul wandered through all the species of animals after the death of the body, returning to a human frame after three thousand years of transmigration. ii. the myth of the in-planting of the soul.--the soul existed independently in another place--a psychogenetic store, as it were (in a kind of embryonic slumber or latent life); it was taken out by a bird (sometimes represented as an eagle, generally as a white stork), and implanted in the human body. iii. the myth of the creation of the soul.--god creates the souls, and keeps them stored--sometimes in a pond (living in the form of _plankton_), according to other myths in a tree (where they are conceived as the fruit of a phanerogam); the creator takes them from the pond or tree, and inserts them in the human germ during the act of conception. iv. the myth of the scatulation of the soul (the theory of leibnitz which we have given above). v. the myth of the division of the soul (the theory of rudolph wagner [ ] and of other physiologists).--in the act of procreation a portion is detached from both the (immaterial) souls of the parents; the maternal contribution passes in the ovum, the paternal in the spermatozoa; when these two germinal cells coalesce, the two psychic fragments that accompany them also combine to form a new (immaterial) soul. although the poetic fancies we have mentioned as to the origin of the individual human soul are still widely accepted, their purely mythological character is now firmly established. the deeply interesting and remarkable research which has been made in the course of the last twenty-five years into the more minute processes of the impregnation and germination of the ovum has made it clear that these mysterious phenomena belong entirely to the province of cellular physiology (cf. p. ). both the female element, the ovum, and the male fertilizing body, the sperma or spermatozoa, are _simple cells_. these living cells possess a certain sum of physiological properties to which we give the title of the "cell-soul," just as we do in the permanently unicellular protist (see p. ). both germinal cells have the faculty of movement and sensation. the young ovum, or egg-cell, moves after the manner of an amoeba; the minute spermatozoa, of which there are millions in every drop of the seminal fluid, are ciliated cells, and swim about as freely in the sperm, by means of their lashes or _cilia_, as the ordinary ciliated infusoria (the flagellata). when the two cells meet as a result of copulation, or when they are brought into contact through artificial fertilization (in the fishes, for instance), they attract each other and become firmly attached. the main cause of this cellular attraction is a chemical sensitive action of the protoplasm, allied to smell or taste, which we call "erotic chemicotropism"; it may also be correctly (both in the chemical and the romantic sense) termed "cellular affinity" or "sexual cell-love." a number of the ciliated cells in the sperm swim rapidly towards the stationary egg-cell and seek to penetrate into it. as hertwig showed in , as a rule only one of the suitors is fortunate enough to reach the desired goal. as soon as this favored spermatozoon has pierced into the body of the ovum with its head (the nucleus of the cell), a thin mucous layer is detached from the ovum which prevents the further entrance of spermatozoa. the formation of this protective membrane was only prevented when hertwig kept the ovum stiff with cold by lowering the temperature, or benumbed it with narcotics (chloroform, morphia, nicotine, etc.); then there was "super-impregnation" or "poly-spermy"--a number of sperm-threads pierced into the body of the unconscious ovum. this remarkable fact proved that there is a low degree of "cellular instinct" (or, at least, of specific, lively sensation) in the sexual cells just as effectively as do the important phenomena that immediately follow in their interior. both nuclei--that of the ovum and of the spermatozoon--attract each other, approach, and, on contact, completely fuse together. thus from the impregnated ovum arises the important new cell which we call the "stem-cell" (_cytula_), from the repeated segmentation of which the whole polycellular organism is evolved. the psychological information which is afforded by these remarkable facts of impregnation, which have only been properly observed during the last twenty-five years, is supremely important; its vast significance has hitherto been very far from appreciated. we shall condense the main conclusions of research in the following five theses: i. each human individual, like every other higher animal, is a single simple cell at the commencement of his existence. ii. this "stem-cell" (cytula) is formed in the same manner in all cases--that is, by the blending or copulation of two separate cells of diverse origin, the female ovum and the male spermatozoon. iii. each of these sexual cells has its own "cell-soul"--that is, each is distinguished by a peculiar form of sensation and movement. iv. at the moment of conception or impregnation, not only the protoplasm and the nuclei of the two sexual cells coalesce, but also their "cell-souls"; in other words, the potential energies which are latent in both, and inseparable from the matter of the protoplasm, unite for the formation of a new potential energy, the "germ-soul" of the newly constructed stem-cell. v. consequently each personality owes his bodily and spiritual qualities to both parents; by heredity the nucleus of the ovum contributes a portion of the maternal features, while the nucleus of the spermatozoon brings a part of the father's characteristics. by these empirical facts of conception, moreover, the further fact of extreme importance is established, that every man, like every other animal, _has a beginning of existence_; the complete copulation of the two sexual cell-nuclei marks the precise moment when not only the body, but also the "soul," of the new stem-cell makes its appearance. this fact suffices of itself to destroy the myth of the immortality of the soul, to which we shall return later on. it suffices, too, for the destruction of the still prevalent superstition that man owes his personal existence to the favor of god. its origin is rather to be attributed solely to the "eros" of his parents, to that powerful impulse that is common to all polycellular animals and plants, and leads to their nuptial union. but the essential point in this physiological process is not the "embrace," as was formerly supposed, or the amorousness connected therewith; it is simply the introduction of the spermatozoa into the vagina. this is the sole means, in the land-dwelling animals, by which the fertilizing element can reach the released ova (which usually takes place in the uterus in man). in the case of the lower aquatic animals (fishes, mussels, medusæ, etc.) the mature sexual elements on both sides are simply discharged into the water, and their union is let to chance; they have no real copulation, and so they show none of those higher psychic "erotic" functions which play so conspicuous a part in the life of the higher animals. hence it is, also, that all the lower, non-copulating animals are wanting in those interesting organs which darwin has called "secondary sexual characters," and which are the outcome of sexual selection: such are the beard of man, the antlers of the stag, the beautiful plumage of the bird of paradise and of so many other birds, together with other distinctions of the male which are absent in the female. among the above theses as to the physiology of conception the inheritance of the psychic qualities of the two parents is of particular importance for psychological purposes. it is well known that every child inherits from both his parents peculiarities of character, temperament, talent, acuteness of sense, and strength of will. it is equally well known that even psychic qualities are often (if not always) transmitted from grandparents by heredity--often, in fact, a man resembles his grandparents more than his parents in certain respects; and that is true both of bodily and mental features. all the chief laws of heredity which i first formulated in my _general morphology_, and popularized in my _natural history of creation_, are just as valid and universal in their application to psychic phenomena as to bodily structure--in fact, they are frequently more striking and conspicuous in the former than in the latter. however, the great province of heredity, to the inestimable importance of which darwin first opened our eyes in , is thickly beset with obscure problems and physiological difficulties. we dare not claim, even after forty years of research, that all its aspects are clear to us. yet we have done so much that we can confidently speak of heredity as a _physiological function_ of the organism, which is directly connected with the faculty of generation; and we must reduce it, like all other vital phenomena, to exclusively physical and chemical processes, to the _mechanics of the protoplasm_. we now know accurately enough the process of impregnation itself; we know that in it the nucleus of the spermatozoon contributes the qualities of the male parent, and the nucleus of the ovum gives the qualities of the mother, to the newly born stem-cell. the blending of the two nuclei is the "physiological moment" of heredity; by it the personal features of both body and soul are transmitted to the new individual. these facts of ontogeny are beyond the explanation of the dualistic and mystic psychology which still prevails in the schools; whereas they find a perfectly simple interpretation in our monistic philosophy. the physiological fact which is most material for a correct appreciation of individual psychogeny is the _continuity_ of the _psyche_ through the rise and fall of generations. a new individual comes into existence at the moment of conception; yet it is not an independent entity, either in respect of its mental or its bodily features, but merely the product of the blending of the two parental factors, the maternal egg-cell and paternal sperm-cell. the cell-souls of these two sexual cells combine in the act of conception for the formation of a new cell-soul, just as truly as the two cell-nuclei, which are the material vehicles of this psychic potential energy, unite to form a new nucleus. as we now see that the individuals of one and the same species--even sisters born of the same parents--always show certain differences, however slight, we must assume that these variations were already present in the chemical plasmatic constitution of the generative cells themselves.[ ] these facts alone would suffice to explain the infinite variety of individual features, of soul and of bodily form, that we find in the organic world. as an extreme, but one-sided, consequence of them, there is the theory of weismann, which considers the _amphimixis_, or the blending of the germ-plasm in sexual generation, to be the universal and the sole cause of individual variability. this exclusive theory, which is connected with his theory of the continuity of the germ-plasm, is, in my opinion, an exaggeration. i am convinced, on the contrary, that the great laws of _progressive heredity_ and of the correlative _functional adaptation_ apply to the soul as well as to the body. the new characteristics which the individual has acquired during life may react to some extent on the molecular texture of the germ-plasm in the egg-cell and sperm-cell, and may thus be transferred to the next generation by heredity in certain conditions (naturally, only in the form of latent energy). although in the soul-blending at the moment of conception only the latent forces of the two parent souls are transmitted by the coalescence of the erotic cell-nuclei, still it is possible that the hereditary psychic influence of earlier, and sometimes very much older, generations may be communicated at the same time. for the laws of _latent heredity_ or atavism apply to the soul just as validly as to the anatomical organization. we find these remarkable phenomena of reversion in a very simple and instructive form in the alternation of generations of the polyps and medusæ. here we see two very different generations alternate so regularly that the first resembles the third, fifth, and so on; while the second (very different from the preceding) is like the fourth, sixth, etc. (_natural history of creation_). we do not find such alternation of generations in man and the higher animals and plants, in which, owing to continuous heredity, each generation resembles the next; nevertheless, even in these cases we often meet with phenomena of reversion, which must be reduced to the same law of latent heredity. eminent men often take more after their grandparents than their parents even in the finer shades of psychic activity--in the possession of certain artistic talents or inclinations, in force of character, and in warmth of temperament; not infrequently there is a striking feature which neither parents nor grandparents possessed, but which may be traced a long way back to an older branch of the family. even in these remarkable cases of atavism the same laws of heredity apply to the _psyche_ and to the physiognomy, to the personal quality of the sense-organs, muscles, skeleton, and other parts of the body. we can trace them most clearly in the reigning dynasties and in old families of the nobility, whose conspicuous share in the life of the state has given occasion to a more careful historical picture of the individuals in the chain of generations--for instance, in the hohenzollerns, the princes of orange, the bourbons, etc., and in the roman cæsars. the causal-nexus of _biontic_ (individual) and _phyletic_ (historical) evolution, which i gave in my _general morphology_ as the supreme law at the root of all biogenetic research, has a universal application to psychology no less than to morphology. i have fully treated the special importance which it has with regard to man, in both respects, in the first chapter of my _anthropogeny_. in man, as in all other organisms, "the embryonic development is an epitome of the historical development of the species. this condensed and abbreviated recapitulation is the more complete in proportion as the original _epitomized development_ (_palingenesis_) is preserved by a constant heredity; on the other hand, it falls off from completeness in proportion as the later _disturbing development_ (_cenogenesis_) is accentuated by varying adaptation." while we apply this law to the evolution of the soul, we must lay special stress on the injunction to keep _both_ sides of it critically before us. for, in the case of man, just as in all the higher animals and plants, such appreciable perturbations of type (or _cenogeneses_) have taken place during the millions of years of development that the original simple idea of _palingenesis_, or "epitome of history," has been greatly disturbed and altered. while, on the one side, the _palingenetic_ recapitulation is preserved by the laws of like-time and like-place heredity, it is subject to an essential _cenogenetic_ change, on the other hand, by the laws of abbreviated and simplified heredity. that is clearly seen in the embryonic evolution of the psychic organs, the nervous system, the muscles, and the sense-organs. but it applies in just the same manner to the psychic functions, which are absolutely dependent on the normal construction of these organs. their evolution is subject to great cenogenetic modification in man and all other viviparous animals, precisely because the complete development of the embryo occupies a longer time within the body of the mother. but we have to distinguish two periods of individual psychogeny: ( ) the embryonic, and ( ) the post-embryonic development of the soul. i. _embryonic psychogeny._--the human foetus, or embryo, normally takes nine months (or two hundred and seventy days) to develop in the uterus. during this time it is entirely cut off from the outer world, and protected, not only by the thick muscular wall of the womb, but also by the special foetal membranes (_embryolemmata_) which are common to all the three higher classes of vertebrates--reptiles, birds, and mammals. in all the classes of amniotes these membranes (the _amnion_ and the _serolemma_) develop in just the same fashion. they represent the protective arrangements which were acquired by the earliest reptiles (_proreptilia_), the common parents of all the amniotes, in the permian period (towards the end of the palæozoic age), when these higher vertebrates accustomed themselves to live on land and breathe the atmosphere. their ancestors, the amphibia of the carboniferous period, still lived and breathed in the water, like their earlier predecessors, the fishes. in the case of these older and lower vertebrates that lived in the water, the embryonic development had the palingenetic character in a still higher degree, as is the case in most of the fishes and amphibia of the present day. the familiar tadpole and the larva of the salamander or the frog still preserve the structure of their fish-ancestors in the first part of their life in the water; they resemble them, likewise, in their habits of life, in breathing by gills, in the action of their sense-organs, and in other psychic organs. then, when the interesting metamorphosis of the swimming tadpole takes place, and when it adapts itself to a land-life, the fish-like body changes into that of a four-footed, crawling amphibium; instead of the gill-breathing in the water comes an exclusive breathing of the atmosphere by means of lungs, and, with the changed habits of life, even the psychic apparatus, the nervous system, and the sense-organs reach a higher degree of construction. if we could completely follow the psychogeny of the tadpole from beginning to end, we should be able to apply the biogenetic law in many ways to its psychic evolution. for it develops in direct communication with the changing conditions of the outer world, and so must quickly adapt its sensation and movement to these. the swimming tadpole has not only the structure but the habits of life of a fish, and only acquires those of a frog in its metamorphosis. it is different with man and all the other amniotes; their embryo is entirely withdrawn from the direct influence of the outer world, and cut off from any reciprocal action therewith, by enclosure in its protective membranes. besides, the special care of the young on the part of the amniotes gives their embryo much more favorable conditions for the cenogenetic abbreviation of the palingenetic evolution. there is, in the first place, the excellent arrangement for the nourishment of the embryo; in the reptiles, birds, and monotremes (the oviparous mammals) it is effected by the great yellow nutritive yelk, which is associated with the egg; in the rest of the mammals (the marsupials and placentals) it is effected by the mother's blood, which is conducted to the foetus by the blood-vessels of the yelk-sac and the allantois. in the case of the most highly developed placentals this elaborate nutritive arrangement has reached the highest degree of perfection by the construction of a placenta; hence in these classes the embryo is fully developed before birth. but its soul remains during all this time in a state of embryonic slumber, a state of repose which preyer has justly compared to the hibernation of animals. we have a similar long sleep in the chrysalis stage of those insects which undergo a complete metamorphosis--butterflies, bees, flies, beetles, and so forth. this sleep of the pupa, during which the most important formations of organs and tissues take place, is the more interesting from the fact that the preceding condition of the free larva (caterpillar, grub, or maggot) included a highly developed psychic activity, and that this is, significantly, lower than the stage which is seen afterwards (when the chrysalis sleep is over) in the perfect, winged, sexually mature insect. man's psychic activity, like that of most of the higher animals, runs through a long series of stages of development during the individual life. we may single out the five following as the most important of them: i. the soul of the new-born infant up to the birth of self-consciousness and the learning of speech. ii. the soul of the boy or girl up to puberty (_i.e._, until the awakening of the sexual instinct). iii. the soul of the youth or maiden up to the time of sexual intercourse (the "idealist" period). iv. the soul of the grown man and the mature woman (the period of full maturity and of the founding of families, lasting until about the sixtieth year for the man and the fiftieth for the woman--until _involution_ sets in). v. the soul of the old man or woman (the period of degeneration). man's psychic life runs the same evolution--upward progress, full maturity, and downward degeneration--as every other vital activity in his organization. chapter ix the phylogeny of the soul gradual historical evolution of the human soul from the animal soul--methods of phylogenetic psychology--four chief stages in the phylogeny of the soul: i. the cell-soul (cytopsyche) of the protist (infusoria, ova, etc.): cellular psychology; ii. the soul of a colony of cells, or the cenobitic soul (coenopsyche): psychology of the morula and blastula; iii. the soul of the tissue (histopsyche): its twofold nature: the soul of the plant: the soul of the lower, nerveless animal: double soul of the siphonophora (personal and kormal soul); iv. the nerve-soul (neuropsyche) of the higher animal--three sections of its psychic apparatus: sense-organs, muscles, and nerves--typical formation of the nerve-centre in the various groups of animals--psychic organ of the vertebrate: the brain and the spinal cord--phylogeny of the mammal soul the theory of descent, combined with anthropological research, has convinced us of the descent of our human organism from a long series of animal ancestors by a slow and gradual transformation occupying many millions of years. since, then, we cannot dissever man's psychic life from the rest of his vital functions--we are rather forced to a conviction of the natural evolution of our whole body and mind--it becomes one of the main tasks of the modern monistic psychology to trace the stages of the historical development of the soul of man from the soul of the brute. our "phylogeny of the soul" seeks to attain this object; it may also, as a branch of general psychology, be called _phylogenetic_ psychology, or, in contradistinction to _biontic_ (individual), _phyletic psychogeny_. and, although this new science has scarcely been taken up in earnest yet, and most of the "professional" psychologists deny its very right to existence, we must claim for it the utmost importance and the deepest interest. for, in our opinion, it is its special province to solve for us the great enigma of the nature and origin of the human soul. the methods and paths which will lead us to the remote goal of a complete phylogenetic psychology--a goal that is still buried in the mists of the future, and almost imperceptible to many--do not differ from those of other branches of evolutionary research. comparative anatomy, physiology, and ontogeny are of the first importance. much support is given also by palæontology, for the order in which the fossil remains of the various classes of vertebrates succeed each other in the course of organic evolution reveals to us, to some extent, the gradual growth of their psychic power as well as their phyletic connection. we must admit that we are here, as we are in every branch of phylogenetic research, driven to the construction of a number of hypotheses in order to fill up the considerable lacunæ of empirical phylogeny. yet these hypotheses cast so clear and significant a light on the chief stages of historical development that we are afforded a most gratifying insight into their entire course. the comparative psychology of man and the higher animals enables us to learn from the highest group of the placentals, the primates, the long strides by which the human soul has advanced beyond the _psyche_ of the anthropoid ape. the phylogeny of the mammals and of the lower vertebrates acquaints us with the long series of the earlier ancestors of the primates which have arisen within this stem since the silurian age. all these vertebrates agree in the structure and development of their characteristic psychic organ--the spinal cord. we learn from the comparative anatomy of the vermalia that this spinal cord has been evolved from a dorsal _acroganglion_, or vertical brain, of an invertebrate ancestor. we learn, further, from comparative ontogeny that this simple psychic organ has been evolved from the stratum of cells in the outer germinal layer, the ectoderm, of the platodes. in these earliest flat-worms, which have no specialized nervous system, the outer skin-covering serves as a general sensitive and psychic organ. finally, comparative embryology teaches us that these simple metazoa have arisen by gastrulation from blastæades, from hollow spheres, the wall of which is merely one simple layer of cells, the _blastoderm_; and the same science, with the aid of the biogenetic law, explains how these protozoic coenobia originally sprang from the simplest unicellular organisms. on a critical study of these different embryonic formations, the evolution of which from each other we can directly observe under the microscope, we arrive, by means of the great law of biogeny, at a series of most important conclusions as to the chief stages in the development of our psychic life. we may distinguish eight of these to begin with: i. unicellular protozoa with a simple cell-soul: the infusoria. ii. multicellular protozoa with a communal soul: the catallacta. iii. the earliest metazoa with an epithelial soul: the platodes. iv. invertebrate ancestors with a simple vertical brain: the vermalia. v. vertebrates without skull or brain, with a simple spinal cord: the acrania. vi. animals with skull and brain (of five vesicles): the craniota. vii. mammals with predominant development of the cortex of the brain: the placentals. viii. the higher anthropoid apes and man, with organs of thought (in the cerebrum): the anthropomorpha. among these eight stages in the development of the human soul we may further distinguish more or less clearly a number of subordinate stages. naturally, however, in reconstructing them we have to fall back on the same defective evidence of empirical psychology which the comparative anatomy and physiology of the actual fauna affords us. as the craniote animals of the sixth stage--and these are true fishes--are already found fossilized in the silurian system, we are forced to assume that the five preceding series of ancestors (which were incapable of fossilization) were evolved in an earlier, pre-silurian age. i. _the cell-soul_ (_or cytopsyche_): first stage of phyletic psychogenesis.--the earliest ancestors of man and all other animals were unicellular protozoa. this fundamental hypothesis of rational phylogeny is based, in virtue of the phylogenetic law, on the familiar embryological fact that every man, like every other metazoon (_i.e._, every multicellular organism with tissues), begins his personal existence as a simple cell, the stem-cell (_cytula_), or the impregnated egg-cell (see p. ). as this cell has a "soul" from the commencement, so had also the corresponding unicellular _ancestral forms_, which were represented in the oldest series of man's ancestors by a number of different protozoa. we learn the character of the psychic activity of these unicellular organisms from the comparative physiology of the protists of to-day. close observation and careful experiment have opened out to us in this respect, in the second half of the nineteenth century, a new world of the most interesting phenomena. the best description of them was given by max verworn in his thoughtful work, based on original research, _psycho-physiological studies of the protists_. the work includes also the few earlier observations of the "psychic life of the protist." verworn came to the firm conclusion that the psychic processes are unconscious in all the protists, that the phenomena of sensation and movement coincide with the molecular vital processes in their protoplasm, and that their ultimate causes are to be sought in the properties of the protoplasmic molecules (the _plastidules_). "hence the psychic phenomena of the protists form a bridge that connects the chemical processes of the inorganic world with the psychic life of the highest animals; they represent the germ of the highest psychic phenomena of the metazoa and of man." the careful observations and many experiments of verworn, together with those of wilhelm engelmann, wilhelm preyer, richard hertwig, and other more recent students of the protists, afford conclusive evidence for my "theory of the cell-soul" ( ). on the strength of several years of study of different kinds of protists, especially rhizopods and infusoria, i published a theory thirty-three years ago to the effect that every living cell has psychic properties, and that the psychic life of the multicellular animals and plants is merely the sum total of the psychic functions of the cells which build up their structure. in the lower groups (in algæ and sponges, for instance) _all_ the cells of the body have an equal share in it (or with very slight differences); in the higher groups, in harmony with the law of the "division of labor," only a select portion of them are involved--the "soul-cells." the important consequences of this "cellular psychology" were partly treated in my work on _the perigenesis of the plastidule_ ( ), and partly in my speech at munich, in , on "modern evolution in relation to the whole of science." a more popular presentation of them is to be found in my two vienna papers ( ) on "the origin and development of the sense-organs" and on "cell-souls and soul-cells." moreover, the cell-soul, even within the limits of the protist world, presents a long series of stages of development, from the most simple and primitive to a comparatively elaborate activity. in the earliest and simplest protists the faculty of sensation and movement is equally distributed over the entire protoplasm of the homogeneous morsel; in the higher forms certain "cell-instruments," or _organella_, appear, as their physiological organs. motor cell-parts of that character are found in the pseudopodia of the rhizopods, and the vibrating hairs, lashes, or cilia of the infusoria. the cell-nucleus, which is wanting in the earlier and lower protists, is considered to be an internal central organ of the cell-life. it is especially noteworthy, from a physiologico-chemical point of view, that the very earliest protists were plasmodomous, with plant-like nutrition--hence _protophyta_, or primitive plants; from these came as a secondary stage, by metasitism, the first plasmophagi, with animal nutrition--the _protozoa_, or primitive animals.[ ] this metasitism, or circulation of nutritive matter, implies an important psychological advance; with it began the development of those characteristic properties of the animal soul which are wanting in the plant. we find the highest development of the animal cell-soul in the class of ciliata, or ciliated infusoria. when we compare their activity with the corresponding psychic life of the higher, multicellular animals, we find scarcely any psychological difference; the sensitive and motor _organella_ of these protozoa seem to accomplish the same as the sense-organs, nerves, and muscles of the metazoa. indeed, we have found in the great cell-nucleus (_meganucleus_) of the infusoria a central organ of psychic activity, which plays much the same part in their unicellular organism as the brain does in the psychic life of higher animals. however, it is very difficult to determine how far this comparison is justified; the views of experts diverge considerably over the matter. some take all spontaneous bodily movement in them to be automatic, or impulsive, and all stimulated movement to be reflex; others are convinced that such movements are partly voluntary and intentional. the latter would attribute to the infusoria a certain degree of consciousness, and even self-consciousness; but this is rejected by the others. however that very difficult question may be settled, it does not alter the fact that these unicellular protozoa give proof of the possession of a highly developed "cell-soul," which is of great interest for a correct decision as to the _psyche_ of our earliest unicellular ancestors. ii. _the communal or cenobitic soul_ (_coenopsyche_): second stage of phyletic psychogenesis.--individual development begins, in man and in all other multicellular animals, with the repeated segmentation of one simple cell. this _stem-cell_, the impregnated ovum, divides first into two daughter cells, by a process of ordinary indirect segmentation; as the process is repeated there arise (by equal division of the egg) successively four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four such new cells, or "blastomeres." usually (that is, in the case of the majority of animals) an irregular enlargement sooner or later takes the place of this original regular division of cells. but the result is the same in all cases--the formation of a (generally spherical) cluster of heterogeneous (originally homogeneous) cells. this stage is called the _morula_ ("mulberry," which it somewhat resembles in shape). then, as a rule, a fluid gathers in the interior of this aggregate of cells; it changes into a spherical vesicle; all the cells go to its surface, and arrange themselves in one simple layer--the _blastoderm_. the hollow sphere which is thus formed is the important stage of the "germinal vesicle," the _blastula_, or blastosphere. the psychological phenomena which we directly observe in the formation of the blastula are partly sensations, partly movements, of this community of cells. the movements may be divided into two groups: ( ) the inner movements, which are always repeated in substantially the same manner in the process of ordinary (indirect) segmentation of cells (formation of the axis of the nucleus, mitosis, karyokinesis, etc.); ( ) the outer movements, which are seen in the regular change of position of the social cells and their grouping for the construction of the blastoderm. we assume that these movements are hereditary and unconscious, because they are always determined in the same fashion by heredity from the earlier protist ancestors. the sensations also fall into two groups: ( ) the sensations of the individual cells, which reveal themselves in the assertion of their individual independence and their relation to neighboring cells (with which they are in contact, and partly in direct combination, by means of protoplasmic fibres); ( ) the common sensation of the entire community of cells, which is seen in the individual formation of the _blastula_ as a hollow vesicle. the causal interpretation of the formation of the blastula is given us by the biogenetic law, which explains the phenomena we directly observe to be the outcome of heredity, and relates them to corresponding historical processes which took place long ago in the origin of the earliest protist-coenobia, the blastæads. but we get a physiological and psychological insight into these important phenomena of the earliest cell-communities by observation and experiment on their modern representatives. such permanent cell-communities or colonies are still found in great numbers both among the plasmodomous primitive plants (for instance, the paulotomacea, diatomacea, volvocinæ, etc.) and the plasmophagous primitive animals (the infusoria and rhizopods). in all these coenobia we can easily distinguish two different grades of psychic activity: ( ) the cell-soul of the individual cells (the "elementary organisms") and ( ) the communal soul of the entire colony. iii. _the tissue-soul_ (_histopsyche_): third stage of phyletic psychogenesis.--in all multicellular, tissue-forming plants (_metaphyta_) and in the lowest, nerveless classes of tissue-forming animals (_metazoa_) we have to distinguish two different forms of psychic activity--namely: ( ) the _psyche_ of the individual cells which compose the tissue, and ( ) the _psyche_ of the tissue itself, or of the "cell-state" which is made up of the tissues. this "tissue-soul" is the higher psychological function which gives physiological individuality to the compound multicellular organism as a true "cell-commonwealth." it controls all the separate "cell-souls" of the social cells--the mutually dependent "citizens" which constitute the community. this fundamental twofold character of the _psyche_ in the metaphyta and the lower, nerveless metazoa is very important. it may be verified by unprejudiced observation and suitable experiment. in the first place, each single cell has its own sensation and movement, and, in addition, each tissue and each organ, composed of a number of homogeneous cells, has its special irritability and psychic unity (_e.g._, the pollen and stamens). a. _the plant-soul_ (_phytopsyche_) is, in our view, the summary of the entire psychic activity of the tissue-forming, multicellular plant (the _metaphyton_, as distinct from the unicellular _protophyton_); it is, however, the subject of the most diverse opinions even at the present day. it was once customary to draw an essential distinction between the plant and the animal, on the ground that the latter had a "soul" and the plant had none. however, an unprejudiced comparison of the irritability and movements of various higher plants and lower animals convinced many observers, even at the beginning of the century, that there must be a "soul" on both sides. at a later date fechner, leitgeb, and others strongly contended for the plant-soul. but a profounder knowledge of the subject was obtained when the similarity of the elementary structure of the plant and of the animal was proved by the cellular theory, and especially when the similarity of conduct of the active, living protoplasm in both was shown in the plasma theory of max schultze ( ). modern comparative physiology has shown that the physiological attitude towards various stimuli (light, heat, electricity, gravity, friction, chemical action, etc.) of the "sensitive" portions of many plants and animals is exactly the same, and that the reflex movements which the stimuli elicit take place in precisely the same manner on both sides. hence, if it was necessary to attribute this activity to a "soul" in the lower, nerveless metazoa (sponges, polyps, etc.), it was also necessary in the case of many (if not all) metaphyta, at least in the very sensitive _mimosa_, the "fly-traps" (_dionaea_ and _drosera_), and the numerous kinds of climbing plants. it is true that modern vegetal physiology has given a purely physical explanation of many of these stimulated movements, or tropisms, by special features of growth, variations of pressure, etc. yet these mechanical causes are neither more nor less _psychophysical_ than the similar "reflex movements" of the sponges, polyps, and other nerveless metazoa, even though their mechanism is entirely different. the character of the tissue-soul reveals itself in the same way in both cases--the cells of the tissue (the regular, orderly structure of cells) transmit the stimuli they have received in one part, and thus provoke movements of other parts, or of the whole organ. this transmission of stimuli has as much title to be called "psychic activity" as its more complete form in the higher animals with nerves; the anatomic explanation of it is that the social cells of the tissue, or cell-community, are not isolated from each other (as was formerly supposed), but are connected throughout by fine threads or bridges of protoplasm. when the sensitive mimosa closes its graceful leaves and droops its stalk at contact, or on being shaken; when the irritable fly-trap (the dionæa) swiftly clasps its leaves together at a touch, and captures a fly; the sensation seems to be keener, the transmission of the stimulus more rapid, and the movement more energetic than in the reflex action of the stimulated bath-sponge and many other sponges. b. _the soul of the nerveless metazoa._--of very special interest for comparative psychology in general, and for the phylogeny of the animal soul in particular, is the psychic activity of those lower metazoa which have tissues, and sometimes differentiated organs, but no nerves or specific organs of sense. to this category belong four different groups of the earliest coelenterates: (_a_) the gastræads, (_b_) the platodaria, (_c_) the sponges, and (_d_) the hydropolyps, the lowest form of cnidaria. the _gastraeads_ (or animals with a primitive gut) form a small group of the lowest coelenterates, which is of great importance as the common ancestral group of all the metazoa. the body of these little swimming animals looks like a tiny (generally oval) vesicle, which has a simple cavity with one opening--the primitive gut and the primitive mouth. the wall of the digestive cavity is formed of two simple layers of cells, or epithelium, the inner of which--the gut-layer--is responsible for the vegetal activity of nourishment, while the outer, or skin-layer, discharges the animal functions of movement and sensation. the homogeneous sensitive cells of the skin-layer bear long, slender hairs or lashes (_cilia_), by the vibration of which the swimming motion is effected. the few surviving forms of gastræads, the gastræmaria (_trichoplacidae_) and cyemaria (_orthonectidae_), are extremely interesting, from the fact that they remain throughout life at a stage of structure which is passed by all the other metazoa (from the sponge to man) at the commencement of their embryonic development. as i have shown in my _theory of the gastraea_ ( ), a very characteristic embryonic form, the _gastrula_, is immediately developed from the _blastula_ in all the tissue animals. the germinal membrane (blastoderm), which represents the wall of the hollow vesicle, forms a depression at one side, and this soon sinks in so deep that the inner cavity of the vesicle disappears. the half of the membrane which bends in is thus laid on, and inside, the other half; the latter forms the _skin-layer_, or outer germinal layer (ectoderm or epiblast), and the former becomes the _gut-layer_, or inner germinal layer (endoderm or hypoblast). the new cavity of the cup-shaped body is the digestive stomach cavity (the _progaste_), and its opening is the primitive mouth (or _prostoma_).[ ] the skin-layer, or ectoderm, is the primitive psychic organ in the metazoa; from it, in all the nerve animals, not only the external skin and the organs of sense, but also the nervous system, are developed. in the gastræads, which have no nerves, all the cells which compose the simple epithelium of the ectoderm are equally organs of sensation and of movement; we have here the tissue-soul in its simplest form. the platodaria, the earliest and simplest form of the platodes, seem to be of the same primitive construction. some of these cryptocoela--the _convoluta_, etc.--have no specific nervous system, while their nearest relatives, the turbellaria, have already differentiated one, and even developed a vertical brain. the _sponges_ form a peculiar group in the animal world, which differs widely in organization from all the other metazoa. the innumerable kinds of sponges grow, as a rule, at the bottom of the sea. the simplest form of sponge, the _olynthus_, is in reality nothing more than a _gastraea_, the body-wall of which is perforated like a sieve, with fine pores, in order to permit the entrance of the nourishing stream of water. in the majority of sponges--even in the most familiar one, the bath-sponge--the bulbous organism constructs a kind of stem or tree, which is made up of thousands of these gastræads, and permeated by a nutritive system of canals. sensation and movement are only developed in the faintest degree in the sponges; they have no nerves, muscles, or organs of sense. it was therefore quite natural that such stationary, shapeless, insensitive animals should have been commonly taken to be plants in earlier years. their psychic life--for which no special organs have been differentiated--is far inferior to that of the mimosa and other sensitive plants. _the soul of the cnidaria_ is of the utmost importance in comparative and phylogenetic psychology; for in this numerous group of the coelenterates the historical evolution of the _nerve-soul_ out of the _tissue-soul_ is repeated before our eyes. to this group belong the innumerable classes of stationary polyps and corals, and of swimming medusæ and siphonophora. as the common ancestor of all the cnidaria we can safely assign a very simple polyp, which is substantially the same in structure as the common, still surviving, fresh-water polyp--the hydra. yet the hydræ, and the stationary, closely related _hydropolyps_, have no nerves or higher sense-organs, although they are extremely sensitive. on the other hand, the free-swimming medusæ, which are developed from them--and are still connected with them by alternation of generations--have an independent nervous system and specific sense-organs. here, also, we may directly observe the ontogenetic evolution of the nerve-soul (_neuropsyche_) out of the tissue-soul (_histopsyche_), and thus learn its phylogenetic origin. this is the more interesting as such phenomena are _polyphyletic_--that is, they have occurred several times--more than once, at least--quite independently. as i have shown elsewhere, the hydromedusæ have arisen from the hydropolyps in a different manner from that of the evolution of the scyphomedusæ from the scyphopolyps; the gemmation is terminal in the case of the latter, and lateral with the former. in addition, both groups have characteristic hereditary differences in the more minute structure of their psychic organs. the class of siphonophora is also very interesting to the psychologist. in these pretty, free-swimming organisms, which come from the hydromedusæ we can observe a double soul: the _personal soul_ of the numerous individualities which compose them, and the common, harmoniously acting psyche of the entire colony. iv. _the nerve-soul_ (_neuropsyche_): fourth stage of phyletic psychogeny.--the psychic life of all the higher animals is conducted, as in man, by means of a more or less complicated "psychic apparatus." this apparatus is always composed of three chief sections: the _organs of sense_ are responsible for the various sensations; the _muscles_ effect the movements; the _nerves_ form the connection between the two by means of a special central organ, the brain or ganglion. the arrangement and action of this psychic mechanism have been frequently compared with those of a telegraphic system: the nerves are the wires, the brain the central, and the sense-organs subordinate stations. the motor nerves conduct the commands of the will centrifugally from the nerve-centre to the muscles, by the contraction of which they produce the movements: the sensitive nerves transmit the various sensations centripetally--that is, from the peripheral sense-organs to the brain, and thus render an account of the impressions they receive from the outer world. the ganglionic cells, or "psychic cells," which compose the central nervous organ, are the most perfect of all organic elements; they not only conduct the commerce between the muscles and the organs of sense, but they also effect the highest performances of the animal soul, the formation of ideas and thoughts, and especially consciousness. the great progress of anatomy, physiology, histology, and ontogeny has recently added a wealth of interesting discoveries to our knowledge of the mechanism of the soul. if speculative philosophy assimilated only the most important of these significant results of empirical biology, it would have a very different character from that it unfortunately presents. as i have not space for an exhaustive treatment of them here, i will confine myself to a relation of the chief facts. each of the higher animal species has a characteristic psychic organ; the central nervous system of each has certain peculiarities of shape, position, and composition. the medusæ, among the radiating cnidaria, have a ring of nervous matter at the border of the fringe, generally provided with four or eight ganglia. the mouth of the five-rayed cnidarion is girt with a nerve-ring, from which proceed five branches. the bi-symmetrical _platodes_ and the _vermalia_ have a vertical brain, or acroganglion, composed of two dorsal ganglia, lying above the mouth; from these "upper ganglia" two branch nerves proceed to the skin and the muscles. in some of the vermalia and in the mollusca a pair of ventral "lower ganglia" are added, which are connected with the former by a ring round the gullet. this ring is found also in the _articulata_; but in these it is continued on the belly side of the long body as a ventral medulla, a double fibre like a rope-ladder, which expands into a double ganglion in each member. the vertebrates have an entirely different formation of the psychic organ; they have always a spinal medulla developed at the back of the body; and from an expansion of its fore part there arises subsequently the characteristic vesicular brain.[ ] although the psychic organs of the higher species of animals differ very materially in position, form, and composition, nevertheless comparative anatomy is in a position to prove a common origin for most of them--namely, from the vertical brain of the platodes and vermalia; they have all, moreover, had their origin in the outermost layer of the embryo, the _ectoderm_, or outer skin-layer. hence we find the same typical structure in all varieties of the central nervous organ--a combination of ganglionic cells, or "psychic cells" (the real active elementary organs of the soul), and of nerve-fibres, which effect the connection and transmission of the action. the first fact we meet in the comparative psychology of the vertebrates, and which should be the empirical starting-point of all scientific human psychology, is the characteristic structure of the central nervous system. this central psychic organ has a particular position, shape, and texture in the vertebrate as it has in all the higher species. in every case we find a spinal medulla, a strong cylindrical nervous cord, which runs down the middle of the back, in the upper part of the vertebral column (or the cord which represents it). in every case a number of nerves branch off from this medulla in regular division, one pair to each segment or vertebra. in every case this medullary cord arises in the same way in the foetus; a fine groove appears in the middle axis of the skin at the back; then the parallel borders of this medullary groove are lifted up a little, bend over towards each other, and form into a kind of tube. the long dorsal cylindrical medullary tube which is thus formed is thoroughly characteristic of the vertebrates; it is always the same in the early embryonic sketch of the organism, and it is always the chief feature of the different kinds of psychic organ which evolve from it in time. only one single group of invertebrates has a similar structure: the rare, marine _tunicata_, copelata, ascidia, and thalidiæ. these animals have other important peculiarities of structure (especially in the chorda and the gut) which show a striking divergence from the other invertebrates and resemblance to the vertebrates. the inference we draw is that both these groups, the vertebrates and the tunicates, have arisen from a common ancestral group of the vermalia, the _prochordonia_.[ ] still, there is a great difference between the two classes in the fact that the body of the tunicate does not articulate, or form members, and has a very simple organization (most of them subsequently attach themselves to the bottom of the sea and degenerate). the vertebrate, on the other hand, is characterized by an early development of internal members, and the formation of pro-vertebræ (_vertebratio_). this prepares the way for the much higher development of their organism, which finally attains perfection in man. this is easily seen in the finer structure of his spinal cord, and in the development of a number of segmental pairs of nerves, the spinal nerves, which proceed to the various parts of the body. the long ancestral history of our "vertebrate soul" commences with the formation of the most rudimentary spinal cord in the earliest acrania; slowly and gradually, through a period of many millions of years, it conducts to that marvellous structure of the human brain which seems to entitle the highest primate form to quite an exceptional position in nature. since a clear conception of this slow and steady progress of our phyletic psychogeny is indispensable for a true psychology, we must divide that vast period into a number of stages or sections: in each of them the perfecting of the structure of the nervous centre has been accompanied by a corresponding evolution of its function, the _psyche_. i distinguish eight of these periods in the phylogeny of the spinal cord, which are characterized by eight different groups of vertebrates: ( ) the acrania; ( ) the cyclostomata; ( ) the fishes; ( ) the amphibia; ( ) the implacental mammals (monotremes and marsupials); ( ) the earlier placental mammals, especially the prosimiæ; ( ) the younger primates, the simiæ; and ( ) the anthropoid apes and man. i. first stage--the _acrania_: their only modern representative is the lancelot or amphioxus; the psychic organ remains a simple medullary tube, and contains a regularly segmented spinal cord, without brain. ii. second stage--the _cyclostomata_: the oldest group of the craniota, now only represented by the _petromyzontes_ and _myxinoides_: the fore-termination of the cord expands into a vesicle, which then subdivides into five successive parts--the great-brain, intermediate-brain, middle-brain, little-brain, and hind-brain: these five cerebral vesicles form the common type from which the brain of all craniota has evolved, from the lamprey to man. iii. third stage--the _primitive fishes_ (_selachii_): similar to the modern shark: in these oldest fishes, from which all the gnathostomata descend, the more pronounced division of the five cerebral vesicles sets in. iv. fourth stage--the _amphibia_. these earliest land animals, making their first appearance in the carboniferous period, represent the commencement of the characteristic structure of the _tetrapod_ and a corresponding development of the fish-brain: it advances still further in their permian successors, the _reptiles_, the earliest representatives of which, the _tocosauria_, are the common ancestors of all the amniota (reptiles and birds on one side, mammals on the other). v.-viii. fifth to the eighth stages--the _mammals_. i have exhaustively treated, and illustrated with a number of plates, in my _anthropogeny_, the evolution of our nervous system and the correlative question of the development of the soul. i have now, therefore, merely to refer the reader to that work. it only remains for me to add a few remarks on the last and most interesting class of facts pertaining to this--to the evolution of the soul and its organs within the limits of the class mammalia. in doing so, i must remind the reader that the _monophyletic origin_ of this class--that is, the descent of all the mammals from one common ancestral form (of the triassic period)--is now fully established. the most important consequence of the monophyletic origin of the mammals is the necessity of deriving the human soul from a long evolutionary series of other mammal souls. a deep anatomical and physiological gulf separated the brain structure and the dependent psychic activity of the higher mammals from those of the lower: this gulf, however, is completely bridged over by a long series of intermediate stages. the period of at least fourteen (more than a hundred, on other estimates) million years, which has elapsed since the commencement of the triassic period, is amply sufficient to allow even the greatest psychological advance. the following is a summary of the results of investigation in this quarter, which has recently been very penetrating: i. the brain of the mammal is differentiated from that of the other vertebrates by certain features, which are found in all branches of the class; especially by a preponderant development of the first and fourth vesicles, the cerebrum and cerebellum, while the third vesicle, the middle brain, disappears altogether. ii. the brain development of the lowest and earliest mammals (the monotremes, marsupials, and prochoriates) is closely allied to that of their palæozoic ancestors, the carboniferous amphibia (the _stegocephala_) and the permian reptiles (the _tocosauria_). iii. during the tertiary period commences the typical development of the cerebrum, which distinguishes the younger mammals so strikingly from the older. iv. the special development (quantitatively and qualitatively) of the cerebrum which is so prominent a feature in man, and which is the root of his pre-eminent psychic achievements, is only found, outside humanity, in a small section of the most highly developed mammals of the earlier tertiary epoch, especially in the anthropoid apes. v. the differences of brain structure and psychic faculty which separate man from the anthropoid ape are slighter than the corresponding interval between the anthropoid apes and the lower primates (the earliest simiæ and prosimiæ). vi. consequently, the historical, gradual evolution of the human soul from a long chain of higher and lower mammal souls must, by application of the universally valid phyletic laws of the theory of descent, be regarded as a _fact_ which has been scientifically proved. chapter x consciousness consciousness as a natural phenomenon--its definition--difficulties of the problem--its relation to the life of the soul--our human consciousness--various theories: i. anthropistic theory (descartes); ii. neurological theory (darwin); iii. animal theory (schopenhauer); iv. biological theory (fechner); v. cellular theory (fritz schultze); vi. atomistic theory--monistic and dualistic theories--transcendental character of consciousness--the ignorabimus verdict of du bois-reymond--physiology of consciousness--discovery of the organs of thought by flechsig--pathology--double and intermittent consciousness--ontogeny of consciousness: modifications at different ages--phylogeny of consciousness--formation of concepts no phenomenon of the life of the soul is so wonderful and so variously interpreted as consciousness. the most contradictory views are current to-day, as they were two thousand years ago, not only with regard to the nature of this psychic function and its relation to the body, but even as to its diffusion in the organic world and its origin and development. it is more responsible than any other psychic faculty for the erroneous idea of an "immaterial soul" and the belief in "personal immortality"; many of the gravest errors that still dominate even our modern civilization may be traced to it. hence it is that i have entitled consciousness "the central mystery of psychology"; it is the strong citadel of all mystic and dualistic errors, before whose ramparts the best-equipped efforts of reason threaten to miscarry. this fact would suffice of itself to induce us to make a special critical study of consciousness from our monistic point of view. we shall see that consciousness is simply a natural phenomenon like any other psychic quality, and that it is subject to the law of substance like all other natural phenomena. even as to the elementary idea of consciousness, its contents and extension, the views of the most distinguished philosophers and scientists are widely divergent. perhaps the meaning of consciousness is best conceived as an _internal perception_, and compared with the action of _a mirror_. as its two chief departments we distinguish objective and subjective consciousness--consciousness of the world, the non-ego, and of the ego. by far the greater part of our conscious activity, as schopenhauer justly remarked, belongs to the consciousness of the outer world, or the non-ego: this _world-consciousness_ embraces all possible phenomena of the outer world which are in any sense accessible to our minds. much more contracted is the sphere of _self-consciousness_, the internal mirror of all our own psychic activity, all our presentations, sensations, and volitions. many distinguished thinkers, especially on the physiological side (wundt and ziehen, for instance) take the ideas of consciousness and psychic function to be identical--"all psychic action is conscious"; the province of psychic life, they say, is coextensive with that of consciousness. in our opinion, such a definition gives an undue extension to the meaning of consciousness, and occasions many errors and misunderstandings. we share, rather, the view of other philosophers (romanes, fritz schultze, and paulsen), that even our unconscious presentations, sensations, and volitions pertain to our psychic life; indeed, the province of these unconscious psychic actions (reflex action, and so forth) is far more extensive than that of consciousness. moreover, the two provinces are intimately connected, and are separated by no sharp line of demarcation. an unconscious presentation may become conscious at any moment; let our attention be withdrawn from it by some other object, and forthwith it disappears from consciousness once more. the only source of our knowledge of consciousness is that faculty itself; that is the chief cause of the extraordinary difficulty of subjecting it to scientific research. subject and object are one and the same in it: the perceptive subject mirrors itself in its own inner nature, which is to be the object of our inquiry. thus we can never have a complete objective certainty of the consciousness of others; we can only proceed by a comparison of their psychic condition with our own. as long as this comparison is restricted to _normal_ people we are justified in drawing certain conclusions as to their consciousness, the validity of which is unchallenged. but when we pass on to consider _abnormal_ individuals (the genius, the eccentric, the stupid, or the insane) our conclusions from analogy are either unsafe or entirely erroneous. the same must be said with even greater truth when we attempt to compare human consciousness with that of the animals (even the higher, but especially the lower). in that case such grave difficulties arise that the views of physiologists and philosophers diverge as widely as the poles on the subject. we shall briefly enumerate the most important of these views. i. _the anthropistic theory of consciousness._--it is peculiar to man. to descartes we must trace the widespread notion that consciousness and thought are man's exclusive prerogative, and that he alone is blessed with an "immortal soul." this famous french philosopher and mathematician (educated in a jesuit college) established a rigid partition between the psychic activity of man and that of the brute. in his opinion the human soul, a thinking, immaterial being, is completely separated from the body, which is extended and material. yet it is united to the body at a certain point in the brain (the _glandula pinealis_) for the purpose of receiving impressions from the outer world and effecting muscular movements. the animals, not being endowed with thought, have no soul: they are mere automata, or cleverly constructed machines, whose sensations, presentations, and volitions are purely mechanical, and take place according to the ordinary laws of physics. hence descartes was a _dualist_ in human psychology, and a _monist_ in the psychology of the brute. this open contradiction in so clear and acute a thinker is very striking; in explaining it, it is not unnatural to suppose that he concealed his real opinion, and left the discovery of it to independent scholars. as a pupil of the jesuits, descartes had been taught to deny the truth in the face of his better insight; and perhaps he dreaded the power and the fires of the church. besides, his sceptical principle, that every sincere effort to attain the truth must start with a doubt of the traditional dogma had already drawn upon him fanatical accusations of scepticism and atheism. the great influence which descartes had on subsequent philosophy was very remarkable, and entirely in harmony with his "book-keeping by double entry." the _materialists_ of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries appealed to the cartesian theory of the animal soul and its purely mechanical activity in support of their monistic psychology. the _spiritualists_, on the other hand, asserted that their dogma of the immortality of the soul and its independence of the body was firmly established by descartes' theory of the human soul. this view is still prevalent in the camp of the theologians and dualistic metaphysicians. the scientific conception of nature, however, which has been built up in the nineteenth century, has, with the aid of empirical progress, in physiological and comparative psychology, completely falsified it. ii. _neurological theory of consciousness._--it is present only in man and those higher animals which have a centralized nervous system and organs of sense. the conviction that a large number of animals--at least the higher mammals--are not less endowed than man with a thinking soul and consciousness prevails in modern zoology, exact physiology, and the monistic psychology. the immense progress we have made in the various branches of biology has contributed to bring about a recognition of this important truth. we confine ourselves for the present to the higher vertebrates, and especially the mammals. that these most intelligent specimens of these highly developed vertebrates--apes and dogs, in particular--have a strong resemblance to man in their whole psychic life has been recognized and speculated on for thousands of years. their faculty of presentation and sensation, of feeling and desire, is so like that of man that we need adduce no proof of our thesis. but even the higher associational activity of the brain, the formation of judgments and their connection into chains of reasoning, thought, and consciousness in the narrower sense, are developed in them after the same fashion as in man: they differ only in degree, not in kind. moreover, we learn from comparative anatomy and histology that the intricate structure of the brain (both in general and in detail) is substantially the same in the mammals as it is in man. the same lesson is enforced by comparative ontogeny with regard to the origin of these psychic organs. comparative physiology teaches us that the various states of consciousness are just the same in these highest placentals as in man; and we learn by experiment that there is the same reaction to external stimuli. the higher animals can be narcotized by alcohol, chloroform, ether, etc., and may be hypnotized by the usual methods, just as in the case of man. it is, however, impossible to determine mathematically at what stage of animal life consciousness is to be first recognized as such. some zoologists draw the line very high in the scale, others very low. darwin, who most accurately distinguishes the various stages of consciousness, intelligence, and emotion in the higher animals, and explains them by progressive evolution, points out how difficult, or even impossible, it is to determine the first beginning of this supreme psychic faculty in the lower animals. personally, out of the many contradictory theories, i take that to be most probable which holds _the centralization of the nervous system_ to be a condition of consciousness; and that is wanting in the lower classes of animals. the presence of a central nervous organ, of highly developed sense-organs, and an elaborate association of groups of presentations, seem to me to be required before the unity of consciousness is possible. iii. _animal theory of consciousness._--all animals, and they alone, have consciousness. this theory would draw a sharp distinction between the psychic life of the animal and of the plant. such a distinction was urged by many of the older writers, and was clearly formulated by linné in his celebrated _systema naturae_; the two great kingdoms of the organic world are, in his opinion, divided by the fact that animals have sensation and consciousness, and the plants are devoid of them. later on schopenhauer laid stress on the same distinction: "consciousness is only known to us as a feature of animal nature. even though it extend upwards through the whole animal kingdom, even to man and his reason, the unconsciousness of the plant, from which it started, remains as the basic feature. in the lowest animals we have but the dawn of it." the inaccuracy of this view was obvious by about the middle of the present century, when a deeper study was made of the psychic activity of the lower animal forms, especially the coelenterates (sponges and cnidaria): they are undoubtedly animals, yet there is no more trace of a definite consciousness in them than in most of the plants. the distinction between the two kingdoms was still further obliterated when more careful research was made into their unicellular forms. there is no psychological difference between the plasmophagous protozoa and the plasmodomous protophyta, even in respect of their consciousness. iv. _biological theory of consciousness._--it is found in all organisms, animal or vegetal, but not in lifeless bodies (such as crystals). this opinion is usually associated with the idea that all organisms (as distinguished from inorganic substances) have souls: the three ideas--life, soul, and consciousness--are then taken to be coextensive. another modification of this view holds that, though these fundamental phenomena of organic life are inseparably connected, yet consciousness is only a part of the activity of the soul, and of the vital activity. fechner, in particular, has endeavored to prove that the plant has a "soul," in the same sense as an animal is said to have one; and many credit the vegetal soul with a consciousness similar to that of the animal soul. in truth, the remarkable stimulated movements of the leaves of the sensitive plants (the mimosa, drosera, and dionæa), the automatic movements of other plants (the clover and wood-sorrel, and especially the hedysarum), the movements of the "sleeping plants" (particularly the _papilionacea_), etc., are strikingly similar to the movements of the lower animal forms: whoever ascribes consciousness to the latter cannot refuse it to such vegetal forms. v. _cellular theory of consciousness._--it is a vital property of every cell. the application of the cellular theory to every branch of biology involved its extension to psychology. just as we take the living cell to be the "elementary organism" in anatomy and physiology, and derive the whole system of the multicellular animal or plant from it, so, with equal right, we may consider the "cell-soul" to be the psychological unit, and the complex psychic activity of the higher organism to be the result of the combination of the psychic activity of the cells which compose it. i gave the outlines of this _cellular psychology_ in my _general morphology_ in , and entered more fully into the subject in my paper on "cell-souls and soul-cells." i was led to a deeper study of this "elementary psychology" by my protracted research into the unicellular forms of life. many of these tiny (generally microscopic) protists show similar expressions of sensation and will, and similar instincts and movements, to those of higher animals; that is especially true of the very sensitive and lively infusoria. in the relation of these sensitive cell-organisms to their environment, and in many other of their vital expressions (for instance, in the wonderful architecture of the rhizopods, the thalamophoræ, and the infusoria), we seemed to have clear indications of conscious psychic action. if, then, we accept the biological theory of consciousness (no. iv.), and credit every psychic function with a share of that faculty, we shall be compelled to ascribe it to each independent protist cell. in that case its material basis would be either the entire protoplasm of the cell, or its nucleus, or a portion of it. in the "psychade theory" of fritz schultze the elementary consciousness of the _psychade_ would have the same relation to the individual cells as personal consciousness has to the multicellular organism of the personality in the higher animals and man. it is impossible definitively to disprove this theory, which i held at one time. still, i now feel compelled to agree with max verworn, in his belief that none of the protists have a developed self-consciousness, but that their sensations and movements are of an unconscious character. vi. _atomistic theory of consciousness._--it is an elementary property of all atoms. this atomistic hypothesis goes furthest of all the different views as to the extension of consciousness. it certainly escapes the difficulty which so many philosophers and biologists experience in solving the problem of the first origin of consciousness. it is a phenomenon of so peculiar a character that a derivation of it from other psychic functions seems extremely hazardous. it seemed, therefore, the easiest way out of the difficulty to conceive it as an inherent property of all matter, like gravitation or chemical affinity. on that hypothesis there would be as many forms of this original consciousness as there are chemical elements; each atom of hydrogen would have its hydrogenic consciousness, each atom of carbon its carbonic consciousness, and so forth. there are philosophers, even, who ascribe consciousness to the four elements of empedocles, the union of which, by "love and hate," produces the totality of things. personally, i have never subscribed to this hypothesis of atomic consciousness. i emphasize the point because emil du bois-reymond has attributed it to me. in the controversy i had with him ( ) he violently attacked my "pernicious and false philosophy," and contended that i had, in my paper on "the perigenesis of the plastidule," "laid it down as a metaphysical axiom that every atom has its individual consciousness." on the contrary, i explicitly stated that i conceive the elementary psychic qualities of sensation and will, which may be attributed to atoms, to be _unconscious_--just as unconscious as the elementary memory which i, in company with that distinguished physiologist, ewald hering, consider to be "a common function of all organized matter"--or, more correctly, "living substance." du bois-reymond curiously confuses "soul" and "consciousness"; whether from oversight or not i cannot say. since he considers consciousness to be a transcendental phenomenon (as we shall see presently), while denying that character to other psychic functions--the action of the senses, for example--i must infer that he recognizes the difference of the two ideas. other parts of his eloquent speeches contain quite the opposite view, for the famous orator not infrequently contradicts himself on important questions of principle. however, i repeat that, in my opinion, consciousness is only _part_ of the psychic phenomena which we find in man and the higher animals; the great majority of them are unconscious. however divergent are the different views as to the nature and origin of consciousness, they may, nevertheless, on a clear and logical examination, all be reduced to two fundamental theories--the transcendental (or dualistic) and the physiological (or monistic). i have myself always held the latter view, in the light of my evolutionary principles, and it is now shared by a great number of distinguished scientists, though it is by no means generally accepted. the transcendental theory is the older and much more common; it has recently come once more into prominence, principally through du bois-reymond, and it has acquired a great importance in modern discussions of cosmic problems through his famous "ignorabimus speech." on account of the extreme importance of this fundamental question we must touch briefly on its main features. in the celebrated discourse on "the limits of natural science," which e. du bois-reymond gave on august , , at the scientific congress at leipzig, he spoke of two "absolute limits" to our possible knowledge of nature which the human mind will never transcend in its most advanced science--_never_, as the oft-quoted termination of the address, "ignorabimus," emphatically pronounces. the first absolutely insoluble "world-enigma" is the "connection of matter and force," and the distinctive character of these fundamental natural phenomena; we shall go more fully into this "problem of substance" in the twelfth chapter. the second insuperable difficulty of philosophy is given as the problem of consciousness--the question how our mental activity is to be explained by material conditions, especially movements, how "substance [the substance which underlies matter and force] comes, under certain conditions, to feel, to desire, and to think." for brevity, and in order to give a characteristic name to the leipzig discourse, i have called it the "ignorabimus speech"; this is the more permissible, as e. du bois-reymond himself, with a just pride, eight years afterwards, speaking of the extraordinary consequences of his discourse, said: "criticism sounded every possible note, from friendly praise to the severest censure, and the word 'ignorabimus,' which was the culmination of my inquiry, was at once transformed into a kind of scientific shibboleth." it is quite true that loud praise and approbation resounded in the halls of the dualistic and spiritualistic philosophy, and especially in the camp of the "church militant"; even the spiritists and the host of believers, who thought the immortality of their precious souls was saved by the "ignorabimus," joined in the chorus. the "severest censure" came at first only from a few scientists and philosophers--from the few who had sufficient scientific knowledge and moral courage to oppose the dogmatism of the all-powerful secretary and dictator of the berlin academy of science. towards the end, however, the author of the "ignorabimus speech" briefly alluded to the question whether these two great "world-enigmas," the general problem of substance and the special problem of consciousness, are not two aspects of one and the same problem. "this idea," he said, "is certainly the simplest, and preferable to the one which makes the world doubly incomprehensible. such, however, is the nature of things that even here we can obtain no clear knowledge, and it is useless to speak further of the question." the latter sentiment i have always stoutly contested, and have endeavored to prove that the two great questions are not two distinct problems. "the neurological problem of consciousness is but a particular aspect of the all-pervading cosmological problem of substance." the peculiar phenomenon of consciousness is not, as du bois-reymond and the dualistic school would have us believe, a completely "transcendental" problem; it is, as i showed thirty-three years ago, a _physiological_ problem, and, as such, must be reduced to the phenomena of physics and chemistry. i subsequently gave it the more definite title of a _neurological_ problem, as i share the view that true consciousness (thought and reason) is only present in those higher animals which have a centralized nervous system and organs of sense of a certain degree of development. those conditions are certainly found in the higher vertebrates, especially in the placental mammals, the class from which man has sprung. the consciousness of the highest apes, dogs, elephants, etc., differs from that of man in degree only, not in kind, and the graduated interval between the consciousness of these "rational" placentals and that of the lowest races of men (the veddahs, etc.) is less than the corresponding interval between these uncivilized races and the highest specimens of thoughtful humanity (spinoza, goethe, lamarck, darwin, etc.). consciousness is but a part of the higher activity of the soul, and as such it is dependent on the normal structure of the corresponding psychic organ, the brain. physiological observation and experiment determined twenty years ago that the particular portion of the mammal-brain which we call the _seat_ (preferably the _organ_) of consciousness is a part of the cerebrum, an area in the late-developed gray bed, or cortex, which is evolved out of the convex dorsal portion of the primary cerebral vesicle, the "fore-brain." now, the morphological proof of this physiological thesis has been successfully given by the remarkable progress of the microscopic anatomy of the brain, which we owe to the perfect methods of research of modern science (kölliker, flechsig, golgi, edinger, weigert, and others). the most important development is the discovery of the _organs of thought_ by paul flechsig, of leipzig; he proved that in the gray bed of the brain are found the four seats of the central sense-organs, or four "inner spheres of sensation"--the sphere of touch in the vertical lobe, the sphere of smell in the frontal lobe, the sphere of sight in the occipital lobe, and the sphere of hearing in the temporal lobe. between these four "sense-centres" lie the four great "thought-centres," or centres of association, the _real organs of mental life_; they are those highest instruments of psychic activity that produce thought and consciousness. in front we have the frontal brain or centre of association; behind, on top there is the vertical brain, or parietal centre of association, and underneath the principal brain, or "the great occipito-temporal centre of association" (the most important of all); lower down, and internally, the insular brain or the insula of reil, the insular centre of association. these four "thought-centres," distinguished from the intermediate "sense-centres" by a peculiar and elaborate nerve-structure, are the true and sole organs of thought and consciousness. flechsig has recently pointed out that, in the case of man, very specific structures are found in one part of them; these structures are wanting in the other mammals, and they, therefore, afford an explanation of the superiority of man's mental powers. the momentous announcement of modern physiology, that the cerebrum is the organ of consciousness and mental action in man and the higher mammals, is illustrated and confirmed by the pathological study of its diseases. when parts of the cortex are destroyed by disease their respective functions are affected, and thus we are enabled, to some extent, to localize the activities of the brain; when certain parts of the area are diseased, that portion of thought and consciousness disappears which depends on those particular sections. pathological experiment yields the same result; the decay of some known area (for instance, the centre of speech) extinguishes its function (speech). in fact, there is proof enough in the most familiar phenomena of consciousness of their complete dependence on chemical changes in the substance of the brain. many beverages (such as coffee and tea) stimulate our powers of thought; others (such as wine and beer) intensify feeling; musk and camphor reanimate the fainting consciousness; ether and chloroform deaden it, and so forth. how would that be possible if consciousness were an immaterial entity, independent of these anatomical organs? and what becomes of the consciousness of the "immortal soul" when it no longer has the use of these organs? these and other familiar facts prove that man's consciousness--and that of the nearest mammals--is _changeable_, and that its activity is always open to modification from inner (alimentation, circulation, etc.) and outer causes (lesion of the brain, stimulation, etc.). very instructive, too, are the facts of double and intermittent consciousness, which remind us of "alternate generations of presentations." the same individual has an entirely different consciousness on different days, with a change of circumstances; he does not know to-day what he did yesterday: yesterday he could say, "i am i"; to-day he must say, "i am another being." such intermittence of consciousness may last not only days, but months, and even years; the change may even become permanent. as everybody knows, the new-born infant has no consciousness. preyer has shown that it is only developed after the child has begun to speak; for a long time it speaks of itself in the third person. in the important moment when it first pronounces the word "i," when the feeling of self becomes clear, we have the beginning of self-consciousness, and of the antithesis to the non-ego. the rapid and solid progress in knowledge which the child makes in its first ten years, under the care of parents and teachers, and the slower progress of the second decade, until it reaches complete maturity of mind, are intimately connected with a great advancement in the growth and development of consciousness and of its organ, the brain. but even when the pupil has got his "certificate of maturity" his consciousness is still far from mature; it is then that his "world-consciousness" first begins to develop, in his manifold relations with the outer world. then, in the third decade, we have the full maturity of rational thought and consciousness, which, in cases of normal development, yield their ripe fruits during the next three decades. the slow, gradual degeneration of the higher mental powers, which characterizes senility, usually sets in at the commencement of the seventh decade--sometimes earlier, sometimes later. memory, receptiveness, and interest in particular objects gradually decay; though productivity, mature consciousness, and philosophic interest in general truths often remain for many years longer. the individual development of consciousness in earlier youth proves the universal validity of the _biogenetic law_; and, indeed, it is still recognizable in many ways during the later years. in any case, the ontogenesis of consciousness makes it perfectly clear that it is not an "immaterial entity," but a physiological function of the brain, and that it is, consequently, no exception to the general law of substance. from the fact that consciousness, like all other psychic functions, is dependent on the normal development of certain organs, and that it gradually unfolds in the child in proportion to the development of those organs, we may already conclude that it has arisen in the animal kingdom by a gradual historical development. still, however certain we are of the fact of this natural evolution of consciousness, we are, unfortunately, not yet in a position to enter more deeply into the question and construct special hypotheses in elucidation of it. palæontology, it is true, gives us a few facts which are not without significance. for instance, the quantitative and qualitative development of the brain of the placental mammals during the tertiary period is very remarkable. the cavity of many of the fossil skulls of the period has been carefully examined, and has given us a good deal of reliable information as to the size, and, to some extent, as to the structure, of the brain they enclosed. we find, within the limits of one and the same group (the ungulates, the rodents, or the primates), a marked advance in the later miocene and pliocene specimens as compared with the earlier eocene and oligocene representatives of the same stem; in the former the brain (in proportion to the size of the organism) is six to eight times as large as in the latter. moreover, that highest stage of consciousness, which is reached by man alone, has been evolved step by step--even by the very progress of civilization--from a lower condition, as we find illustrated to-day in the case of uncivilized races. that is easily proved by a comparison of their languages, which is closely connected with the comparison of their ideas. the higher the conceptual faculty advances in thoughtful civilized man, the more qualified he is to detect common features amid a multitude of details, and embody them in general concepts, and so much the clearer and deeper does his consciousness become. chapter xi the immortality of the soul the citadel of superstition--athanatism and thanatism--individual character of death--immortality of the unicellular organisms (protists)--cosmic and personal immortality--primary thanatism (of uncivilized peoples)--secondary thanatism (of ancient and recent philosophers)--athanatism and religion--origin of the belief in immortality--christian athanatism--eternal life--the day of judgment--metaphysical athanatism--substance of the soul--ether souls and air souls; fluid souls and solid souls--immortality of the animal soul--arguments for and against athanatism--athanatist illusions when we turn from the genetic study of the soul to the great question of its immortality, we come to that highest point of superstition which is regarded as the impregnable citadel of all mystical and dualistic notions. for in this crucial question, more than in any other problem, philosophic thought is complicated by the selfish interest of the human personality, who is determined to have a guarantee of his existence beyond the grave at any price. this "higher necessity of feeling" is so powerful that it sweeps aside all the logical arguments of critical reason. consciously or unconsciously, most men are influenced in all their general views, and, therefore, in their theory of life, by the dogma of personal immortality; and to this theoretical error must be added practical consequences of the most far-reaching character. it is our task, therefore, to submit every aspect of this important dogma to a critical examination, and to prove its untenability in the light of the empirical data of modern biology. in order to have a short and convenient expression for the two opposed opinions on the question, we shall call the belief in man's personal immortality "athanatism" (from _athanes_ or _athanatos_ == immortal). on the other hand, we give the name of "thanatism" (from _thanatos_ == death) to the opinion which holds that at a man's death not only all the other physiological functions are arrested, but his "soul" also disappears--that is, that sum of cerebral functions which psychic dualism regards as a peculiar entity, independent of the other vital processes in the living body. in approaching this physiological problem of death we must point out the _individual_ character of this organic phenomenon. by death we understand simply the definitive cessation of the vital activity of the _individual_ organism, no matter to which category or stage of individuality the organism in question belongs. man is dead when his own personality ceases to exist, whether he has left offspring that they may continue to propagate for many generations or not. in a certain sense we often say that the minds of great men (in a dynasty of eminent rulers, for instance, or a family of talented artists) live for many generations; and in the same way we speak of the "soul" of a noble woman living in her children and children's children. but in these cases we are dealing with intricate phenomena of _heredity_, in which a microscopic cell (the sperm-cell of the father or the egg-cell of the mother) transmits certain features to offspring. the particular personalities who produce those sexual cells in thousands are mortal beings, and at their death their personal psychic activity is extinguished like every other physiological function. a number of eminent zoologists--weismann being particularly prominent--have recently defended the opinion that only the lowest unicellular organisms, the protists, are immortal, in contradistinction to the multicellular plants and animals, whose bodies are formed of tissues. this curious theory is especially based on the fact that most of the protists multiply without sexual means, by division or the formation of spores. in such processes the whole body of the unicellular organism breaks up into two or more equal parts (daughter cells), and each of these portions completes itself by further growth until it has the size and form of the mother cell. however, by the very process of division the _individuality_ of the unicellular creature has been destroyed; both its physiological and its morphological unity have gone. the view of weismann is logically inconsistent with the very notion of _individual_--an "indivisible" entity; for it implies a unity which cannot be divided without destroying its nature. in this sense the unicellular protophyta and protozoa are throughout life _physiological individuals_, just as much as the multicellular tissue-plants and animals. a sexual propagation by simple division is found in many of the multicellular species (for instance, in many cnidaria, corals, medusæ, etc.); the mother animal, the division of which gives birth to the two daughter animals, ceases to exist with the segmentation. "the protozoa," says weismann, "have no individuals and no generations in the metazoic sense." i must entirely dissent from his thesis. as i was the first to introduce the title of _metazoa_, and oppose these multicellular, tissue-forming animals to the unicellular _protozoa_ (infusoria, rhizopods, etc.), and as i was the first to point out the essential difference in the development of the two (the former from germinal layers, and the latter not), i must protest that i consider the _protozoa_ to be just as mortal in the physiological (and psychological) sense as the _metazoa_; neither body nor soul is immortal in either group. the other erroneous consequences of weismann's notion have been refuted by moebius ( ), who justly remarks that "every event in the world is periodic," and that "there is no source from which immortal organic individuals might have sprung." when we take the idea of immortality in the widest sense, and extend it to the totality of the knowable universe, it has a scientific significance; it is then not merely acceptable, but self-evident, to the monistic philosopher. in that sense the thesis of the indestructibility and eternal duration of all that exists is equivalent to our supreme law of nature, the _law of substance_ (see chap. xii). as we intend to discuss this immortality of the cosmos fully later on, in establishing the theory of the persistence of matter and force, we shall not dilate on it at present. we pass on immediately to the criticism of that belief in immortality which is the only sense usually attached to the word, the immortality of the individual soul. we shall first inquire into the extent and the origin of this mystic and dualistic notion, and point out, in particular, the wide acceptance of the contradictory thesis, our monistic, empirically established _thanatism_. i must distinguish two essentially different forms of thanatism--primary and secondary; primary thanatism is the original absence of the dogma of immortality (in the primitive uncivilized races); secondary thanatism is the later outcome of a rational knowledge of nature in the civilized intelligence. we still find it asserted in philosophic, and especially in theological, works that belief in the personal immortality of the human soul was originally shared by all men--or, at least, by all "rational" men. that is not the case. this dogma is not an original idea of the human mind, nor has it ever found universal acceptance. it has been absolutely proved by modern comparative ethnology that many uncivilized races of the earliest and most primitive stage had no notion either of immortality or of god. that is true, for instance, of the veddahs of ceylon, those primitive pygmies whom, on the authority of the able studies of the sarasins, we consider to be a relic of the earliest inhabitants of india;[ ] it is also the case in several of the earliest groups of the nearly related dravidas, the indian seelongs, and some native australian races. similarly, several of the primitive branches of the american race, in the interior of brazil, on the upper amazon, etc., have no knowledge either of gods or immortality. this _primary_ absence of belief in immortality and deity is an extremely important fact; it is, obviously, easy to distinguish from the _secondary_ absence of such belief, which has come about in the highest civilized races as the result of laborious critico-philosophical study. differently from the primary thanatism which originally characterized primitive man, and has always been widely spread, the _secondary_ absence of belief in immortality is only found at a late stage of history: it is the ripe fruit of profound reflection on life and death, the outcome of bold and independent philosophical speculation. we first meet it in some of the ionic philosophers of the sixth century b.c., then in the founders of the old materialistic philosophy, democritus and empedocles, and also in simonides and epicurus, seneca and plinius, and in an elaborate form in lucretius carus. with the spread of christianity at the decay of classical antiquity, athanatism, one of its chief articles of faith, dominated the world, and so, amid other forms of superstition, the myth of personal immortality came to be invested with a high importance. naturally, through the long night of the dark ages it was rarely that a brave free-thinker ventured to express an opinion to the contrary: the examples of galileo, giordano bruno, and other independent philosophers, effectually destroyed all freedom of utterance. heresy only became possible when the reformation and the renaissance had broken the power of the papacy. the history of modern philosophy tells of the manifold methods by which the matured mind of man sought to rid itself of the superstition of immortality. still, the intimate connection of the belief with the christian dogma invested it with such power, even in the more emancipated sphere of protestantism, that the majority of convinced free-thinkers kept their sentiments to themselves. from time to time some distinguished scholar ventured to make a frank declaration of his belief in the impossibility of the continued life of the soul after death. this was done in france in the second half of the eighteenth century by voltaire, danton, mirabeau, and others, and by the leaders of the materialistic school of those days, holbach, lamettrie, etc. the same opinion was defended by the able friend of the materialists, the greatest of the hohenzollerns, the monistic "philosopher of sans-souci." what would frederick the great, the "crowned thanatist and atheist," say, could he compare his monistic views with those of his successor of to-day? among thoughtful physicians the conviction that the existence of the soul came to an end at death has been common for centuries: generally, however, they refrained from giving it expression. moreover, the empirical science of the brain remained so imperfect during the last century that the soul could continue to be regarded as its mysterious inhabitant. it was the gigantic progress of biology in the present century, and especially in the latter half of the century, that finally destroyed the myth. the establishment of the theory of descent and the cellular theory, the astounding discoveries of ontogeny and experimental physiology--above all, the marvellous progress of the microscopic anatomy of the brain, gradually deprived athanatism of every basis; now, indeed, it is rarely that an informed and honorable biologist is found to defend the immortality of the soul. all the monistic philosophers of the century (strauss, feuerbach, büchner, spencer, etc.) are thanatists. the dogma of personal immortality owes its great popularity and its high importance to its intimate connection with the teaching of christianity. this circumstance gave rise to the erroneous and still prevalent belief that the myth is a fundamental element of all the higher religions. that is by no means the case. the higher oriental religions include no belief whatever in the immortality of the soul; it is not found in buddhism, the religion that dominates thirty per cent. of the entire human race; it is not found in the ancient popular religion of the chinese, nor in the reformed religion of confucius which succeeded it; and, what is still more significant, it is not found in the earlier and purer religion of the jews. neither in the "five mosaic books," nor in any of the writings of the old testament which were written before the babylonian exile, is there any trace of the notion of individual persistence after death. the mystic notion that the human soul will live forever after death has had a polyphyletic origin. it was unknown to the earliest speaking man (the hypothetical _homo primigenius_ of asia), to his predecessors, of course, the _pithecanthropus_ and _prothylobates_, and to the least developed of his modern successors, the veddahs of ceylon, the seelongs of india, and other distant races. with the development of reason and deeper reflection on life and death, sleep and dreams, mystic ideas of a dualistic composition of our nature were evolved--independently of each other--in a number of the earlier races. very different influences were at work in these polyphyletic creations--worship of ancestors, love of relatives, love of life and desire of its prolongation, hope of better conditions of life beyond the grave, hope of the reward of good and punishment of evil deeds, and so forth. comparative psychology has recently brought to our knowledge a great variety of myths and legends of that character; they are, for the most part, closely associated with the oldest forms of theistic and religious belief. in most of the modern religions athanatism is intimately connected with theism; the majority of believers transfer their materialistic idea of a "personal god" to their "immortal soul." that is particularly true of the dominant religion of modern civilized states, christianity. as everybody knows, the dogma of the immortality of the soul has long since assumed in the christian religion that rigid form which it has in the articles of faith: "i believe in the resurrection of the body and in an eternal life." man will arise on "the last day," as christ is alleged to have done on easter morn, and receive a reward according to the tenor of his earthly life. this typically christian idea is thoroughly materialistic and anthropomorphic; it is very little superior to the corresponding crude legends of uncivilized peoples. the impossibility of "the resurrection of the body" is clear to every man who has some knowledge of anatomy and physiology. the resurrection of christ, which is celebrated every easter by millions of christians, is as purely mythical as "the awakening of the dead," which he is alleged to have taught. these mystic articles of faith are just as untenable in the light of pure reason as the cognate hypothesis of "eternal life." the fantastic notions which the christian church disseminates as to the eternal life of the immortal soul after the dissolution of the body are just as materialistic as the dogma of "the resurrection of the body." in his interesting work on _religion in the light of the darwinian theory_, savage justly remarks: "it is one of the standing charges of the church against science that it is materialistic. i must say, in passing, that the whole ecclesiastical doctrine of a future life has always been, and still is, materialism of the purest type. it teaches that the material body shall rise, and dwell in a material heaven." to prove this one has only to read impartially some of the sermons and ornate discourses in which the glory of the future life is extolled as the highest good of the christian, and belief in it is laid down to be the foundation of morality. according to them, all the joys of the most advanced modern civilization await the pious believer in paradise, while the "all-loving father" reserves his eternal fires for the godless materialist. in opposition to the materialist athanatism, which is dominant in the christian and mohammedan churches, we have, apparently, a purer and higher form of faith in the _metaphysical athanatism_, as taught by most of our dualist and spiritualist philosophers. plato must be considered its chief creator: in the fourth century before christ he taught that complete dualism of body and soul which afterwards became one of the most important, theoretically, and one of the most influential, practically, of the christian articles of faith. the body is mortal, material, physical; the soul is immortal, immaterial, metaphysical. they are only temporarily associated, for the course of the individual life. as plato postulated an eternal life before as well as after this temporary association, he must be classed as an adherent of "metempsychosis," or transmigration of souls; the soul existed as such, or as an "eternal idea," before it entered into a human body. when it quits one body it seeks such other as is most suited to its character for its habitation. the souls of bloody tyrants pass into the bodies of wolves and vultures, those of virtuous toilers migrate into the bodies of bees and ants, and so forth. the childish naïvety of this platonic morality is obvious; on closer examination his views are found to be absolutely incompatible with the scientific truth which we owe to modern anatomy, physiology, histology, and ontogeny; we mention them only because, in spite of their absurdity, they have had a profound influence on thought and culture. on the one hand, the mysticism of the neo-platonists, which penetrated into christianity, attaches itself to the psychology of plato; on the other hand, it became subsequently one of the chief supports of spiritualistic and idealistic philosophy. the platonic "idea" gave way in time to the notion of psychic "substance"; this is just as incomprehensible and metaphysical, though it often assumed a physical appearance. the conception of the soul as a "substance" is far from clear in many psychologists; sometimes it is regarded as an "immaterial" entity of a peculiar character in an abstract and idealistic sense, sometimes in a concrete and realistic sense, and sometimes as a confused _tertium quid_ between the two. if we adhere to the monistic idea of substance, which we develop in chap. xii., and which takes it to be the simplest element of our whole world-system, we find _energy_ and _matter_ inseparably associated in it. we must, therefore, distinguish in the "substance of the soul" the characteristic psychic _energy_ which is all we perceive (sensation, presentation, volition, etc.), and the psychic _matter_, which is the inseparable basis of its activity--that is, the living protoplasm. thus, in the higher animals the "matter" of the soul is a part of the nervous system; in the lower nerveless animals and plants it is a part of their multicellular protoplasmic body; and in the unicellular protists it is a part of their protoplasmic cell-body. in this way we are brought once more to the psychic organs, and to an appreciation of the fact that these material organs are indispensable for the action of the soul; but the soul itself is _actual_--it is the sum-total of their physiological functions. however, the idea of a specific "soul-substance" found in the dualistic philosophers who admit such a thing is very different from this. they conceive the immortal soul to be material, yet invisible, and essentially different from the visible body which it inhabits. thus _invisibility_ comes to be regarded as a most important attribute of the soul. some, in fact, compare the soul with ether, and regard it, like ether, as an extremely subtle, light, and highly elastic material, an imponderable agency, that fills the intervals between the ponderable particles of the living organism, others compare the soul with the wind, and so give it a gaseous nature; and it is this simile which first found favor with primitive peoples, and led in time to the familiar dualistic conception. when a man died, the body remained as a lifeless corpse, but the immortal soul "flew out of it with the last breath." the comparison of the human soul with physical ether as a qualitatively similar idea has assumed a more concrete shape in recent times through the great progress of optics and electricity (especially in the last decade); for these sciences have taught us a good deal about the energy of ether, and enabled us to formulate certain conclusions as to the material character of this all-pervading agency. as i intend to describe these important discoveries later on (in chap. xii.), i shall do no more at present than briefly point out that they render the notion of an "etheric soul" absolutely untenable. such an etheric soul--that is a psychic substance--which is similar to physical ether, and which, like ether, passes between the ponderable elements of the living protoplasm or the molecules of the brain, cannot possibly account for the individual life of the soul. neither the mystic notions of that kind which were warmly discussed about the middle of the century, nor the attempts of modern "neovitalists" to put their mystical "vital force" on a line with physical ether, call for refutation any longer. much more widespread, and still much respected, is the view which ascribes a gaseous nature to the substance of the soul. the comparison of human breath with the wind is a very old one; they were originally considered to be identical, and were both given the same name. the _anemos_ and _psyche_ of the greeks, and the _anima_ and _spiritus_ of the romans, were originally all names for "a breath of wind"; they were transferred from this to the breath of man. after a time this "living breath" was identified with the "vital force," and finally it came to be regarded as the soul itself, or, in a narrower sense, as its highest manifestation, the "spirit." from that the imagination went on to derive the mystic notion of individual "spirits"; these, also, are still usually conceived as "aëriform beings"--though they are credited with the physiological functions of an organism, and they have been photographed in certain well-known spiritist circles. experimental physics has succeeded, during the last decade of the century, in reducing all gaseous bodies to a liquid--most of them, also, to a solid--condition. nothing more is needed than special apparatus, which exerts a violent pressure on the gases at a very low temperature. by this process not only the atmospheric elements, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, but even compound gases (such as carbonic-acid gas) and gaseous aggregates (like the atmosphere) have been changed from gaseous to liquid form. in this way the "invisible" substances have become "visible" to all, and in a certain sense "tangible." with this transformation the mystic nimbus which formerly veiled the character of the gas in popular estimation--as an invisible body that wrought visible effects--has entirely disappeared. if, then, the substance of the soul were really gaseous, it should be possible to liquefy it by the application of a high pressure at a low temperature. we could then catch the soul as it is "breathed out" at the moment of death, condense it, and exhibit it in a bottle as "immortal fluid" (_fluidum animae immortale_). by a further lowering of temperature and increase of pressure it might be possible to solidify it--to produce "soul-snow." the experiment has not yet succeeded. if athanatism were true, if, indeed, the human soul were to live for all eternity, we should have to grant the same privilege to the souls of the higher animals, at least to those of the nearest related mammals (apes, dogs, etc.). for man is not distinguished from them by a special _kind_ of soul, or by any peculiar and exclusive psychic function, but only by a higher _degree_ of psychic activity, a superior stage of development. in particular, consciousness--the function of the association of ideas, thought, and reason--has reached a higher level in many men (by no means in all) than in most of the animals. yet this difference is far from being so great as is popularly supposed; and it is much slighter in every respect than the corresponding difference between the higher and the lower animal souls, or even the difference between the highest and the lowest stages of the human soul itself. if we ascribe "personal immortality" to man, we are bound to grant it also to the higher animals. it is, therefore, quite natural that we should find this belief in the immortality of the animal soul among many ancient and modern peoples; we even meet it sometimes to-day in many thoughtful men who postulate an "immortal life" for themselves, and have, at the same time, a thorough empirical knowledge of the psychic life of the animals. i once knew an old head-forester, who, being left a widower and without children at an early age, had lived alone for more than thirty years in a noble forest of east prussia. his only companions were one or two servants, with whom he exchanged merely a few necessary words, and a great pack of different kinds of dogs, with which he lived in perfect psychic communion. through many years of training this keen observer and friend of nature had penetrated deep into the individual souls of his dogs, and he was as convinced of their personal immortality as he was of his own. some of his most intelligent dogs were, in his impartial and objective estimation, at a higher stage of psychic development than his old, stupid maid and the rough, wrinkled manservant. any unprejudiced observer, who will study the conscious and intelligent psychic activity of a fine dog for a year, and follow attentively the physiological processes of its thought, judgment, and reason, will have to admit that it has just as valid a claim to immortality as man himself. the proofs of the immortality of the soul, which have been adduced for the last two thousand years, and are, indeed, still credited with some validity, have their origin, for the most part, not in an effort to discover the truth, but in an alleged "necessity of emotion"--that is, in imagination and poetic conceit. as kant puts it, the immortality of the soul is not an object of pure reason, but a "postulate of practical reason." but we must set "practical reason" entirely aside, together with all the "exigencies of emotion, or of moral education, etc.," when we enter upon an honest and impartial pursuit of truth; for we shall only attain it by the work of pure reason, starting from empirical data and capable of logical analysis. we have to say the same of athanatism as of theism; both are creations of poetic mysticism and of transcendental "faith," not of rational science. when we come to analyze all the different proofs that have been urged for the immortality of the soul, we find that not a single one of them is of a scientific character; not a single one is consistent with the truths we have learned in the last few decades from physiological psychology and the theory of descent. the _theological_ proof--that a personal creator has breathed an immortal soul (generally regarded as a portion of the divine soul) into man--is a pure myth. the _cosmological_ proof--that the "moral order of the world" demands the eternal duration of the human soul--is a baseless dogma. the _teleological_ proof--that the "higher destiny" of man involves the perfecting of his defective, earthly soul beyond the grave--rests on a false anthropism. the _moral_ proof--that the defects and the unsatisfied desires of earthly existence must be fulfilled by "compensative justice" on the other side of eternity--is nothing more than a pious wish. the _ethnological_ proof--that the belief in immortality, like the belief in god, is an innate truth, common to all humanity--is an error in fact. the _ontological_ proof--that the soul, being a "simple, immaterial, and indivisible entity," cannot be involved in the corruption of death--is based on an entirely erroneous view of the psychic phenomena; it is a spiritualistic fallacy. all these and similar "proofs of athanatism" are in a parlous condition; they are definitely annulled by the scientific criticism of the last few decades. the extreme importance of the subject leads us to oppose to these untenable "proofs of immortality" a brief exposition of the sound scientific arguments against it. the _physiological_ argument shows that the human soul is not an independent, immaterial substance, but, like the soul of all the higher animals, merely a collective title for the sum-total of man's cerebral functions; and these are just as much determined by physical and chemical processes as any of the other vital functions, and just as amenable to the law of substance. the _histological_ argument is based on the extremely complicated microscopic structure of the brain; it shows us the true "elementary organs of the soul" in the ganglionic cells. the _experimental_ argument proves that the various functions of the soul are bound up with certain special parts of the brain, and cannot be exercised unless these are in a normal condition; if the areas are destroyed, their function is extinguished; and this is especially applicable to the "organs of thought," the four central instruments of mental activity. the _pathological_ argument is the complement of the physiological; when certain parts of the brain (the centres of speech, sight, hearing, etc.) are destroyed by sickness, their activity (speech, vision, hearing, etc.) disappears; in this way nature herself makes the decisive physiological experiment. the _ontogenetic_ argument puts before us the facts of the development of the soul in the individual; we see how the child-soul gradually unfolds its various powers; the youth presents them in full bloom, the mature man shows their ripe fruit; in old age we see the gradual decay of the psychic powers, corresponding to the senile degeneration of the brain. the _phylogenetic_ argument derives its strength from palæontology, and the comparative anatomy and physiology of the brain; co-operating with and completing each other, these sciences prove to the hilt that the human brain (and, consequently, its function--the soul) has been evolved step by step from that of the mammal, and, still further back, from that of the lower vertebrate. these inquiries, which might be supplemented by many other results of modern science, prove the old dogma of the immortality of the soul to be absolutely untenable; in the twentieth century it will not be regarded as a subject of serious scientific research, but will be left wholly to transcendental "faith." the "critique of pure reason" shows this treasured faith to be a mere _superstition_, like the belief in a personal god which generally accompanies it. yet even to-day millions of "believers"--not only of the lower, uneducated masses, but even of the most cultured classes--look on this superstition as their dearest possession and their most "priceless treasure." it is, therefore, necessary to enter more deeply into the subject, and--assuming it to be true--to make a critical inquiry into its practical value. it soon becomes apparent to the impartial critic that this value rests, for the most part, on fancy, on the want of clear judgment and consecutive thought. it is my firm and honest conviction that a definitive abandonment of these "athanatist illusions" would involve no painful loss, but an inestimable positive gain for humanity. man's "emotional craving" clings to the belief on immortality for two main reasons: firstly, in the hope of better conditions of life beyond the grave; and, secondly, in the hope of seeing once more the dear and loved ones whom death has torn from us. as for the first hope, it corresponds to a natural feeling of the justice of compensation, which is quite correct subjectively, but has no objective validity whatever. we make our claim for an indemnity for the unnumbered defects and sorrows of our earthly existence, without the slightest real prospect or guarantee of receiving it. we long for an eternal life in which we shall meet no sadness and no pain, but an unbounded peace and joy. the pictures that most men form of this blissful existence are extremely curious; the immaterial soul is placed in the midst of grossly material pleasures. the imagination of each believer paints the enduring splendor according to his personal taste. the american indian, whose athanatism schiller has so well depicted, trusts to find in his paradise the finest hunting-grounds with innumerable hordes of buffaloes and bears; the eskimo looks forward to sun-tipped icebergs with an inexhaustible supply of bears, seals, and other polar animals; the effeminate cingalese frames his paradise on the wonderful island-paradise of ceylon with its noble gardens and forests--adding that there will be unlimited supplies of rice and curry, of cocoanuts and other fruit, always at hand; the mohammedan arab believes it will be a place of shady gardens of flowers, watered by cool springs, and filled with lovely maidens; the catholic fisherman of sicily looks forward to a daily superabundance of the most valuable fishes and the finest macaroni, and eternal absolution for all his sins, which he can go on committing in his eternal home; the evangelical of north europe longs for an immense gothic cathedral, in which he can chant the praises of the lord of hosts for all eternity. in a word, each believer really expects his eternal life to be a direct continuation of his individual life on earth, only in a "much improved and enlarged edition." we must lay special stress on the thoroughly materialistic character of _christian_ athanatism, which is closely connected with the absurd dogma of the "resurrection of the body." as thousands of paintings of famous masters inform us, the bodies that have risen again, with the souls that have been born again, walk about in heaven just as they did in this vale of tears; they see god with their eyes, they hear his voice with their ears, they sing hymns to his praise with their larynx, and so forth. in fine, the modern inhabitants of the christian paradise have the same dual character of body and soul, the same organs of an earthly body, as our ancient ancestors had in odin's hall in walhalla, as the "immortal" turks and arabs have in mohammed's lovely gardens, as the old greek demi-gods and heroes had in the enjoyment of nectar and ambrosia at the table of zeus. but, however gloriously we may depict this eternal life in paradise, it remains _endless_ in duration. do we realize what "eternity" means?--the uninterrupted continuance of our individual life forever! the profound legend of the "wandering jew," the fruitless search for rest of the unhappy ahasuerus, should teach us to appreciate such an "eternal life" at its true value. the best we can desire after a courageous life, spent in doing good according to our light, is the eternal peace of the grave. "lord, give them an eternal rest." any impartial scholar who is acquainted with geological calculations of time, and has reflected on the long series of millions of years the organic history of the earth has occupied, must admit that the crude notion of an eternal life is not a _comfort_, but a fearful _menace_, to the best of men. only want of clear judgment and consecutive thought can dispute it. the best and most plausible ground for athanatism is found in the hope that immortality will reunite us to the beloved friends who have been prematurely taken from us by some grim mischance. but even this supposed good fortune proves to be an illusion on closer inquiry; and in any case it would be greatly marred by the prospect of meeting the less agreeable acquaintances and the enemies who have troubled our existence here below. even the closest family ties would involve many a difficulty. there are plenty of men who would gladly sacrifice all the glories of paradise if it meant the eternal companionship of their "better half" and their mother-in-law. it is more than questionable whether henry viii. would like the prospect of living eternally with his six wives; or augustus the strong of poland, who had a hundred mistresses and three hundred and fifty-two children. as he was on good terms with the vicar of christ, he must be assumed to be in paradise, in spite of his sins, and in spite of the fact that his mad military ventures cost the lives of more than a hundred thousand saxons. another insoluble difficulty faces the athanatist when he asks _in what stage of their individual development_ the disembodied souls will spend their eternal life. will the new-born infant develop its psychic powers in heaven under the same hard conditions of the "struggle for life" which educate man here on earth? will the talented youth who has fallen in the wholesale murder of war unfold his rich, unused mental powers in walhalla? will the feeble, childish old man, who has filled the world with the fame of his deeds in the ripeness of his age, live forever in mental decay? or will he return to an earlier stage of development? if the immortal souls in olympus are to live in a condition of rejuvenescence and perfectness, then both the stimulus to the formation of, and the interest in, personality disappear for them. not less impossible, in the light of pure reason, do we find the anthropistic myth of the "last judgment," and the separation of the souls of men into two great groups, of which one is destined for the eternal joys of paradise and the other for the eternal torments of hell--and that from a personal god who is called the "father of love"! and it is this "universal father" who has himself created the conditions of heredity and adaptation, in virtue of which the elect, on the one side, were _bound_ to pursue the path towards eternal bliss, and the luckless poor and miserable, on the other hand, were _driven_ into the paths of the damned? a critical comparison of the countless and manifold fantasies which belief in immortality has produced during the last few thousand years in the different races and religions yields a most remarkable picture. an intensely interesting presentation of it, based on most extensive original research, may be found in adalbert svoboda's distinguished works, _the illusion of the soul_ and _forms of faith_. however absurd and inconsistent with modern knowledge most of these myths seem to be, they still play an important part, and, as "postulates of practical reason," they exercise a powerful influence on the opinions of individuals and on the destiny of races. the idealist and spiritualist philosophy of the day will freely grant that these prevalent materialistic forms of belief in immortality are untenable; it will say that the refined idea of an immaterial soul, a platonic "idea" or a transcendental psychic substance, must be substituted for them. but modern realism can have nothing whatever to do with these incomprehensible notions; they satisfy neither the mind's feeling of causality nor the yearning of our emotions. if we take a comprehensive glance at all that modern anthropology, psychology, and cosmology teach with regard to athanatism, we are forced to this definite conclusion: "the belief in the immortality of the human soul is a dogma which is in hopeless contradiction with the most solid empirical truths of modern science." chapter xii the law of substance the fundamental chemical law of the constancy of matter--the fundamental physical law of the conservation of energy--combination of both laws in the law of substance--the kinetic, pyknotic, and dualistic ideas of substance--monism of matter--ponderable matter--atoms and elements--affinity of the elements--the soul of the atom (feeling and inclination)--existence and character of ether--ether and ponderable matter--force and energy--potential and actual force--unity of natural forces--supremacy of the law of substance the supreme and all-pervading law of nature, the true and only cosmological law, is, in my opinion, _the law of substance_; its discovery and establishment is the greatest intellectual triumph of the nineteenth century, in the sense that all other known laws of nature are subordinate to it. under the name of "law of substance" we embrace two supreme laws of different origin and age--the older is the chemical law of the "conservation of matter," and the younger is the physical law of the "conservation of energy."[ ] it will be self-evident to many readers, and it is acknowledged by most of the scientific men of the day, that these two great laws are essentially inseparable. this fundamental thesis, however, is still much contested in some quarters, and we must proceed to furnish the proof of it. but we must first devote a few words to each of the two laws. the law of the "_persistence_" or "_indestructibility of matter_," established by lavoisier in , may be formulated thus: the sum of matter, which fills infinite space, is unchangeable. a body has merely changed its form, when it seems to have disappeared. when coal burns, it is changed into carbonic-acid gas by combination with the oxygen of the atmosphere; when a piece of sugar melts in water, it merely passes from the solid to the fluid condition. in the same way, it is merely a question of change of form in the cases where a new body seems to be produced. a shower of rain is the moisture of the atmosphere cast down in the form of drops of water; when a piece of iron rusts, the surface layer of the metal has combined with water and with atmospheric oxygen, and formed a "rust," or oxyhydrate of iron. nowhere in nature do we find an example of the production, or "creation," of new matter; nowhere does a particle of existing matter pass entirely away. this empirical truth is now the unquestionable foundation of chemistry; it may be directly verified at any moment by means of the balance. to the great french chemist lavoisier belongs the high merit of first making this experiment with the balance. at the present day the scientist, who is occupied from one end of the year to the other with the study of natural phenomena, is so firmly convinced of the absolute "constancy" of matter that he is no longer able to imagine the contrary state of things. we may formulate the "_law of the persistence of force_" or "_conservation of energy_" thus: the sum of force, which is at work in infinite space and produces all phenomena, is unchangeable. when the locomotive rushes along the line, the potential energy of the steam is transformed into the kinetic or actual energy of the mechanical movement; when we hear its shrill whistle, as it speeds along, the sound-waves of the vibrating atmosphere are conveyed through the tympanum and the three bones of the ear into the inner labyrinth, and thence transferred by the auditory nerve to the acoustic ganglionic cells which form the centre of hearing in the temporal lobe of the gray bed of the brain. the whole marvellous panorama of life that spreads over the surface of our globe is, in the last analysis, transformed sunlight. it is well known how the remarkable progress of technical science has made it possible for us to convert the different physical forces from one form to another; heat may be changed into molar movement, or movement of mass; this in turn into light or sound, and then into electricity, and so forth. accurate measurement of the quantity of force which is used in this metamorphosis has shown that it is "constant" or unchanged. no particle of living energy is ever extinguished; no particle is ever created anew. friedrich mohr, of bonn, was very near to the discovery of this great fact in , but the discovery was actually made by the able swabian physician, robert mayer, of heilbronn, in . independently of mayer, however, the principle was reached almost at the same time by the famous physiologist, hermann helmholtz; five years afterwards he pointed out its general application to, and fertility in, every branch of physics. we ought to say to-day that it rules also in the entire province of physiology--that is, of "organic physics"; but on that point we meet a strenuous opposition from the vitalistic biologists and the dualist and spiritualist philosophers. for these the peculiar "spiritual forces" of human nature are a group of "free" forces, not subject to the law of energy; the idea is closely connected with the dogma of the "freedom of the will." we have, however, already seen (p. ) that the dogma is untenable. modern physics draws a distinction between "force" and "energy," but our general observations so far have not needed a reference to it. the conviction that these two great cosmic theorems, the chemical law of the persistence of matter and the physical law of the persistence of force, are fundamentally one, is of the utmost importance in our monistic system. the two theories are just as intimately united as their objects--matter and force or energy. indeed, this fundamental unity of the two laws is self-evident to many monistic scientists and philosophers, since they merely relate to two different aspects of one and the same object, the _cosmos_. but, however natural the thought may be, it is still very far from being generally accepted. it is stoutly contested by the entire dualistic philosophy, vitalistic biology, and parallelistic psychology; even, in fact, by a few (inconsistent) monists, who think they find a check to it in "consciousness," in the higher mental activity of man, or in other phenomena of our "free mental life." for my part, i am convinced of the profound importance of the unifying "law of substance," as an expression of the inseparable connection in reality of two laws which are only separated in conception. that they were not originally taken together and their unity recognized from the beginning is merely an accident of the date of their respective discoveries. the earlier and more accessible chemical law of the persistence of matter was detected by lavoisier in , and, after a general application of the balance, became the basis of exact chemistry. on the other hand, the more recondite law of the persistence of force was only discovered by mayer in , and only laid down as the basis of exact physics by helmholtz. the unity of the two laws--still much disputed--is expressed by many scientists who are convinced of it in the formula: "law of the persistence of matter and force." in order to have a briefer and more convenient expression for this fundamental thought, i proposed some time ago to call it the "law of substance" or the "fundamental cosmic law"; it might also be called the "universal law," or the "law of constancy," or the "axiom of the constancy of the universe." in the ultimate analysis it is found to be a necessary consequence of the principle of causality.[ ] the first thinker to introduce the purely monistic conception of substance into science and appreciate its profound importance was the great philosopher baruch spinoza; his chief work appeared shortly after his premature death in , just one hundred years before lavoisier gave empirical proof of the constancy of matter by means of the chemist's principal instrument, the balance. in his stately pantheistic system the notion of the _world_ (the universe, or the cosmos) is identical with the all-pervading notion of god; it is at one and the same time the purest and most rational _monism_ and the clearest and most abstract _monotheism_. this universal substance, this "divine nature of the world," shows us two different aspects of its being, or two fundamental attributes--matter (infinitely _extended_ substance) and spirit (the all-embracing energy of _thought_). all the changes which have since come over the idea of substance are reduced, on a logical analysis, to this supreme thought of spinoza's; with goethe i take it to be the loftiest, profoundest, and truest thought of all ages. every single object in the world which comes within the sphere of our cognizance, all individual forms of existence, are but special transitory forms--_accidents_ or _modes_--of substance. these modes are material things when we regard them under the attribute of _extension_ (or "occupation of space"), but forces or ideas when we consider them under the attribute of _thought_ (or "energy"). to this profound thought of spinoza our purified monism returns after a lapse of two hundred years; for us, too, matter (space-filling substance) and energy (moving force) are but two inseparable attributes of the one underlying substance. among the various modifications which the fundamental idea of substance has undergone in modern physics, in association with the prevalent atomism, we shall select only two of the most divergent theories for a brief discussion, the kinetic and the pyknotic. both theories agree that we have succeeded in reducing all the different forces of nature to one common original force; gravity and chemical action, electricity and magnetism, light and heat, etc., are only different manifestations, forms, or _dynamodes_, of a single primitive force (_prodynamis_). this fundamental force is generally conceived as a vibratory motion of the smallest particles of matter--a vibration of atoms. the atoms themselves, according to the usual "kinetic theory of substance," are dead, separate particles of matter, which dance to and fro in empty space and act at a distance. the real founder and most distinguished representative of the kinetic theory is newton, the famous discoverer of the law of gravitation. in his great work, the _philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica_ ( ), he showed that throughout the universe the same law of attraction controls the unvarying constancy of gravitation; the attraction of two particles being in direct proportion to their mass and in inverse proportion to the square of their distance. this universal force of gravity is at work in the fall of an apple and the tidal wave no less than in the course of the planets round the sun and the movements of all the heavenly bodies. newton had the immortal merit of establishing the law of gravitation and embodying it in an indisputable mathematical formula. yet this _dead mathematical formula_, on which most scientists lay great stress, as so frequently happens, gives us merely the _quantitative_ demonstration of the theory; it gives us no insight whatever into the _qualitative_ nature of the phenomena. the action at a distance without a medium, which newton deduced from his law of gravitation, and which became one of the most serious and most dangerous dogmas of later physics, does not afford the slightest explanation of the real causes of attraction; indeed, it long obstructed our way to the real discovery of them. i cannot but suspect that his speculations on this mysterious action at a distance contributed not a little to the leading of the great english mathematician into the obscure labyrinth of mystic dreams and theistic superstition in which he passed the last thirty-four years of his life; we find him, at the end, giving metaphysical hypotheses on the predictions of daniel and on the paradoxical fantasies of st. john. in fundamental opposition to the theory of vibration, or the kinetic theory of substance, we have the modern "theory of condensation," or the pyknotic theory of substance. it is most ably established in the suggestive work of j. c. vogt on _the nature of electricity and magnetism on the basis of a simplified conception of substance_ ( ). vogt assumes the primitive force of the world, the universal _prodynamis_, to be, not the vibration or oscillation of particles in empty space, but the condensation of a simple primitive substance, which fills the infinity of space in an unbroken continuity. its sole inherent mechanical form of activity consists in a tendency to condensation or contraction, which produces infinitesimal centres of condensation; these may change their degree of thickness, and, therefore, their volume, but are constant as such. these minute parts of the universal substance, the centres of condensation, which might be called _pyknatoms_, correspond in general to the ultimate separate atoms of the kinetic theory; they differ, however, very considerably in that they are credited with sensation and inclination (or will-movement of the simplest form), _with souls_, in a certain sense--in harmony with the old theory of empedocles of the "love and hatred of the elements." moreover, these "atoms with souls" do not float in empty space, but in the continuous, extremely attenuated intermediate substance, which represents the uncondensed portion of the primitive matter. by means of certain "constellations, centres of perturbation, or systems of deformation," great masses of centres of condensation quickly unite in immense proportions, and so obtain a preponderance over the surrounding masses. by that process the primitive substance, which in its original state of quiescence had the same mean consistency throughout, divides or differentiates into two kinds. the centres of disturbance, which _positively_ exceed the mean consistency in virtue of the _pyknosis_ or condensation, form the ponderable matter of bodies; the finer, intermediate substance, which occupies the space between them, and _negatively_ falls below the mean consistency, forms the ether, or imponderable matter. as a consequence of this division into mass and ether there ensues a ceaseless struggle between the two antagonistic elements, and this struggle is the source of all physical processes. the positive ponderable matter, the element with the feeling of like or desire, is continually striving to complete the process of condensation, and thus collecting an enormous amount of _potential_ energy; the negative, imponderable matter, on the other hand, offers a perpetual and equal resistance to the further increase of its strain and of the feeling of dislike connected therewith, and thus gathers the utmost amount of _actual_ energy. we cannot go any further here into the details of the brilliant theory of j. c. vogt. the interested reader cannot do better than have recourse to the second volume of the above work for a clear, popular exposition of the difficult problem. i am myself too little informed in physics and mathematics to enter into a critical discussion of its lights and shades; still, i think that this pyknotic theory of substance will prove more acceptable to every biologist who is convinced of the unity of nature than the kinetic theory which prevails in physics to-day. a misunderstanding may easily arise from the fact that vogt puts his process of condensation in explicit contradiction with the general phenomenon of motion; but it must be remembered that he is speaking of vibratory movement in the sense of the physicist. his hypothetical "condensation" is just as much determined by a movement of substance as is the hypothetical "vibration"; only the kind of movement and the relation of the moving elements are very different in the two hypotheses. moreover, it is not the whole theory of vibration, but only an important section of it, that is contradicted by the theory of condensation. modern physics, for the most part, still firmly adheres to the older theory of vibration, to the idea of an _actio in distans_ and the eternal vibration of dead atoms in empty space; it rejects the pyknotic theory. although vogt's theory may be still far from perfect, and his original speculations may be marred by many errors, yet i think he has rendered a very good service in eliminating the untenable principles of the kinetic theory of substance. as to my own opinion--and that of many other scientists--i must lay down the following theses, which are involved in vogt's pyknotic theory, as indispensable for a truly monistic view of substance, and one that covers the whole field of organic and inorganic nature: i. the two fundamental forms of substance, ponderable matter and ether, are not dead and only moved by extrinsic force, but they are endowed with sensation and will (though, naturally, of the lowest grade); they experience an inclination for condensation, a dislike of strain; they strive after the one and struggle against the other. ii. there is no such thing as empty space; that part of space which is not occupied with ponderable atoms is filled with ether. iii. there is no such thing as an action at a distance through perfectly empty space; all action of bodies upon each other is either determined by immediate contact or is effected by the mediation of ether. both the theories of substance which we have just contrasted are _monistic_ in principle, since the opposition between the two conditions of substance--mass and ether--is not original; moreover, they involve a continuous immediate contact and reciprocal action of the two elements. it is otherwise with the _dualistic_ theories of substance which still obtain in the idealist and spiritualist philosophy, and which have the support of a powerful theology, in so far as theology indulges in such metaphysical speculations. these theories draw a distinction between two entirely different kinds of substance, material and immaterial. material substance enters into the composition of the bodies which are the object of physics and chemistry; the law of the persistence of matter and force is confined to this world (apart from a belief in its "creation from nothing" and other miracles). immaterial substance is found in the "spiritual world" to which the law does not extend; in this province the laws of physics and chemistry are either entirely inapplicable or they are subordinated to a "vital force," or a "free will," or a "divine omnipotence," or some other phantom which is beyond the ken of critical science. in truth, these profound errors need no further refutation to-day, for experience has never yet discovered for us a single immaterial substance, a single force which is not dependent on matter, or a single form of energy which is not exerted by material movement, whether it be of mass, or of ether, or of both. even the most elaborate and most perfect forms of energy that we know--the psychic life of the higher animals, the thought and reason of man--depend on material processes, or changes in the neuroplasm of the ganglionic cells; they are inconceivable apart from such modifications. i have already shown (chap. xi.) that the physiological hypothesis of a special, immaterial "soul-substance" is untenable. the study of ponderable matter is primarily the concern of chemistry. few are ignorant of the astonishing theoretical progress which this science has made in the course of the century and the immense practical influence it has had on every aspect of modern life. we shall confine ourselves here to a few remarks on the more important questions which concern the nature of ponderable matter. it is well known that analytical chemistry has succeeded in resolving the immense variety of bodies in nature into a small number of simple elements--that is, simple bodies which are incapable of further analysis. the number of these elements is about seventy. only fourteen of them are widely distributed on the earth and of much practical importance; the majority are rare elements (principally metals) of little practical moment. the affinity of these groups of elements, and the remarkable proportions of their atomic weights, which lothar meyer and mendelejeff have proved in their _periodic system of the elements_, make it extremely probable that they are not _absolute species_ of ponderable matter--that is, not eternally unchangeable particles. the seventy elements have in that system been distributed into eight leading groups, and arranged in them according to their atomic weight, so that the elements which have a chemical affinity are formed into families. the relations of the various groups in such a natural system of the elements recall, on the one hand, similar relations of the innumerable compounds of carbon, and, again, the relations of parallel groups in the natural arrangement of the animal and plant species. since in the latter cases the "affinity" of the related forms is based on descent from a common parent form, it seems very probable that the same holds good of the families and orders of the chemical elements. we may, therefore, conclude that the "empirical elements" we now know are not really simple, ultimate, and unchangeable forms of matter, but compounds of homogeneous, simple, primitive atoms, variously distributed as to number and grouping. the recent speculations of gustav wendt, wilhelm preyer, sir w. crookes, and others, have pointed out how we may conceive the evolution of the elements from a simple primitive material, the _prothyl_. the modern atomistic theory, which is regarded as an indispensable instrument in chemistry to-day, must be carefully distinguished from the old philosophic atomism which was taught more than two thousand years ago by a group of distinguished thinkers of antiquity--leucippus, democritus, and epicurus: it was considerably developed and modified later on by descartes, hobbes, leibnitz, and other famous philosophers. but it was not until that modern atomism assumed a definite and acceptable form, and was furnished with an empirical basis by dalton, who formulated the "law of simple and multiple proportions" in the formation of chemical combinations. he first determined the atomic weight of the different elements, and thus created the solid and exact foundation on which more recent chemical theories are based; these are all _atomistic_, in the sense that they assume the elements to be made up of homogeneous, infinitesimal, distinct particles, which are incapable of further analysis. that does not touch the question of the real nature of the atoms--their form, size, psychology, etc. these atomic qualities are merely hypothetical; while the _chemistry_ of the atoms, their "chemical affinity"--that is, the constant proportion in which they combine with the atoms of other elements--is empirical.[ ] the different relation of the various elements towards each other, which chemistry calls "affinity," is one of the most important properties of ponderable matter; it is manifested in the different relative quantities or proportions of their combination in the intensity of its consummation. every shade of inclination, from complete indifference to the fiercest passion, is exemplified in the chemical relation of the various elements towards each other, just as we find in the psychology of man, and especially in the life of the sexes. goethe, in his classical romance, _affinities_, compared the relations of pairs of lovers with the phenomenon of the same name in the formation of chemical combinations. the irresistible passion that draws edward to the sympathetic ottilia, or paris to helen, and leaps over all bounds of reason and morality, is the same powerful "unconscious" attractive force which impels the living spermatozoon to force an entrance into the ovum in the fertilization of the egg of the animal or plant--the same impetuous movement which unites two atoms of hydrogen to one atom of oxygen for the formation of a molecule of water. this fundamental _unity of affinity in the whole of nature_, from the simplest chemical process to the most complicated love story, was recognized by the great greek scientist, empedocles, in the fifth century b.c., in his theory of "the love and hatred of the elements." it receives empirical confirmation from the interesting progress of cellular psychology, the great significance of which we have only learned to appreciate in the last thirty years. on those phenomena we base our conviction that even the _atom_ is not without a rudimentary form of sensation and will, or as it is better expressed, of feeling (_aesthesis_) and inclination (_tropesis_)--that is, a universal "soul" of the simplest character. the same must be said of the molecules which are composed of two or more atoms. further combinations of different kinds of these molecules give rise to simple and, subsequently, complex chemical compounds, in the activity of which the same phenomena are repeated in a more complicated form. the study of ether, or imponderable matter, pertains principally to physics. the existence of an extremely attenuated medium, filling the whole of space outside of ponderable matter, was known and applied to the elucidation of various phenomena (especially light) a long time ago; but it was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that we became more closely acquainted with this remarkable substance, in connection with our astonishing empirical discoveries in the province of electricity, with their experimental detection, their theoretical interpretation, and their practical application. the path was opened in particular by the famous researches of heinrich hertz, of bonn, in . the premature death of a brilliant young physicist of so much promise cannot be sufficiently deplored. like the premature death of spinoza, raphael, schubert, and many other great men, it is one of those brutal facts of human history which are enough of themselves to destroy the untenable myth of a "wise providence" and an "all-loving father in heaven." the existence of ether (or cosmic ether) as a real element is a _positive fact_, and has been known as such for the last twelve years. we sometimes read even to-day that ether is a "pure hypothesis"; this erroneous assertion comes not only from uninformed philosophers and "popular" writers, but even from certain "prudent and exact physicists." but there would be just as much reason to deny the existence of ponderable matter. as a matter of fact, there are metaphysicians who accomplish even this feat, and whose highest wisdom lies in denying or calling into question the existence of an external universe; according to them only one real entity exists--their own precious personality, or, to be more correct, their immortal soul. several modern physiologists have embraced this ultra-idealist view, which is to be found in descartes, berkeley, fichte, and others. their "psycho-monism" affirms: "one thing only exists, and that is my own mind." this audacious spiritualism seems to us to rest on an erroneous inference from kant's correct critical theory, that we can know the outer world only in the phenomenal aspect which is accessible to our human organs of thought--the brain and the organs of sense. if by those means we can attain only an imperfect and limited knowledge of the material world, that is no reason for denying its existence altogether. in my opinion, the existence of ether is as certain as that of ponderable matter--as certain as my own existence, as i reflect and write on it. as we assure ourselves of the existence of ponderable matter by its mass and weight, by chemical and mechanical experiments, so we prove that of ether by the experiences and experiments of optics and electricity. although, however, the existence of ether is now regarded as a positive fact by nearly all physicists, and although many effects of this remarkable substance are familiar to us through an extensive experience, especially in the way of optical and electrical experiments, yet we are still far from being clear and confident as to its real character. the views of the most eminent physicists, who have made a special study of it, are extremely divergent; they frequently contradict each other on the most important points. one is, therefore, free to choose among the contradictory hypotheses according to one's knowledge and judgment. i will put in the following eight theses the view which has approved itself to me after mature reflection on the subject, though i am no expert in this department: i. ether fills the whole of space, in so far as it is not occupied by ponderable matter, as a _continuous substance_; it fully occupies the space between the atoms of ponderable matter. ii. ether has probably no chemical quality, and is not composed of atoms. if it be supposed that it consists of minute homogeneous atoms (for instance, indivisible etheric particles of a uniform size), it must be further supposed that there is something else between these atoms, either "empty space" or a third, completely unknown medium, a purely hypothetical "interether"; the question as to the nature of this brings us back to the original difficulty, and so on _in infinitum_. iii. as the idea of an empty space and an action at a distance is scarcely possible in the present condition of our knowledge (at least it does not help to a clear monistic view), i postulate for ether a special structure which is not atomistic, like that of ponderable matter, and which may provisionally be called (without further determination) _etheric_ or _dynamic_ structure. iv. the consistency of ether is also peculiar, on our hypothesis, and different from that of ponderable matter. it is neither gaseous, as some conceive, nor solid, as others suppose; the best idea of it can be formed by comparison with an extremely attenuated, elastic, and light jelly. v. ether may be called _imponderable_ matter in the sense that we have no means of determining its weight experimentally. if it really has weight, as is very probable, it must be so slight as to be far below the capacity of our most delicate balance. some physicists have attempted to determine its weight by the energy of the light-waves, and have discovered that it is some fifteen trillion times lighter than atmospheric air; on that hypothesis a sphere of ether of the size of our earth would weigh at least two hundred and fifty pounds(?). vi. the etheric consistency may probably (in accordance with the pyknotic theory) pass into the gaseous state under certain conditions by progressive condensation, just as a gas may be converted into a fluid, and ultimately into a solid, by lowering its temperature. vii. consequently, these three conditions of matter may be arranged (and it is a point of great importance in our monistic cosmogony) in a genetic, continuous order. we may distinguish five stages in it: ( ) the etheric, ( ) the gaseous, ( ) the fluid, ( ) the viscous (in the living protoplasm), and ( ) the solid state. viii. ether is boundless and immeasurable, like the space it occupies. it is in eternal motion; and this specific movement of ether (it is immaterial whether we conceive it as vibration, strain, condensation, etc.), in reciprocal action with mass-movement (or gravitation), is the ultimate cause of all phenomena. "the great question of the nature of ether," as hertz justly calls it, includes the question of its relation to ponderable matter; for these two forms of matter are not only always in the closest external contact, but also in eternal, dynamic, reciprocal action. we may divide the most general phenomena of nature, which are distinguished by physics as natural forces or "functions of matter," into two groups; the first of them may be regarded mainly (though not exclusively) as a function of ether, and the second a function of ponderable matter--as in the following scheme which i take from my _monism_: the world (nature, or the cosmos) ---------------------------------+------------------------------------- ether--imponderable. | mass--ponderable. ---------------------------------+------------------------------------- | . _consistency_: | . _consistency_: | etheric (_i.e._, neither | not etheric (but gaseous, fluid, gaseous nor fluid, nor solid). | or solid). | . _structure_: | . _structure_: | not atomistic, not made up of | atomistic, made up of infinitesimal, separate particles (atoms), but | distinct particles (atoms) continuous. | discontinuous. | . _chief functions_: | . _chief functions_: | light, radiant heat, electricity,| gravity, inertia, molecular heat, and magnetism. | and chemical affinity. ---------------------------------+------------------------------------- the two groups of functions of matter, which we have opposed in this table, may, to some extent, be regarded as the outcome of the first "division of labor" in the development of matter, the "primary ergonomy of matter." but this distinction must not be supposed to involve an absolute separation of the two antithetic groups; they always retain their connection, and are in constant reciprocal action. it is well known that the optical and electrical phenomena of ether are closely connected with mechanical and chemical changes in ponderable elements; the radiant heat of ether may be directly converted into the mechanical heat of the mass; gravitation is impossible unless the ether effects the mutual attraction of the separated atoms, because we cannot admit the idea of an _actio in distans_. in like manner, the conversion of one form of energy into another, as indicated in the law of the persistence of force, illustrates the constant reciprocity of the two chief types of substance, ether and mass. the great law of nature, which, under the title of the "law of substance," we put at the head of all physical considerations, was conceived as the law of "the persistence of force" by robert meyer, who first formulated it, and helmholtz, who continued the work. another german scientist, friedrich mohr, of bonn, had clearly outlined it in its main features ten years earlier ( ). the old idea of _force_ was, after a time, differentiated by modern physics from that of _energy_, which was at first synonymous with it. hence the law is now usually called the "law of the persistence of energy." however, this finer distinction need not enter into the general consideration, to which i must confine myself here, and into the question of the great principle of the "persistence of substance." the interested reader will find a very clear treatment of the question in tyndall's excellent paper on "the fundamental law of nature," in his _fragments of science_. it fully explains the broad significance of this profound cosmic law, and points out its application to the main problems of very different branches of science. we shall confine our attention to the important fact that the "principle of energy" and the correlative idea of the unity of natural forces, on the basis of a common origin, are now accepted by all competent physicists, and are regarded as the greatest advance of physics in the nineteenth century. we now know that heat, sound, light, chemical action, electricity, and magnetism are all modes of motion. we can, by a certain apparatus, convert any one of these forces into another, and prove by an accurate measurement that not a single particle of energy is lost in the process. the sum-total of force or energy in the universe remains constant, no matter what changes take place around us; it is eternal and infinite, like the matter on which it is inseparably dependent. the whole drama of nature apparently consists in an alternation of movement and repose; yet the bodies at rest have an inalienable quantity of force, just as truly as those that are in motion. it is in this movement that the potential energy of the former is converted into the kinetic energy of the latter. "as the principle of the persistence of force takes into account repulsion as well as attraction, it affirms that the mechanical value of the potential energy and the kinetic energy in the material world is a constant quantity. to put it briefly, the force of the universe is divided into two parts, which may be mutually converted, according to a fixed relation of value. the diminution of the one involves the increase of the other; the total value remains unchanged in the universe." the potential energy and the actual, or kinetic, energy are being continually transformed from one condition to the other; but the infinite sum of force in the world at large never suffers the slightest curtailment. once modern physics had established the law of substance as far as the simpler relations of inorganic bodies are concerned, physiology took up the story, and proved its application to the entire province of the organic world. it showed that all the vital activities of the organism--without exception--are based on a constant "reciprocity of force" and a correlative change of material, or metabolism, just as much as the simplest processes in "lifeless" bodies. not only the growth and the nutrition of plants and animals, but even their functions of sensation and movement, their sense-action and psychic life, depend on the conversion of potential into kinetic energy, and _vice versâ_. this supreme law dominates also those elaborate performances of the nervous system which we call, in the higher animals and man, "the action of the mind." our monistic view, that the great cosmic law applies throughout the whole of nature, is of the highest moment. for it not only involves, on its positive side, the essential unity of the cosmos and the causal connection of all phenomena that come within our cognizance, but it also, in a negative way, marks the highest intellectual progress, in that it definitely rules out the three central dogmas of metaphysics--god, freedom, and immortality. in assigning mechanical causes to phenomena everywhere, the law of substance comes into line with the universal law of causality. chapter xiii the evolution of the world the notion of creation--miracles--creation of the whole universe and of its various parts--creation of substance (cosmological creation)--deism: one creative day--creation of separate entities--five forms of ontological creationism--theory of evolution--i. monistic cosmogony--beginning and end of the world--the infinity and eternity of the universe--space and time--_universum perpetuum mobile_--entropy of the universe--ii. monistic geogeny--history of the inorganic and organic worlds--iii. monistic biogeny--transformism and the theory of descent: lamarck and darwin--iv. monistic anthropogeny--origin of man the greatest, vastest, and most difficult of all cosmic problems is that of the origin and development of the world--the "question of creation," in a word. even to the solution of this most difficult world-riddle the nineteenth century has contributed more than all its predecessors; in a certain sense, indeed, it has found the solution. we have at least attained to a clear view of the fact that all the partial questions of creation are indivisibly connected, that they represent one single, comprehensive "cosmic problem," and that the key to this problem is found in the one magic word--evolution. the great questions of the creation of man, the creation of the animals and plants, the creation of the earth and the sun, etc., are all parts of the general question, what is the origin of the whole world? has it been _created_ by supernatural power, or has it been _evolved_ by a natural process? what are the causes and the manner of this evolution? if we succeed in finding the correct answer to one of these questions, we have, according to our monistic conception of the world, cast a brilliant light on the solution of them all, and on the entire cosmic problem. the current opinion as to the origin of the world in earlier ages was almost a universal belief in creation. this belief has been expressed in thousands of interesting, more or less fabulous, legends, poems, cosmogonies, and myths. a few great philosophers were devoid of it, especially those remarkable free-thinkers of classical antiquity who first conceived the idea of natural evolution. all the creation-myths, on the contrary, were of a supernatural, miraculous, and transcendental character. incompetent, as it was, to investigate for itself the nature of the world and its origin by natural causes, the undeveloped mind naturally had recourse to the idea of miracle. in most of these creation-myths _anthropism_ was blended with the belief in the miraculous. the creator was supposed to have constructed the world on a definite plan, just as man accomplishes his artificial constructions; the conception of the creator was generally completely anthropomorphic, a palpable "anthropistic creationism." the "all-mighty maker of heaven and earth," as he is called in genesis and the catechism, is just as humanly conceived as the modern creator of agassiz and reinke, or the intelligent "engineer" of other recent biologists. entering more fully into the notion of creation, we can distinguish as two entirely different acts the production of the universe as a whole and the partial production of its various parts, in harmony with spinoza's idea of _substance_ (the universe) and _accidents_ (or _modes_, the individual phenomena of substance). this distinction is of great importance, because there are many eminent philosophers who admit the one and reject the other. according to this creationist theory, then, god has "made the world out of nothing." it is supposed that god (a rational, but immaterial, being) existed by himself for an eternity before he resolved to create the world. some supporters of the theory restrict god's creative function to one single act; they believe that this extramundane god (the rest of whose life is shrouded in mystery) created the substance of the world in a single moment, endowed it with the faculty of the most extensive evolution, and troubled no further about it. this view may be found, for instance, in the english deists in many forms. it approaches very close to our monistic theory of evolution, only abandoning it in the one instant in which god accomplished the creation. other creationists contend that god did not confine himself to the mere creation of matter, but that he continues to be operative as the "sustainer and ruler of the world." different modifications of this belief are found, some approaching very close to _pantheism_ and others to complete _theism_. all these and similar forms of belief in creation are incompatible with the law of the persistence of matter and force; that law knows nothing of a beginning. it is interesting to note that e. du bois-reymond has identified himself with this cosmological creationism in his latest speech (on "neovitalism," ). "it is more consonant with the divine omnipotence," he says, "to assume that it created the whole material of the world in one creative act unthinkable ages ago in such wise that it should be endowed with inviolable laws to control the origin and the progress of living things--that, for instance, here on earth rudimentary organisms should arise from which, without further assistance, the whole of living nature could be evolved, from a primitive bacillus to the graceful palm-wood, from a primitive micrococcus to solomon's lovely wives or to the brain of newton. thus we are content with _one_ creative day, and we derive organic nature mechanically, without the aid of either old or new vitalism." du bois-reymond here shows, as in the question of consciousness, the shallow and illogical character of his monistic thought. according to another still prevalent theory, which may be called "ontological creationism," god not only created the world at large, but also its separate contents. in the christian world the old semitic legend of creation, taken from genesis, is still very widely accepted; even among modern scientists it finds an adherent here and there. i have fully entered into the criticism of it in the first chapter of my _natural history of creation_. the following theories may be enumerated as the most interesting modifications of this ontological creationism: i. _dualistic creation._--god restricted his interference to _two_ creative acts. first he created the inorganic world, mere dead substance, to which alone the law of energy applies, working blindly and aimlessly in the mechanism of material things and the building of the mountains; then god attained intelligence and communicated it to the purposive intelligent forces which initiate and control organic evolution.[ ] ii. _trialistic creation._--god made the world in _three_ creative acts: (_a_) the creation of the heavens--the extra-terrestrial world, (_b_) the creation of the earth (as the centre of the world) and of its living inhabitants, and (_c_) the creation of man (in the image and likeness of god). this dogma is still widely prevalent among theologians and other "educated" people; it is taught as the truth in many of our schools. iii. _heptameral creation_; a creation in seven days (_teste_ moses).--although few educated people really believe in this mosaic myth now, it is still firmly impressed on our children in the biblical lessons of their earliest years. the numerous attempts that have been made, especially in england, to harmonize it with the modern theory of evolution have entirely failed. it obtained some importance in science when linné adopted it in the establishment of his system, and based his definition of organic species (which he considered to be unchangeable) on it: "there are as many different species of animals and plants as there were different forms created in the beginning by the infinite." this dogma was pretty generally held until the time of darwin ( ), although lamarck had already proved its untenability in . iv. _periodic creation._--at the beginning of each period of the earth's history the whole population of animals and plants was created anew, and destroyed by a general catastrophe at its close; there were as many general creative acts as there are distinct geological periods (the catastrophic theory of cuvier [ ] and louis agassiz [ ]). palæontology, which seemed to support this theory in its more imperfect stage, has since completely refuted it. v. _individual creation._--every single man--and every individual animal and plant--does not arise by a natural process of growth, but is created by the favor of god. this view of creation is still often met with in journals, especially in the "births" column. the special talents and features of our children are often gratefully acknowledged to be "gifts of god"; their hereditary defects fit into another theory. the error of these creation-legends and the cognate belief in miracles must have been apparent to thoughtful minds at an early period; more than two thousand years ago we find that many attempts were made to replace them by a rational theory, and to explain the origin of the world by natural causes. in the front rank, once more, we must place the leaders of the ionic school, with democritus, heraclitus, empedocles, aristotle, lucretius, and other ancient philosophers. the first imperfect attempts which they made astonish us, in a measure, by the flashes of mental light in which they anticipate modern ideas. it must be remembered that classical antiquity had not that solid groundwork for scientific speculation which has been provided by the countless observations and experiments of modern scientists. during the middle ages--especially during the domination of the papacy--scientific work in this direction entirely ceased. the torture and the stake of the inquisition insured that an unconditional belief in the hebrew mythology should be the final answer to all the questions of creation. even the phenomena which led directly to the observation of the _facts_ of evolution--the embryology of the plant and the animal, and of man--remained unnoticed, or only excited the interest of an occasional keen observer; but their discoveries were ignored or forgotten. moreover, the path to a correct knowledge of natural development was barred by the dominant theory of preformation, the dogma which held that the characteristic form and structure of each animal and plant were already sketched in miniature in the germ (cf. p. ). the science which we now call the science of evolution (in the broadest sense) is, both in its general outline and in its separate parts, a child of the nineteenth century; it is one of its most momentous and most brilliant achievements. almost unknown in the preceding century, this theory has now become the sure foundation of our whole world-system. i have treated it exhaustively in my _general morphology_ ( ), more popularly in my _natural history of creation_ ( ), and in its special application to man in my _anthropogeny_ ( ). here i shall restrict myself to a brief survey of the chief advances which the science has made in the course of the century. it falls into four sections, according to the nature of its object; that is, it deals with the natural origin of ( ) the cosmos, ( ) the earth, ( ) terrestrial forms of life, and ( ) man. i.--monistic cosmogony the first attempt to explain the constitution and the mechanical origin of the world in a simple manner by "newtonian laws"--that is, by mathematical and physical laws--was made by immanuel kant in the famous work of his youth ( ), _general history of the earth and theory of the heavens_. unfortunately, this distinguished and daring work remained almost unknown for ninety years; it was only disinterred in by alexander humboldt in the first volume of his _cosmos_. in the mean time the great french mathematician, pierre laplace, had arrived independently at similar views to those of kant, and he gave them a mathematical foundation in his _exposition du système du monde_ ( ). his chief work, the _mécanique céleste_, appeared a hundred years ago. the analogous features of the cosmogony of kant and laplace consist, as is well known, in a mechanical explanation of the movements of the planets, and the conclusion which is drawn therefrom, that all the cosmic bodies were formed originally by a condensation of rotating nebulous spheres. this "nebular hypothesis" has been much improved and supplemented since, but it is still the best of all the attempts to explain the origin of the world on monistic and mechanical lines. it has recently been strongly confirmed and enlarged by the theory that this cosmogonic process did not simply take place once, but is periodically repeated. while new cosmic bodies arise and develop out of rotating masses of nebula in some parts of the universe, in other parts old, extinct, frigid suns come into collision, and are once more reduced by the heat generated to the condition of nebulæ. nearly all the older and the more recent cosmogonies, including most of those which were inspired by kant and laplace, started from the popular idea that the world had had a beginning. hence, according to a widespread version of the nebular hypothesis, "in the beginning" was made a vast nebula of infinitely attenuated and light material, and at a certain moment ("countless ages ago") a movement of rotation was imparted to this mass. given this "first beginning" of the cosmogonic movement, it is easy, on mechanical principles, to deduce and mathematically establish the further phenomena of the formation of the cosmic bodies, the separation of the planets, and so forth. this first "origin of movement" is du bois-reymond's second "world-enigma"; he regards it as transcendental. many other scientists and philosophers are equally helpless before this difficulty; they resign themselves to the notion that we have here a primary "supernatural impetus" to the scheme of things, a "miracle." in our opinion, this second "world-enigma" is solved by the recognition that movement is as innate and original a property of substance as is sensation. the proof of this monistic assumption is found, first, in the law of substance, and, secondly, in the discoveries which astronomy and physics have made in the latter half of the century. by the spectral analysis of bunsen and kirchhoff ( ) we have found, not only that the millions of bodies, which fill the infinity of space, are of the same material as our own sun and earth, but also that they are in various stages of evolution; we have obtained by its aid information as to the movements and distances of the stars, which the telescope would never have given us. moreover, the telescope itself has been vastly improved, and has, in alliance with photography, made a host of scientific discoveries of which no one dreamed at the beginning of the century. in particular, a closer acquaintance with comets, meteorites, star-clusters, and nebulæ has helped us to realize the great significance of the smaller bodies which are found in millions in the space between the stars. we now know that the _paths_ of the millions of heavenly bodies are _changeable_, and to some extent irregular, whereas the planetary system was formerly thought to be constant, and the rotating spheres were described as pursuing their orbits in eternal regularity. astro-physics owes much of its triumph to the immense progress of other branches of physics, of optics, and electricity, and especially of the theory of ether. and here, again, our supreme law of substance is found to be one of the most valuable achievements of modern science. we now know that it rules unconditionally in the most distant reaches of space, just as it does in our planetary system, in the most minute particle of the earth as well as in the smallest cell of our human frame. we are, moreover, justified in concluding, if we are not logically compelled to conclude, that the persistence of matter and force has held good throughout all time as it does to-day. through all eternity the infinite universe has been, and is, subject to the law of substance. from this great progress of astronomy and physics, which mutually elucidate and supplement each other, we draw a series of most important conclusions with regard to the constitution and evolution of the cosmos, and the persistence and transformation of substance. let us put them briefly in the following theses: i. the _extent_ of the universe is infinite and unbounded; it is empty in no part, but everywhere filled with substance. ii. the _duration_ of the world is equally infinite and unbounded; it has no beginning and no end: it is eternity. iii. substance is everywhere and always in uninterrupted movement and transformation: nowhere is there perfect repose and rigidity; yet the infinite quantity of matter and of eternally changing force remains constant. iv. this universal movement of substance in space takes the form of an eternal cycle or of a periodical process of evolution. v. the phases of this evolution consist in a periodic change of consistency, of which the first outcome is the primary division into mass and ether--the ergonomy of ponderable and imponderable matter. vi. this division is effected by a progressive condensation of matter as the formation of countless infinitesimal "centres of condensation," in which the inherent primitive properties of substance--feeling and inclination--are the active causes. vii. while minute and then larger bodies are being formed by this pyknotic process in one part of space, and the intermediate ether increases its strain, the opposite process--the destruction of cosmic bodies by collision--is taking place in another quarter. viii. the immense quantity of heat which is generated in this mechanical process of the collision of swiftly moving bodies represents the new kinetic energy which effects the movement of the resultant nebulæ and the construction of new rotating bodies. the eternal drama begins afresh. even our mother earth, which was formed of part of the gyrating solar system millions of ages ago, will grow cold and lifeless after the lapse of further millions, and, gradually narrowing its orbit, will fall eventually into the sun. it seems to me that these modern discoveries as to the periodic decay and re-birth of cosmic bodies, which we owe to the most recent advance of physics and astronomy, associated with the law of substance, are especially important in giving us a clear insight into the universal cosmic process of evolution. in their light our earth shrinks into the slender proportions of a "mote in the sunbeam," of which unnumbered millions chase each other through the vast depths of space. our own "human nature," which exalted itself into an image of god in its anthropistic illusion, sinks to the level of a placental mammal, which has no more value for the universe at large than the ant, the fly of a summer's day, the microscopic infusorium, or the smallest bacillus. humanity is but a transitory phase of the evolution of an eternal substance, a particular phenomenal form of matter and energy, the true proportion of which we soon perceive when we set it on the background of infinite space and eternal time. since kant explained space and time to be merely "forms of perception"--space the form of external, time of internal, sensitivity--there has been a keen controversy, which still continues, over this important problem. a large section of modern metaphysicians have persuaded themselves that this "critical fact" possesses a great importance as the starting-point of "a purely idealist theory of knowledge," and that, consequently, the natural opinion of the ordinary healthy mind as to the _reality_ of time and space is swept aside. this narrow and ultra-idealist conception of time and space has become a prolific source of error. it overlooks the fact that kant only touched one side of the problem, the _subjective_ side, in that theory, and recognized the equal validity of its _objective_ side. "time and space," he said, "have empirical reality, but transcendental ideality." our modern monism is quite compatible with this thesis of kant's, but not with the one-sided exaggeration of the subjective aspect of the problem; the latter leads logically to the absurd idealism that culminates in berkeley's thesis, "bodies are but ideas; their essence is in their perception." the thesis should be read thus: "bodies are only ideas for my personal consciousness; their existence is just as real as that of my organs of thought, the ganglionic cells in the gray bed of my brain, which receive the impress of bodies on my sense-organs and form those ideas by association of the impressions." it is just as easy to doubt or to deny the reality of my own consciousness as to doubt that of time and space. in the delirium of fever, in hallucinations, in dreams, and in double-consciousness, i take ideas to be true which are merely fancies. i mistake my own personality for another (_vide_ p. ); descartes' famous _cogito ergo sum_ applies no longer. on the other hand, the reality of time and space is now fully established by that expansion of our philosophy which we owe to the law of substance and to our monistic cosmogony. when we have happily got rid of the untenable idea of "empty space," there remains as the infinite "space-filling"-medium matter, in its two forms of ether and mass. so also we find a "time-filling" event in the eternal movement, or genetic energy, which reveals itself in the uninterrupted evolution of substance, in the _perpetuum mobile_ of the universe. as a body which has been set in motion continues to move as long as no external agency interferes with it, the idea was conceived long ago of constructing an apparatus which should illustrate perpetual motion. the fact was overlooked that every movement meets with external impediments and gradually ceases, unless a new impetus is given to it from without and a new force is introduced to counteract the impediments. thus, for instance, a pendulum would swing backward and forward for an eternity at the same speed if the resistance of the atmosphere and the friction at the point it hangs from did not gradually deprive it of the mechanical kinetic energy of its motion and convert it into heat. we have to furnish it with fresh mechanical energy by a spring (or, as in the pendulum-clock, by the drag of a weight). hence it is impossible to construct a machine that would produce, without external aid, a surplus of energy by which it could keep itself going. every attempt to make such a _perpetuum mobile_ must necessarily fail; the discovery of the law of substance showed, in addition, the theoretical impossibility of it. the case is different, however, when we turn to the world at large, the boundless universe that is in eternal movement. the infinite matter, which fills it objectively, is what we call _space_ in our subjective impression of it; _time_ is our subjective conception of its eternal movement, which is, objectively, a periodic, cyclic evolution. these two "forms of perception" teach us the infinity and eternity of the universe. that is, moreover, equal to saying that the universe itself is a _perpetuum mobile_. this infinite and eternal "machine of the universe" sustains itself in eternal and uninterrupted movement, because every impediment is compensated by an "equivalence of energy," and the unlimited sum of kinetic and potential energy remains always the same. the law of the persistence of force proves also that the idea of a _perpetuum mobile_ is just as applicable to, and as significant for, the cosmos as a whole as it is impossible for the isolated action of any part of it. hence the theory of _entropy_ is likewise untenable. the able founder of the mechanical theory of heat ( ), clausius, embodied the momentous contents of this important theory in two theses. the first runs: "the energy of the universe is constant"--that is one-half of our law of substance, the principle of energy (_vide_ p. ). the second thesis is: "the energy of the universe tends towards a maximum." in my opinion this second assertion is just as erroneous as the first is true. in the theory of clausius the entire energy of the universe is of two kinds, one of which (heat of the higher degree, mechanical, electrical, chemical energy, etc.) is partly convertible into work, but the other is not; the latter energy, already converted into heat and distributed in the cooler masses, is irrevocably lost as far as any further work is concerned. clausius calls this unconsumed energy, which is no longer available for mechanical work, _entropy_ (that is, force that is directed _inward_); it is continually increasing at the cost of the other half. as, therefore, the mechanical energy of the universe is daily being transformed into heat, and this cannot be reconverted into mechanical force, the sum of heat and energy in the universe must continually tend to be reduced and dissipated. all difference of temperature must ultimately disappear, and the completely latent heat must be equally distributed through one inert mass of motionless matter. all organic life and movement must cease when this maximum of _entropy_ has been reached. that would be a real "end of the world." if this theory of entropy were true, we should have a "beginning" corresponding to this assumed "end" of the world--a minimum of entropy, in which the differences in temperature of the various parts of the cosmos would be at a maximum. both ideas are quite untenable in the light of our monistic and consistent theory of the eternal cosmogenetic process; both contradict the law of substance. there is neither beginning nor end of the world. the universe is infinite, and eternally in motion; the conversion of kinetic into potential energy, and _vicissim_, goes on uninterruptedly; and the sum of this actual and potential energy remains constant. the second thesis of the mechanical theory of heat contradicts the first, and so must be rejected. the representatives of the theory of entropy are quite correct as long as they confine themselves to distinct processes, in which, _under certain conditions_, the latent heat cannot be reconverted into work. thus, for instance, in the steam-engine the heat can only be converted into mechanical work when it passes from a warmer body (steam) into a cooler (water); the process cannot be reversed. in the world at large, however, quite other conditions obtain--conditions which permit the reconversion of latent heat into mechanical work. for instance, in the collision of two heavenly bodies, which rush towards each other at inconceivable speed, enormous quantities of heat are liberated, while the pulverized masses are hurled and scattered about space. the eternal drama begins afresh--the rotating mass, the condensation of its parts, the formation of new meteorites, their combination into larger bodies, and so on. ii.--monistic geogeny the history of the earth, of which we are now going to make a brief survey, is only a minute section of the history of the cosmos. like the latter, it has been the object of philosophic speculation and mythological fantasy for many thousand years. its true scientific study, however, is much younger; it belongs, for the most part, to the nineteenth century. the fact that the earth is a planet revolving round the sun was determined by the system of copernicus ( ); galilei, kepler, and other great astronomers, mathematically determined its distance from the sun, the laws of its motion, and so forth. kant and laplace indicated, in their cosmogony, the way in which the earth had been developed from the parent sun. but the later history of the earth, the formation of its crust, the origin of its seas and continents, its mountains and deserts, was rarely made the subject of serious scientific research in the eighteenth century, and in the first two decades of the nineteenth. as a rule, men were satisfied with unreliable conjectures or with the traditional story of creation; once more the mosaic legend barred the way to an independent investigation. in an important work appeared, which followed the same method in the scientific investigation of the history of the earth that had already proved the most fertile--the _ontological_ method, or the principle of "actualism." it consists in a careful study and manipulation of _actual_ phenomena with a view to the elucidation of the analogous historical processes of the past. the society of science at göttingen had offered a prize in for "the most searching and comprehensive inquiry into the changes in the earth's crust which are historically demonstrable, and the application which may be made of a knowledge of them in the investigation of the terrestrial revolutions which lie beyond the range of history." this prize was obtained by karl hoff, of gotha, for his distinguished work, _history of the natural changes in the crust of the earth in the light of tradition_ ( - ). sir charles lyell then applied this _ontological_ or _actualistic_ method with great success to the whole province of geology; his _principles of geology_ ( ) laid the firm foundation on which the fabric of the history of the earth was so happily erected. the important geogenetic research of alexander humboldt, leopold buch, gustav bischof, edward süss, and other geologists, were wholly based on the empirical foundation and the speculative principles of karl hoff and charles lyell. they cleared the way for purely rational science in the field of geology; they removed the obstacles that had been put in the path by mythological fancy and religious tradition, especially by the bible and its legends. i have already discussed the merits of lyell, and his relations with his friend charles darwin, in the sixteenth and seventeenth chapters of my _natural history of creation_, and must refer the reader to the standard works on geology for a further acquaintance with the history of the earth and the great progress which dynamical and historical geology have made during the century. the first division of the history of the earth must be a separation of inorganic and organic geogeny; the latter begins with the first appearance of living things on our planet. the earlier section, the inorganic history of the earth, ran much the same course as that of the other planets of our system. they were all cast off as rings of nebula at the equator of the rotating solar mass, and gradually condensed into independent bodies. after cooling down a little, the glowing ball of the earth was formed out of the gaseous mass, and eventually, as the heat continued to radiate out into space, there was formed at its surface the thin solid crust on which we live. when the temperature at the surface had gone down to a certain point, the water descended upon it from the environing clouds of steam, and thus the first condition was secured for the rise of organic life. many million years--certainly more than a hundred--have passed since this important process of the formation of water took place, introducing the third section of cosmogony, which we call _biogeny_. iii.--monistic biogeny the third phase of the evolution of the world opens with the advent of organisms on our planet, and continues uninterrupted from that point until the present day. the great problems which this most interesting part of the earth's history suggests to us were still thought insoluble at the beginning of the nineteenth century, or, at least, so difficult that their solution seemed to be extremely remote. now, at the close of the century, we can affirm with legitimate pride that they have been substantially solved by modern biology and its theory of transformism; indeed, many of the phenomena of the organic world are now interpreted on physical principles as completely as the familiar physical phenomena of inorganic nature. the merit of making the first important step in this difficult path and of pointing out the way to the monistic solution of all the problems of biology must be accorded to the great french scientist, jean lamarck; it was in , the year of the birth of charles darwin, that he published his famous _philosophie zoologique_. in this original work not only is a splendid effort made to interpret all the phenomena of organic life from a monistic and physical point of view, but the path is opened which alone leads to the solution of the greatest enigma of this branch of science--the problem of the natural origin of organic species. lamarck, who had an equally extensive empirical acquaintance with zoology and botany, drew the first sketch of the theory of descent; he showed that all the countless members of the plant and animal kingdoms have arisen by slow transformation from simple, common ancestral types, and that it is the gradual modification of forms by _adaptation_, in reciprocal action with _heredity_, which has brought about this secular metamorphosis. i have fully appreciated the merit of lamarck in the fifth chapter, and of darwin in the sixth and seventh chapters, of the _natural history of creation_. darwin, fifty years afterwards, not only gave a solid foundation to all the essential parts of the theory of descent, but he filled up the _lacunae_ of lamarck's work by his theory of selection. darwin reaped abundantly the success that lamarck had never seen, with all his merit. his epoch-making work on _the origin of species by natural selection_ has transformed modern biology from its very foundations, in the course of the last forty years, and has raised it to a stage of development that yields to no other science in existence. darwin is _the copernicus of the organic world_, as i said in , and e. du bois-reymond repeated fifteen years afterwards.[ ] iv.--monistic anthropogeny the fourth and last phase of the world's history must be for us men that latest period of time which has witnessed the development of our own race. lamarck ( ) had already recognized that this evolution is only rationally conceivable as the outcome of a natural process, by "descent from the apes," our next of kin among the mammals. huxley then proved, in his famous essay on _the place of man in nature_, that this momentous thesis is an inevitable consequence of the theory of descent, and is thoroughly established by the facts of anatomy, embryology, and palæontology. he considered this "question of all questions" to be substantially answered. darwin followed with a brilliant discussion of the question under many aspects in his _descent of man_ ( ). i had myself devoted a special chapter to this important problem of the science of evolution in my _general morphology_ ( ). in i published my _anthropogeny_, which contains the first attempt to trace the descent of man through the entire chain of his ancestry right up to the earliest archigonous monera; the attempt was based equally on the three great "documents" of evolutionary science--anatomy, embryology, and palæontology. the progress we have made in anthropogenetic research during the last few years is described in the paper which i read on "our present knowledge of the origin of man" at the international congress of zoologists at cambridge in .[ ] chapter xiv the unity of nature the monism of the cosmos--essential unity of organic and inorganic nature--carbon-theory--the hypothesis of abiogenesis--mechanical and purposive causes--mechanicism and teleology in kant's works--design in the organic and inorganic worlds--vitalism--neovitalism--dysteleology (the moral of the rudimentary organs)--absence of design in, and imperfection of, nature--telic action in organized bodies--its absence in ontogeny and phylogeny--the platonist "ideas"--no moral order discoverable in the history of the organic world, of the vertebrates, or of the human race--prevision--design and chance one of the first things to be proved by the law of substance is the basic fact that any natural force can be directly or indirectly converted into any other. mechanical and chemical energy, sound and heat, light and electricity, are mutually convertible; they seem to be but different modes of one and the same fundamental force or _energy_. thence follows the important thesis of the unity of all natural forces, or, as it may also be expressed, the "monism of energy." this fundamental principle is now generally recognized in the entire province of physics and chemistry, as far as it applies to inorganic substances. it seems to be otherwise with the organic world and its wealth of color and form. it is, of course, obvious that a great part of the phenomena of life may be immediately traced to mechanical and chemical energy, and to the effects of electricity and light. for other vital processes, however, especially for psychic activity and consciousness, such an interpretation is vigorously contested. yet the modern science of evolution has achieved the task of constructing a bridge between these two apparently irreconcilable provinces. we are now certain that all the phenomena of organic life are subject to the universal law of substance no less than the phenomena of the inorganic universe. the unity of nature which necessarily follows, and the demolition of the earlier dualism, are certainly among the most valuable results of modern evolution. thirty-three years ago i made an exhaustive effort to establish this "monism of the cosmos" and the essential unity of organic and inorganic nature by a thorough, critical demonstration, and a comparison of the accordance of these two great divisions of nature with regard to matter, form, and force.[ ] a short epitome of the result is given in the fifteenth chapter of my _natural history of creation_. the views i put forward are accepted by the majority of modern scientists, but an attempt has been made in many quarters lately to dispute them and to maintain the old antithesis of the two divisions of nature. the ablest of these is to be found in the recent _welt als that_ of the botanist reinke. it defends _pure cosmological_ dualism with admirable lucidity and consistency, and only goes to prove how utterly untenable the teleological system is that is connected therewith. according to the author, physical and chemical forces alone are at work in the entire field of inorganic nature, while in the organic world we find "intelligent forces," regulative or dominant forces. the law of substance is supposed to apply to the one, but not to the other. on the whole, it is a question of the old antithesis of a mechanical and a teleological system. but before we go more fully into it, let us glance briefly at two other theories, which seem to me to be of great importance in the decision of that controversy--the carbon-theory and the theory of spontaneous generation. physiological chemistry has, after countless analyses, established the following five facts during the last forty years: i. no other elements are found in organic bodies than those of the inorganic world. ii. the combinations of elements which are peculiar to organisms, and which are responsible for their vital phenomena, are compound protoplasmic substances, of the group of albuminates. iii. organic life itself is a chemico-physical process, based on the metabolism (or interchange of material) of these albuminates. iv. the only element which is capable of building up these compound albuminates, in combination with other elements (oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and sulphur), is carbon. v. these protoplasmic compounds of carbon are distinguished from most other chemical combinations by their very intricate molecular structure, their instability, and their jelly-like consistency. on the basis of these five fundamental facts the following "carbon-theory" was erected thirty-three years ago: "the peculiar chemico-physical properties of carbon--especially the fluidity and the facility of decomposition of the most elaborate albuminoid compounds of carbon--are the sole and the mechanical causes of the specific phenomena of movement, which distinguish organic from inorganic substances, and which are called life, in the usual sense of the word" (see _the natural history of creation_). although this "carbon-theory" is warmly disputed in some quarters, no better monistic theory has yet appeared to replace it. we have now a much better and more thorough knowledge of the physiological relations of cell-life, and of the chemistry and physics of the living protoplasm, than we had thirty-three years ago, and so it is possible to make a more confident and effective defence of the carbon-theory. the old idea of spontaneous generation is now taken in many different senses. it is owing to this indistinctness of the idea, and its application to so many different hypotheses, that the problem is one of the most contentious and confused of the science of the day. i restrict the idea of spontaneous generation--also called abiogenesis or archigony--to the first development of living protoplasm out of inorganic carbonates, and distinguish two phases in this "beginning of biogenesis": ( ) _autogony_, or the rise of the simplest protoplasmic substances in a formative fluid, and ( ) _plasmogony_, the differentiation of individual primitive organisms out of these protoplasmic compounds, in the form of _monera_. i have treated this important, though difficult, problem so exhaustively in the fifteenth chapter of my _natural history of creation_ that i may content myself here with referring to it. there is also a very searching and severely scientific inquiry into it in my _general morphology_ ( ). naegeli has also treated the hypothesis in quite the same sense in his mechanico-physiological theory of descent ( ), and has represented it to be an indispensable thesis in any natural theory of evolution. i entirely agree with his assertion that "to reject abiogenesis is to admit a miracle." the hypothesis of spontaneous generation and the allied carbon-theory are of great importance in deciding the long-standing conflict between the _teleological_ (dualistic) and the _mechanical_ (monistic) interpretation of phenomena. since darwin gave us the key to the monistic explanation of organization in his theory of selection forty years ago, it has become possible for us to trace the splendid variety of orderly tendencies of the organic world to mechanical, natural causes, just as we could formerly in the inorganic world alone. hence the supernatural and telic forces, to which the scientist had had recourse, have been rendered superfluous. modern metaphysics, however, continues to regard the latter as indispensable and the former as inadequate. no philosopher has done more than immanuel kant in defining the profound distinction between efficient and final causes, with relation to the interpretation of the whole cosmos. in his well-known earlier work on _the general natural history and theory of the heavens_ he made a bold attempt "to treat the constitution and the mechanical origin of the entire fabric of the universe according to newtonian laws." this "cosmological nebular theory" was based entirely on the mechanical phenomena of gravitation. it was expanded and mathematically established later on by laplace. when the famous french astronomer was asked by napoleon i. where god, the creator and sustainer of all things, came in in his system, he clearly and honestly replied: "sire, i have managed without that hypothesis." that indicated the atheistic character which this mechanical cosmogony shares with all the other inorganic sciences. this is the more noteworthy because the theory of kant and laplace is now almost universally accepted; every attempt to supersede it has failed. when atheism is denounced as a grave reproach, as it so often is, it is well to remember that the reproach extends to the whole of modern science, in so far as it gives a purely mechanical interpretation of the inorganic world. mechanicism (in the kantian sense) alone can give us a true explanation of natural phenomena, for it traces them to their real efficient causes, to blind and unconscious agencies, which are determined in their action only by the material constitution of the bodies we are investigating. kant himself emphatically affirms that "there can be no science without this mechanicism of nature," and that the capacity of human reason to give a mechanical interpretation of phenomena is unlimited. but when he came subsequently to give an elucidation of the complex phenomena of organic nature in his _critique_ of the teleological system, he declared that these mechanical causes were inadequate; that in this we must call _final causes_ to our assistance. it is true, he said, that even here we must recognize the theoretical faculty of the mind to give a mechanical interpretation, but its actual competence to do so is restricted. he grants it this capacity to some extent; but for the majority of the vital processes (and especially for man's psychic activity) he thinks we are bound to postulate _final_ causes. the remarkable § of the _critique_ of judgment bears the characteristic heading: "on the necessity for the subordination of the mechanical principle to the teleological in the explanation of a thing as a natural end." it seemed to kant so impossible to explain the orderly processes in the living organism without postulating supernatural final causes (that is, a purposive creative force) that he said: "it is quite certain that we cannot even satisfactorily understand, much less elucidate, the nature of an organism and its internal faculty on purely mechanical natural principles; it is so certain, indeed, that we may confidently say, 'it is absurd for a man to conceive the idea even that some day a newton will arise who can explain the origin of a single blade of grass by natural laws which are uncontrolled by design'--such a hope is entirely forbidden us." seventy years afterwards this impossible "newton of the organic world" appeared in the person of charles darwin, and achieved the great task that kant had deemed impracticable. since newton ( ) formulated the law of gravitation, and kant ( ) established "the constitution and mechanical origin of the entire fabric of the world on newtonian laws," and laplace ( ) provided a mathematical foundation for this law of cosmic mechanicism, the whole of the inorganic sciences have become purely _mechanical_, and at the same time purely _atheistic_. astronomy, cosmogony, geology, meteorology, and inorganic physics and chemistry are now absolutely ruled by mechanical laws on a mathematical foundation. the idea of "design" has wholly disappeared from this vast province of science. at the close of the nineteenth century, now that this monistic view has fought its way to general recognition, no scientist ever asks seriously of the "purpose" of any single phenomenon in the whole of this great field. is any astronomer likely to inquire seriously to-day into the purpose of planetary motion, or a mineralogist to seek design in the structure of a crystal? does the physicist investigate the purpose of electric force, or the chemist that of atomic weight? we may confidently answer in the negative--certainly not, in the sense that god, or a purposive natural force, had at some time created these fundamental laws of the mechanism of the universe with a definite design, and causes them to work daily in accordance with his rational will. the anthropomorphic notion of a deliberate architect and ruler of the world has gone forever from this field; the "eternal, iron laws of nature" have taken his place. but the idea of design has a very great significance and application in the _organic_ world. we do undeniably perceive a purpose in the structure and in the life of an organism. the plant and the animal seem to be controlled by a definite design in the combination of their several parts, just as clearly as we see in the machines which man invents and constructs; as long as life continues the functions of the several organs are directed to definite ends, just as is the operation of the various parts of a machine. hence it was quite natural that the older naïve study of nature, in explaining the origin and activity of the living being, should postulate a creator who had "arranged all things with wisdom and understanding," and had constructed each plant and animal according to the special purpose of its life. the conception of this "almighty creator of heaven and earth" was usually quite anthropomorphic; he created "everything after its kind." as long as the creator seemed to man to be of human shape, to think with his brain, see with his eyes, and fashion with his hands, it was possible to form a definite picture of this "divine engineer" and his artistic work in the great workshop of creation. this was not so easy when the idea of god became refined, and man saw in his "invisible god" a creator without organs--a gaseous being. still more unintelligible did these anthropomorphic ideas become when physiology substituted for the conscious, divine architect an unconscious, creative "vital force"--a mysterious, purposive, natural force, which differed from the familiar forces of physics and chemistry, and only took these in part, during life, into its service. this vitalism prevailed until about the middle of the nineteenth century. johannes müller, the great berlin physiologist, was the first to menace it with a destructive dose of facts. it is true that the distinguished biologist had himself (like all others in the first half of the century) been educated in a belief in this vital force, and deemed it indispensable for an elucidation of the ultimate sources of life; nevertheless, in his classical and still unrivalled _manual of physiology_ ( ) he gave a demonstrative proof that there is really nothing to be said for this vital force. müller himself, in a long series of remarkable observations and experiments, showed that most of the vital processes in the human organism (and in the other animals) take place according to physical and chemical laws, and that many of them are capable of mathematical determination. that was no less true of the animal functions of the muscles and nerves, and of both the higher and the lower sense-organs, than of the vegetal functions of digestion, assimilation, and circulation. only two branches of the life of the organism, mental action and reproduction, retained any element of mystery, and seemed inexplicable without assuming a vital force. but immediately after müller's death such important discoveries and advances were made in these two branches that the uneasy "phantom of vital force" was driven from its last refuge. by a very remarkable coincidence johannes müller died in the year , which saw the publication of darwin's first communication concerning his famous theory. the theory of selection solved the great problem that had mastered müller--the question of the origin of orderly arrangements from purely mechanical causes. darwin, as we have often said, had a twofold immortal merit in the field of philosophy--firstly, the reform of lamarck's theory of descent, and its establishment on the mass of facts accumulated in the course of the half-century; secondly, the conception of the theory of selection, which first revealed to us the true causes of the gradual formation of species. darwin was the first to point out that the "struggle for life" is the unconscious regulator which controls the reciprocal action of heredity and adaptation in the gradual transformation of species; it is the great "selective divinity" which, by a purely "natural choice," without preconceived design, creates new forms, just as selective man creates new types by an "artificial choice" with a definite design. that gave us the solution of the great philosophic problem: "how can purposive contrivances be produced by purely mechanical processes without design?" kant held the problem to be insoluble, although empedocles had pointed out the direction of the solution two thousand years before. his principle of "teleological mechanism" has become more and more accepted of late years, and has furnished a mechanical explanation even of the finest and most recondite processes of organic life by "the functional self-production of the purposive structure." thus have we got rid of the transcendental "design" of the ideological philosophy of the schools, which was the greatest obstacle to the growth of a rational and monistic conception of nature. very recently, however, this ancient phantom of a mystic vital force, which seemed to be effectually banished, has put in a fresh appearance; a number of distinguished biologists have attempted to reintroduce it under another name. the clearest presentation of it is to be found in the _welt als that_, of the kiel botanist, j. reinke. he takes upon himself the defence of the notion of miracle, of theism, of the mosaic story of creation, and of the constancy of species; he calls "vital forces," in opposition to physical forces, the directive or dominant forces. other neovitalists prefer, in the good old anthropomorphic style, a "supreme" engineer, who has endowed organic substance with a purposive structure, directed to the realization of a definite plan. these curious teleological hypotheses, and the objections to darwinism which generally accompany them, do not call for serious scientific refutation to-day. thirty-three years ago i gave the title of "dysteleology" to the science of those extremely interesting and significant biological facts, which, in the most striking fashion, give a direct contradiction to the teleological idea "of the purposive arrangement of the living organism."[ ] this "science of rudimentary, abortive, arrested, distorted, atrophied, and cataplastic individuals" is based on an immense quantity of remarkable phenomena, which were long familiar to zoologists and botanists, but were not properly interpreted, and their great philosophic significance appreciated, until darwin. all the higher animals and plants, or, in general, all organisms which are not entirely simple in structure, but are made up of a number of organs in orderly co-operation, are found, on close examination, to possess a number of useless or inoperative members, sometimes, indeed, hurtful and dangerous. in the flowers of most plants we find, besides the actual sex-leaves that effect reproduction, a number of other leaf-organs which have no use or meaning (arrested or "miscarried" pistils, fruit, corona, and calix-leaves, etc.). in the two large and variegated classes of flying animals, birds and insects, there are, besides the forms which make constant use of their wings, a number of species which have undeveloped wings and cannot fly. in nearly every class of the higher animals which have eyes there are certain types that live in the dark; they have eyes, as a rule, but undeveloped and useless for vision. in our own human organism we have similar useless rudimentary structures in the muscles of the ear, in the eye-lid, in the nipple and milk-gland of the male, and in other parts of the body; indeed, the vermiform appendix of our cæcum is not only useless, but extremely dangerous, and inflammation of it is responsible for a number of deaths every year. neither the old mystic vitalism nor the new, equally irrational, neovitalism can give any explanation of these and many other purposeless contrivances in the structure of the plant and the animal; but they are very simple in the light of the theory of descent. it shows that these rudimentary organs are atrophied, owing to disuse. just as our muscles, nerves, and organs of sense are strengthened by exercise and frequent use, so, on the other hand, they are liable to degenerate more or less by disuse or suspended exercise. but, although the development of the organs is promoted by exercise and adaptation, they by no means disappear without leaving a trace after neglect; the force of heredity retains them for many generations, and only permits their gradual disappearance after the lapse of a considerable time. the blind "struggle for existence between the organs" determines their historical disappearance, just as it effected their first origin and development. there is no internal "purpose" whatever in the drama. the life of the animal and the plant bears the same universal character of incompleteness as the life of man. this is directly attributable to the circumstance that nature--organic as well as inorganic--is in a perennial state of evolution, change, and transformation. this evolution seems on the whole--at least as far as we can survey the development of organic life on our planet--to be a progressive improvement, an historical advance from the simple to the complex, the lower to the higher, the imperfect to the perfect. i have proved in my _general morphology_ that this historical progress--or gradual perfecting (_teleosis_)--is the inevitable result of selection, and not the outcome of a preconceived design. that is clear from the fact that no organism is perfect; even if it does perfectly adapt itself to its environment at a given moment, this condition would not last very long; the conditions of existence of the environment are themselves subject to perpetual change and they thus necessitate a continuous adaptation on the part of the organism. under the title of _design in the living organism_, the famous embryologist, karl ernst baer, published a work in which, together with the article on darwinism which accompanied it, proved very acceptable to our opponents, and is still much quoted in opposition to evolution. it was a revival of the old teleological system under a new name, and we must devote a line of criticism to it. we must premise that, though baer was a scientist of the highest order, his original monistic views were gradually marred by a tinge of mysticism with the advance of age, and he eventually became a thorough dualist. in his profound work on "the evolution of animals" ( ), which he himself entitled _observation and experiment_, these two methods of investigation are equally applied. by careful observation of the various phenomena of the development of the animal ovum baer succeeded in giving the first consistent presentation of the remarkable changes which take place in the growth of the vertebrate from a simple egg-cell. at the same time he endeavored, by far-seeing comparison and keen reflection, to learn the causes of the transformation, and to reduce them to general constructive laws. he expressed the general result of his research in the following thesis: "the evolution of the individual is the story of the growth of individuality in every respect." he meant that "the one great thought that controls all the different aspects of animal evolution is the same that gathered the scattered fragments of space into spheres and linked them into solar systems. this thought is no other than life itself, and the words and syllables in which it finds utterance are the varied forms of living things." baer, however, did not attain to a deeper knowledge of this great genetic truth and a clearer insight into the real efficient causes of organic evolution, because his attention was exclusively given to one half of evolutionary science, the science of the evolution of the individual, embryology, or, in a wider sense, _ontogeny_. the other half, the science of the evolution of species, _phylogeny_, was not yet in existence, although lamarck had already pointed out the way to it in . when it was established by darwin in , the aged baer was no longer in a position to appreciate it; the fruitless struggle which he led against the theory of selection clearly proved that he understood neither its real meaning nor its philosophic importance. teleological and, subsequently, theological speculations had incapacitated the ageing scientist from appreciating this greatest reform of biology. the teleological observations which he published against it in his _species and studies_ in his eighty-fourth year are mere repetitions of errors which the teleology of the dualists has opposed to the mechanical or monistic system for more than two thousand years. the "telic idea" which, according to baer, controls the entire evolution of the animal from the ovum, is only another expression for the eternal "idea" of plato and the _entelecheia_ of his pupil aristotle. our modern biogeny gives a purely physiological explanation of the facts of embryology, in assigning the functions of heredity and adaptation as their causes. the great biogenetic law, which baer failed to appreciate, reveals the intimate causal connection between the _ontogenesis_ of the individual and the _phylogenesis_ of its ancestors; the former seems to be a recapitulation of the latter. nowhere, however, in the evolution of animals and plants do we find any trace of design, but merely the inevitable outcome of the struggle for existence, the blind controller, instead of the provident god, that effects the changes of organic forms by a mutual action of the laws of heredity and adaptation. and there is no more trace of "design" in the embryology of the individual plant, animal, or man. this _ontogeny_ is but a brief epitome of _phylogeny_, an abbreviated and condensed recapitulation of it, determined by the physiological laws of heredity. baer ended the preface to his classical _evolution of animals_ ( ) with these words: "the palm will be awarded to the fortunate scientist who succeeds in reducing the constructive forces of the animal body to the general forces or life-processes of the entire world. the tree has not yet been planted which is to make his cradle." the great embryologist erred once more. that very year, , witnessed the arrival of charles darwin at cambridge university (for the purpose of studying theology!)--the "fortunate scientist" who richly earned the palm thirty years afterwards by his theory of selection. in the philosophy of history--that is, in the general reflections which historians make on the destinies of nations and the complicated course of political evolution--there still prevails the notion of a "moral order of the universe." historians seek in the vivid drama of history a leading design, an ideal purpose, which has ordained one or other race or state to a special triumph, and to dominion over the others. this teleological view of history has recently become more strongly contrasted with our monistic view in proportion as monism has proved to be the only possible interpretation of inorganic nature. throughout the whole of astronomy, geology, physics, and chemistry there is no question to-day of a "moral order," or a personal god, whose "hand hath disposed all things in wisdom and understanding." and the same must be said of the entire field of biology, the whole constitution and history of organic nature, if we set aside the question of man for the moment. darwin has not only proved by his theory of selection that the orderly processes in the life and structure of animals and plants have arisen by mechanical laws without any preconceived design, but he has shown us in the "struggle for life" the powerful natural force which has exerted supreme control over the entire course of organic evolution for millions of years. it may be said that the struggle for life is the "survival of the fittest" or the "victory of the best"; that is only correct when we regard the strongest as the best (in a moral sense). moreover, the whole history of the organic world goes to prove that, besides the predominant advance towards perfection, there are at all times cases of retrogression to lower stages. even baer's notion of "design" has no moral feature whatever. do we find a different state of things in the history of peoples, which man, in his anthropocentric presumption, loves to call "the history of the world"? do we find in every phase of it a lofty moral principle or a wise ruler, guiding the destinies of nations? there can be but one answer in the present advanced stage of natural and human history: no. the fate of those branches of the human family, those nations and races which have struggled for existence and progress for thousands of years, is determined by the same "eternal laws of iron" as the history of the whole organic world which has peopled the earth for millions of years. geologists distinguish three great epochs in the organic history of the earth, as far as we can read it in the monuments of the science of fossils--the primary, secondary, and tertiary epochs. according to a recent calculation, the first occupied at least thirty-four million, the second eleven million, and the third three million years. the history of the family of vertebrates, from which our own race has sprung, unfolds clearly before our eyes during this long period. three different stages in the evolution of the vertebrate correspond to the three epochs; the _fishes_ characterized the primary (palæozoic) age, the _reptiles_ the secondary (mesozoic), and the _mammals_ the tertiary (cænozoic). of the three groups the fishes rank lowest in organization, the reptiles come next, and the mammals take the highest place. we find, on nearer examination of the history of the three classes, that their various orders and families also advanced progressively during the three epochs towards a higher stage of perfection. may we consider this progressive development as the outcome of a conscious design or a moral order of the universe? certainly not. the theory of selection teaches us that this organic progress, like the earlier organic differentiation, is an inevitable consequence of the struggle for existence. thousands of beautiful and remarkable species of animals and plants have perished during those forty-eight million years, to give place to stronger competitors, and the victors in this struggle for life were not always the noblest or most perfect forms in a moral sense. it has been just the same with the history of humanity. the splendid civilization of classical antiquity perished because christianity, with its faith in a loving god and its hope of a better life beyond the grave, gave a fresh, strong impetus to the soaring human mind. the papal church quickly degenerated into a pitiful caricature of real christianity, and ruthlessly scattered the treasures of knowledge which the hellenic philosophy had gathered; it gained the dominion of the world through the ignorance of the credulous masses. in time the reformation broke the chains of this mental slavery, and assisted reason to secure its right once more. but in the new, as in the older, period the great struggle for existence went on in its eternal fluctuation, with no trace of a moral order. and it is just as impossible for the impartial and critical observer to detect a "wise providence" in the fate of individual human beings as a moral order in the history of peoples. both are determined with iron necessity by a mechanical causality which connects every single phenomenon with one or more antecedent causes. even the ancient greeks recognized _ananke_, the blind _heimarmene_, the fate "that rules gods and men," as the supreme principle of the universe. christianity replaced it by a conscious providence, which is not blind, but sees, and which governs the world in patriarchal fashion. the anthropomorphic character of this notion, generally closely connected with belief in a personal god, is quite obvious. belief in a "loving father," who unceasingly guides the destinies of one billion five hundred million men on our planet, and is attentive at all times to their millions of contradictory prayers and pious wishes, is absolutely impossible; that is at once perceived on laying aside the colored spectacles of "faith" and reflecting rationally on the subject. as a rule, this belief in providence and the tutelage of a "loving father" is more intense in the modern civilized man--just as in the uncultured savage--when some good fortune has fallen him: an escape from peril of life, recovery from a severe illness, the winning of the first prize in a lottery, the birth of a long-delayed child, and so forth. when, on the other hand, a misfortune is met with, or an ardent wish is not fulfilled, "providence" is forgotten. the wise ruler of the world slumbered--or refused his blessing. in the extraordinary development of commerce of the nineteenth century the number of catastrophes and accidents has necessarily increased beyond all imagination; of that the journal is a daily witness. thousands are killed every year by shipwreck, railway accidents, mine accidents, etc. thousands slay each other every year in war, and the preparation for this wholesale massacre absorbs much the greater part of the revenue in the highest civilized nations, the chief professors of "christian charity." and among these hundreds of thousands of annual victims of modern civilization strong, industrious, courageous workers predominate. yet the talk of a "moral order" goes on. since impartial study of the evolution of the world teaches us that there is no definite aim and no special purpose to be traced in it, there seems to be no alternative but to leave everything to "blind chance." this reproach has been made to the transformism of lamarck and darwin, as it had been to the previous systems of kant and laplace; there are a number of dualist philosophers who lay great stress on it. it is, therefore, worth while to make a brief remark upon it. one group of philosophers affirms, in accordance with its teleological conception, that the whole cosmos is an orderly system, in which every phenomenon has its aim and purpose; there is no such thing as chance. the other group, holding a mechanical theory, expresses itself thus: the development of the universe is a monistic mechanical process, in which we discover no aim or purpose whatever; what we call design in the organic world is a special result of biological agencies; neither in the evolution of the heavenly bodies nor in that of the crust of our earth do we find any trace of a controlling purpose--all is the result of chance. each party is right--according to its definition of chance. the general law of causality, taken in conjunction with the law of substance, teaches us that every phenomenon has a mechanical cause; in this sense there is no such thing as chance. yet it is not only lawful, but necessary, to retain the term for the purpose of expressing the simultaneous occurrence of two phenomena, which are not causally related to each other, but of which each has its own mechanical cause, independent of that of the other. everybody knows that chance, in its monistic sense, plays an important part in the life of man and in the universe at large. that, however, does not prevent us from recognizing in each "chance" event, as we do in the evolution of the entire cosmos, the universal sovereignty of nature's supreme law, _the law of substance_. chapter xv god and the world the idea of god in general--antithesis of god and the world; the supernatural and nature--theism and pantheism--chief forms of theism--polytheism--triplotheism--amphitheism--monotheism--religious statistics--naturalistic monotheism--solarism--anthropistic monotheism--the three great mediterranean religions--mosaism--christianity--the cult of the madonna and the saints--papal polytheism--islam--mixotheism--nature of theism--an extra-mundane and anthropomorphic god; a gaseous vertebrate--pantheism--intramundane god (nature)--the hylozoism of the ionic monists (anaximander)--conflict of pantheism and christianity--spinoza--modern monism--atheism for thousands of years humanity has placed the last and supreme basis of all phenomena in an efficient cause, to which it gives the title of god (_deus_, _theos_). like all general ideas, this notion of god has undergone a series of remarkable modifications and transformations in the course of the evolution of reason. indeed, it may be said that no other idea has had so many metamorphoses; for no other belief affects in so high a degree the chief objects of the mind and of rational science, as well as the deepest interests of the emotion and poetic fancy of the believer. a comparative criticism of the many different forms of the idea of god would be extremely interesting and instructive; but we have not space for it in the present work. we must be content with a passing glance at the most important forms of the belief and their relation to the modern thought that has been evoked by a sound study of nature. for further information on this interesting question the reader would do well to consult the distinguished work of adalbert svoboda, _forms of faith_ ( ). when we pass over the finer shades and the variegated clothing of the god-idea and confine our attention to its chief element, we can distribute all the different presentations of it in two groups--the _theistic_ and _pantheistic_ group. the latter is closely connected with the monistic, or rational, view of things, and the former is associated with dualism and mysticism. i.--theism in this view god is distinct from, and opposed to, the world as its creator, sustainer, and ruler. he is always conceived in a more or less human form, as an organism which thinks and acts like a man--only on a much higher scale. this anthropomorphic god, polyphyletically evolved by the different races, assumes an infinity of shapes in their imagination, from fetichism to the refined monotheistic religions of the present day. the chief forms of theism are polytheism, triplotheism, amphitheism, and monotheism. the polytheist peoples the world with a variety of gods and goddesses, which enter into its machinery more or less independently. _fetichism_ sees such subordinate deities in the lifeless body of nature, in rocks, in water, in the air, in human productions of every kind (pictures, statues, etc.). _demonism_ sees gods in living organisms of every species--trees, animals, and men. this kind of polytheism is found in innumerable forms even in the lowest tribes. it reaches the highest stage in hellenic polytheism, in the myths of ancient greece, which still furnish the finest images to the modern poet and artist. at a much lower stage we have catholic polytheism, in which innumerable "saints" (many of them of very equivocal repute) are venerated as subordinate divinities, and prayed to to exert their mediation with the supreme divinity. the dogma of the "trinity," which still comprises three of the chief articles of faith in the creed of christian peoples, culminates in the notion that the one god of christianity is really made up of _three_ different persons: ( ) god the father, the omnipotent creator of heaven and earth (this untenable myth was refuted long ago by scientific cosmogony, astronomy, and geology); ( ) jesus christ; and ( ) the holy ghost, a mystical being, over whose incomprehensible relation to the father and the son millions of christian theologians have racked their brains in vain for the last nineteen hundred years. the gospels, which are the only clear sources of this _triplotheism_, are very obscure as to the relation of these three persons to each other, and do not give a satisfactory answer to the question of their unity. on the other hand, it must be carefully noted what confusion this obscure and mystic dogma of the trinity must necessarily cause in the minds of our children even in the earlier years of instruction. one morning they learn (in their religious instruction) that three times one are one, and the very next hour they are told in their arithmetic class that three times one are three. i remember well the reflection that this confusion led me to in my early school-days. for the rest, the "trinity" is not an original element in christianity; like most of the other christian dogmas, it has been borrowed from earlier religions. out of the sun-worship of the chaldean magi was evolved the trinity of ilu, the mysterious source of the world; its three manifestations were anu, primeval chaos; bel, the architect of the world; and aa, the heavenly light, the all-enlightening wisdom. in the brahmanic religion the trimurti is also conceived as a "divine unity" made up of three persons--brahma (the creator), vishnu (the sustainer), and shiva (the destroyer). it would seem that in this and other ideas of a trinity the "sacred number, three," as such--as a "symbolical number"--has counted for something. the three first christian virtues--faith, hope, and charity--form a similar _triad_. according to the _amphitheists_, the world is ruled by two different gods, a good and an evil principle, god and the devil. they are engaged in a perpetual struggle, like rival emperors, or pope and anti-pope. the condition of the world is the result of this conflict. the loving god, or good principle, is the source of all that is good and beautiful, of joy and of peace. the world would be perfect if his work were not continually thwarted by the evil principle, the devil; this being is the cause of all that is bad and hateful, of contradiction and of pain. amphitheism is undoubtedly the most rational of all forms of belief in god, and the one which is least incompatible with a scientific view of the world. hence we find it elaborated in many ancient peoples thousands of years before christ. in ancient india vishnu, the preserver, struggles with shiva, the destroyer. in ancient egypt the good osiris is opposed by the wicked typhon. the early hebrews had a similar dualism of aschera (or keturah), the fertile mother-earth, and elion (moloch or sethos), the stern heavenly father. in the zend religion of the ancient persians, founded by zoroaster two thousand years before christ, there is a perpetual struggle between ormuzd, the good god of light, and ahriman, the wicked god of darkness. in christian mythology the devil is scarcely less conspicuous as the adversary of the good deity, the tempter and seducer, the prince of hell, and lord of darkness. a personal devil was still an important element in the belief of most christians at the beginning of the nineteenth century. towards the middle of the century he was gradually eliminated by being progressively explained away, or he was restricted to the subordinate _rôle_ he plays as mephistopheles in goethe's great drama. to-day the majority of educated people look upon "belief in a personal devil" as a mediæval superstition, while "belief in god" (that is, the personal, good, and loving god) is retained as an indispensable element of religion. yet the one belief is just as much (or as little) justified as the other. in any case, the much-lamented "imperfection of our earthly life," the "struggle for existence," and all that pertains to it, are explained much more simply and naturally by this struggle of a good and an evil god than by any other form of theism. the dogma of the unity of god may in some respects be regarded as the simplest and most natural type of theism; it is popularly supposed to be the most widely accepted element of religion, and to predominate in the ecclesiastical systems of civilized countries. in reality, that is not the case, because this alleged "monotheism" usually turns out on closer inquiry to be one of the other forms of theism we have examined, a number of subordinate deities being generally introduced besides the supreme one. most of the religions which took a purely monotheistic stand-point have become more or less polytheistic in the course of time. modern statistics assure us that of the one billion five hundred million men who people the earth the great majority are monotheists; of these, _nominally_, about six hundred millions are brahma-buddhists, five hundred millions are called christians, two hundred millions are heathens (of various types), one hundred and eighty millions are mohammedans, ten millions are jews, and ten millions have no religion at all. however, the vast majority of these nominal monotheists have very confused ideas about the deity, or believe in a number of gods and goddesses besides the chief god--angels, devils, etc. the different forms which monotheism has assumed in the course of its polyphyletic development may be distributed in two groups--those of _naturalistic_ and _anthropistic_ monotheism. naturalistic monotheism finds the embodiment of the deity in some lofty and dominating natural phenomenon. the sun, the deity of light and warmth, on whose influence all organic life insensibly and directly depends, was taken to be such a phenomenon many thousand years ago. sun-worship (solarism, or heliotheism) seems to the modern scientist to be the best of all forms of theism, and the one which may be most easily reconciled with modern monism. for modern astrophysics and geogeny have taught us that the earth is a fragment detached from the sun, and that it will eventually return to the bosom of its parent. modern physiology teaches us that the first source of organic life on the earth is the formation of protoplasm, and that this synthesis of simple inorganic substances, water, carbonic acid, and ammonia, only takes place under the influence of sunlight. on the primary evolution of the plasmodomous plants followed, secondarily, that of the plasmophagous animals, which directly or indirectly depend on them for nourishment; and the origin of the human race itself is only a later stage in the development of the animal kingdom. indeed, the whole of our bodily and mental life depends, in the last resort, like all other organic life, on the light and heat rays of the sun. hence in the light of pure reason, sun-worship, as a form of naturalistic monotheism, seems to have a much better foundation than the anthropistic worship of christians and of other monotheists who conceive their god in human form. as a matter of fact, the sun-worshippers attained, thousands of years ago, a higher intellectual and moral standard than most of the other theists. when i was in bombay, in , i watched with the greatest sympathy the elevating rites of the pious parsees, who, standing on the sea-shore, or kneeling on their prayer-rugs, offered their devotion to the sun at its rise and setting.[ ] moon-worship (lunarism and selenotheism) is of much less importance than sun-worship. there are a few uncivilized races that have adored the moon as their only deity, but it has generally been associated with a worship of the stars and the sun. the humanization of god, or the idea that the "supreme being" feels, thinks, and acts like man (though in a higher degree), has played a most important part, as _anthropomorphic monotheism_, in the history of civilization. the most prominent in this respect are the three great religions of the mediterranean peoples--the old mosaic religion, the intermediate christian religion, and the younger mohammedanism. these three great mediterranean religions, all three arising on the east coast of the most interesting of all seas, and originating in an imaginative enthusiast of the semitic race, are intimately connected, not only by this external circumstance of an analogous origin, but by many common features of their internal contents. just as christianity borrowed a good deal of its mythology directly from ancient judaism, so islam has inherited much from both its predecessors. all the three were originally monotheistic; all three were subsequently overlaid with a great variety of polytheistic features, in proportion as they extended, first along the coast of the mediterranean with its heterogeneous population, and eventually into every part of the world. the hebrew monotheism, as it was founded by moses (about b.c.), is usually regarded as the ancient faith which has been of the greatest importance in the ethical and religious development of humanity. this high historical appreciation is certainly valid in the sense that the two other world-conquering mediterranean religions issued from it; christ was just as truly a pupil of moses as mohammed was afterwards of christ. so also the new testament, which has become the foundation of the belief of the highest civilized nations in the short space of nineteen hundred years, rests on the venerable basis of the old testament. the bible, which the two compose, has had a greater influence and a wider circulation than any other book in the world. even to-day the bible--in spite of its curious mingling of the best and the worst elements--is in a certain sense the "book of books." yet when we make an impartial and unprejudiced study of this notable historical source, we find it very different in several important respects from the popular impression. here again modern criticism and history have come to certain conclusions which destroy the prevalent tradition in its very foundations. the monotheism which moses endeavored to establish in the worship of jehovah, and which the prophets--the philosophers of the hebrew race--afterwards developed with great success, had at first to sustain a long and severe struggle with the dominant polytheism which was in possession. jehovah, or yahveh, was originally derived from the heaven-god, which, under the title of moloch or baal, was one of the most popular of the oriental deities (the sethos or typhon of the egyptians, and the saturn or cronos of the greeks). there were, however, other gods in great favor with the jewish people, and so the struggle with "idolatry" continued. still, jehovah was, in principle, the only god, explicitly claiming, in the first precept of the decalogue: "i am the lord thy god; thou shalt have no other gods beside me." christian monotheism shared the fate of its mother, mosaism; it was generally only monotheistic in theory, while it degenerated practically into every kind of polytheism. in point of fact, monotheism was logically abandoned in the very dogma of the trinity, which was adopted as an indispensable foundation of the christian religion. the three persons, which are distinguished as father, son, and holy ghost, are three distinct individuals (and, indeed, anthropomorphic persons), just as truly as the three indian deities of the trimurti (brahma, vishnu, and shiva) or the trinity of the ancient hebrews (anu, bel, and aa). moreover, in the most widely distributed form of christianity the "virgin" mother of christ plays an important part as a fourth deity; in many catholic countries she is practically taken to be much more powerful and influential than the three male persons of the celestial administration. the cult of the madonna has been developed to such an extent in these countries that we may oppose it to the usual masculine form of monotheism as one of a feminine type. the "queen of heaven" becomes so prominent, as is seen in so many pictures and legends of the madonna, that the three male persons practically disappear. in addition, the imagination of the pious christian soon came to increase this celestial administration by a numerous company of "saints" of all kinds, and bands of musical angels, who should see that "eternal life" should not prove too dull. the popes--the greatest charlatans that any religion ever produced--have constantly studied to increase this band of celestial satellites by repeated canonizations. this curious company received its most interesting acquisition in , when the vatican council pronounced the popes, as the vicars of christ, to be infallible, and thus raised them to a divine dignity. when we add the "personal devil" that they acknowledge, and the "bad angels" who form his court, we have in modern catholicism, still the most extensive branch of christianity, a rich and variegated polytheism that dwarfs the olympic family of the greeks. islam, or the mohammedan monotheism, is the youngest and purest form of monotheism. when the young mohammed (born ) learned to despise the polytheistic idolatry of his arabian compatriots, and became acquainted with nestorian christianity, he adopted its chief doctrines in a general way; but he could not bring himself to see anything more than a prophet in christ, like moses. he found in the dogma of the trinity what every emancipated thinker finds on impartial reflection--an absurd legend which is neither reconcilable with the first principles of reason nor of any value whatever for our religious advancement. he justly regarded the worship of the immaculate mother of god as a piece of pure idolatry, like the veneration of pictures and images. the longer he reflected on it, and the more he strove after a purified idea of deity, the clearer did the certitude of his great maxim appear: "god is the only god"--there are no other gods beside him. yet mohammed could not free himself from the anthropomorphism of the god-idea. his one only god was an idealized, almighty man, like the stern, vindictive god of moses, and the gentle, loving god of christ. still, we must admit that the mohammedan religion has preserved the character of pure monotheism throughout the course of its historical development and its inevitable division much more faithfully than the mosaic and christian religions. we see that to-day, even externally, in its forms of prayer and preaching, and in the architecture and adornment of its mosques. when i visited the east for the first time, in , and admired the noble mosques of cairo, smyrna, brussa, and constantinople, i was inspired with a feeling of real devotion by the simple and tasteful decoration of the interior, and the lofty and beautiful architectural work of the exterior. how noble and inspiring do these mosques appear in comparison with the majority of catholic churches, which are covered internally with gaudy pictures and gilt, and are outwardly disfigured by an immoderate crowd of human and animal figures! not less elevated are the silent prayers and the simple devotional acts of the koran when compared with the loud, unintelligible verbosity of the catholic mass and the blatant music of their theatrical processions. under the title of _mixotheism_ we may embrace all the forms of theistic belief which contain mixtures of religious notions of different, sometimes contradictory, kinds. in theory this most widely diffused type of religion is not recognized at all; in the concrete it is the most important and most notable of all. the vast majority of men who have religious opinions have always been, and still are, _mixotheists_; their idea of god is picturesquely compounded from the impressions received in childhood from their own sect, and a number of other impressions which are received later on, from contact with members of other religions, and which modify the earlier notions. in educated people there is also sometimes the modifying influence of philosophic studies in maturer years, and especially the unprejudiced study of natural phenomena, which reveals the futility of the theistic idea. the conflict of these contradictory impressions, which is very painful to a sensitive soul, and which often remains undecided throughout life, clearly shows the immense power of the _heredity_ of ancient myths on the one hand and the early _adaptation_ to erroneous dogmas on the other. the particular faith in which the child has been brought up generally remains in power, unless a "conversion" takes place subsequently, owing to the stronger influence of some other religion. but even in this supersession of one faith by another the new name, like the old one, proves to be merely an outward label covering a mixture of the most diverse opinions and errors. the greater part of those who call themselves christians are not monotheists (as they think), but amphitheists, triplotheists, or polytheists. and the same must be said of islam and mosaism, and other monotheistic religions. everywhere we find associated with the original idea of a "sole and triune god" later beliefs in a number of subordinate deities--angels, devils, saints, etc.--a picturesque assortment of the most diverse theistic forms. all the above forms of theism, in the proper sense of the word--whether the belief assumes a naturalistic or an anthropistic form--represent god to be an extramundane or a supernatural being. he is always opposed to the world, or nature, as an independent being; generally as its creator, sustainer, and ruler. in most religions he has the additional character of personality, or, to put it more definitely still, god as a person is likened to man. "in his gods man paints himself." this anthropomorphic conception of god as one who thinks, feels, and acts like man prevails with the great majority of theists, sometimes in a cruder and more naïve form, sometimes in a more refined and abstract degree. in any case the form of theosophy we have described is sure to affirm that god, the supreme being, is infinite in perfection, and therefore far removed from the imperfection of humanity. yet, when we examine closely, we always find the same psychic or mental activity in the two. god feels, thinks, and acts as man does, although it be in an infinitely more perfect form. the _personal anthropism_ of god has become so natural to the majority of believers that they experience no shock when they find god personified in human form in pictures and statues, and in the varied images of the poet, in which god takes human form--that is, is changed into a vertebrate. in some myths, even, god takes the form of other mammals (an ape, lion, bull, etc.), and more rarely of a bird (eagle, dove, or stork), or of some lower vertebrate (serpent, crocodile, dragon, etc.). in the higher and more abstract forms of religion this idea of bodily appearance is entirely abandoned, and god is adored as a "pure spirit" without a body. "god is a spirit, and they who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." nevertheless, the psychic activity of this "pure spirit" remains just the same as that of the anthropomorphic god. in reality, even this immaterial spirit is not conceived to be incorporeal, but merely invisible, gaseous. we thus arrive at the paradoxical conception of god as a _gaseous vertebrate_. ii.--pantheism pantheism teaches that god and the world are one. the idea of god is identical with that of nature or substance. this pantheistic view is sharply opposed in principle to all the systems we have described, and to all possible forms of theism although there have been many attempts made from both sides to bridge over the deep chasm that separates the two. there is always this fundamental contradiction between them, that in theism god is opposed to nature as an _extramundane_ being, as creating and sustaining the world, and acting upon it from without, while in pantheism god, as an _intramundane_ being, is everywhere identical with nature itself, and is operative _within_ the world as "force" or "energy." the latter view alone is compatible with our supreme law--the law of substance. it follows necessarily that pantheism is _the world-system of the modern scientist_. there are, it is true, still a few men of science who contest this, and think it possible to reconcile the old theistic theory of human nature with the pantheistic truth of the law of substance. all these efforts rest on confusion or sophistry--when they are honest. as pantheism is a result of an advanced conception of nature in the civilized mind, it is naturally much younger than theism, the crudest forms of which are found in great variety in the uncivilized races of ten thousand years ago. we do, indeed, find the germs of pantheism in different religions at the very dawn of philosophy in the earliest civilized peoples (in india, egypt, china, and japan), several thousand years before the time of christ; still, we do not meet a definite philosophical expression of it until the hylozoism of the ionic philosophers, in the first half of the sixth century before christ. all the great thinkers of this flourishing period of hellenic thought are surpassed by the famous anaximander, of miletus, who conceived the essential unity of the infinite universe (_apeiron_) more profoundly and more clearly than his master, thales, or his pupil, anaximenes. not only the great thought of the original unity of the cosmos and the development of all phenomena out of the all-pervading primitive matter found expression in anaximander, but he even enunciated the bold idea of countless worlds in a periodic alternation of birth and death. many other great philosophers of classical antiquity, especially democritus, heraclitus, and empedocles, had, in the same or an analogous sense, a profound conception of this unity of nature and god, of body and spirit, which has obtained its highest expression in the law of substance of our modern monism. the famous roman poet and philosopher, lucretius carus, has presented it in a highly poetic form in his poem "de rerum natura." however, this true pantheistic monism was soon entirely displaced by the mystic dualism of plato, and especially by the powerful influence which the idealistic philosophy obtained by its blending with christian dogmas. when the papacy attained to its spiritual despotism over the world, pantheism was hopelessly crushed; giordano bruno, its most gifted defender, was burned alive by the "vicar of christ" in the campo dei fiori at rome on february , . it was not until the middle of the seventeenth century that pantheism was exhibited in its purest form by the great baruch spinoza; he gave for the totality of things a definition of substance in which god and the world are inseparably united. the clearness, confidence, and consistency of spinoza's monistic system are the more remarkable when we remember that this gifted thinker of two hundred and fifty years ago was without the support of all those sound empirical bases which have been obtained in the second half of the nineteenth century. we have already spoken, in the first chapter, of spinoza's relation to the materialism of the eighteenth and the monism of the nineteenth century. the propagation of his views, especially in germany, is due, above all, to the immortal works of our greatest poet and thinker, wolfgang goethe. his splendid _god and the world_, _prometheus_, _faust_, etc., embody the great thoughts of pantheism in the most perfect poetic creations. atheism affirms that there are no gods or goddesses, assuming that god means a personal, extramundane entity. this "godless world-system" substantially agrees with the monism or pantheism of the modern scientist; it is only another expression for it, emphasizing its negative aspect, the non-existence of any supernatural deity. in this sense schopenhauer justly remarks: "pantheism is only a polite form of atheism. the truth of pantheism lies in its destruction of the dualist antithesis of god and the world, in its recognition that the world exists in virtue of its own inherent forces. the maxim of the pantheist, 'god and the world are one,' is merely a polite way of giving the lord god his _congé_." during the whole of the middle ages, under the bloody despotism of the popes, atheism was persecuted with fire and sword as a most pernicious system. as the "godless" man is plainly identified with the "wicked" in the gospel, and is threatened--simply on account of his "want of faith"--with the eternal fires of hell, it was very natural that every good christian should be anxious to avoid the suspicion of atheism. unfortunately, the idea still prevails very widely. the atheistic scientist who devotes his strength and his life to the search for the truth, is freely credited with all that is evil; the theistic church-goer, who thoughtlessly follows the empty ceremonies of catholic worship, is at once assumed to be a good citizen, even if there be no meaning whatever in his faith and his morality be deplorable. this error will only be destroyed when, in the twentieth century, the prevalent superstition gives place to rational knowledge and to a monistic conception of the unity of god and the world. chapter xvi knowledge and belief the knowledge of the truth and its sources: the activity of the senses and the association of presentations--organs of sense and organs of thought--sense-organs and their specific energy--their evolution--the philosophy of sensibility--inestimable value of the senses--limits of sensitive knowledge--hypothesis and faith--theory and faith--essential difference of scientific (natural) and religious (supernatural) faith--superstition of savage and of civilized races--confessions of faith--unsectarian schools--the faith of our fathers--spiritism--revelation every effort of genuine science makes for a knowledge of the truth. our only real and valuable knowledge is a knowledge of nature itself, and consists of presentations which correspond to external things. we are incompetent, it is true, to penetrate into the innermost nature of this real world--the "thing in itself"--but impartial critical observation and comparison inform us that, in the normal action of the brain and the organs of sense, the impressions received by them from the outer world are the same in all rational men, and that in the normal function of the organs of thought certain presentations are formed which are everywhere the same. these presentations we call _true_, and we are convinced that their content corresponds to the knowable aspect of things. we _know_ that these facts are not imaginary, but real. all knowledge of the truth depends on two different, but intimately connected, groups of human physiological functions: firstly, on the _sense-impressions_ of the object by means of sense-action, and, secondly, on the combination of these impressions by an association into _presentations_ in the subject. the instruments of sensation are the sense-organs (_sensilla_ or _aestheta_); the instruments which form and link together the presentations are the organs of thought (_phroneta_). the latter are part of the central, and the former part of the peripheral, nervous system--that important and elaborate system of organs in the higher animals which alone effects their entire psychic activity. man's sense-activity, which is the starting-point of all knowledge, has been slowly and gradually developed from that of his nearest mammal relatives, the primates. the sense-organs are of substantially the same construction throughout this highest animal group, and their function takes place always according to the same physical and chemical laws. they have had the same historical development in all cases. in the mammals, as in the case of all other animals, the _sensilla_ were originally parts of the skin; the sensitive cells of the epidermis are the sources of all the different sense-organs, which have acquired their specific energy by adaptation to different stimuli (light, heat, sound, chemical action, etc.). the rod-cells in the retina of the eye, the auditory cells in the cochlea of the ear, the olfactory cells in the nose, and the taste-cells on the tongue, are all originally derived from the simple, indifferent cells of the epidermis, which cover the entire surface of the body. this significant fact can be directly proved by observation of the embryonic development of man or any of the higher animals. and from this ontogenetic fact we confidently infer, in virtue of the great biogenetic law, the important phylogenetic proposition, that in the long historical evolution of our ancestors, likewise, the higher sense-organs with their specific energies were originally derived from the epidermis of lower animals, from a simple layer of cells which had no trace of such differentiated sensilla. a particular importance attaches to the circumstance that different nerves are qualified to perceive different properties of the environment, and these only. the optic nerve accomplishes only the perception of light, the auditory nerve the perception of sound, the olfactory nerve the perception of smell, and so on. no matter what stimuli impinge on and irritate a given sense-organ, its reaction is always of the same character. from this specific energy of the sense-nerves, which was first fully appreciated by johannes müller, very erroneous inferences have been drawn, especially in favor of a dualistic and _à priori_ theory of knowledge. it has been affirmed that the brain, or the soul, only perceives a certain condition of the stimulated nerve, and that, consequently, no conclusion can be drawn from the process as to the existence and nature of the stimulating environment. sceptical philosophy concluded that the very existence of an outer world is doubtful, and extreme idealism went on positively to deny it, contending that things only exist in our impressions of them. in opposition to these erroneous views, we must recall the fact that the "specific energy" was not originally an innate, special quality of the various nerves, but it has arisen by adaptation to the particular activity of the epidermic cells in which they terminate. in harmony with the great law of "division of labor" the originally indifferent "sense-cells of the skin" undertook different tasks, one group of them taking over the stimulus of the light rays, another the impress of the sound waves, a third the chemical impulse of odorous substances, and so on. in the course of a very long period these external stimuli effected a gradual change in the physiological, and later in the morphological, properties of these parts of the epidermis, and there was a correlative modification of the sensitive nerves which conduct the impressions they receive to the brain. selection improved, step by step, such particular modifications as proved to be useful, and thus eventually, in the course of many million years, created those wonderful instruments, the eye and the ear, which we prize so highly; their structure is so remarkably purposive that they might well lead to the erroneous assumption of a "creation on a preconceived design." the peculiar character of each sense-organ and its specific nerve has thus been gradually evolved by use and exercise--that is, by _adaptation_--and has then been transmitted by _heredity_ from generation to generation. albrecht rau has thoroughly established this view in his excellent work on _sensation and thought_, a physiological inquiry into the nature of the human understanding ( ). it points out the correct significance of müller's law of specific sense-energies, adding searching investigations into their relation to the brain, and in the last chapter there is an able "philosophy of sensitivity" based on the ideas of ludwig feuerbach. i thoroughly agree with his convincing work. critical comparison of sense-action in man and the other vertebrates has brought to light a number of extremely important facts, the knowledge of which we owe to the penetrating research of the nineteenth century, especially of the second half of the century. this is particularly true of the two most elaborate "æsthetic" organs, the eye and the ear. they present a different and more complicated structure in the vertebrates than in the other animals, and have also a characteristic development in the embryo. this typical ontogenesis and structure of the sensilla of all the vertebrates is only explained by _heredity_ from a common ancestor. within the vertebrate group, however, we find a great variety of structure in points of detail, and this is due to _adaptation_ to their manner of life on the part of the various species, to the increasing or diminishing use of various parts. in respect of the structure of his sense-organs man is by no means the most perfect and most highly-developed vertebrate. the eye of the eagle is much keener, and can distinguish small objects at a distance much more clearly than the human eye. the hearing of many mammals, especially of the carnivora, ungulata, and rodentia of the desert, is much more sensitive than that of man, and perceives slight noises at a much greater distance; that may be seen at a glance by their large and very sensitive cochlea. singing birds have attained a higher grade of development, even in respect of musical endowment, than the majority of men. the sense of smell is much more developed in most of the mammals, especially in the carnivora and the ungulata, than in man; if the dog could compare his own fine scent with that of man, he would look down on us with compassion. even with regard to the lower senses--taste, sex-sense, touch, and temperature--man has by no means reached the highest stage in every respect. we can naturally only pass judgment on the sensations which we ourselves experience. however, anatomy informs us of the presence in the bodies of many animals of other senses than those we are familiar with. thus fishes and other lower aquatic vertebrates have peculiar sensilla in the skin which are in connection with special sense-nerves. on the right and left sides of the fish's body there is a long canal, branching into a number of smaller canals at the head. in this "mucous canal" there are nerves with numerous branches, the terminations of which are connected with peculiar nerve-aggregates. this extensive epidermic sense-organ probably serves for the perception of changes in the pressure, or in other properties, of the water. some groups are distinguished by the possession of other peculiar sensilla, the meaning of which is still unknown to us. but it is already clear from the above facts that our human sense-activity is limited, not only in quantity, but in quality also. we can thus only perceive with our senses, especially with the eye and the sense of touch, a part of the qualities of the objects in our environment. and even this partial perception is incomplete, in the sense that our organs are imperfect, and our sensory nerves, acting as interpreters, communicate to the brain only a translation of the impressions received. however, this acknowledged imperfection of our senses should not prevent us from recognizing their instruments, and especially the eye, to be organs of the highest type; together with the thought-organs in the brain, they are nature's most valuable gift to man. very truly does albrecht rau say: "all science is sensitive knowledge in the ultimate analysis; it does not deny, but interpret, the data of the senses. the senses are our first and best friends. long before the mind is developed the senses tell man what he must do and avoid. he who makes a general disavowal of the senses in order to meet their dangers acts as thoughtlessly and as foolishly as the man who plucks out his eyes because they once fell on shameful things, or the man who cuts off his hand lest at any time it should reach out to the goods of his neighbor." hence feuerbach is quite right in calling all philosophies, religions, and systems which oppose the principle of sense-action not only erroneous, but really pernicious. without the senses there is no knowledge--"_nihil est in intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu_," as locke said. twenty years ago i pointed out, in my chapter "on the origin and development of the sense-organs,"[ ] the great service of darwinism in giving us a profounder knowledge and a juster appreciation of the senses. the thirst for knowledge of the educated mind is not contented with the defective acquaintance with the outer world which is obtained through our imperfect sense-organs. he endeavors to build up the sense-impressions which they have brought him into valuable knowledge. he transforms them into specific sense-perceptions in the sense-centres of the cortex of the brain, and combines them into presentations, by association, in the thought-centres. finally, by a further concatenation of the groups of presentations he attains to connected knowledge. but this knowledge remains defective and unsatisfactory until the imagination supplements the inadequate power of combination of the intelligence, and, by the association of stored-up images, unites the isolated elements into a connected whole. thus are produced new general presentative images, and these suffice to interpret the facts perceived and satisfy "reason's feeling of causality." the presentations which fill up the gaps in our knowledge, or take its place, may be called, in a broad sense, "faith." that is what happens continually in daily life. when we are not sure about a thing we say, i believe it. in this sense we are compelled to make use of faith even in science itself; we conjecture or assume that a certain relation exists between two phenomena, though we do not know it for certain. if it is a question of a _cause_, we form a _hypothesis_; though in science only such hypotheses are admitted as lie within the sphere of human cognizance, and do not contradict known facts. such hypotheses are, for instance--in physics the theory of the vibratory movement of ether, in chemistry the hypothesis of atoms and their affinity, in biology the theory of the molecular structure of living protoplasm, and so forth. the explanation of a great number of connected phenomena by the assumption of a common cause is called a _theory_. both in theory and hypothesis "faith" (in the scientific sense) is indispensable; for here again it is the imagination that fills up the gaps left by the intelligence in our knowledge of the connection of things. a theory, therefore, must always be regarded only as an approximation to the truth; it must be understood that it may be replaced in time by another and better-grounded theory. but, in spite of this admitted uncertainty, theory is indispensable for all true science; it elucidates facts by postulating a cause for them. the man who renounces theory altogether, and seeks to construct a pure science with certain facts alone (as often happens with wrong-headed representatives of our "exact sciences"), must give up the hope of any knowledge of causes, and, consequently, of the satisfaction of reason's demand for causality. the theory of gravitation in astronomy (newton), the nebular theory in cosmogony (kant and laplace), the principle of energy in physics (meyer and helmholtz), the atomic theory in chemistry (dalton), the vibratory theory in optics (huyghens), the cellular theory in histology (schleiden and schwann), and the theory of descent in biology (lamarck and darwin), are all important theories of the first rank; they explain a whole world of natural phenomena by the assumption of a common cause for all the several facts of their respective provinces, and by showing that all the phenomena thereof are inter-connected and controlled by laws which issue from this common cause. yet the cause itself may remain obscure in character, or be merely a "provisional hypothesis." the "force of gravity" in the theory of gravitation and in cosmogony, "energy" itself in its relation to matter, the "ether" of optics and electricity, the "atom" of the chemist, the living "protoplasm" of histology, the "heredity" of the evolutionist--these and similar conceptions of other great theories may be regarded by a sceptical philosophy as "mere hypotheses" and the outcome of scientific "faith," yet they are indispensable for us, until they are replaced by better hypotheses. the dogmas which are used for the explanation of phenomena in the various religions, and which go by the name of "faith" (in the narrower sense), are of a very different character from the forms of scientific faith we have enumerated. the two types, however--the "natural" faith of science and the "supernatural" faith of religion--are not infrequently confounded, so that we must point out their fundamental difference. religious faith means always belief in a miracle, and as such is in hopeless contradiction with the natural faith of reason. in opposition to reason it postulates supernatural agencies, and, therefore, may be justly called superstition. the essential difference of this superstition from rational faith lies in the fact that it assumes supernatural forces and phenomena, which are unknown and inadmissible to science, and which are the outcome of illusion and fancy; moreover, superstition contradicts the well-known laws of nature, and is therefore _irrational_. owing to the great progress of ethnology during the century, we have learned a vast quantity of different kinds and practices of superstition, as they still survive in uncivilized races. when they are compared with each other and with the mythological notion of earlier ages, a manifold analogy is discovered, frequently a common origin, and eventually one simple source for them all. this is found in the "demand of causality in reason," in the search for an explanation of obscure phenomena by the discovery of a cause. that applies particularly to such phenomena as threaten us with danger and excite fear, like thunder and lightning, earthquakes, eclipses, etc. the demand for a causal explanation of such phenomena is found in uncivilized races of the lowest grade, transmitted from their primate ancestors by heredity. it is even found in many other vertebrates. when a dog barks at the full moon, or at a ringing bell, of which it sees the hammer moving, or at a flag that flutters in the breeze, it expresses not only fear, but also the mysterious impulse to learn the cause of the obscure phenomenon. the crude beginnings of religion among primitive races spring partly from this hereditary superstition of their primate ancestors, and partly from the worship of ancestors, from various emotional impulses, and from habits which have become traditional. the religious notions of modern civilized peoples, which they esteem so highly, profess to be on a much higher level than the "crude superstition" of the savage; we are told of the great advance which civilization has made in sweeping it aside. that is a great mistake. impartial comparison and analysis show that they only differ in their special "form of faith" and the outer shell of their creed. in the clear light of reason the refined faith of the most liberal ecclesiastical religion--inasmuch as it contradicts the known and inviolable laws of nature--is no less irrational a superstition than the crude spirit-faith of primitive fetichism on which it looks down with proud disdain. and if, from this impartial stand-point, we take a critical glance at the kinds of faith that prevail to-day in civilized countries, we find them everywhere saturated with traditional superstition. the christian belief in creation, the trinity, the immaculate conception, the redemption, the resurrection and ascension of christ, and so forth, is just as purely imaginative as the belief in the various dogmas of the mohammedan, mosaic, buddhistic, and brahmanic religions, and is just as incapable of reconciliation with a rational knowledge of nature. each of these religions is for the sincere believer an indisputable truth, and each regards the other as heresy and damnable error. the more confidently a particular sect considers itself "the only ark of salvation," and the more ardently this conviction is cherished, the more zealously does it contend against all other sects and give rise to the fearful religious wars that form the saddest pages in the book of history. and all the time the unprejudiced "critique of pure reason" teaches us that all these different forms of faith are equally false and irrational, mere creatures of poetic fancy and uncritical tradition. rational science must reject them all alike as the outcome of superstition. the incalculable injury which irrational superstition has done to credulous humanity is conspicuously revealed in the ceaseless conflict of confessions of faith. of all the wars which nations have waged against each other with fire and sword the religious wars have been the bloodiest; of all the forms of discord that have shattered the happiness of families and of individuals those that arise from religious differences are still the most painful. think of the millions who have lost their lives in christian persecutions, in the religious conflicts of islam and of the reformation, by the inquisition, and under the charge of witchcraft. or think of the still greater number of luckless men who, through religious differences, have been plunged into family troubles, have lost the esteem of their fellow-citizens and their position in the community, or have even been compelled to fly from their country. the official confession of faith becomes most pernicious of all when it is associated with the political aims of a modern state, and is enforced as "religious instruction" in our schools. the child's mind is thus early diverted from the pursuit of the truth and impregnated with superstition. every friend of humanity should do all in his power to promote unsectarian schools as one of the most valuable institutions of the modern state. the great value which is, none the less, still very widely attached to sectarian instruction is not only due to the compulsion of a reactionary state and its dependence on a dominant clericalism, but also to the weight of old traditions and "emotional cravings" of various kinds. one of the strongest of these is the devout reverence which is extended everywhere to sectarian tradition, to the "faith of our fathers." in thousands of stories and poems fidelity to it is extolled as a spiritual treasure and a sacred duty. yet a little impartial study of the history of faith suffices to show the absurdity of the notion. the dominant evangelical faith of the second half of the nineteenth century is essentially different from that of the first half, and this again from that of the eighteenth century. the faith of the eighteenth century diverges considerably from the "faith of our fathers" of the seventeenth, and still more from that of the sixteenth, century. the reformation, releasing enslaved reason from the tyranny of the popes, is naturally regarded by them as darkest heresy; but even the faith of the papacy itself had been completely transformed in the course of a century. and how different is the faith of the christian from that of his heathen ancestors. every man with some degree of independent thought frames a more or less personal religion for himself, which is always different from that of his fathers; it depends largely on the general condition of thought in his day. the further we go back in the history of civilization, the more clearly do we find this esteemed "faith of our fathers" to be an indefensible superstition which is undergoing continual transformation. one of the most remarkable forms of superstition, which still takes a very active part in modern life, is _spiritism_. it is a surprising and a lamentable fact that millions of educated people are still dominated by this dreary superstition; even distinguished scientists are entangled in it. a number of spiritualist journals spread the faith far and wide, and our "superior circles" do not scruple to hold _séances_ in which "spirits" appear, rapping, writing, giving messages from "the beyond," and so on. it is a frequent boast of spiritists that even eminent men of science defend their superstition. in germany, a. zöllner and fechner are quoted as instances; in england, wallace and crookes. the regrettable circumstance that physicists and biologists of such distinction have been led astray by spiritism is accounted for, partly by their excess of imagination and defect of critical faculty, and partly by the powerful influence of dogmas which a religious education imprinted on the brain in early youth. moreover, it was precisely through the famous _séances_ at leipzig, in which the physicists, zöllner, fechner, and wilhelm weber, were imposed on by the clever american conjuror, slade, that the fraud of the latter was afterwards fully exposed; he was discovered to be a common impostor. in other cases, too, where the alleged marvels of spiritism have been thoroughly investigated, they have been traced to a more or less clever deception; the mediums (generally of the weaker sex) have been found to be either smart swindlers or nervous persons of abnormal irritability. their supposed gift of "telepathy" (or "action at a distance of thought without material medium") has no more existence than the "voices" or the "groans" of spirits, etc. the vivid pictures which carl du prel, of munich, and other spiritists give of their phenomena must be regarded as the outcome of a lively imagination, together with a lack of critical power and of knowledge of physiology. the majority of religions have, in spite of their great differences, one common feature, which is, at the same time, one of their strongest supports in many quarters. they declare that they can elucidate the problem of existence, the solution of which is beyond the natural power of reason, by the supernatural way of revelation; from that they derive the authority of the dogmas which in the guise of "divine laws" control morality and the practical conduct of life. "divine" inspirations of that kind form the basis of many myths and legends, the human origin of which is perfectly clear. it is true that the god who reveals himself does not always appear in human shape, but in thunder and lightning, storm and earthquake, fiery bush or menacing cloud. but the revelation which he is supposed to bring to the credulous children of men is always anthropomorphic; it invariably takes the form of a communication of ideas or commands which are formulated and expressed precisely as is done in the normal action of the human brain and larynx. in the indian and egyptian religions, in the mythologies of greece and rome, in the old and the new testaments, the gods think, talk, and act just as men do; the revelations, in which they are supposed to unveil for us the secrets of existence and the solution of the great world-enigma, are creations of the human imagination. the "truth" which the credulous discover in them is a human invention; the "childlike faith" in these irrational revelations is mere superstition. the true revelation--that is, the true source of rational knowledge--is to be sought in nature alone. the rich heritage of truth which forms the most valuable part of human culture is derived exclusively from the experiences acquired in a searching study of nature, and from the rational conclusions which it has reached by the just association of these empirical presentations. every intelligent man with normal brain and senses finds this true revelation in nature on impartial study, and thus frees himself from the superstition with which the "revelations" of religion had burdened him. chapter xvii science and christianity increasing opposition between modern science and christian theology--the old and the new faith--defence of rational science against the attacks of christian superstition, especially against catholicism--four periods in the evolution of christianity: i. primitive christianity (the first three centuries)--the four canonical gospels--the epistles of paul--ii. the papacy (ultramontane christianity)--retrogression of civilization in the middle ages--ultramontane falsification of history--the papacy and science--the papacy and christianity--iii. the reformation--luther and calvin--the year of emancipation--iv. the pseudo-christianity of the nineteenth century--the papal declaration of war against reason and science: (_a_) infallibility, (_b_) the encyclica, (_c_) the immaculate conception one of the most distinctive features of the expiring century is the increasing vehemence of the opposition between science and christianity. that is both natural and inevitable. in the same proportion in which the victorious progress of modern science has surpassed all the scientific achievements of earlier ages has the untenability been proved of those mystic views which would subdue reason under the yoke of an alleged revelation; and the christian religion belongs to that group. the more solidly modern astronomy, physics, and chemistry have established the sole dominion of inflexible natural laws in the universe at large, and modern botany, zoology, and anthropology have proved the validity of those laws in the entire kingdom of organic nature, so much the more strenuously has the christian religion, in association with dualistic metaphysics, striven to deny the application of these natural laws in the province of the so-called "spiritual life"--that is, in one section of the physiology of the brain. no one has more clearly, boldly, and unanswerably enunciated this open and irreconcilable opposition between the modern scientific and the outworn christian view than david friedrich strauss, the greatest theologian of the nineteenth century. his last work, _the old faith and the new_, is a magnificent expression of the honest conviction of all educated people of the present day who understand this unavoidable conflict between the discredited, dominant doctrines of christianity and the illuminating, rational revelation of modern science--all those who have the courage to defend the right of reason against the pretensions of superstition, and who are sensible of the philosophic demand for a unified system of thought. strauss, as an honorable and courageous free-thinker, has expounded far better than i could the principal points of difference between "the old and the new faith." the absolute irreconcilability of the opponents and the inevitability of their struggle ("for life or death") have been ably presented on the philosophic side by e. hartmann, in his interesting work on _the self-destruction of christianity_. when the works of strauss and feuerbach and _the history of the conflict between religion and science_ of j. w. draper have been read, it may seem superfluous for us to devote a special chapter to the subject. yet we think it useful, and even necessary for our purpose, to cast a critical glance at the historical course of this great struggle; especially seeing that the attacks of the "church militant" on science in general, and on the theory of evolution in particular, have become extremely bitter and menacing of late years. unfortunately, the mental relaxation which has lately set in, and the rising flood of reaction in the political, social, and ecclesiastical world, are only too well calculated to give point to those dangers. if any one doubts it, he has only to look over the conduct of christian synods and of the german reichstag during the last few years. quite in harmony are the recent efforts of many secular governments to get on as good a footing as possible with the "spiritual regiment," their deadly enemy--that is, to submit to its yoke. the two forces find a common aim in the suppression of free thought and free scientific research, for the purpose of thus more easily securing a complete despotism. let us first emphatically protest that it is a question for us of the necessary defence of science and reason against the vigorous attacks of the christian church and its vast army, not of an unprovoked attack of science on religion. and, in the first place, our defence must be prepared against romanism or ultramontanism. this "one ark of salvation," this catholic church "destined for all," is not only much larger and more powerful than the other christian sects, but it has the exceptional advantage of a vast, centralized organization and an unrivalled political ability. men of science are often heard to say that the catholic superstition is no more astute than the other forms of supernatural faith, and that all these insidious institutions are equally inimical to reason and science. as a matter of general theoretical principle the statement may pass, but it is certainly wrong when we look to its practical side. the deliberate and indiscriminate attacks of the ultramontane church on science, supported by the apathy and ignorance of the masses, are, on account of its powerful organization, much more severe and dangerous than those of other religions. in order to appreciate correctly the extreme importance of christianity in regard to the entire history of civilization, and particularly its fundamental opposition to reason and science, we must briefly run over the principal stages of its historical evolution. it may be divided into four periods: ( ) primitive christianity (the first three centuries), ( ) papal christianity (twelve centuries, from the fourth to the fifteenth), ( ) the reformation (three centuries, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth), and ( ) modern pseudo-christianity. i.--primitive christianity primitive christianity embraces the first three centuries. christ himself, the noble prophet and enthusiast, so full of the love of humanity, was far below the level of classical culture; he knew nothing beyond the jewish traditions; he has not left a single line of writing. he had, indeed, no suspicion of the advanced stage to which greek philosophy and science had progressed five hundred years before. all that we know of him and of his original teaching is taken from the chief documents of the new testament--the four gospels and the pauline epistles. as to the four canonical gospels, we now know that they were selected from a host of contradictory and forged manuscripts of the first three centuries by the three hundred and eighteen bishops who assembled at the council of nicæa in . the entire list of gospels numbered forty; the canonical list contains four. as the contending and mutually abusive bishops could not agree about the choice, they determined to leave the selection to a miracle. they put all the books (according to the _synodicon_ of pappus) together underneath the altar, and prayed that the apocryphal books, of human origin, might remain there, and the genuine, inspired books might be miraculously placed on the table of the lord. and that, says tradition, really occurred! the three synoptic gospels (matthew, mark, and luke--all written _after_ them, not _by_ them, at the beginning of the second century) and the very different fourth gospel (ostensibly "after" john, written about the middle of the second century) leaped on the table, and were thenceforth recognized as the inspired (with their thousand mutual contradictions) foundations of christian doctrine. if any modern "unbeliever" finds this story of the "leap of the sacred books" incredible, we must remind him that it is just as credible as the table-turning and spirit-rapping that are believed to take place to-day by millions of educated people; and that hundreds of millions of christians believe just as implicitly in their personal immortality, their "resurrection from the dead," and the trinity of god--dogmas that contradict pure reason no more and no less than that miraculous bound of the gospel manuscripts. the most important sources after the gospels are the fourteen separate (and generally forged) epistles of paul. the genuine pauline epistles (_three_ in number, according to recent criticism--to the romans, galatians, and corinthians) were written before the canonical gospels, and contain less incredible miraculous matter than they. they are also more concerned than the gospels to adjust themselves with a rational view of the world. hence the advanced theology of modern times constructs its "ideal christianity" rather on the base of the pauline epistles than on the gospels, so that it has been called "paulinism." the remarkable personality of paul, who possessed much more culture and practical sense than christ, is extremely interesting, from the anthropological point of view, from the fact that the racial origin of the two great religious founders is very much the same. recent historical investigation teaches that paul's father was of greek nationality, and his mother of jewish.[ ] the half-breeds of these two races, which are so very distant in origin (although they are branches of the same species, the _homo mediterraneus_), are often distinguished by a happy blending of talents and temperament, as we find in many recent and actual instances. the plastic oriental imagination and the critical western reason often admirably combine and complete each other. that is visible in the pauline teaching, which soon obtained a greater influence than the earliest christian notions. hence it is not incorrect to consider paulinism a new phenomenon, of which the father was the philosophy of the greeks, and the mother the religion of the jews. neoplatonism is an analogous combination. as to the real teaching and aims of christ (and as to many important aspects of his life) the views of conflicting theologians diverge more and more, as historical criticism (strauss, feuerbach, baur, renan, etc.) puts the accessible facts in their true light, and draws impartial conclusions from them. two things, certainly, remain beyond dispute--the lofty principle of universal charity and the fundamental maxim of ethics, the "golden rule," that issues therefrom; both, however, existed in theory and in practice centuries before the time of christ (cf. chap. xix.). for the rest, the christians of the early centuries were generally pure communists, sometimes "social democrats," who, according to the prevailing theory in germany to-day, ought to have been exterminated with fire and sword. ii.--papal christianity latin christianity, variously called papistry, romanism, vaticanism, ultramontanism, or the roman catholic church, is one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of civilized man; in spite of the storms that have swept over it, it still exerts a most powerful influence. of the four hundred and ten million christians who are scattered over the earth the majority--that is, two hundred and twenty-five millions--are roman catholics; there are seventy-five million greek catholics and one hundred and ten million protestants. during a period of one thousand two hundred years, from the fourth to the sixteenth century, the papacy has almost absolutely controlled and tainted the spiritual life of europe; on the other hand, it has won but little territory from the ancient religions of asia and africa. in asia buddhism still counts five hundred and three million followers, the brahmanic religion one hundred and thirty-eight millions, and islam one hundred and twenty millions. it is the despotism of the papacy that lent its darkest character to the middle ages; it meant death to all freedom of mental life, decay to all science, corruption to all morality. from the noble height to which the life of the human mind had attained in classical antiquity, in the centuries before christ and the first century after christ, it soon sank, under the rule of the papacy, to a level which, in respect of the knowledge of the truth, can only be termed barbarism. it is often protested that other aspects of mental life--poetry and architecture, scholastic learning and patristic philosophy--were richly developed in the middle ages. but this activity was in the service of the church; it did not tend to the cultivation, but to the suppression, of free mental research. the exclusive preparing for an unknown eternity beyond the tomb, the contempt of nature, the withdrawal from the study of it, which are essential elements of christianity, were urged as a sacred duty by the roman hierarchy. it was not until the beginning of the sixteenth century that a change for the better came in with the reformation. it is impossible for us here to describe the pitiful retrogression of culture and morality during the twelve centuries of the spiritual despotism of rome. it is very pithily expressed in a saying of the greatest and the ablest of the hohenzollerns; frederick the great condensed his judgment in the phrase that the study of history led one to think that from constantine to the date of the reformation the whole world was insane. l. büchner has given us an admirable, brief description of this "period of insanity" in his work on _religious and scientific systems_. the reader who desires a closer acquaintance with the subject would do well to consult the historical works of ranke, draper, kolb, svoboda, etc. the truthful description of the awful condition of the christian middle ages, which is given by these and other unprejudiced historians, is confirmed by all the reliable sources of investigation, and by the historical monuments which have come down from the saddest period of human history. educated catholics, who are sincere truth-seekers, cannot be too frequently recommended to study these historical sources for themselves. this is the more necessary as ultramontane literature has still a considerable influence. the old trick of deceiving the faithful by a complete reversal of facts and an invention of miraculous circumstances is still worked by it with great success. we will only mention lourdes and the "holy coat" of trêves. the ultramontane professor of history at frankfurt, johannes janssen, affords a striking example of the length they will go in distorting historical truth; his much-read works (especially his _history of the german people since the middle ages_) are marred by falsification to an incredible extent. the untruthfulness of these jesuitical productions is on a level with the credulity and the uncritical judgment of the simple german nation that takes them for gospel. one of the most interesting of the historical facts which clearly prove the evil of the ultramontane despotism is its vigorous and consistent struggle with science. this was determined on, in principle, from the very beginning of christianity, inasmuch as it set faith above reason and preached the blind subjection of the one to the other; that was natural, seeing that our whole life on earth was held to be only a preparation for the legendary life beyond, and thus scientific research was robbed of any real value. the deliberate and successful attack on science began in the early part of the fourth century, particularly after the council of nicæa ( ), presided over by constantine--called the "great" because he raised christianity to the position of a state religion, and founded constantinople, though a worthless character, a false-hearted hypocrite, and a murderer. the success of the papacy in its conflict with independent scientific thought and inquiry is best seen in the distressing condition of science and its literature during the middle ages. not only were the rich literary treasures that classical antiquity had bequeathed to the world destroyed for the most part, or withdrawn from circulation, but the rack and the stake insured the silence of every heretic--that is, every independent thinker. if he did not keep his thoughts to himself, he had to look forward to being burned alive, as was the fate of the great monistic philosopher, giordano bruno, the reformer, john huss, and more than a hundred thousand other "witnesses to the truth." the history of science in the middle ages teaches us on every page that independent thought and empirical research were completely buried for twelve sad centuries under the oppression of the omnipotent papacy. all that we esteem in true christianity, in the sense of its founder and of his noblest followers, and that we must endeavor to save from the inevitable wreck of this great world religion for our new monistic religion, lies on its ethical and social planes. the principles of true humanism, the golden rule, the spirit of tolerance, the love of man, in the best and highest sense of the word--all these true graces of christianity were not, indeed, first discovered and given to the world by that religion, but were successfully developed in the critical period when classical antiquity was hastening to its doom. the papacy, however, has attempted to convert all those virtues into the direct contrary, and still to hang out the sign of the old firm. instead of christian charity, it introduced a fanatical hatred of the followers of all other religions; with fire and sword it has pursued, not only the heathen, but every christian sect that dared resist the imposition of ultramontane dogma. tribunals for heretics were erected all over europe, yielding unnumbered victims, whose torments seemed only to fill their persecutors, with all their christian charity, with a peculiar satisfaction. the power of rome was directed mercilessly for centuries against everything that stood in its way. under the notorious torquemada ( - ), in spain alone eight thousand heretics were burned alive and ninety thousand punished with the confiscation of their goods and the most grievous ecclesiastical fines; in the netherlands, under the rule of charles v., at least fifty thousand men fell victims to the clerical bloodthirst. and while the heavens resounded with the cry of the martyrs, the wealth of half the world was pouring into rome, to which the whole of christianity paid tribute, and the self-styled representatives of god on earth and their accomplices (not infrequently atheists themselves) wallowed in pleasure and vice of every description. "and all these privileges," said the frivolous, syphilitic pope, leo x., "have been secured to us by the fable of jesus christ." yet, with all the discipline of the church and the fear of god, the condition of european society was pitiable. feudalism, serfdom, the grace of god, and the favor of the monks ruled the land; the poor helots were only too glad to be permitted to raise their miserable huts under the shadow of the castle or the cloister, their secular and spiritual oppressors and exploiters. even to-day we suffer from the aftermath of these awful ages and conditions, in which there was no question of care for science or higher mental culture save in rare circumstances and in secret. ignorance, poverty, and superstition combined with the immoral operation of the law of celibacy, which had been introduced in the eleventh century, to consolidate the ever-growing power of the papacy. it has been calculated that there were more than ten million victims of fanatical religious hatred during this "golden age" of papal domination; and how many more million human victims must be put to the account of celibacy, oral confession, and moral constraint, the most pernicious and accursed institutions of the papal despotism! unbelieving philosophers, who have collected disproofs of the existence of god, have overlooked one of the strongest arguments in that sense--the fact that the roman "vicar of christ" could for twelve centuries perpetrate with impunity the most shameful and horrible deeds "in the name of god." iii.--the reformation the history of civilization, which we are so fond of calling "the history of the world," enters upon its third period with the reformation of the christian church, just as its second period begins with the founding of christianity. with the reformation begins the new birth of fettered reason, the reawakening of science, which the iron hand of the christian papacy had relentlessly crushed for twelve hundred years. at the same time the spread of general education had already commenced, owing to the invention of printing about the middle of the fifteenth century; and towards its close several great events occurred, especially the discovery of america in , which prepared the way for the "renaissance" of science in company with that of art. indeed, certain very important advances were made in the knowledge of nature during the first half of the sixteenth century, which shook the prevailing system to its very foundations. such were the circumnavigation of the globe by magellan in , which afforded empirical proof of its rotundity, and the founding of the new system of the world by copernicus in . yet the st of october in the year , the day on which martin luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the wooden door of wittenburg cathedral, must be regarded as the commencement of a new epoch; for on that day was forced the iron door of the prison in which the papal church had detained fettered reason for twelve hundred years. the merits of the great reformer have been partly exaggerated, partly underestimated. it has been justly pointed out that luther, like all the other reformers, remained in manifold subjection to the deepest superstition. thus he was throughout life a supporter of the rigid dogma of the verbal inspiration of the bible; he zealously maintained the doctrines of the resurrection, original sin, predestination, justification by faith, etc. he rejected as folly the great discovery of copernicus, because in the bible "joshua bade the sun, not the earth, stand still." he utterly failed to appreciate the great political revolutions of his time, especially the profound and just agitation of the peasantry. worse still was the fanatical calvin, of geneva, who had the talented spanish physician, serveto, burned alive in , because he rejected the absurd dogma of the trinity. the fanatical "true believers" of the reformed church followed only too frequently in the blood-stained footsteps of their papal enemies; as they do even in our own day. deeds of unparalleled cruelty followed in the train of the reformation--the massacre of st. bartholomew and the persecution of the huguenots in france, bloody heretic-hunts in italy, civil war in england, and the thirty years war in germany. yet, in spite of those grave blemishes, to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries belongs the honor of once more opening a free path to the thoughtful mind, and delivering reason from the oppressive yoke of the papacy. thus only was made possible that great development of different tendencies in critical philosophy and of new paths in science which won for the subsequent eighteenth century the honorable title of "the century of enlightenment." iv.--the pseudo-christianity of the nineteenth century as the fourth and last stage in the history of christianity we oppose our nineteenth century to all its predecessors. it is true that the enlightenment of preceding centuries had promoted critical thought in every direction, and the rise of science itself had furnished powerful empirical weapons; yet it seems to us that our progress along both lines has been quite phenomenal during the nineteenth century. it has inaugurated an entirely new period in the history of the human mind, characterized by the development of the monistic philosophy of nature. at its very commencement the foundations were laid of a new anthropology (by the comparative anatomy of cuvier) and of a new biology (by the _philosophie zoologique_ of lamarck). the two great french scientists were quickly succeeded by two contemporary german scholars--baer, the founder of the science of evolution, and johannes müller, the founder of comparative morphology and physiology. a pupil of müller, theodor schwann, created the far-reaching cellular theory in , in conjunction with m. schleiden. lyell had already traced the evolution of the earth to natural causes, and thus proved the application to our planet of the mechanical cosmogony which kant had sketched with so much insight in . finally, robert mayer and helmholtz established the principle of energy in --the second, complementary half of the great law of substance, the first half of which (the persistence of matter) had been previously discovered by lavoisier. forty years ago charles darwin crowned all these profound revelations of the intimate nature of the universe by his new theory of evolution, the greatest natural-philosophical achievement of our century. what is the relation of modern christianity to this vast and unparalleled progress of science? in the first place, the deep gulf between its two great branches, conservative romanism and progressive protestantism, has naturally widened. the ultramontane clergy (and we must associate with them the orthodox "evangelical alliance") had naturally to offer a strenuous opposition to this rapid advance of the emancipated mind; they continued unmoved in their rigid literal belief, demanding the unconditional surrender of reason to dogma. liberal protestantism, on the other hand, took refuge in a kind of monistic pantheism, and sought a means of reconciling two contradictory principles. it endeavored to combine the unavoidable recognition of the established laws of nature, and the philosophic conclusions that followed from them, with a purified form of religion, in which scarcely anything remained of the distinctive teaching of faith. there were many attempts at compromise to be found between the two extremes; but the conviction rapidly spread that dogmatic christianity had lost every foundation, and that only its valuable ethical contents should be saved for the new monistic religion of the twentieth century. as, however, the existing external forms of the dominant christian religion remained unaltered, and as, in spite of a progressive political development, they are more intimately than ever connected with the practical needs of the state, there has arisen that widespread religious profession in educated spheres which we can only call "pseudo-christianity"--at the bottom it is a "religious lie" of the worst character. the great dangers which attend this conflict between sincere conviction and the hypocritical profession of modern pseudo-christians are admirably described in max nordau's interesting work on _the conventional lies of civilization_. in the midst of this obvious falseness of prevalent pseudo-christianity there is one favorable circumstance for the progress of a rational study of nature: its most powerful and bitterest enemy, the roman church, threw off its mask of ostensible concern for higher mental development about the middle of the nineteenth century, and declared a _guerre à l'outrance_ against independent science. this happened in three important challenges to reason, for the explicitness and resoluteness of which modern science and culture cannot but be grateful to the "vicar of christ." ( ) in december, , the pope promulgated the dogma of the immaculate conception of mary. ( ) ten years afterwards--in december, --the pope published, in his famous _encyclica_, an absolute condemnation of the whole of modern civilization and culture; in the _syllabus_ that accompanied it he enumerated and anathematized all the rational theses and philosophical principles which are regarded by modern science as lucid truths. ( ) finally, six years afterwards--on july , --the militant head of the church crowned his folly by claiming _infallibility_ for himself and all his predecessors in the papal chair. this triumph of the roman _curia_ was communicated to the astonished world five days afterwards, on the very day on which france declared war with prussia. two months later the temporal power of the pope was taken from him in consequence of the war. these three stupendous acts of the papacy were such obvious assaults on the reason of the nineteenth century that they gave rise, from the very beginning, to a most heated discussion even within orthodox catholic circles. when the vatican council proceeded to define the dogma of infallibility on july , , only three-fourths of the bishops declared in its favor, out of assenting; many other bishops, who wished to keep clear of the perilous definition, were absent from the council. but the shrewd pontiff had calculated better than the timid "discreet catholics": even this extraordinary dogma was blindly accepted by the credulous and uneducated masses of the faithful. the whole history of the papacy, as it is substantiated by a thousand reliable sources and accessible documents, appears to the impartial student as an unscrupulous tissue of lying and deceit, a reckless pursuit of absolute mental despotism and secular power, a frivolous contradiction of all the high moral precepts which true christianity enunciates--charity and toleration, truth and chastity, poverty and self-denial. when we judge the long series of popes and of the roman princes of the church, from whom the pope is chosen, by the standard of pure christian morality, it is clear that the great majority of them were pitiful impostors, many of them utterly worthless and vicious. these well-known historical facts, however, do not prevent millions of educated catholics from admitting the infallibility which the pope has claimed for himself; they do not prevent protestant princes from going to rome, and doing reverence to the pontiff (their most dangerous enemy); they do not prevent the fate of the german people from being intrusted to-day to the hands of the servants and followers of this "pious impostor" in the reichstag--thanks to the incredible political indolence and credulity of the nation. the most interesting of the three great events by which the papacy has endeavored to maintain and strengthen its despotism in the nineteenth century is the publication of the encyclica and the syllabus in december, . in these remarkable documents all independent action was forbidden to reason and science, and they were commanded to submit implicitly to faith--that is, to the decrees of the infallible pope. the great excitement which followed this sublime piece of effrontery in educated and independent circles was in proportion with the stupendous contents of the encyclica. draper has given us an excellent discussion of its educational and political significance in his _history of the conflict between science and religion_. the dogma of the immaculate conception seems, perhaps, to be less audacious and significant than the encyclica and the dogma of the infallibility of the pope. yet not only the roman hierarchy, but even some of the orthodox protestants (the evangelical alliance, for instance), attach great importance to this thesis. what is known as the "immaculate oath"--that is, the confirmation of faith by an oath taken on the immaculate conception of mary--is still regarded by millions of christians as a sacred obligation. many believers take the dogma in a twofold application; they think that the mother of mary was impregnated by the holy ghost as well as mary herself. comparative and critical theology has recently shown that this myth has no greater claim to originality than most of the other stories in the christian mythology; it has been borrowed from older religions, especially buddhism. similar myths were widely circulated in india, persia, asia minor, and greece several centuries before the birth of christ. whenever a king's unwedded daughter, or some other maid of high degree, gave birth to a child, the father was always pronounced to be a god, or a demi-god; in the christian case it was the holy ghost. the special endowments of mind or body which often distinguished these "children of love" above ordinary offspring were thus partly explained by "heredity." distinguished "sons of god" of this kind were held in high esteem both in antiquity and during the middle ages, while the moral code of modern civilization reproaches them with their want of honorable parentage. this applies even more forcibly to "daughters of god," though the poor maidens are just as little to blame for their want of a father. for the rest, every one who is familiar with the beautiful mythology of classical antiquity knows that these sons and daughters of the greek and roman gods often approach nearest to the highest ideal of humanity. recollect the large legitimate family, and the still more numerous illegitimate offspring, of zeus. to return to the particular question of the impregnation of the virgin mary by the holy ghost, we are referred to the gospels for testimony to the fact. the only two evangelists who speak of it, matthew and luke, relate in harmony that the jewish maiden mary was betrothed to the carpenter joseph, but became pregnant without his co-operation, and, indeed, "by the holy ghost." as we have already related, the four canonical gospels which are regarded as the only genuine ones by the christian church, and adopted as the foundation of faith, were deliberately chosen from a much larger number of gospels, the details of which contradict each other sometimes just as freely as the assertions of the four. the fathers of the church enumerate from forty to fifty of these spurious or apocryphal gospels; some of them are written both in greek and latin--for instance, the gospel of james, of thomas, of nicodemus, and so forth. the details which these apocryphal gospels give of the life of christ, especially with regard to his birth and childhood, have just as much (or, on the whole, just as little) claim to historical validity as the four canonical gospels. now we find in one of these documents an historical statement, confirmed, moreover, in the _sepher toldoth jeschua_, which probably furnishes the simple and natural solution of the "world-riddle" of the supernatural conception and birth of christ. the author curtly gives us in one sentence the remarkable statement which contains this solution: "josephus pandera, the roman officer of a calabrian legion which was in judæa, seduced miriam of bethlehem, and was the father of jesus." other details given about miriam (the hebrew name for mary) are far from being to the credit of the "queen of heaven." naturally, these historical details are carefully avoided by the official theologian, but they assort badly with the traditional myth, and lift the veil from its mystery in a very simple and natural fashion. that makes it the more incumbent on impartial research and pure reason to make a critical examination of these statements. it must be admitted that they have much more title to credence than all the other statements about the birth of christ. when, on familiar principles of science, we put aside the notion of supernatural conception through an "overshadowing of the most high" as a pure myth, there only remains the widely accepted version of modern rational theology--that joseph, the jewish carpenter, was the true father of christ. but this assumption is explicitly contradicted by many texts of the gospels; christ himself was convinced that he was a "son of god," and he never recognized his foster-father, joseph, as his real parent. joseph, indeed, wanted to leave his betrothed when he found her pregnant without his interference. he gave up this idea when an angel appeared to him in a dream and pacified him. as it is expressly stated in the first chapter of matthew (vv. , ), there was no sexual intercourse between joseph and mary until after jesus was born. the statement of the apocryphal gospels, that the roman officer, pandera, was the true father of christ, seems all the more credible when we make a careful anthropological study of the personality of christ. he is generally regarded as purely jewish. yet the characteristics which distinguish his high and noble personality, and which give a distinct impress to his religion, are certainly not semitical; they are rather features of the higher arian race, and especially of its noblest branch, the hellenes. now, the name of christ's real father, "pandera," points unequivocally to a greek origin; in one manuscript, in fact, it is written "pandora." pandora was, according to the greek mythology, the first woman, born of the earth by vulcan and adorned with every charm by the gods, who was espoused by epimetheus, and sent by zeus to men with the dread "pandora-box," containing every evil, in punishment for the stealing of divine fire from heaven by prometheus. and it is interesting to see the different reception that the love-story of miriam has met with at the hands of the four great christian nations of civilized europe. the stern morality of the teutonic races entirely repudiates it; the righteous german and the prudish briton prefer to believe blindly in the impossible thesis of a conception "by the holy ghost." it is well known that this strenuous and carefully paraded prudery of the higher classes (especially in england) is by no means reflected in the true condition of sexual morality in high quarters. the revelations which the _pall mall gazette_, for instance, made on the subject twelve years ago vividly recalled the condition of babylon. the romantic races, which ridicule this prudery and take sexual relations less seriously, find _mary's romance_ attractive enough; the special cult which "our lady" enjoys in france and italy is often associated with this love-story with curious naïveté. thus, for example, paul de regla (dr. desjardin), author of _jesus of nazareth considered from a scientific, historical, and social standpoint_ ( ), finds precisely in the illegitimate birth of christ a special "title to the halo that irradiates his noble form." it seemed to me necessary to enter fully into this important question of the origin of christ in the sense of impartial historical science, because the church militant itself lays great emphasis on it, and because it regards the miraculous structure which has been founded on it as one of its strongest weapons against modern thought. the highest ethical value of pure primitive christianity and the ennobling influence of this "religion of love" on the history of civilization are quite independent of those mythical dogmas. the so-called "revelations" on which these myths are based are incompatible with the firmest results of modern science. chapter xviii our monistic religion monism as a connecting link between religion and science--the _cultur-kampf_--the relations of church and state--principles of the monistic religion--its three-fold ideal: the good, the true, and the beautiful--contradiction between scientific and christian truth--harmony of the monistic and the christian idea of virtue--opposition between monistic and christian views of art--modern expansion and enrichment of our idea of the world--landscape-painting and the modern enjoyment of nature--the beauties of nature--this world and beyond--monistic churches many distinguished scientists and philosophers of the day, who share our monistic views, consider that religion is generally played out. their meaning is that the clear insight into the evolution of the world which the great scientific progress of the nineteenth century has afforded us will satisfy, not only the causal feeling of our reason, but even our highest emotional cravings. this view is correct in the sense that the two ideas, religion and science, would indeed blend into one if we had a perfectly clear and consecutive system of monism. however, there are but a few resolute thinkers who attain to this most pure and lofty conception of spinoza and goethe. most of the educated people of our time (as distinct from the uncultured masses) remain in the conviction that religion is a separate branch of our mental life, independent of science, and not less valuable and indispensable. if we adopt this view, we can find a means of reconciling the two great and apparently quite distinct branches in the idea i put forward in "monism, as a connecting-link between religion and science," in . in the preface to this _confession of faith of a man of science_ i expressed myself in the following words with regard to its double object: "in the first place, i must give expression to the rational system which is logically forced upon us by the recent progress of science; it dwells in the intimate thoughts of nearly every impartial and thoughtful scientist, though few have the courage or the disposition to avow it. in the second place, i would make of it a connecting-link between religion and science, and thus do away with the antithesis which has been needlessly maintained between these two branches of the highest activity of the human mind. the ethical craving of our emotion is satisfied by monism no less than the logical demand for causality on the part of reason." the remarkable interest which the discourse enkindled is a proof that in this monistic profession of faith i expressed the feeling not only of many scientists, but of a large number of cultured men and women of very different circles. not only was i rewarded by hundreds of sympathetic letters, but by a wide circulation of the printed address, of which six editions were required within six months. i had the more reason to be content with this unexpected success, as this "confession of faith" was originally merely an occasional speech which i delivered unprepared on october , , at altenburg, during the jubilee of the scientific society of east germany. naturally there was the usual demonstration on the other side; i was fiercely attacked, not only by the ultramontane press, the sworn defenders of superstition, but also by the "liberal" controversialists of evangelical christianity, who profess to defend both scientific truth and purified faith. in the seven years that have ensued since that time the great struggle between modern science and orthodox christianity has become more threatening; it has grown more dangerous for science in proportion as christianity has found support in an increasing mental and political reaction. in some countries the church has made such progress that the freedom of thought and conscience, which is guaranteed by the laws, is in practice gravely menaced (for instance, in bavaria). the great historic struggle which draper has so admirably depicted in his _conflict between religion and science_ is to-day more acute and significant than ever. for the last twenty-seven years it has been rightly called the "_cultur-kampf_." the famous encyclica and syllabus which the militant pope, pius ix., sent out into the entire world in were a declaration of war on the whole of modern science; they demanded the blind submission of reason to the dogmas of the infallible pope. the enormity of this crude assault on the highest treasures of civilization even roused many indolent minds from the slumber of belief. together with the subsequent promulgation of the papal infallibility ( ), the encyclica provoked a deep wave of irritation and an energetic repulse which held out high hopes. in the new german empire, which had attained its indispensable national unity by the heavy sacrifices of the wars of and , the insolent attacks of the pope were felt to be particularly offensive. on the one hand, germany is the cradle of the reformation and the modern emancipation of reason; on the other hand, it unfortunately has in its , , catholics a vast host of militant believers, who are unsurpassed by any other civilized people in blind obedience to their chief shepherd. the dangers of such a situation were clearly recognized by the great statesman who had solved the political "world-riddle" of the dismemberment of germany, and had led us by a marvellous statecraft to the long-desired goal of national unity and power. prince bismarck began the famous struggle with the vatican, which is known as the _cultur-kampf_, in , and it was conducted with equal ability and energy by the distinguished minister of worship, falk, author of the may laws of . unfortunately, bismarck had to desist six years afterwards. although the great statesman was a remarkable judge of men and a realistic politician of immense tact, he had underestimated the force of three powerful obstacles--first, the unsurpassed cunning and unscrupulous treachery of the roman _curia_; secondly, the correlative ingratitude and credulity of the uneducated catholic masses, on which the papacy built; and, thirdly, the power of apathy, the continuance of the irrational, simply because it is in possession. hence, in , when the abler leo xiii. had ascended the pontifical throne, the fatal "to canossa" was heard once more. from that time the newly established power of rome grew in strength; partly through the unscrupulous intrigues and serpentine bends of its slippery jesuitical politics, partly through the false church-politics of the german government and the marvellous political incompetence of the german people. we have, therefore, at the close of the nineteenth century to endure the pitiful spectacle of the catholic "centre" being the most important section of the reichstag, and the fate of our humiliated country depending on a papal party, which does not constitute numerically a third part of the nation. when the _cultur-kampf_ began in , it was justly acclaimed by all independent thinkers as a political renewal of the reformation, a vigorous attempt to free modern civilization from the yoke of papal despotism. the whole of the liberal press hailed bismarck as a "political luther"--as the great hero, not only of the national unity, but also of the rational emancipation of germany. ten years afterwards, when the papacy had proved victorious, the same "liberal press" changed its colors, and denounced the _cultur-kampf_ as a great mistake; and it does the same thing to-day. the facts show how short is the memory of our journalists, how defective their knowledge of history, and how poor their philosophic education. the so-called "peace between church and state" is never more than a suspension of hostilities. the modern papacy, true to the despotic principles it has followed for the last sixteen hundred years, is determined to wield sole dominion over the credulous souls of men; it must demand the absolute submission of the cultured state, which, as such, defends the rights of reason and science. true and enduring peace there cannot be until one of the combatants lies powerless on the ground. either the church wins, and then farewell to all "free science and free teaching"--then are our universities no better than jails, and our colleges become cloistral schools; or else the modern rational state proves victorious--then, in the twentieth century, human culture, freedom, and prosperity will continue their progressive development until they far surpass even the height of the nineteenth century. in order to compass these high aims, it is of the first importance that modern science not only shatter the false structures of superstition and sweep their ruins from the path, but that it also erect a new abode for human emotion on the ground it has cleared--a "palace of reason," in which, under the influence of our new monistic views, we do reverence to the real trinity of the nineteenth century--the trinity of "the true, the good, and the beautiful." in order to give a tangible shape to the cult of this divine ideal, we must first of all compare our position with the dominant forms of christianity, and realize the changes that are involved in the substitution of the one for the other. for, in spite of its errors and defects, the christian religion (in its primitive and purer form) has so high an ethical value, and has entered so deeply into the most important social and political movements of civilized history for the last fifteen hundred years, that we must appeal as much as possible to its existing institutions in the establishment of our monistic religion. we do not seek a mighty _revolution_, but a rational _reformation_, of our religious life. and just as, two thousand years ago, the classic poetry of the ancient greeks incarnated their ideals of virtue in divine shapes, so may we, too, lend the character of noble goddesses to our three rational ideals. we must inquire into the features of the three goddesses of the monist--truth, beauty, and virtue; and we must study their relation to the three corresponding ideals of christianity which they are to replace. i. the preceding inquiries (especially those of the first and third sections) have convinced us that truth unadulterated is only to be found in the temple of the study of nature, and that the only available paths to it are critical observation and reflection--the empirical investigation of facts and the rational study of their efficient causes. in this way we arrive, by means of pure reason, at true science, the highest treasure of civilized man. we must, in accordance with the arguments of our sixteenth chapter, reject what is called "revelation," the poetry of faith, that affirms the discovery of truth in a supernatural fashion, without the assistance of reason. and since the entire structure of the judæo-christian religion, like that of the mohammedan and the buddhistic, rests on these so-called revelations, and these mystic fruits of the imagination directly contradict the clear results of empirical research, it is obvious that we shall only attain to a knowledge of the truth by the rational activity of genuine science, not by the poetic imagining of a mystic faith. in this respect it is quite certain that the christian system must give way to the monistic. the goddess of truth dwells in the temple of nature, in the green woods, on the blue sea, and on the snowy summits of the hills--not in the gloom of the cloister, nor in the narrow prisons of our jail-like schools, nor in the clouds of incense of the christian churches. the paths which lead to the noble divinity of truth and knowledge are the loving study of nature and its laws, the observation of the infinitely great star-world with the aid of the telescope, and the infinitely tiny cell-world with the aid of the microscope--not senseless ceremonies and unthinking prayers, not alms and peter's pence. the rich gifts which the goddess of truth bestows on us are the noble fruits of the tree of knowledge and the inestimable treasure of a clear, unified view of the world--not belief in supernatural miracles and the illusion of an eternal life. ii. it is otherwise with the divine ideal of eternal goodness. in our search for the truth we have entirely to exclude the "revelation" of the churches, and devote ourselves solely to the study of nature; but, on the other hand, the idea of the good, which we call virtue, in our monistic religion coincides for the most part with the christian idea of virtue. we are speaking, naturally, of the primitive and pure christianity of the first three centuries, as far as we learn its moral teaching from the gospels and the epistles of paul; it does not apply to the vatican caricature of that pure doctrine which has dominated european civilization, to its infinite prejudice, for twelve hundred years. the best part of christian morality, to which we firmly adhere, is represented by the humanist precepts of charity and toleration, compassion and assistance. however, these noble commands, which are set down as "christian" morality (in its best sense), are by no means original discoveries of christianity; they are derived from earlier religions. the golden rule, which sums up these precepts in one sentence, is centuries older than christianity. in the conduct of life this law of natural morality has been followed just as frequently by non-christians and atheists as it has been neglected by pious believers. moreover, christian ethics was marred by the great defect of a narrow insistence on altruism and a denunciation of egoism. our monistic ethics lays equal emphasis on the two, and finds perfect virtue in the just balance of love of self and love of one's neighbor (cf. chap. xix.). iii. but monism enters into its strongest opposition to christianity on the question of beauty. primitive christianity preached the worthlessness of earthly life, regarding it merely as a preparation for an eternal life beyond. hence it immediately followed that all we find in the life of man here below, all that is beautiful in art and science, in public and in private life, is of no real value. the true christian must avert his eyes from them; he must think only of a worthy preparation for the life beyond. contempt of nature, aversion from all its inexhaustible charms, rejection of every kind of fine art, are christian duties; and they are carried out to perfection when a man separates himself from his fellows, chastises his body, and spends all his time in prayer in the cloister or the hermit's cell. history teaches us that this ascetical morality that would scorn the whole of nature had, as a natural consequence, the very opposite effect to that it intended. monasteries, the homes of chastity and discipline, soon became dens of the wildest orgies; the sexual commerce of monks and nuns has inspired shoals of novels, as it is so faithfully depicted in the literature of the renaissance. the cult of the "beautiful," which was then practised, was in flagrant contradiction with the vaunted "abandonment of the world"; and the same must be said of the pomp and luxury which soon developed in the immoral private lives of the higher ecclesiastics and in the artistic decoration of christian churches and monasteries. it may be objected that our view is refuted by the splendor of christian art, which, especially in the best days of the middle ages, created works of undying beauty. the graceful gothic cathedrals and byzantine basilicas, the hundreds of magnificent chapels, the thousands of marble statues of saints and martyrs, the millions of fine pictures of saints, of profoundly conceived representations of christ and the madonna--all are proofs of the development of a noble art in the middle ages, which is unique of its kind. all these splendid monuments of mediæval art are untouched in their high æsthetic value, whatever we say of their mixture of truth and fancy. yes; but what has all that to do with the pure teaching of christianity--with that religion of sacrifice that turned scornfully away from all earthly parade and glamour, from all material beauty and art; that made light of the life of the family and the love of woman; that urged an exclusive concern as to the immaterial goods of eternal life? the idea of a christian art is a contradiction in terms--a _contradictio in adjecto_. the wealthy princes of the church who fostered it were candidly aiming at very different ideals, and they completely attained them. in directing the whole interest and activity of the human mind in the middle ages to the christian church and its distinctive art they were diverting it _from nature_ and from the knowledge of the treasures that were hidden in it, and would have conducted to independent science. moreover, the daily sight of the huge images of the saints and of the scenes of "sacred history" continually reminded the faithful of the vast collection of myths that the church had made. the legends themselves were taught and believed to be true narratives, and the stories of miracles to be records of actual events. it cannot be doubted that in this respect christian art has exercised an immense influence on general culture, and especially in the strengthening of christian belief--an influence which still endures throughout the entire civilized world. the diametrical opposite of this dominant christian art is the new artistic tendency which has been developed during the present century in connection with science. the remarkable expansion of our knowledge of nature, and the discovery of countless beautiful forms of life, which it includes, have awakened quite a new æsthetic sense in our generation, and thus given a new tone to painting and sculpture. numerous scientific voyages and expeditions for the exploration of unknown lands and seas, partly in earlier centuries, but more especially in the nineteenth, have brought to light an undreamed abundance of new organic forms. the number of new species of animals and plants soon became enormous, and among them (especially among the lower groups that had been neglected before) there were thousands of forms of great beauty and interest, affording an entirely new inspiration for painting, sculpture, architecture, and technical art. in this respect a new world was revealed by the great advance of microscopic research in the second half of the century, and especially by the discovery of the marvellous inhabitants of the deep sea, which were first brought to light by the famous expedition of the _challenger_ ( - ). thousands of graceful radiolaria and thalamophora, of pretty medusæ and corals, of extraordinary molluscs, and crabs, suddenly introduced us to a wealth of hidden organisms beyond all anticipation, the peculiar beauty and diversity of which far transcend all the creations of the human imagination. in the fifty large volumes of the account of the _challenger_ expedition a vast number of these beautiful forms are delineated on three thousand plates; and there are millions of other lovely organisms described in other great works that are included in the fast-growing literature of zoology and botany of the last ten years. i began on a small scale to select a number of these beautiful forms for more popular description in my _art forms in nature_ ( ). however, there is now no need for long voyages and costly works to appreciate the beauties of this world. a man needs only to keep his eyes open and his mind disciplined. surrounding nature offers us everywhere a marvellous wealth of lovely and interesting objects of all kinds. in every bit of moss and blade of grass, in every beetle and butterfly, we find, when we examine it carefully, beauties which are usually overlooked. above all, when we examine them with a powerful glass or, better still, with a good microscope, we find everywhere in nature a new world of inexhaustible charms. but the nineteenth century has not only opened our eyes to the æsthetic enjoyment of the microscopic world; it has shown us the beauty of the greater objects in nature. even at its commencement it was the fashion to regard the mountains as magnificent but forbidding, and the sea as sublime but dreaded. at its close the majority of educated people--especially they who dwell in the great cities--are delighted to enjoy the glories of the alps and the crystal splendor of the glacier world for a fortnight every year, or to drink in the majesty of the ocean and the lovely scenery of its coasts. all these sources of the keenest enjoyment of nature have only recently been revealed to us in all their splendor, and the remarkable progress we have made in facility and rapidity of conveyance has given even the less wealthy an opportunity of approaching them. all this progress in the æsthetic enjoyment of nature--and, proportionately, in the scientific understanding of nature--implies an equal advance in higher mental development and, consequently, in the direction of our monistic religion. the opposite character of our _naturalistic_ century to that of the _anthropistic_ centuries that preceded is especially noticeable in the different appreciation and spread of illustrations of the most diverse natural objects. in our own days a lively interest in artistic work of that kind has been developed, which did not exist in earlier ages; it has been supported by the remarkable progress of commerce and technical art which have facilitated a wide popularization of such illustrations. countless illustrated periodicals convey along with their general information a sense of the inexhaustible beauty of nature in all its departments. in particular, landscape-painting has acquired an importance that surpassed all imagination. in the first half of the century one of our greatest and most erudite scientists, alexander humboldt, had pointed out that the development of modern landscape-painting is not only of great importance as an incentive to the study of nature and as a means of geographical description, but that it is to be commended in other respects as a noble educative medium. since that time the taste for it has considerably increased. it should be the aim at every school to teach the children to enjoy scenery at an early age, and to give them the valuable art of imprinting on the memory by a drawing or water-color sketch. the infinite wealth of nature in what is beautiful and sublime offers every man with open eyes and an æsthetic sense an incalculable sum of choicest gifts. still, however valuable and agreeable is the immediate enjoyment of each single gift, its worth is doubled by a knowledge of its meaning and its connection with the rest of nature. when humboldt gave us the "outline of a physical description of the world" in his magnificent _cosmos_ forty years ago, and when he combined scientific and æsthetic consideration so happily in his standard _prospects of nature_, he justly indicated how closely the higher enjoyment of nature is connected with the "scientific establishment of cosmic laws," and that the conjunction of the two serves to raise human nature to a higher stage of perfection. the astonishment with which we gaze upon the starry heavens and the microscopic life in a drop of water, the awe with which we trace the marvellous working of energy in the motion of matter, the reverence with which we grasp the universal dominance of the law of substance throughout the universe--all these are part of our emotional life, falling under the heading of "natural religion." this progress of modern times in knowledge of the true and enjoyment of the beautiful expresses, on the one hand, a valuable element of our monistic religion, but is, on the other hand, in fatal opposition to christianity. for the human mind is thus made to live on this side of the grave; christianity would have it ever gaze beyond. monism teaches that we are perishable children of the earth, who for one or two, or, at the most, three generations, have the good fortune to enjoy the treasures of our planet, to drink of the inexhaustible fountain of its beauty, and to trace out the marvellous play of its forces. christianity would teach us that the earth is "a vale of tears," in which we have but a brief period to chasten and torment ourselves in order to merit the life of eternal bliss beyond. where this "beyond" is, and of what joys the glory of this eternal life is compacted, no revelation has ever told us. as long as "heaven" was thought to be the blue vault that hovers over the disk of our planet, and is illumined by the twinkling light of a few thousand stars, the human imagination could picture to itself the ambrosial banquets of the olympic gods above or the laden tables of the happy dwellers in valhalla. but now all these deities and the immortal souls that sat at their tables are "houseless and homeless," as david strauss has so ably described; for we know from astrophysical science that the immeasurable depths of space are filled with a prosaic ether, and that millions of heavenly bodies, ruled by eternal laws of iron, rush hither and thither in the great ocean, in their eternal rhythm of life and death. the places of devotion, in which men seek the satisfaction of their religious emotions and worship the objects of their reverence, are regarded as sacred "churches." the pagodas of buddhistic asia, the greek temples of classical antiquity, the synagogues of palestine, the mosques of egypt, the catholic cathedrals of the south, and the protestant cathedrals of the north, of europe--all these "houses of god" serve to raise man above the misery and the prose of daily life, to lift him into the sacred, poetic atmosphere of a higher, ideal world. they attain this end in a thousand different ways, according to their various forms of worship and their age. the modern man who "has science and art"--and, therefore, "religion"--needs no special church, no narrow, enclosed portion of space. for through the length and breadth of free nature, wherever he turns his gaze, to the whole universe or to any single part of it, he finds, indeed, the grim "struggle for life," but by its side are ever "the good, the true, and the beautiful"; his church is commensurate with the whole of glorious nature. still, there will always be men of special temperament who will desire to have decorated temples or churches as places of devotion to which they may withdraw. just as the catholics had to relinquish a number of churches to the reformation in the sixteenth century, so a still larger number will pass over to "free societies" of monists in the coming years. chapter xix our monistic ethics monistic and dualistic ethics--contradiction of pure and practical reason in kant--his categorical imperative--the neo-kantians--herbert spencer--egoism and altruism--equivalence of the two instincts--the fundamental law of ethics: the golden rule--its antiquity--christian ethics--contempt of self, the body, nature, civilization, the family, woman--roman catholic ethics--immoral results of celibacy--necessity for the abolition of the law of celibacy, oral confession, and indulgences--state and church--religion a private concern--church and school--state and school--need of school reform the practical conduct of life makes a number of definite ethical claims on a man which can only be duly and naturally satisfied when they are in complete harmony with his view of the world. in accordance with this fundamental principle of our monistic philosophy, our whole system of ethics must be rationally connected with the unified conception of the cosmos which we have formed by our advanced knowledge of the laws of nature. just as the infinite universe is one great whole in the light of our monistic teaching, so the spiritual and moral life of man is a part of this cosmos, and our naturalistic ordering of it must also be monistic. there are not two different, separate worlds--the one physical and material, and the other moral and immaterial. the great majority of philosophers and theologians still hold the contrary opinion. they affirm, with kant, that the moral world is quite independent of the physical, and is subject to very different laws; hence a man's conscience, as the basis of his moral life, must also be quite independent of our scientific knowledge of the world, and must be based rather on his religious faith. on that theory the study of the moral world belongs to _practical_ reason, while that of nature, or of the physical world, is referred to _pure_ or theoretical reason. this unequivocal and conscious dualism of kant's philosophy was its greatest defect; it has caused, and still causes, incalculable mischief. first of all the "critical kant" had built up the splendid and marvellous palace of pure reason, and convincingly proved that the three great central dogmas of metaphysics--a personal god, free will, and the immortal soul--had no place whatever in it, and that no rational proof could be found of their reality. afterwards, however, the "dogmatic kant" superimposed on this true crystal palace of _pure_ reason the glittering, ideal castle in the air of _practical_ reason, in which three imposing church-naves were designed for the accommodation of those three great mystic divinities. when they had been put out at the front door by rational knowledge they returned by the back door under the guidance of irrational faith. the cupola of his great cathedral of faith was crowned by kant with his curious idol, the famous "categorical imperative." according to it, the demand of the universal moral law is unconditional, independent of any regard to actuality or potentiality. it runs: "act at all times in such wise that the maxim (or the subjective law of thy will) may hold good as a principle of a universal law." on that theory all normal men would have the same sense of duty. modern anthropology has ruthlessly dissipated that pretty dream; it has shown that conceptions of duty differ even more among uncivilized than among civilized nations. all the actions and customs which we regard as sins or loathsome crimes (theft, fraud, murder, adultery, etc.) are considered by other nations in certain circumstances to be virtues, or even sacred duties. although the obvious contradiction of the two forms of reason in kant's teaching, the fundamental antagonism of pure and practical reason, was recognized and attacked at the very beginning of the century, it is still pretty widely accepted. the modern school of neo-kantians urges a "return to kant" so pressingly precisely on account of this agreeable dualism; the church militant zealously supports it because it fits in admirably with its own mystic faith. but it met with an effective reverse at the hands of modern science in the second half of the nineteenth century, which entirely demolished the theses of the system of practical reason. monistic cosmology proved, on the basis of the law of substance, that there is no personal god; comparative and genetic psychology showed that there cannot be an immortal soul; and monistic physiology proved the futility of the assumption of "free will." finally, the science of evolution made it clear that the same eternal iron laws that rule in the inorganic world are valid too in the organic and moral world. but modern science gives not only a negative support to practical philosophy and ethics in demolishing the kantian dualism, but it renders the positive service of substituting for it the new structure of ethical monism. it shows that the feeling of duty does not rest on an illusory "categorical imperative," but on the solid ground of _social instinct_, as we find in the case of all social animals. it regards as the highest aim of all morality the re-establishment of a sound harmony between egoism and altruism, between self-love and the love of one's neighbor. it is to the great english philosopher, herbert spencer, that we owe the founding of this monistic ethics on a basis of evolution. man belongs to the social vertebrates, and has, therefore, like all social animals, two sets of duties--first to himself, and secondly to the society to which he belongs. the former are the behests of self-love or egoism, the latter of love for one's fellows or altruism. the two sets of precepts are equally just, equally natural, and equally indispensable. if a man desire to have the advantage of living in an organized community, he has to consult not only his own fortune, but also that of the society, and of the "neighbors" who form the society. he must realize that its prosperity is his own prosperity, and that it cannot suffer without his own injury. this fundamental law of society is so simple and so inevitable that one cannot understand how it can be contradicted in theory or in practice; yet that is done to-day, and has been done for thousands of years. the equal appreciation of these two natural impulses, or the moral equivalence of self-love and love of others, is the chief and the fundamental principle of our morality. hence the highest aim of all ethics is very simple--it is the re-establishment of "the natural equality of egoism and altruism, of the love of one's self and the love of one's neighbor." the golden rule says: "do unto others as you would that they should do unto you." from this highest precept of christianity it follows of itself that we have just as sacred duties towards ourselves as we have towards our fellows. i have explained my conception of this principle in my _monism_, and laid down three important theses. ( ) both these concurrent impulses are natural laws, of equal importance and necessity for the preservation of the family and the society; egoism secures the self-preservation of the individual, altruism that of the species which is made up of the chain of perishable individuals. ( ) the social duties which are imposed by the social structure of the associated individuals, and by means of which it secures its preservation, are merely higher evolutionary stages of the social instincts, which we find in all higher social animals (as "habits which have become hereditary"). ( ) in the case of civilized man all ethics, theoretical or practical, being "a science of rules," is connected with his view of the world at large, and consequently with his religion. from the recognition of the fundamental principle of our morality we may immediately deduce its highest precept, that noble command, which is often called the golden rule of morals, or, briefly, the golden rule. christ repeatedly expressed it in the simple phrase: "thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." mark adds that "there is no greater commandment than this," and matthew says: "in these two commandments is the whole law and the prophets." in this greatest and highest commandment our monistic ethics is completely at one with christianity. we must, however, recall the historical fact that the formulation of this supreme command is not an original merit of christ, as the majority of christian theologians affirm and their uncritical supporters blindly accept. the golden rule is five hundred years older than christ; it was laid down as the highest moral principle by many greek and oriental sages. pittacus, of mylene, one of the seven wise men of greece, said six hundred and twenty years before christ: "do not that to thy neighbor that thou wouldst not suffer from him." confucius, the great chinese philosopher and religious founder (who rejected the idea of a personal god and of the immortality of the soul), said five hundred years b.c.: "do to every man as thou wouldst have him do to thee; and do not to another what thou wouldst not have him do to thee. this precept only dost thou need; it is the foundation of all other commandments." aristotle taught about the middle of the fourth century b.c.: "we must act towards others as we wish others to act towards us." in the same sense, and partly in the same words, the golden rule was given by thales, isocrates, aristippus, sextus, the pythagorean, and other philosophers of classic antiquity--several centuries before christ. from this collection it is clear that the golden rule had a _polyphyletic_ origin--that is, it was formulated by a number of philosophers at different times and in different places, quite independently of each other. otherwise it must be assumed that jesus derived it from some other oriental source, from ancient semitic, indian, chinese, or especially buddhistic traditions, as has been proved in the case of most of the other christian doctrines. as the great ethical principle is thus twenty-five hundred years old, and as christianity itself has put it at the head of its moral teaching as the highest and all-embracing commandment, it follows that our monistic ethics is in complete harmony on this important point, not only with the ethics of the ancient heathens, but also with that of christianity. unfortunately this harmony is disturbed by the fact that the gospels and the pauline epistles contain many other points of moral teaching, which contradict our first and supreme commandment. christian theologians have fruitlessly striven to explain away these striking and painful contradictions by their ingenious interpretations. we need not enter into that question now, but we must briefly consider those unfortunate aspects of christian ethics which are incompatible with the better thought of the modern age, and which are distinctly injurious in their practical consequences. of that character is the contempt which christianity has shown for self, for the body, for nature, for civilization, for the family, and for woman. i. the supreme mistake of christian ethics, and one which runs directly counter to the golden rule, is its exaggeration of love of one's neighbor at the expense of self-love. christianity attacks and despises egoism on principle. yet that natural impulse is absolutely indispensable in view of self-preservation; indeed, one may say that even altruism, its apparent opposite, is only an enlightened egoism. nothing great or elevated has ever taken place without egoism, and without the passion that urges us to great sacrifices. it is only the excesses of the impulse that are injurious. one of the christian precepts that were impressed upon us in our early youth as of great importance, and that are glorified in millions of sermons, is: "love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you." it is a very ideal precept, but as useless in practice as it is unnatural. so it is with the counsel, "if any man will take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also." translated into the terms of modern life, that means: "when some unscrupulous scoundrel has defrauded thee of half thy goods, let him have the other half also." or, again, in the language of modern politics: "when the pious english take from you simple germans one after another of your new and valuable colonies in africa, let them have all the rest of your colonies also--or, best of all, give them germany itself." and, while we touch on the marvellous world-politics of modern england, we may note in passing its direct contradiction of every precept of christian charity, which is more frequently on the lips of that great nation than of any other nation in the world. however, the glaring contradiction between the theoretical, _ideal_, altruistic morality of the human individual and the _real_, purely selfish morality of the human community, and especially of the civilized christian state, is a familiar fact. it would be interesting to determine mathematically in what proportion among organized men the altruistic ethical ideal of the individual changes into its contrary, the purely egoistic "real politics" of the state and the nation. ii. since the christian faith takes a wholly dualistic view of the human organism and attributes to the immortal soul only a temporary sojourn in the mortal frame, it very naturally sets a much greater value on the soul than on the body. hence results that neglect of the care of the body, of training, and of cleanliness which contrasts the life of the christian middle ages so unfavorably with that of pagan classical antiquity. christian ethics contains none of those firm commands as to daily ablutions which are theoretically laid down and practically fulfilled in the mohammedan, hindoo, and other religions. in many monasteries the ideal of the pious christian is the man who does not wash and clothe himself properly, who never changes his malodorous gown, and who, instead of regular work, fills up his useless life with mechanical prayers, senseless fasts, and so forth. as a special outgrowth of this contempt of the body we have the disgusting discipline of the flagellants and other ascetics. iii. one source of countless theoretical errors and practical blemishes, of deplorable crudity and privation, is found in the false anthropism of christianity--that is, in the unique position which it gives to man, as the image of god, in opposition to all the rest of nature. in this way it has contributed, not only to an extremely injurious isolation from our glorious mother "nature," but also to a regrettable contempt of all other organisms. christianity has no place for that well-known love of animals, that sympathy with the nearly related and friendly mammals (dogs, horses, cattle, etc.), which is urged in the ethical teaching of many of the older religions, especially buddhism. whoever has spent much time in the south of europe must have often witnessed those frightful sufferings of animals which fill us friends of animals with the deepest sympathy and indignation. and when one expostulates with these brutal "christians" on their cruelty, the only answer is, with a laugh: "but the beasts are not christians." unfortunately descartes gave some support to the error in teaching that man only has a sensitive soul, not the animal. how much more elevated is our monistic ethics than the christian in this regard! darwinism teaches us that we have descended immediately from the primates, and, in a secondary degree, from a long series of earlier mammals, and that, therefore, they are "our brothers"; physiology informs us that they have the same nerves and sense-organs as we, and the same feelings of pleasure and pain. no sympathetic monistic scientist would ever be guilty of that brutal treatment of animals which comes so lightly to the christian in his anthropistic illusion--to the "child of the god of love." moreover, this christian contempt of nature on principle deprives man of an abundance of the highest earthly joys, especially of the keen, ennobling enjoyment of nature. iv. since, according to christ's teaching, our planet is "a vale of tears," and our earthly life is valueless and a mere preparation for a better life to come, it has succeeded in inducing men to sacrifice all happiness on this side of eternity and make light of all earthly goods. among these "earthly goods," in the case of the modern civilized man, we must include the countless great and small conveniences of technical science, hygiene, commerce, etc., which have made modern life cheerful and comfortable; we must include all the gratifications of painting, sculpture, music, and poetry, which flourished exceedingly even during the middle ages (in spite of its principles), and which we esteem as "ideal pleasures"; we must include all that invaluable progress of science, especially the study of nature, of which the nineteenth century is justly proud. all these "earthly goods," that have so high a value in the eyes of the monist, are worthless--nay, injurious--for the most part, according to christian teaching; the stern code of christian morals should look just as unfavorably on the pursuit of these pleasures as our humanistic ethics fosters and encourages it. once more, therefore, christianity is found to be an enemy to civilization, and the struggle which modern thought and science are compelled to conduct with it is, in this additional sense, a "_cultur-kampf_." v. another of the most deplorable aspects of christian morality is its belittlement of the life of the family, of that natural living together with our next of kin which is just as necessary in the case of man as in the case of all the higher social animals. the family is justly regarded as the "foundation of society," and the healthy life of the family is a necessary condition of the prosperity of the state. christ, however, was of a very different opinion: with his gaze ever directed to "the beyond," he thought as lightly of woman and the family as of all other goods of "this life." of his infrequent contact with his parents and sisters the gospels have very little to say; but they are far from representing his relations with his mother to have been so tender and intimate as they are poetically depicted in so many thousands of pictures. he was not married himself. sexual love, the first foundation of the family union, seems to have been regarded by jesus as a necessary evil. his most enthusiastic apostle, paul, went still farther in the same direction, declaring it to be better not to marry than to marry: "it is good for a man not to touch a woman." if humanity were to follow this excellent counsel, it would soon be rid of all earthly misery and suffering: it would be killed off by such a "radical cure" within half a century. vi. as christ never knew the love of woman, he had no personal acquaintance with that refining of man's true nature that comes only from the intimate life of man with woman. the intimate sexual union, on which the preservation of the human race depends, is just as important on that account as the spiritual penetration of the two sexes, or the mutual complement which they bring to each other in the practical wants of daily life as well as in the highest ideal functions of the soul. for man and woman are two different organisms, equal in worth, each having its characteristic virtues and defects. as civilization advanced, this ideal value of sexual love was more appreciated, and woman held in higher honor, especially among the teutonic races; she is the inspiring source of the highest achievements of art and poetry. but christ was as far from this view as nearly the whole of antiquity; he shared the idea that prevailed everywhere in the east--that woman is subordinate to man, and intercourse with her is "unclean." long-suffering nature has taken a fearful revenge for this blunder; its sad consequences are written in letters of blood in the history of the papal middle ages. the marvellous hierarchy of the roman church, that never disdained any means of strengthening its spiritual despotism, found an exceptionally powerful instrument in the manipulation of this "unclean" idea, and in the promotion of the ascetic notion that abstinence from intercourse with women is a virtue of itself. in the first few centuries after christ a number of priests voluntarily abstained from marriage, and the supposed value of this celibacy soon rose to such a degree that it was made obligatory. in the middle ages the seduction of women of good repute and of their daughters by catholic priests (the confessional was an active agency in the business) was a public scandal: many communities, in order to prevent such things, pressed for a license of concubinage to be given to the clergy. and it was done in many, and sometimes very romantic, ways. thus, for instance, the canon law that the priest's cook should not be less than forty years old was very cleverly "explained" in the sense that the priest might have two cooks, one in the presbytery, another without; if one was twenty-four and the other eighteen, that made forty-two together--two years above the prescribed age. at the christian councils, at which heretics were burned alive, the cardinals and bishops sat down with whole troops of prostitutes. the private and public debauchery of the catholic clergy was so scandalous and dangerous to the commonwealth that there was a general rebellion against it before the time of luther, and a loud demand for a "reformation of the church in head and members." it is well known that these immoral relations still continue in roman catholic lands, although more in secret. formerly proposals were made from time to time for the definitive abrogation of celibacy, as was done, for instance, in the chambers of baden, bavaria, hesse, saxony, and other lands; but they have, unfortunately, hitherto proved unavailing. in the german reichstag, in which the ultramontane centre is now proposing the most ridiculous measures for the suppression of sexual immorality, there is now no party that will urge the abolition of celibacy in the interest of public morality. the so-called "freethought" party and the utopian social democracy coquette with the favor of the centre. the modern state that would lift not only the material, but the moral, life of its people to a higher level is entitled, and indeed bound, to sweep away such unworthy and harmful conditions. the obligatory celibacy of the catholic clergy is as pernicious and immoral as the practice of auricular confession or the sale of indulgences. all three have nothing whatever to do with primitive christianity. all three are directly opposed to true christian morality. all three are disreputable inventions of the papacy, designed for the sole purpose of strengthening its despotic rule over the credulous masses and making as much material profit as possible out of them. the nemesis of history will sooner or later exact a terrible account of the roman papacy, and the millions who have been robbed of their happiness by this degenerate religion will help to give it its death-blow in the coming twentieth century--at least, in every truly civilized state. it has been recently calculated that the number of men who lost their lives in the papal persecutions of heretics, the inquisition, the christian religious wars, etc., is much more than ten millions. but what is this in comparison with the tenfold greater number of the unfortunate _moral_ victims of the institutions and the priestly domination of the degenerate christian church--with the unnumbered millions whose higher mental life was extinguished, whose conscience was tortured, whose family life was destroyed, by the church? we may with truth apply the words of goethe in his _bride of corinth_: "victims fall, nor lambs nor bulls, but human victims numberless." in the great _cultur-kampf_, which must go on as long as these sad conditions exist, the first aim must be the absolute separation of church and state. there shall be "a free church in a free state"--that is, every church shall be free in the practice of its special worship and ceremonies, and in the construction of its fantastic poetry and superstitious dogmas--with the sole condition that they contain no danger to social order or morality. then there will be equal rights for all. free societies and monistic religious bodies shall be equally tolerated, and just as free in their movements as liberal protestant and orthodox ultramontane congregations. but for all these "faithful" of the most diverse sects religion will have to be a private concern. the state shall supervise them, and prevent excesses; but it must neither oppress nor support them. above all, the ratepayers shall not be compelled to contribute to the support and spread of a "faith" which they honestly believe to be a harmful superstition. in the united states such a complete separation of church and state has been long accomplished, greatly to the satisfaction of all parties. they have also the equally important separation of the church from the school; that is, undoubtedly, a powerful element in the great advance which science and culture have recently made in america. it goes without saying that this exclusion of the church from the school only refers to its sectarian principles, the particular form of belief which each church has evolved in the course of its life. this sectarian education is purely a private concern, and should be left to parents and tutors, or to such priests or teachers as may have the personal confidence of the parents. instead of the rejected sectarian instruction, two important branches of education will be introduced--monistic or humanist ethics and comparative religion. during the last thirty years an extensive literature has appeared dealing with the new system of ethics which has been raised on the basis of modern science--especially evolutionary science. comparative religion will be a natural companion to the actual elementary instruction in "biblical history" and in the mythology of greece and rome. both of these will remain in the curriculum. the reason for that is obvious enough; the whole of our painting and sculpture, the chief branches of monistic æsthetics, are intimately blended with the christian, greek, and roman mythologies. there will only be this important difference--that the christian myths and legends will not be taught as truths, but as poetic fancies, like the greek and roman myths; the high value of the ethical and æsthetical material they contain will not be lessened, but increased, by this means. as regards the bible, the "book of books" will only be given to the children in carefully selected extracts (a sort of "school bible"); in this way we shall avoid the besmirching of the child's imagination with the unclean stories and passages which are so numerous in the old testament. once the modern state has freed itself and its schools from the fetters of the church, it will be able to devote more attention to the improvement of education. the incalculable value of a good system of education has forced itself more and more upon us as the many aspects of modern civilized life have been enlarged and enriched in the course of the century. but the development of the educational methods has by no means kept pace with life in general. the necessity for a comprehensive reform of our schools is making itself felt more and more. on this question, too, a number of valuable works have appeared in the course of the last forty years. we shall restrict ourselves to making a few general observations which we think of special importance. . in all education up to the present time _man_ has played the chief part, and especially the grammatical study of his language; the study of _nature_ was entirely neglected. . in the school of the future nature will be the chief object of the study; a man shall learn a correct view of the world he lives in; he will not be made to stand outside of and opposed to nature, but be represented as its highest and noblest product. . the study of the classical tongues (latin and greek), which has hitherto absorbed most of the pupils' time and energy, is indeed valuable; but it will be much restricted, and confined to the mere elements (obligatory for latin, optional for greek). . in consequence, modern languages must be all the more cultivated in all the higher schools (english and french to be obligatory, italian optional). . historical instruction must pay more attention to the inner mental and spiritual life of a nation, and to the development of its civilization, and less to its external history (the vicissitudes of dynasties, wars, and so forth). . the elements of evolutionary science must be learned in conjunction with cosmology, geology must go with geography, and anthropology with biology. . the first principles of biology must be familiar to every educated man; the modern training in observation furnishes an attractive introduction to the biological sciences (anthropology, zoology, and botany). a start must be made with descriptive system (in conjunction with ætiology or bionomy); the elements of anatomy and physiology to be added later on. . the first principles of physics and chemistry must also be taught, and their exact establishment with the aid of mathematics. . every pupil must be taught to draw well, and from nature; and, wherever it is possible, the use of water-colors. the execution of drawings and of water-color sketches from nature (of flowers, animals, landscapes, clouds, etc.) not only excites interest in nature and helps memory to enjoy objects, but it gives the pupil his first lesson in _seeing_ correctly and understanding what he has seen. . much more care and time must be devoted than has been done hitherto to corporal exercise, to gymnastics and swimming; but it is especially important to have walks in common every week, and journeys on foot during the holidays. the lesson in observation which they obtain in this way is invaluable. the chief aim of higher education up to the present time, in most countries, has been a preparation for the subsequent profession, and the acquisition of a certain amount of information and direction for civic duties. the school of the twentieth century will have for its main object the formation of independent thought, the clear understanding of the knowledge acquired, and an insight into the natural connection of phenomena. if the modern state gives every citizen a vote, it should also give him the means of developing his reason by a proper education, in order to make a rational use of his vote for the commonweal. chapter xx solution of the world-problems a glance at the progress of the nineteenth century in solving cosmic problems--i. progress of astronomy and cosmology--physical and chemical unity of the universe--cosmic metamorphoses--evolution of the planetary system--analogy of the phylogenetic processes on the earth and on other planets--organic inhabitants of other heavenly bodies--periodic variation in the making of worlds--ii. progress of geology and palæontology--neptunism and vulcanism--theory of continuity--iii. progress of physics and chemistry--iv. progress of biology--cellular theory and theory of descent--v. anthropology--origin of man--general conclusion at the close of our philosophic study of the riddles of the universe we turn with confidence to the answer to the momentous question, how nearly have we approached to a solution of them? what is the value of the immense progress which the passing nineteenth century has made in the knowledge of nature? and what prospect does it open out to us for the future, for the further development of our system in the twentieth century, at the threshold of which we pause? every unprejudiced thinker who impartially considers the solid progress of our empirical science, and the unity and clearness of our philosophic interpretation of it, will share our view: the nineteenth century has made greater progress in knowledge of the world and in grasp of its nature than all its predecessors; it has solved many great problems that seemed insoluble a hundred years ago; it has opened out to us new provinces of learning, the very existence of which was unsuspected at the beginning of the century. above all, it has put clearly before our eyes the lofty aim of monistic cosmology, and has pointed out the path which alone will lead us towards it--the way of the exact empirical investigation of facts, and of the critical genetic study of their causes. the great abstract law of mechanical causality, of which our cosmological law--the law of substance--is but another and a concrete expression, now rules the entire universe, as it does the mind of man; it is the steady, immovable pole-star, whose clear light falls on our path through the dark labyrinth of the countless separate phenomena. to see the truth of this more clearly, let us cast a brief glance at the astonishing progress which the chief branches of science have made in this remarkable period. i.--progress of astronomy the study of the heavens is the oldest, the study of man the youngest, of the sciences. with regard to himself and the character of his being man only obtained a clear knowledge in the second half of the present century; with regard to the starry heavens, the motions of the planets, and so on, he had acquired astonishing information forty-five hundred years ago. the ancient chinese, hindoos, egyptians, and chaldæans in the distant east knew more of the science of the spheres than the majority of educated christians did in the west four thousand years after them. an eclipse of the sun was astronomically observed in china in the year b.c., and the plane of the ecliptic was determined by means of a gnome eleven hundred years b.c., while christ himself had no knowledge whatever of astronomy--indeed, he looked out upon heaven and earth, nature and man, from the very narrowest geocentric and anthropocentric point of view. the greatest advance of astronomy is generally, and rightly, said to be the founding of the heliocentric system of copernicus, whose famous work, _de revolutionibus orbium celestium_, of itself caused a profound revolution in the minds of thoughtful men. in overthrowing the ptolemaic system, he destroyed the foundation of the christian theory, which regarded the earth as the centre of the universe and man as the godlike ruler of the earth. it was natural, therefore, that the christian clergy, with the pope at its head, should enter upon a fierce struggle with the invaluable discovery of copernicus. yet it soon cleared a path for itself, when kepler and galileo grounded on it their true "mechanics of the heavens," and newton gave it a solid foundation by his theory of gravitation ( ). a further great advance, comprehending the entire universe, was the application of the idea of evolution to astronomy. it was done by the youthful kant in ; in his famous general natural history and theory of the heavens he undertook the discussion, not only of the "constitution," but also of the "mechanical origin" of the whole world-structure on newtonian principles. the splendid _système du monde_ of laplace, who had independently come to the same conclusions as kant on the world-problem, gave so firm a basis to this new _mécanique céleste_ in that it looked as if nothing entirely new of equal importance was left to be discovered in the nineteenth century. yet here again it had the honor of opening out entirely new paths and infinitely enlarging our outlook on the universe. the invention of photography and photometry, and especially of spectral analysis (in by bunsen and kirchoff), introduced physics and chemistry into astronomy and led to cosmological conclusions of the utmost importance. it was now made perfectly clear that matter is the same throughout the universe, and that its physical and chemical properties in the most distant stars do not differ from those of the earth under our feet. the monistic conviction, which we thus arrived at, of the physical and chemical unity of the entire cosmos is certainly one of the most valuable general truths which we owe to astrophysics, the new branch of astronomy which is honorably associated with the name of friedrich zöllner. not less important is the clear knowledge we have obtained that the same laws of mechanical development that we have on the earth rule throughout the infinite universe. a vast, all-embracing metamorphosis goes on continuously in all parts of the universe, just as it is found in the geological history of the earth; it can be traced in the evolution of its living inhabitants as surely as in the history of peoples or in the life of each human individual. in one part of space we perceive, with the aid of our best telescopes, vast nebulæ of glowing, infinitely attenuated gas; we see in them the embryos of heavenly bodies, billions of miles away, in the first stage of their development. in some of these "stellar embryos" the chemical elements do not seem to be differentiated yet, but still buried in the homogeneous primitive matter (_prothyl_) at an enormous temperature (calculated to run into millions of degrees); it is possible that the original basic "substance" (_vide_ p. ) is not yet divided into ponderable and imponderable matter. in other parts of space we find stars that have cooled down into glowing fluid, and yet others that are cold and rigid; we can tell their stage of evolution approximately by their color. we find stars that are surrounded with rings and moons like saturn; and we recognize in the luminous ring of the nebula the embryo of a new moon, which has detached itself from the mother-planet, just as the planet was released from the sun. many of the stars, the light of which has taken thousands of years to reach us, are certainly suns like our own mother-sun, and are girt about with planets and moons, just as in our own solar system. we are justified in supposing that thousands of these planets are in a similar stage of development to that of our earth--that is, they have arrived at a period when the temperature at the surface lies between the freezing and boiling point of water, and so permits the existence of water in its liquid condition. that makes it possible that carbon has entered into the same complex combinations on those planets as it has done on our earth, and that from its nitrogenous compounds protoplasm has been evolved--that wonderful substance which alone, as far as our knowledge goes, is the possessor of organic life. the monera (for instance, chromacea and bacteria), which consist only of this primitive protoplasm, and which arise by spontaneous generation from these inorganic nitrocarbonates, may thus have entered upon the same course of evolution on many other planets as on our own; first of all, living cells of the simplest character would be formed from their homogeneous protoplasmic body by the separation of an inner nucleus from the outer cell body (cytostoma). further, the analogy that we find in the life of all cells--whether plasmodomous plant-cells or plasmophagous animal-cells--justifies the inference that the further course of organic evolution on these other planets has been analogous to that of our own earth--always, of course, given the same limits of temperature which permit water in a liquid form. in the glowing liquid bodies of the stars, where water can only exist in the form of steam, and on the cold extinct suns, where it can only be in the shape of ice, such organic life as we know is impossible. the similarity of phylogeny, or the analogy of organic evolution, which we may thus assume in many stars which are at the same stage of biogenetic development, naturally opens out a wide field of brilliant speculation to the constructive imagination. a favorite subject for such speculation has long been the question whether there are men, or living beings like ourselves, perhaps much more highly developed, in other planets? among the many works which have sought to answer the question, those of camille flammarion, the parisian astronomer, have recently been extremely popular; they are equally distinguished by exuberant imagination and brilliant style, and by a deplorable lack of critical judgment and biological knowledge. we may condense in the following thesis the present condition of our knowledge on the subject: i. it is very probable that a similar biogenetic process to that of our own earth is taking place on some of the other planets of our solar system (mars and venus), and on many planets of other solar systems; first simple monera are formed by spontaneous generation, and from these arise unicellular protists (first plasmodomous primitive plants, and then plasmophagous primitive animals). ii. it is very probable that from these unicellular protists arise, in the further course of evolution, first social cell-communities (coenobia), and subsequently tissue-forming plants and animals (metaphyta and metazoa). iii. it is also very probable that thallophyta (algæ and fungi) were the first to appear in the plant-kingdom, then diaphyta (mosses and ferns), finally anthophyta (gymnosperm and angiosperm flowering plants). iv. it is equally probable that the biogenetic process took a similar course in the animal kingdom--that from the blastæads (catallacta) first gastræads were formed, and from these lower animal forms (coelenteria) higher organisms (coelomaria) were afterwards evolved. v. on the other hand, it is very questionable whether the different stems of these higher animals (and those of the higher plants as well) run through the same course of development on other planets as on our earth. vi. in particular, it is wholly uncertain whether there are vertebrates on other planets, and whether, in the course of their phyletic development, taking millions of years, mammals are formed as on earth, reaching their highest point in the formation of man; in such an event, millions of changes would have to be just the same in both cases. vii. it is much more probable, on the contrary, that other planets have produced other types of the higher plants and animals, which are unknown on our earth; perhaps from some higher animal stem, which is superior to the vertebrate in formation, higher beings have arisen who far transcend us earthly men in intelligence. viii. the possibility of our ever entering into direct communication with such inhabitants of other planets seems to be excluded by the immense distance of our earth from the other heavenly bodies, and the absence of the requisite atmosphere in the intervening space, which contains only ether. but while many of the stars are probably in a similar stage of biogenetic development to that of our earth (for the last one hundred million years at least), others have advanced far beyond this stage, and, in their planetary old age, are hastening towards their end--the same end that inevitably awaits our own globe. the radiation of heat into space gradually lowers the temperature until all the water is turned into ice; that is the end of all organic life. the substance of the rotating mass contracts more and more; the rapidity of its motion gradually falls off. the orbits of the planets and of their moons grow narrower. at length the moons fall upon the planets, and the planets are drawn into the sun that gave them birth. the collision again produces an enormous quantity of heat. the pulverized mass of the colliding bodies is distributed freely through infinite space, and the eternal drama of sun-birth begins afresh. the sublime picture which modern astrophysics thus unveils before the mind's eye shows us an eternal birth and death of countless heavenly bodies, a periodic change from one to the other of the different cosmogenetic conditions, which we observe side by side in the universe. while the embryo of a new world is being formed from a nebula in one corner of the vast stage of the universe, another has already condensed into a rotating sphere of liquid fire in some far distant spot; a third has already cast off rings at its equator, which round themselves into planets; a fourth has become a vast sun whose planets have formed a secondary retinue of moons, and so on. and between them are floating about in space myriads of smaller bodies, meteorites, or shooting-stars, which cross and recross the paths of the planets apparently like lawless vagabonds, and of which a great number fall onto the planets every day. thus there is a continuous but slow change in the velocities and the orbits of the revolving spheres. the frozen moons fall onto the planets, the planets onto their suns. two distant suns, perhaps already stark and cold, rush together with inconceivable force and melt away into nebulous clouds. and such prodigious heat is generated by the collision that the nebula is once more raised to incandescence, and the old drama begins again. yet in this "perpetual motion" the infinite substance of the universe, the sum total of its matter and energy, remains eternally unchanged, and we have an eternal repetition in infinite time of the periodic dance of the worlds, the metamorphosis of the cosmos that ever returns to its starting-point. over all rules the law of substance. ii.--progress of geology the earth and its origin were much later than the heavens in becoming the object of scientific investigation. the numerous ancient and modern cosmogonies do, indeed, profess to give us as good an insight into the origin of the earth as into that of the heavens; but the mythological raiment, in which all alike are clothed, betrays their origin in poetic fancy. among the countless legends of creation which we find in the history of religions and of thought there is one that soon took precedence of all the rest--the mosaic story of creation as told in the first book of the hexateuch. it did not exist in its present form until long after the death of moses (probably not until eight hundred years afterwards); but its sources are much older, and are to be found for the most part in assyrian, babylonian, and hindoo legends. this hebrew legend of creation obtained its great influence through its adoption into the christian faith and its consecration as the "word of god." greek philosophers had already, five hundred years before christ, explained the natural origin of the earth in the same way as that of other cosmic bodies. xenophanes of colophon had even recognized the true character of the fossils which were afterwards to prove of such moment; the great painter, leonardo da vinci, of the fifteenth century, also explained the fossils as the petrified remains of animals which had lived in earlier periods of the earth's history. but the authority of the bible, especially the myth of the deluge, prevented any further progress in this direction, and insured the triumph of the mosaic legend until about the middle of the last century. it survives even at the present day among orthodox theologians. however, in the second half of the eighteenth century, scientific inquiry into the structure of the crust of the earth set to work independently of the mosaic story, and it soon led to certain conclusions as to the origin of the earth. the founder of geology, werner of freiberg, thought that all the rocks were formed in water, while voigt and hutton ( ) rightly contended that only the stratified, fossil-bearing rocks had had an aquatic origin, and that the vulcanic or plutonic mountain ranges had been formed by the cooling down of molten matter. the heated conflict of these "neptunian" and "plutonic" schools was still going on during the first three decades of the present century; it was only settled when karl hoff ( ) established the principle of "actualism," and sir charles lyell applied it with signal success to the entire natural evolution of the earth. the _principles of geology_ of lyell ( ) secured the full recognition of the supremely important theory of continuity in the formation of the earth's crust, as opposed to the catastrophic theory of cuvier.[ ] palæontology, which had been founded by cuvier's work on fossil bones ( ), was of the greatest service to geology; by the middle of the present century it had advanced so far that the chief periods in the history of the earth and its inhabitants could be established. the comparatively thin crust of the earth was now recognized with certainty to be the hard surface formed by the cooling of an incandescent fluid planet, which still continues its slow, unbroken course of refrigeration and condensation. the crumpling of the stiffened crust, "the reaction of the molten fiery contents on the cool surface," and especially the unceasing geological action of water, are the natural causes which are daily at work in the secular formation of the crust of the earth and its mountains. to the brilliant progress of modern geology we owe three extremely important results of general import. in the first place, it has excluded from the story of the earth all questions of miracle, all questions of supernatural agencies, in the building of the mountains and the shaping of the continents. in the second place, our idea of the length of the vast period of time which had been absorbed in their formation has been considerably enlarged. we now know that the huge mountains of the palæozoic, mesozoic, and cenozoic formations have taken, not thousands, but millions of years in their growth. in the third place, we now know that all the countless fossils that are found in those formations are not "sports of nature," as was believed one hundred and fifty years ago, but the petrified remains of organisms that lived in earlier periods of the earth's history, and arose by gradual transformation from a long series of ancestors. iii.--progress of physics and chemistry the many important discoveries which these fundamental sciences have made during the nineteenth century are so well known, and their practical application in every branch of modern life is so obvious, that we need not discuss them in detail here. in particular, the application of steam and electricity has given to our nineteenth century its characteristic "machinist-stamp." but the colossal progress of inorganic and organic chemistry is not less important. all branches of modern civilization--medicine and technology, industry and agriculture, mining and forestry, land and water transport--have been so much improved in the course of the century, especially in the second half, that our ancestors of the eighteenth century would find themselves in a new world, could they return. but more valuable and important still is the great theoretical expansion of our knowledge of nature, which we owe to the establishment of the law of substance. once lavoisier ( ) had established the law of the persistence of matter, and dalton ( ) had founded his new atomic theory with its assistance, a way was open to modern chemistry along which it has advanced with a rapidity and success beyond all anticipation. the same must be said of physics in respect of the law of the conservation of energy. its discovery by robert mayer ( ) and hermann helmholtz ( ) inaugurated for this science also a new epoch of the most fruitful development; for it put physics in a position to grasp the universal unity of the forces of nature and the eternal play of natural processes, in which one force may be converted into another at any moment. iv.--progress of biology the great discoveries which astronomy and geology have made during the nineteenth century, and which are of extreme importance to our whole system, are, nevertheless, far surpassed by those of biology. indeed, we may say that the greater part of the many branches which this comprehensive science of organic life has recently produced have seen the light in the course of the present century. as we saw in the first section, during the century all branches of anatomy and physiology, botany and zoology, ontogeny and phylogeny, have been so marvellously enriched by countless discoveries that the present condition of biological science is immeasurably superior to its condition a hundred years ago. that applies first of all _quantitatively_ to the colossal growth of our positive information in all those provinces and their several parts. but it applies with even greater force _qualitatively_ to the deepening of our comprehension of biological phenomena, and our knowledge of their efficient causes. in this charles darwin ( ) takes the palm of victory; by his theory of selection he has solved the great problem of "organic creation," of the natural origin of the countless forms of life by gradual transformation. it is true that lamarck had recognized fifty years earlier that the mode of this transformation lay in the reciprocal action of heredity and adaptation. however, lamarck was hampered by his lack of the principle of selection, and of that deeper insight into the true nature of organization which was only rendered possible after the founding of the theory of evolution and the cellular theory. when we collated the results of these and other disciplines, and found the key to their harmonious interpretation in the ancestral development of living beings, we succeeded in establishing the monistic biology, the principles of which i have endeavored to lay down securely in my _general morphology_. v.--progress of anthropology in a certain sense, the true science of man, rational anthropology, takes precedence of every other science. the saying of the ancient sage, "man, know thyself," and that other famous maxim, "man is the measure of all things," have been accepted and applied from all time. and yet this science--taking it in its widest sense--has languished longer than all other sciences in the fetters of tradition and superstition. we saw in the first section how slowly and how late the science of the human organism was developed. one of its chief branches--embryology--was not firmly established until (by baer), and another, of equal importance--the cellular theory--until (by schwann). and it was even later still when the answer was given to the "question of all questions," the great riddle of the origin of man. although lamarck had pointed out the only path to a correct solution of it in , and had affirmed the descent of man from the ape, it fell to darwin to establish the affirmation securely fifty years afterwards, and to huxley to collect the most important proofs of it in , in his _place of man in nature_. i have myself made the first attempt, in my _anthropogeny_ ( ), to present in their historical connection the entire series of ancestors through which our race has been slowly evolved from the animal kingdom in the course of many millions of years. conclusion the number of world-riddles has been continually diminishing in the course of the nineteenth century through the aforesaid progress of a true knowledge of nature. only one comprehensive riddle of the universe now remains--the problem of substance. what is the real character of this mighty world-wonder that the realistic scientist calls nature or the universe, the idealist philosopher calls substance or the cosmos, the pious believer calls creator or god? can we affirm to-day that the marvellous progress of modern cosmology has solved this "problem of substance," or at least that it has brought us nearer to the solution? the answer to this final question naturally varies considerably according to the stand-point of the philosophic inquirer and his empirical acquaintance with the real world. we grant at once that the innermost character of nature is just as little understood by us as it was by anaximander and empedocles twenty-four hundred years ago, by spinoza and newton two hundred years ago, and by kant and goethe one hundred years ago. we must even grant that this essence of substance becomes more mysterious and enigmatic the deeper we penetrate into the knowledge of its attributes, matter and energy, and the more thoroughly we study its countless phenomenal forms and their evolution. we do not know the "thing in itself" that lies behind these knowable phenomena. but why trouble about this enigmatic "thing in itself" when we have no means of investigating it, when we do not even clearly know whether it exists or not? let us, then, leave the fruitless brooding over this ideal phantom to the "pure metaphysician," and let us instead, as "real physicists," rejoice in the immense progress which has been actually made by our monistic philosophy of nature. towering above all the achievements and discoveries of the century we have the great, comprehensive "law of substance," the fundamental law of the constancy of matter and force. the fact that substance is everywhere subject to eternal movement and transformation gives it the character also of the universal law of evolution. as this supreme law has been firmly established, and all others are subordinate to it, we arrive at a conviction of the universal unity of nature and the eternal validity of its laws. from the gloomy _problem_ of substance we have evolved the clear _law_ of substance. the monism of the cosmos which we establish thereon proclaims the absolute dominion of "the great eternal iron laws" throughout the universe. it thus shatters, at the same time, the three central dogmas of the dualistic philosophy--the personality of god, the immortality of the soul, and the freedom of the will. many of us certainly view with sharp regret, or even with a profound sorrow, the death of the gods that were so much to our parents and ancestors. we must console ourselves in the words of the poet: "the times are changed, old systems fall, and new life o'er their ruins dawns." the older view of idealistic dualism is breaking up with all its mystic and anthropistic dogmas; but upon the vast field of ruins rises, majestic and brilliant, the new sun of our realistic monism, which reveals to us the wonderful temple of nature in all its beauty. in the sincere cult of "the true, the good, and the beautiful," which is the heart of our new monistic religion, we find ample compensation for the anthropistic ideals of "god, freedom, and immortality" which we have lost. throughout this discussion of the riddles of the universe i have clearly defined my consistent monistic position and its opposition to the still prevalent dualistic theory. in this i am supported by the agreement of nearly all modern scientists who have the courage to accept a rounded philosophical system. i must not, however, take leave of my readers without pointing out in a conciliatory way that this strenuous opposition may be toned down to a certain degree on clear and logical reflection--may, indeed, even be converted into a friendly harmony. in a thoroughly logical mind, applying the highest principles with equal force in the entire field of the cosmos--in both organic and inorganic nature--the antithetical positions of theism and pantheism, vitalism and mechanism, approach until they touch each other. unfortunately, consecutive thought is a rare phenomenon in nature. the great majority of philosophers are content to grasp with the right hand the pure knowledge that is built on experience, but they will not part with the mystic faith based on revelation, to which they cling with the left. the best type of this contradictory dualism is the conflict of pure and practical reason in the critical philosophy of the most famous of modern thinkers, immanuel kant. on the other hand, the number is always small of the thinkers who will boldly reject dualism and embrace pure monism. that is equally true of consistent idealists and theists, and of logical realists and pantheists. however, the reconciliation of these apparent antitheses, and, consequently, the advance towards the solution of the fundamental riddle of the universe, is brought nearer to us every year in the ever-increasing growth of our knowledge of nature. we may, therefore, express a hope that the approaching twentieth century will complete the task of resolving the antitheses, and, by the construction of a system of pure monism, spread far and wide the long-desired unity of world-conception. germany's greatest thinker and poet, whose one hundred and fiftieth anniversary will soon be upon us--wolfgang goethe--gave this "philosophy of unity" a perfect poetic expression, at the very beginning of the century, in his immortal poems, _faust_, _prometheus_, and _god and the world_: "by eternal laws of iron ruled, must all fulfil the cycle of their destiny." footnotes: [ ] there are two english translations, _the evolution of man_ ( ) and _the pedigree of man_ ( ). [ ] the english translation, by dr. hans gadow, bears the title of _the last link_. [ ] english translation, by j. gilchrist, with the title of _monism_. [ ] e. haeckel, _systematische phylogenie_, , vol. iii., pp. - . (anthropolatry means "a divine worship of human nature.") [ ] cf. my cambridge lecture, _the last link_, "geological time and evolution." [ ] as to induction and deduction, _vide_ _the natural history of creation_. [ ] rudolph virchow, _die gründung der berliner universität und der uebergang aus dem philosophischen in das naturwissenschaftliche zeitalter_. (berlin; .) [ ] cf. chap. iv. of my _general morphology_, ; _kritik der naturwissenschaftlichen methoden_. [ ] _systematische phylogenie_, , part iii., pp. , , and . [ ] translated in the international science series, . [ ] _zell-seelen und seelen-zellen._ ernst haeckel, _gesammelte populäre vorträge. i. heft._ . [ ] cf. e. haeckel, _the systems of darwin, goethe, and lamarck_. lecture given at eisenach in . [ ] _vide_ the translation of dr. hans gadow: _the last link_. (a. & c. black.) [ ] cf. max verworn, _psychophysiologische protisten-studien_, pp. , . [ ] e. haeckel, "general natural history of the radiolaria"; . [ ] _vide natural history of creation_, e. haeckel. [ ] law of individual variation. _vide_ _natural history of creation_. [ ] cf. e. haeckel, _systematic phylogeny_, vol. i. [ ] cf. _anthropogeny_ and _natural history of creation_. [ ] cf. _natural history of creation_. [ ] see chaps. xvi. and xvii. of my _anthropogeny_. [ ] e. haeckel, _a visit to ceylon_. [ ] cf. _monism_, by ernst haeckel. [ ] cf. _monism_, by ernst haeckel. [ ] cf. _monism_, by ernst haeckel. [ ] reinke, _die welt als that_ ( ). [ ] cf. _monism_, by ernst haeckel. [ ] _the last link_, translated by dr. gadow. [ ] _general morphology_, book , chap. v. [ ] cf. _general morphology_, vol. ii., and _the natural history of creation._ [ ] _vide_ _a visit to ceylon_, e. haeckel, translated by c. bell. [ ] _collected popular lectures_; bonn, . [ ] as to the greek paternity of christ, _vide_ p. . [ ] cf. _the natural history of creation_, chaps. iii., vi., xv., and xvi. index abiogenesis, , . abortive organs, . accidents, . acrania, . action at a distance, . actualism, . Æsthesis, . affinity, . altruism, . amphibia, . amphimixis, . ampitheism, . ananke, . anatomy, , etc. comparative, . anaximander, , . anthropism, . anthropistic illusion, , etc. world-theory, . anthropocentric dogma, , etc. anthropogeny, . anthropolatric dogma, . anthropomorpha, . anthropomorphic dogma, . apes, , , . anthropoid, . archæus, . archigony, . aristotle, , . association, centres of, . of ideas, . of presentations, , . astronomy, progress of, . astro-physics, . atavism, . athanatism, . athanatistic illusions, . atheism, . atheistic science, . atom, the, . atomism, . atomistic consciousness, . attributes of ether, . of substance, . augustine of hippo, . auricular confession, , . autogony, . baer (carl ernst), . bastian (adolf), . beginning of the world, , . bible, the, , . biogenesis, . biogenetic law, , . bismarck, . blastoderm, , . blastosphere, . blastula, . bruno (giordano), , . büchner (ludwig), . buddhism, , . calvin, . canonical gospels, . carbon as creator, . theory, . catarrhinæ, . catastrophic theory, . categorical imperative, . causes, efficient, . final, . celibacy, . cell-love, . community, soul of the, . soul, . state, . cellular pathology, . physiology, . psychology, , . theory, . cenobitic soul, . cenogenesis, . of the psyche, . chance, . chemicotropism, , . chordula, . chorion, . christ, father of, . christian art, . civilization, . contempt of the body, . animals, . nature, . self, . the family, . woman, . ethics, . christianity, . church and school, . state, . cnidaria, . conception, . concubinage of the clergy, . confession of faith, . consciousness, . animal, . atomistic, . biological, . cellular, . development of, . dualistic, . human, . monistic, . neurological, . ontogeny of, . pathology of, . physiological, . transcendental, . constancy of energy, , . matter, . constantine the great, . constellations of substance, . conventional lies, . copernicus, , , . cosmic immortality, . cosmogonies, . cosmological dualism, . creationism, . law, . perspective, . cosmos, the, . creation, , , . cosmological, . dualistic, . heptameral, . individual, . myths of, . periodic, . trialistic, . cultur-kampf, . cuvier, . cyclostomata, . cynopitheci, . cytology, , etc. cytopsyche, . cytula, . darwin (charles), , etc. decidua, . deduction, . demonism, . descartes, , . descent of the ape, , etc. of man, . theory of, . design, , . in nature, . in organisms, . in selection, . destruction of heavenly bodies, . determinists, . diaphragm, . division of labor in matter, . draper, , . dualism, , etc. du bois-reymond, , . du prel (carl), . duty, feeling of, . dynamodes, . dysteleology, . echinodermata, . ectoderm, . sense-cells in the, . egoism, . elements, chemical, . system of the, . embryo, human, . embryology, . embryonic psychogeny, . sleep, . empedocles, , . encyclica (of pius ix.), . end of the world, . energy, kinetic, . potential, . principle of, . specific, . entelecheia, . entoderm, . entropy of the universe, . epigenesis, , . ergonomy of matter, . eternity of the world, . ether, . etheric souls, . ethics, fundamental law of, . evolution, theory of, , , . chief element in, . experience, . extra-mundane god, . faith, confession of, . of our fathers, . family, the, and christianity, . fate, . fechner, , etc. fecundation, . fetishism, . feuerbach (ludwig), . flechsig, . foetal membranes, . folk-psychology, . forces, conversion of, . frederick the great, , . galen, , . gaseous souls, . vertebrates, . gastræa, . theory of the, . gastræads, . gastrula, . gegenbaur, , . generation, theory of, . genus, . geology, periods of, . progress of, . germinal disk, . gills, . god, . the father, . the son, , . goethe, , etc. goethe's monism, . golden rule, the, . gospels, . gravitation, theory of, . gut-layer, . haller, . harvey, . helmholtz (hermann), , . heredity, psychic, . hertz (heinrich), . hippocrates, . histology, . histopsyche, . hoff (carl), . holbach (paul), . holy ghost, , . humboldt (alexander), . hydra, . hylozoism, . hypothesis, . iatrochemicists, . iatromechanicists, . ideal of beauty, . of truth, . of virtue, . ignorabimus, . immaculate conception, . immaterial substance, . immortality of animals, . of the human soul, . of unicellular organisms, . personal, . imperfection of nature, . imponderable matter, . impregnation, . indeterminists, . induction, . indulgences, . infallibility of the pope, . instinct, , . intellect, , etc. intramundane god, . introspective psychology, . islam, . janssen (johannes), . jehovah, . journeys on foot, . kant, , etc. kant's metamorphosis, , etc. kinetic energy, . theory of substance, . kölliker, , . lamarck, , etc. lamettrie, . landscape-painting, . language, . study of, . last judgment, . lavoisier, . leap of the gospels, miraculous, . leydig, . life, definition of, . limits of our knowledge, . love, . of animals, . of neighbor, . of self, . lucretius carus, . lunarism, . luther, . lyell, , . madonna, cult of the, , . malphigi, . mammals, , etc. mammary glands, . man, ancestors of, . marsupials, , . mass, . materialism, . mayer (robert), , . mechanical causality, . explanation, . theory of heat, . mechanicism, . mediterranean religions, the, . memory, cellular, o. conscious, . histionic, . unconscious, . mephistopheles, . metabolism, . metamorphoses of the cosmos, . of philosophers, . metaphyta, . metasitism, . metazoa, , . middle ages, , . mixotheism, . mohammedanism, . mohr (friedrich), . monera, , . monism, , and _passim_. of energy, . of spinoza, . of the cosmos, . monistic anthropogeny, . art, . biogeny, . churches, . cosmology, . ethics, . geogeny, . monotheism, . monotrema, . moon-worship, . moral order of the universe, . morula, . mosaism, . müller (johannes), , , . mythology of the soul, . natural religion, . navel-cord, . neokantians, . neovitalism, . neptunian geology, . neuro-muscular cells, . neuroplasm, , . neuropsyche, . nomocracy, . ontogenetic psychology, . ontological creationism, . methods, . orbits of the heavenly bodies, . origin of movement, , . of feeling, , . ovary, . palingenesis, . of the psyche, . pandera (the father of christ), . pantheism, . papacy, . papal ethics, . papiomorpha, . paul, , . epistles of, . paulinism, . pedicle of the allantois, . perpetual motion, . persistence of force, , . of matter, . phroneta, . phylogeny, , . of the apes, . systematic, . physiology, . phytopsyche, . pithecanthropus, . pithecoid theory, , etc. pithecometra-thesis, , . placenta, , . placentals, , . plasmodoma, . plasmogony, . plasmophaga, . plato, , . plato's theory of ideas, . platodaria, . platodes, . platyrrhinæ, . pneuma zoticon, . polytheism, . ponderable matter, . preformation theory, . primaria, . primates, , . primitive christianity, . gut, , . prodynamis, . progaster, . proplacentals, . prosimiæ, . prostoma, . prothyl, . protoplasm, . protozoa, . provertebræ, . pseudo-christianity, . psychade theory, . psyche, . psychogeny, . phyletic, . post-embryonic, . psychology, et seqq. ontogenetic, . phylogenetic, . psychomonism, . psychophysics, . psychoplasm, , . pupa, sleep of the, . pyknosis, . pyknotic theory of substance, . reason, , . reflex action, . arches, . reformation, the, . religion a private concern, . remak, . revelation, . reversion, . romance of the virgin mary, . romanes, . rudimentary organs, . saints, . scale of emotion, . of memory, . of movement, . of presentation, . of reason, . of reflex action, . of will, . scatulation theory, . schleiden, , . school, and church, . and state, . reform of the, . schwann, , . selachii, . selection, theory of, . self-consciousness, . sense-knowledge, . organs, . senses, philosophy of the, . sentiment, , etc., . siebold, . simiæ, . social duties, . instincts, . solar systems, , . solarism, . soul, _et seqq._ apparatus of the, . blending of the, . creation of the, . division of the, . etheric, . gaseous, . histionic, . history of the, . hydra, . life of the, . liquid, . mammal, . nerve, . origin of the, . of the plant, . personal, . solid, . substance of the, . transmigration of the, . sources of knowledge, . space and time, . infinity of, . reality of, . species, . spectral analysis, . spermarium, . spermatozoa, . spinal cord, . spinoza, , , . spirit world, . spirit-rapping, . spiritism, . spiritualism, . sponge, soul of the, . stem-cell, , , . stimulated movement, , . stimuli, conduction of, . strauss (david), , . struggle for life, . substance, . law of, , etc. structure of, . superstition, . süss (edward), . syllabus, . synodikon (of pappus), . table-turning, . teleological explanation, . teleology, . tetrapoda, . thanatism, . primary, . secondary, . theism, . theocracy, . theory, . thought, organs of, , , . time and space, . reality of, . tissue, theory of, . tissue-forming animals, . plants, . transformism, . trimurti, . trinity, dogma of the, . monistic, . triplotheism, . tropesis, . tropismata, . tunicata, . turbellaria, . ultramontanism, . understanding, . unity of natural forces, . of substance, . universum perpetuum mobile, . uterus, . vaticanism, . vertebrates, , _passim_. verworn (max), , . vesalius, . vibration, theory of, . virchow, , . virchow's metamorphosis, . vital force, , . vitalism, , . vivisection, . vogt (carl), . vogt (j.e.), . water-color drawing, . weismann, . will, liberty of the, . scale of the, . wolff (c.f.), . woman and christianity, . world-consciousness, . world-riddles, number of, . wundt (wilhelm), , . the end transcriber's notes: the following is a list of changes made to the original. the first line is the original line, the second the corrected one. ( ) consequently, the so-called history of the world" ( ) consequently, the so-called "history of the world" structure of the primates forces us to distingiush two structure of the primates forces us to distinguish two of the geneaology of our race; for man bears all the of the genealogy of our race; for man bears all the world of which we have direct and certain cognizanze world of which we have direct and certain cognizance the law of substance by robert mayer and helmholz the law of substance by robert mayer and helmholtz the more impotant of these works we owe to romanes the more important of these works we owe to romanes formerly assistant and pupil of helmholz, wundt had early formerly assistant and pupil of helmholtz, wundt had early all other viviporous animals, precisely because the complete all other viviparous animals, precisely because the complete recent students of the protists, afford conlcusive evidence recent students of the protists, afford conclusive evidence a thinker is very striking; in explaning it, it is not a thinker is very striking; in explaining it, it is not "have no individuals and no generations in the matazoic sense." "have no individuals and no generations in the metazoic sense." in his _species and studies_ in his eighty-fouth year in his _species and studies_ in his eighty-fourth year chief forms of theism--polytheism--tritheism--ampitheism chief forms of theism--polytheism--triplotheism--amphitheism faith, and that all these insiduous institutions are faith, and that all these insidious institutions are nor in the narnow prisons of our jail-like schools, nor in the narrow prisons of our jail-like schools, and it was done in many, and sometimes very romatic, ways. and it was done in many, and sometimes very romantic, ways. the ascent of the soul by amory h. bradford, d.d. author of "spirit and life," "heredity and christian problems" "the growing revelation," "the age of faith" "messages of the masters," etc. new york the outlook company copyright, by the outlook company mount pleasant press j. horace mcfarland company harrisburg, pennsylvania to the memory of my father _that each, who seems a separate whole, should move his rounds, and fusing all the skirts of self again, should fall remerging in the general soul, is faith as vague as all unsweet: eternal form shall still divide the eternal soul from all beside; and i shall know him when we meet._ --_in memoriam._ introduction the purpose of the following chapters will be evident to all who may care to peruse them. i have endeavored simply to read the soul of man with something of the care that one reads a book containing a message which he believes to be of importance. while one class of scientists are seeking to explore the physical universe, another class, with equal care, are studying the human spirit, and, already, startling discoveries have been made. my work is in no sense new in kind, but it is such as one whose whole time is devoted to dealing with the inner life would naturally give to such a subject. it hardly needs to be added that my method is practical rather than speculative. i am more interested in helping the ascent of the soul than in accounting for its origin. in carrying out my plan i have considered the following subjects: the nature and genesis of the soul, its awakening to a consciousness of responsibility, the steps which it first takes on its upward pathway, the experience of moral failure, its second awakening, which is to an appreciation that the universe is on its side, the part of christ in promoting its awakening, the sense of spiritual companionship by which it is ever attended, the discipline of struggle, and the nurture and culture best fitted to promote its growth. i have also sought to read some of the prophecies of the soul, and have found them all pointing toward a continuance of its being beyond the event called death, and toward the fullness of christ as the goal of humanity. i have found a place for prayers for the departed even among protestants of the strictest sects. a study of the soul, like a study of history, inspires optimism. it is hard to believe that it could have been intended first for perfection and then for extinction. it is equally difficult to believe that any soul will, in the end, be "cast as rubbish to the void." in these studies i have tried ever to be mindful of my own limitations, and not to forget that a fraction of humanity can never hope to comprehend the fullness of truth. of that side of the spiritual sphere which has been turned toward me, and of that alone, have i presumed to write. all that i claim for this book is that it is the contribution of one, anxious to know what is true, toward a better understanding of a subject which is daily receiving wider recognition and more thorough consideration. amory h. bradford. montclair, new jersey, _august , ._ contents page the soul the awakening of the soul the first steps hindrances the austere re-awakening the place of jesus christ the inseparable companion nurture and culture is death the end? prayers for the dead the goal the soul it is no spirit who from heaven hath flown and is descending on his embassy; nor traveler gone from earth the heaven t'espy! 'tis hesperus--there he stands with glittering crown, first admonition that the sun is down,-- for yet it is broad daylight!--clouds pass by; a few are near him still--and now the sky, he hath it to himself--'tis all his own. o most ambitious star! an inquest wrought within me when i recognized thy light; a moment i was startled at the sight; and, while i gazed, there came to me a thought that even i beyond my natural race might step as thou dost now:--might one day trace some ground not mine; and, strong her strength above, my soul, an apparition in the place, tread there, with steps that no one shall reprove! --wordsworth. i _the soul_ subjects which a few years ago were regarded as the exclusive property of cultured thinkers, are now common themes of thought and conversation. psychology has been popularized. materialistic doctrines are at a discount even in this age of physical science. it is difficult to explain the somewhat sudden appearance of intense interest in questions which have to do with the life of the spirit; but, whatever the theory of its genesis, there is no doubt of its presence. this, therefore, is a favorable time for a somewhat extended study of the stages through which we pass in our spiritual growth. i shall endeavor to use the inductive method in this inquiry, and trust that i am not presumptuous in giving to these essays the title, the ascent of the soul. the phrases, "the ascent of man" and "the descent of man" are familiar to all readers of the literature of modern science. one of the most eminent of american writers on science and philosophy too soon taken from his work, if any act of providence is ever too soon, has made a clear distinction between evolution as applied to the body and as applied to the spirit. in lucid and luminous pages he has taught us that evolution, as a physical process, having culminated in man can go no further along those lines; that henceforward "the cosmic force" will be expended in the perfection of the spirit, and that that process will require eternity to complete. more perspicuously than any other author, john fiske has introduced to modern english thought the conception of the ascent of the soul, considered in its relation to the individual and to the race. this subject naturally divides itself into two departments, viz.--the ascent of each individual soul and, then, the far-off perfecting of humanity. i shall make suggestions along both lines of inquiry. i do not know of any writer who has, in a compact form, presented the results of such studies, although there have been illustrations, especially in literature, which indicate that many thinkers have had in mind the attempt to trace and describe the progress of the soul from its bondage to animalism toward its perfection and glory in the freedom of the spirit. goethe, in "faust," has made an effort to follow the process by which a weak woman and a weaker man, ignorant of the forces struggling within them and susceptible to malign influences from without, through terrible mistakes and bitter failure, at length reach the heights of character. the trilogy of dante is a study of the soul in its slow and painful passage from hell, through purgatory, to heaven. perhaps, however, the noblest and truest effort in this direction to be found in the world's literature is "the pilgrim's progress," in which a man of glorious genius and vision, but without academic culture, reflecting too much the crude and materialistic theology of his time and condition, follows the progress of a soul in its movement from the city of destruction to the city celestial. the city of destruction is the state of animalism and selfishness from which the race has slowly emerged; and the city celestial is not only the christian's heaven, but also the state of those who, having escaped from earthliness, having conquered animalism and risen into the freedom of the spirit, breathe the air and enjoy the companionship of the sons of god. it is my purpose in a different way to attempt to trace some of the steps of what may be called the evolution of the spirit, or, in the light of modern knowledge, the growth of the soul as it moves upward. at the outset i must make it plain that i am speaking of evolution since the time when man as a spirit appeared. given the spiritual being, what are the stages through which he will pass on his way to the goal toward which he is surely pressing? just here we should ask, what do we mean by the soul? the word is used in its popular sense, as synonymous with spirit or personality. man has a dual nature; one part of his being is of the dust and to the dust it returns; the other part is a mystery; it is known only by what it does. man thinks, loves, chooses, and is conscious of himself as thinking, loving, choosing. the unity of this being who thinks, loves, chooses in a single self-consciousness constitutes him a spirit, or personality; and that is what the word soul signifies in its popular usage. there is another technical definition which may be true or false but which is of no importance in our study. the problem of life is the right adjustment of spirit and body, so that the former shall never be the servant but always the master of the latter. we are on this earth, in the midst of darkness, with nothing absolutely sure except that in a little while we must die. we are two-fold beings in which there is war almost from the cradle to the grave, and that war is caused by the effort of the body to rule the soul and of the soul to conquer the body. at the gates of this mystery we continually do cry, and little light comes from any quarter; indeed, it may be said no light except that of the christian revelation, and the, as yet, not very pronounced prophecies of evolution. one of the questions, which in all ages has been most persistently asked, concerns the origin of the soul. perhaps, in reality, that is no more mysterious than the genesis of the body; but the body is material and we live in a world of matter, and it is comparatively easy to see that our bodies are from the earth which they inhabit. our souls, however, are invisible, immaterial, ethereal. there is no evident kinship between a thought and a stone, between love and the soil which produces vegetables, between a heroic choice and the stuff of the earth, between spirit and matter. well, then, whence does the soul come? it will be interesting at least to recall a few of the many answers which have been given to this inquiry. one theory of the genesis of the soul is called emanation. that means that in the universe there is really but one source of spiritual being, one infinite spirit, and that all other spiritual beings have proceeded from him as the rays of light are flashed from the sun; and that, in time, all will return to him again and be absorbed in the being from which they have come. thus all spirits are supposed to have proceeded from one source--god. as all natural life in the end is but a manifestation of solar energy, so all human beings are supposed to be only bits of god, for a time imprisoned in bodies, and some time to return to the deity and be absorbed in him, or in it. another answer to the question as to the soul's origin is that of preëxistence. this may be called the oriental theory, for almost the whole orient holds this view. the substance of the teaching is suggested by wordsworth, in his "ode to immortality," in the following lines: "our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; the soul that rises with us, our life's star, hath had elsewhere its setting, and cometh from afar." many occidentals have believed in preëxistence. one of the most intelligent persons whom i have ever known once affirmed that she had had thoughts which she was sure were memories of events which had occurred in a previous life. this answer only pushes the question one stage further back, and leaves us still inquiring, where do the souls of men originally come from? another answer to our question affirms that every individual soul is created by god whenever a body is in readiness to receive it--that when a body is born a soul is made to order for it. an old poet wrote as follows: "then god smites his hands together and strikes out a soul as a spark, into the organized glory of things, from the deeps of the dark."[ ] [footnote : w.r. alger, "history of the doctrine of a future life," page .] the greek myth of prometheus is an illustration of this teaching, for "prometheus is said to have made a human image from the dust of the ground, and then, by fire stolen from heaven, to have animated it with a living soul."[ ] [footnote : w.r. alger, "history of the doctrine of a future life," page .] another answer teaches that all human souls have been derived by heredity from that of adam. this is a speculation found in medieval theology, and in the koran. a fanciful theory suggests that all souls have been in existence since the universe was formed; that they are floating in space like rays of light; and that when a body comes into being a soul is drawn into it with its first breath, or first nourishment. this is pure imagination, but intelligent and earnest men have believed it to be the true solution of the problem. one other answer to this question of origin teaches that souls are propagated in the same way and at the same time as bodies; that when a human being appears he is body and spirit; that both are born together, both grow together; and then, some add, both die together, while others believe that the spirit enters at death on a larger and freer stage of existence. i have recalled these speculations concerning the soul in order to show that in all ages this question has been eagerly put and reverently pressed. how could it have been otherwise? and what more convincing evidence of the spiritual nature of man could be desired than that he asks such questions? would a figure of clay ask whether it were the abode of a higher order of being? dust asks no questions concerning personality; but intelligence can never be satisfied until it knows the causes of things. what is the teaching of the new testament concerning this subject? the attitude of jesus toward all the great problems was the practical one. he attempted to shed no light on causes, but ever endeavored to show how to make the best of things as they are. whence came the soul? we may ask of him, but he will tell us that a far more important inquiry is, how may the soul be delivered from imperfection, suffering, and sin, and saved to its noblest uses and loftiest possibilities? the reality of spirit is everywhere assumed in the teaching of jesus, but nowhere does there appear any effort to throw light on the mystery of its genesis. the distinction between spirit and body is indicated by the transfiguration, the resurrection, the narratives of the continued existence of jesus after his crucifixion, by many references to the heavenly life, and by the appeals and invitations of the gospel which are all addressed to intelligence and will. the presence of jesus in history is an assertion of the spiritual nature of man. various philosophers have tried to satisfy the desire for light on the question of the origin of personality; but jesus has told us how, being here, we may break our prison-houses and rise into the full freedom and glory of the children of god. while inquirers have been seeking light, jesus has brought to them salvation; while they have fruitlessly asked whence they came, jesus has told them whither they are going. the real problem of human life is not one which has to do with our birth, but with our destiny. we know that we think, choose, love; we know that we are self-conscious; we feel that we have kinship with something higher than the ground on which we walk. the stars attract us because they are above and have motion, but the earth we tread upon has few fascinations. jesus has responded to the essential questions: for what have we been created? what is our true home? what is the goal of personality? by what path does man move from the bondage of his will, and the limitation of his animalism toward the glorious liberty of the children of god, and toward the fullness of his possible being? we are thus brought face to face with other questions of deep importance what part do weakness, limitation, suffering, sorrow, and even sin, play in the development of souls? is it necessary that any should fall in order that they may rise? did john bunyan truly picture the ascent of the soul? does its path, of necessity, lead through the slough of despond, through vanity fair, by castle dangerous, and into the realm of giant despair? must one pass through hell and purgatory before he may enjoy the "beatific vision?" are temptation, sin, sorrow, and even death, angels of god sent forth to minister to the perfection of man? or are they fiends which, in some foul way, have invaded the otherwise fair regions in which we dwell? these are some of the questions to which we are to seek answers in the pages which are to follow. i am persuaded that, as the result of our studies, we shall find that the same beneficent hand which led the "cosmic process" for unnumbered ages, until the appearance of man, is leading it still, that far more wonderful disclosures are waiting for the children of men as they shall be prepared to receive them, and that the glory of the "spiritual universe," as it approaches its consummation, when compared with the finest growths of character yet seen, will transcend them as the ordered creation, with its countless stars, transcends the primeval chaos. in the meantime it is well to remember a few very simple and self-evident facts. one of these is that human souls must vary, at least as much as the bodies in which they dwell. individuality has to do with spirits. we think, love, and choose in ways that differ quite as much as our bodily appearance. there is no uniformity in the spiritual sphere;--this we know from its manifestations in conduct and history. one man is heroic and another tender, one a reformer and another a recluse, one conservative and another radical. the same bible has passages as widely contrasted as the twenty-third and the fifty-eighth psalms, and characters as unlike as jacob and jesus. indeed, may it not be assumed that physical differences are but expressions of still more clearly marked differences in spirits? if this is true it will follow that, as we move toward the goal of our being, while all will be under the same good care, we will move along different, though converging, paths. there are many roads to the "celestial city" and, possibly, some of them do not lead through the slough of despond, or go very near to the realms of giant despair. i cannot leave this part of my subject without dwelling for a moment upon two thoughts which to me seem to be full of significance. this wonderfully complex nature of ours,--this power of thinking, choosing, loving, these mysterious inner depths out of which come strange suggestions, and within which, all the time, processes are carried on which may rise into consciousness and startle with their beauty or shame with their ugliness--does no suggestion come from it concerning its origin and destiny? until they pass mid-life few men realize the terrible significance of the command of the oracle at delphi, "know thyself." who is not surprised every day at what he finds within himself? it sometimes seems as if two beings dwelt in every body, one in the region of consciousness, and one down below consciousness steadily forging the material which, sooner or later, must be forced up for the conscious man to think about. in proportion as we know ourselves more accurately it becomes increasingly evident that as spirits we are allied to the great spirit. few who earnestly think can believe that their power of thought could have grown out of the earth; few when they love can believe that there is no fountain of love, unlimited and free; and few, when they choose one course and refuse another, would be willing to affirm that they are without the power of choice, and have no destiny but the grave. in other words, is not the fact that we are spirits all the proof that we need to have of the father of spirits? is not a single ray of light all the evidence which any one needs of the reality of the sun? is not the presence of one spiritual being a demonstration of a greater spirit somewhere? every soul indicates that, whatever the process by which it has reached its present development, it came originally from god. "in the beginning god" is a phrase which applies to the spiritual as well as to the material universe. the soul is not only a witness concerning its own origin, but it is also a prophecy concerning its destiny. the more thoroughly it is studied the more convincing becomes the evidence that it must some time reach its perfected state. the perfection of intelligence, love, and will require endless growth. the great words of pascal can hardly be recalled too frequently: "man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. it is not necessary that the entire universe arm itself to crush him. a breath of air, a drop of water suffices to kill him. but were the universe to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which kills him, because he knows that he dies; and the universe knows nothing of the advantage it has over him." we can as yet hardly begin to comprehend that for which we were created;--now we see through a glass darkly. a caterpillar on the earth cannot appreciate a butterfly in the air. jesus was the typical man, as well as the revelation of god. st. paul has set our thoughts moving toward the "fullness of christ" as the final goal of humanity. we may not, for many milleniums, know all that is contained in that phrase "the fullness of christ;" but no one ever attentively listened to the voices which speak in his own soul, no one has even asked himself the meaning of the fact that nothing earthly ever completely satisfies, no one ever saw another in the ripeness of splendid powers growing more intelligent, loving, and spiritually beautiful, without feeling that if death were really the end no being is so much to be pitied as man, and no fate so much to be coveted as a short life in which the mockery may go on. our souls themselves assure us that they have come from a fountain of spiritual being--that is, from god; and they are also prophecies of a perfection which has never yet been realized on the earth and which will require eternity to complete. but all are not conscious of themselves as spiritual beings and children of eternity, and many come slowly to that consciousness. our next inquiry, therefore, will concern the soul's awakening. the awakening of the soul there's a palace in florence, the world knows well, and a statue watches it from the square, and this story of both do our townsmen tell. ages ago, a lady there, at the farthest window facing the east asked, who rides by with the royal air? * * * * * that selfsame instant, underneath, the duke rode past in his idle way empty and fine like a swordless sheath. * * * * * he looked at her, as a lover can; she looked at him as one who awakes: the past was a sleep, and her life began. --_the statue and the bust._ browning ii _the awakening of the soul_ the process of physical awakening is not always sudden or swift. the passage from sleep to consciousness is sometimes slow and difficult. the soul's realization of itself is often equally long delayed. the effect of eloquence on an audience has often been observed when one by one the dormant souls wake up and begin to look out of their windows, the eyes, at the speaker who is addressing them. in something the same way the souls of men come to a consciousness of their powers and, with clearness, begin to look out on their possibilities and their destiny. the prodigal son in the parable of jesus lived his earlier years without an appreciation either of his powers or possibilities. when he came to himself this appreciation flashed upon his will and he turned toward his father. two chapters of this book will have to do with thoughts suggested by this "pearl of parables," viz., the soul's awakening and its re-awakening. before this young man decided to return to his father he knew himself as an intelligent and as a responsible being; the power of choice was not given him then for the first time. long ere this he had decided how he would use his wealth. he knew the difference between right and wrong. he was intellectually and morally awake before he saw things in their true relations. "the wine of the senses" intoxicated him; the delights of the flesh seemed the only pleasures to be desired. at first he did not discover the essential excellence of virtue or the sure results of vice. later, when he saw things in a clearer light, their proper proportions and relations appeared, and he came to himself and made the wise choice. in this chapter we are to study the process of the soul's awakening to a consciousness of its powers, and in a subsequent chapter that re-awakening which is so radical as to merit the name it has usually received, viz., the new birth. there is a time when the soul first realizes itself as a personality with definite responsibilities and relations. this experience comes to some earlier, and to some with greater vividness, than to others. so long as we are blind to our powers, responsibilities, relations, we can hardly be said to be spiritually awake. he only is awake who knows himself as a personality; who has heard the voice of duty; who, to some extent, appreciates the fact that he is dependent on a higher personality or power; and who recognizes that he is surrounded by other personalities who also have their rights, responsibilities, and relations. i think, i choose, i love, i know that i am dependent upon a being higher than myself. i see that i am related to other personalities with rights as sacred as my own, and, therefore, that i must choose, think, love so as to be acceptable to the one to whom i am responsible, and harmonious with those by whom i am surrounded. the soul's awakening is primarily a recognition and an appreciation of its responsibility. it may think, choose, love, without realizing responsibility, and, therefore, live as if it were the only being in the universe; but the moment it recognizes responsibility it also discerns a higher person, and other persons, since responsibility to no one, and for nothing, is inconceivable. the soul's awakening, therefore, carries with it the idea of obligation, and that includes the recognition of god, of duty, of right and wrong, in short, of a moral ideal. i do not mean to insist that every one appreciates all that is implied in consciousness of responsibility. there are degrees of alertness, and some men are wide awake and others half asleep. however it may have come to its self-realization, that is a solemn and sublime moment when a human soul understands, ever so dimly, that it is facing in the unseen being one on whom it knows itself to be dependent; and when it discerns the hitherto invisible lines which bind it to other personalities, in all space and time. at that moment life really begins. henceforward, by various ways, over undreamed-of obstacles, assisted by invisible hands, hindered by unseen forces, in spite of foes within and enemies without, the course of that soul must ever be toward its true home and goal, in the bosom of god. the difficulties in the way of such a faith for the thoughtful and sensitive are many and serious. not all blossoms come to fruitage; not all human beings are fit to live; processes of degeneration seem to be at work in nature, in society, and in the individual life. apparently true and time-honored interpretations of scripture are quoted against the faith that in some way, and by some kind of discipline, the souls of men will forever approach god; while the belief of the church, so far as it has found expression in the creeds is urged in opposition. but when i see how timidly the creeds of the church have been held by many in all ages, how large a number of the most spiritual and morally earnest have questioned them at this point, and how often they have been rejected in whole, or in part, by those who have dared to trust their hearts; when i remember that the scripture quoted as opposing is susceptible of another interpretation, when i remember that blossoms are not men, and, most of all when i see the god-like possibilities in every human being, i cannot resist the conviction that every soul of man is from god, and that, sometime and somehow, it may be by the hard path of retribution, possibly through great agonies and by means of austere chastisements and severe discipline as well as by loving entreaty, after suffering shall have accomplished all its ministries it will reach a blissful goal and the "beatific vision." the awakening of the soul is its entrance upon an appreciation of its powers, relations, possibilities, and responsibilities. what awakens the soul? the answer to that question is hidden. the wind bloweth where it listeth. elemental processes and forces are all silent and viewless. the stillness of the sunrise is like that of the deeps of the sea. no eye ever traced the birth of life, and no sound ever attended the awakening of the soul; and yet this subject is not altogether mysterious. a few rays of light have fallen upon it. i venture suggestions which may help a little toward a rational answer to this question. the soul awakens because it grows, and its growth is sure. everything that is alive must grow; only death is stationary. it is as natural for us sometime to know ourselves as having relations both to the seen and the unseen as for our bodies to increase in stature. the confession of augustine[ ] is true of all, "thou madest us for thyself, and our heart is restless until it repose in thee." [footnote : confessions. book i, .] the soul turns toward god as naturally as children turn toward their parents. i know no other way of explaining the fact that in all ages the majority of the people have had faith in some kind of a deity; and that, widely as they differ as to what is right, all feel that they should follow their convictions of duty. the various ethnic religions, however repulsive, cruel, and vile some of their teachings may be, all indicate a realization of dependence, and all, in some way, bear witness to man's longing for god. augustine was right--"the heart is restless until it repose in thee." the healthful soul will always move along the pathway of growth. the next stage in its evolution after its birth is its awakening. its progress may be hindered, but it cannot be prevented, and it may be hastened. the means by which a soul comes to its self-realization has been a favorite study with poets, dramatists, and novelists. marguerite, in "faust," was a simple, sweet, sensuous, traditionally religious girl until she was rudely startled by the knowledge that she was a great sinner; that moment the scales began to fall from her eyes. in her, goethe has shown how one class of persons, and that a large class, come to self-realization. victor hugo, in a passage of almost unparalleled pathos, has pictured in jean valjean a kind of big human beast who, when half awake, steals a loaf of bread to save others from starving, but who is startled into fullness of manhood by the sympathy and consideration of the good bishop whose silver he had also stolen. hawthorne, in donatello, has pictured a beautiful creature fully equipped with affections, emotions, passions, but with little consciousness of responsibility, until the fatal moment in which a crime illuminates his soul like a flash of lightning. such experiences are not to be compared with those of the prodigal son or of saul. before the one was reduced to husks, or the light blazed upon the other, they felt the obligation to do right. the prodigal chose pleasure with his eyes wide open and saul was, mistakenly but truly, trying to do god's will even when he assisted in the stoning of stephen. hugo, goethe, and hawthorne have accurately delineated single steps in the growth of the soul. they have shown how the process of the soul's awakening may be, and often has been, hastened. it may be hindered by false ideals and a vicious environment, and it may be hastened by lofty ideals and a holy environment. dr. bushnell, in his lectures on christian nurture, has said that the formative years of every man's life are the first three. is he correct? i am not sure, but there can be no doubt but what with a good environment the consciousness of moral obligation will be very early developed. the soul cannot long be imprisoned. the consciousness of "ought" and "ought not" will break all barriers as a growing seed will split a rock; and, when that stage of growth appears, the soul knows itself. when the soul is finally awakened, when it realizes that it is indissolubly bound to a larger personality in the unseen sphere; when it finds that it is tied to other souls, and that it cannot escape from its responsibility for itself and them,--what then? then the struggle of life begins. the awakening is to a realization of conflict with the seen and unseen environment, with forces within and fascinations without. when paul speaks of the law as the minister of death, he simply means that law introduces an ideal, and ideals always start struggles. law is something to be obeyed. it is sure to antagonize the animal in man. when our possibilities dawn upon us, in that moment there comes the feeling that they should be our masters. then the lower nature resists and becomes clamorous. duty calls in one direction and inclination impels in another. the period of ignorance has passed. weakness and imperfection remain, but not ignorance. there is a conflict in the soul. the law in the members wars against the law in the mind. we feel that we ought to move upward, but unseen weights press heavily upon us, and to rise seems impossible. between god calling from above and animalism from below the poor soul has a hard time of it. the morally great in all ages have become strong by overcoming their fleshly natures. they have risen on their dead selves to higher things. the vision of god has reached them even in their prison-houses; and it has broken their chains and they have begun to move toward him. to the end of the chapter they have had a long fight, and not seldom have been sadly worsted. goethe and augustine, pascal and coleridge, dequincey and webster--how the list of those who have had to fight bitter battles for spiritual liberty might be extended i and many have not been victorious before the shadows have lengthened and the day closed. should they be blamed or pitied? pitied, surely, and for the rest let us leave them to him who knoweth all things. "vengeance is mine; i will repay, saith the lord." men have nothing to do with judgment; the final word concerning any soul will be spoken only by him whose vision is perfect. "steep and craggy is the pathway of the gods," and steep and craggy is the path by which men rise to spiritual heights. he who is sensitive to life can hardly survey this universal human struggle with undimmed eye or with unquestioning faith. the young are driven here and there by heartless and, sometimes, almost furious passions; some are weak and fall because they are blind, and others because they love and trust; and many who desire to do good mistake and choose evil. the strong often try to run away from themselves but can find no solitude in which to hide; and all the time right and truth shine in the darkness like stars. what shall we say of these confusing conditions? to ignore them is foolish; to insist that the struggle is but a delusion is nonsense. the only sane course is to face facts and adjust our theories to them. the battle between duty and inclination, between the ideal and the actual, will continue as long as life in the body endures. it is not an unmixed evil. in the end right is never worsted. the way that leads to holiness is long and sometimes bloody; but it always develops strength and courage. the fight, for each individual, will be ended only by the full and perfect choice of truth and virtue, which are always the will of god. the victory will be secure long before it is fully won. enough for us to know that conformity to the will of god at last will be the end of strife. it is not well to be overmuch troubled when we see those whom we love fighting a hard battle against inherited tendencies and an evil environment, for the fight, however fierce, is a good sign. those alone are to be pitied who are drifting, and not resisting. progress is ever by a steep and spiral pathway. sometimes the face of the ascending soul is toward the sun and sometimes it is toward the darkness. no man can deliver his friend from the forces which oppose him. each must conquer for himself and none can evade the conflict. from the hour when the soul awakens to a consciousness of its powers and possibilities, its movement, in spite of all hindrances and difficulties, must be to the heights. those only need cause anxiety who are not yet awake; or who, having been awake, have turned backward instead of pressing onward. we are now face to face with a momentous inquiry. when the soul is awake, when it realizes something of its descent from god and of its relation to him and to other souls, what should be its environment? intelligent and otherwise sane people at this point have been strangely insane and blind. we are always affected by influence more than by teaching. education by atmosphere is quite as effective as education by study. involuntarily all become like their ideals. personalities absorb characteristics from surroundings as flowers absorb colors from the light. the awakened soul, therefore, from the first should have a spiritual environment. parents and friends should be helps, not hindrances, to its progress. i once read a letter from one who had changed an old for a new home. the letter was full of aspiration for the best things, of thoughts about god and the spiritual verities. it was not difficult to see that the new home in its reverence for truth, its loyalty to right, its reaching for reality, was providing the same good influence as the old one. if, in the environment, truth and duty are honored, virtue reverenced, god worshipped sincerely and devoutly, manhood held to be as sacred as deity, the unseen and spiritual never spoken of unadvisedly or lightly, courage always found hand in hand with character, the soul will never long fight a losing battle. the home should be organized to promote, as swiftly as possible, the awakening of the souls of the children; and, from the moment of this awakening, everything should be planned to help their growth. the books on the tables should tell the life-stories of those who have bravely fought and never faltered. biographies of men like wilberforce and howard who have lived to help their fellow-men; and of women like florence nightingale and lady stanley, who have regarded their social gifts and ample wealth as calls to service; histories of charities, intellectual development and noble achievement, pictures like sir galahad and the light of the world are potent forces in the formation of character. the ideal side of life should ever be presented in its most attractive form to the awakened soul in its near environment. because the ideal culminates in the religious, and the feeling of moral obligation rests at last upon the conviction that god is, and that he is not far from any one, jesus, in all the beauty and pathos of his earthly career, in all the tragic grandeur of his death and glory of his resurrection, in all the nearness and helpfulness of his continuing ministry, should be the subject of frequent, earnest, honest, sane, and sympathetic conversation. the awakened soul needs first of all an environment which will be favorable to its growth. its development then will usually be steadily and swiftly toward god and conformity to his will. there ought to be no need of any re-awakening. if the soul opens its eyes among those who reverence truth and righteousness, who guard virtue and revere love, to whom god is the nearest and most blessed of realities, and jesus is master, saviour, and daily friend, its growth toward the spiritual goal will be as natural and beautiful as it will also be swift and sure. the first steps no mortal object did these eyes behold when first they met the placid light of thine, and my soul felt her destiny divine, and hope of endless peace in me grew bold: heaven-born, the soul a heav'nward course must hold; beyond the visible world she soars to seek (for what delights the sense is false and weak) ideal form, the universal mould. the wise man, i affirm, can find no rest in that which perishes: nor will he lend his heart to aught which doth on time depend. 'tis sense, unbridled will, and not true love, which kills the soul: love betters what is best, even here below, but more in heaven above. --_sonnet from michael angelo._ wordsworth iii _the first steps_ the first movements of the awakened soul are difficult to trace. observation, painstaking and long-continued, alone can furnish the desired information. in the attempt to recall our own experiences there is always a possibility of inaccuracy. bias counts for more in self-examination than in an examination of others. there is also danger of confusing religious preconceptions with what actually transpires. what we have been led to imagine should be experienced we are very likely to insist has taken place. the truth concerning the ascent of the soul will be found in the conclusions of many observers in widely different conditions. the soul awakens to a consciousness of its responsibilities and to a knowledge that it is in a moral order from which escape is forever impossible. this is our point of departure in this chapter. the new-born child has to become adjusted to its physical environment, to learn to use its powers, to breathe, to eat, to allow the various senses to do their work. in like manner the newly awakened soul has to become adjusted to the moral order. the moral order is the rule of right in the sphere of thought, emotion, and choice. it is the government of the soul as the physical order is the government of the body. it may be best explained by analogy. there is a physical order ruled by physical laws. if those laws are obeyed, strength, health, sanity result; but if they are disobeyed, the consequences, which are inevitable and self-perpetuating, are weakness, disease, insanity. if one violates gravitation he is dashed in pieces; if he trifles with microbes their infinitesimal grasp will be like a shackle of steel. no one can get outside the physical universe and the sweep of its laws. there is also a right and a wrong way to use thought, emotion, will. the mind which has hospitality only for holy thoughts will become clearer, and its vision more distinct; but the mind which harbors impure thoughts, gradually, but surely, confuses evil with good, obscures its vision, and becomes a fountain of moral miasm. if we choose to recall and to retain feelings that are animal, and are the relics of animalism, the natural tendency toward bestiality will gather momentum; but if emotion is turned toward higher objects, and we are thrilled from above rather than lulled from below, the sensibilities become sources of enduring joy. the moral order is like the physical order in its universality and in the remorselessness of the consequences which follow choices. how does the soul become adjusted to the moral order? this question is difficult to answer. at the first there is sight enough to see that one course is right and another wrong, but the vision is indistinct. gradually the ability to make accurate discriminations increases, and, with time and other growth, the faculty of vision is enlarged and clarified. the first step in the ascent of the soul is the development of ability to discriminate between right and wrong. the powers of the soul are enlarged and vivified with the bodily growth, but whether there is any necessary connection between the growth of the one and that of the other, we know not. this alone is sure--clearer vision, with ever-increasing distinctness, reveals the certainty that moral laws are universal and unchangeable. the process of adjustment to the moral order is partly voluntary and partly involuntary. it is hastened by the hidden forces of vitality, and it may be hindered by its own choices. as a human being who refuses to eat will starve, so a soul which turns away from truth will starve. the law in one case is as inexorable as in the other. this consciousness of the moral order is sometimes dim even in mature years because neglect always deadens appreciation. paul said that the law is a schoolmaster leading to christ. by that he intended to teach that we must realize that we are under moral law before we can know that its violation will result in a state of ruin needing salvation. first that which is natural, then that which is spiritual. the phrase "natural law in the spiritual world" means that the consequences following right and wrong are as inevitable and essential in the realm of spirit as in that of matter. the progress of the soul is dependent on the realization that there is a moral quality in thoughts, emotions, choices; that the consequences following them grow out of them as flowers from seed, and that they determine not only the character but the happiness and welfare of the one exercising them. the next step in the upward movement of the soul is the realization of its freedom. it is possible for one to know that he is under law, without at the same time appreciating that he is free to choose whether he will obey. i may see a storm sweeping toward me and know that behind it is resistless force, and know, also, that to step outside the track of that storm is impossible; and it is conceivable that a soul may know itself as able to think, feel, act, and, at the same time, be under the dominion of forces before which it is powerless. the practical question, therefore, for all in this human world is not, are there spiritual laws? but, may we choose for ourselves whether we will obey or disobey them? until the soul knows itself to be free to choose, there will be no deep feeling of obligation, without which there can be no motive impelling toward the heights. here also we walk in the dark. the genesis of the consciousness of freedom has never been observed. dubois-reymond has called it one of "the seven riddles of science." we are no nearer the solution of the problem than were our fathers a thousand years ago. but one thing at least we do know: he who believes himself to be a puppet in the hands of unseen forces will never fight them. if freedom is a fiction the universe is not only unmoral, but immoral. the final argument for freedom is consciousness. i know i could have chosen differently from what i did. but how do i know? the process cannot be pushed farther back. consciousness is ultimate and authoritative. but what then shall be said of heredity? a child when first born is little but a bundle of sensibilities. its growth seems to be but the unfolding of inherited tendencies. every man is what his ancestors have made him plus what he has absorbed from his environment. how can we say then that any are free? that man who is surly, uncomfortable, ugly, as hard to endure as a march wind, is but the extension of his father. when one knows the elder it is difficult to do otherwise than pity the younger. he is but living the tendencies which were born in him and which are an inseparable part of his nature. he cannot be genial and urbane. are not some born moral cripples as others are born with physical deformities? are not some spiritually deaf, dumb, and blind from birth? it cannot be doubted. we are all more or less what our fathers were, but our surroundings do much to modify us. many men seem to be driven on wings of passion, as leaves by tornadoes; and yet we know that we are free, and that all life and conduct, individual and social, must be ordered on that hypothesis. teach men that they are not free, and anarchy and chaos will quickly follow. no freedom? then there is no obligation. no one feels that he ought to do what he cannot do, and no one will try to do what he does not feel that he ought to do. if men are but machines, moving only as the power is turned on, there is no moral quality in any action. if we live in a moral world, whether we can understand it or not, we must be free to choose for ourselves. the possibility of the soul's expansion depends on its freedom. there is no right and no wrong, no truth and no error, if it is a slave to the inheritance with which it was born. what gives to the invitations of jesus a quality so serious and so solemn is the fact that they may be rejected. the power of choice is the most sublime endowment which man possesses. when we have learned to know ourselves as free a long step forward has been taken. the soul grows by a right use of the power of choice. how may it be adjusted to this knowledge? it will undoubtedly grow to it, but the process will be slow. it may, however, be hastened by a use of the experience of others. no man should be allowed to begin the battle of life as ignorant as his father was. each new soul should have the benefit of the experience of all who have lived before. children should be taught by example and conversation, in the home and the school, that the beginning of wisdom is a right use of the experience of others. however this lesson may be learned, and however swift may be the process of growth, the next step in the soul's progress, after its realization that it is in a moral order, must be its adjustment to the fact that it is a free agent and sovereign over its own choices. no man is ever forced into any course of conduct. character is the resultant of many choices rather than of necessity. the moral law may be obeyed or it may be violated. its seat is, indeed, in the bosom of god. it is the only guarantee of individual progress and social harmony. its sway is without bound and without end. to know how to live in a moral world, and how best to use the gifts of liberty, is a subject for an eternity of study. that this consciousness of freedom comes slowly is an immense blessing; otherwise the soul would be dazed as, for the first time, it looked around on the solemnities and splendors of the spiritual universe; and be overwhelmed as it realized, at the very beginning of its career, that it was endowed with a sovereignty as mysterious and potent as that of god. the next step in the upward movement of the soul is appreciation of a moral ideal. that is a solemn and sublime moment when the newly awakened soul realizes that it dwells in a moral order and is free to make its own choices. but another moment is equally thrilling--that in which, in faint and scarcely audible accents, it catches the far call of the goal toward which, henceforward and forever, it must move. it now knows not only that there is a difference between right and wrong, but that there are mysterious affinities between itself and truth and right. later the sound of that far-away voice will become more distinct. but in its infancy the soul is more or less confused. it hears many sounds and does not always know how to distinguish between siren voices and those which prophesy its destiny. it also has to learn to distinguish truth and right. the task of making moral discriminations is not easy at any time. amid a babel of noises to detect the one clear call which alone can satisfy is almost impossible. the mistakes, therefore, are many, but even by mistakes the soul learns to distinguish the true from the false. but how is it to be taught to appreciate that one voice only in all that confusion of strange sounds should be heeded, and all the rest disregarded? the same answer as before must be given. this knowledge, also, will come in large part with the years. it seems to be the cosmic purpose to provide fresh light with every new step of progress. no one is ever left in total darkness. as the soul advances it learns to distinguish between the voices which speak to it. the necessity of growth is the angel of the lord whose ministries and prophecies are the hope and glory of the race. growth may be hindered, but it can never be banished from the universe. it moved in chaos, and never faltered in its march, until under its beneficent leading all things were seen to be good. it led the cosmic movement until man appeared; and now it has taken man in hand, with all the vestiges of animalism clinging to him, and it will never leave him as he rises toward the perfection and glory of god. the law of growth answers most if not all of our questions. the soul of man must grow. with its growth will come vision, strength, and progress toward its goal. but growth is not all. the voices to which we choose to give heed will sound most distinctly in our ears. here we face a fact which is often in evidence. the earth and animalism will never cease to make appeal to our senses, while at the same time voices from above will call from their heights to our spirits. to distinguish between desire and duty, between truth and tradition, between the spiritual and the animal, is a step which has to be taken, and which is taken whether we appreciate how or not. by the pain which follows wrong choices, or by the intuitions of the spirit, the soul comes to realize that its obligation is always in one direction; that its choice ought to be in favor of the morally excellent. but how shall it discern the morally excellent? the process of learning will be a long one, and never fully completed on the earth. this is a realm that poets and dramatists, who are usually the profoundest and most accurate students of life, have not often tried to enter. such questions can be answered only after careful and long-continued inductive study. moralists are usually content to stop short of this inquiry. how the soul comes to learn that it is obligated to truth and right we may not fully know; but that it does learn, and that no step in all its development is more important, there is no doubt. in his dealing with this question jesus preserves the same attitude as toward all subjects of speculation. i came not to explain how life adjusts itself to its environment, he seems to say, but to give life a richness and a beauty which it never had before; i came not to answer questions, but to save to the best uses that which already exists. nevertheless, the question as to how the soul is taught to distinguish the morally excellent is of serious importance. if we do not recognize the sanctity of truth and right we may not give them hospitality; and we may not appreciate their sanctity if we are ignorant of what gives them their authority. how, then, does it learn what truth and right are? are there any clearly defined paths by which this knowledge may be reached? is not truth a matter of education? and is there any absolute right? a hindoo swami, of the school of the vedanta, lecturing in this country, solemnly assured an intelligent audience that there is no sin; that what is called sin is only the result of education; that what is vice in one place may be virtue in another; and that in the sphere of morals all is relative and nothing absolute. then there is no wrong, for wrong and sin are closely related; and no right because if right is not a dream it implies the possibility of an opposite. there is little permanent danger from such shallow theories. the peril from confusion is greater than from denial. but even confusion at this point is not long necessary because in every soul there is a voice which men call conscience, which never fails to impel toward the true and the good. conscience may be likened to a compass whose needle always points toward the north. when it is uninfluenced by distracting causes conscience always shows the way toward truth and right. the spartans believed that lying was a virtue if it was sufficiently obscure; and a hindoo woman who throws her child to the god of the ganges does so because she is deeply religious. are not such persons conscientious? yet they perform acts which are in themselves wrong? of what value, then, is conscience? that they are both conscientious and religious i have no doubt. it is their misfortune to be ignorant. the light appears to be colored by the medium through which it passes, and yet it is not colored; and conscience seems to approve what is wrong, and yet it never does. it always impels toward the right, but men often make serious mistakes because of their ignorance. the needle in the moral compass is deflected by selfishness or false teaching. the hindoo mother might hear and, if she dared to listen to it, would hear a deeper voice than the one calling her to sacrifice her child--even one telling her to spare her child. she has not yet learned that it is always safe to trust the moral sense. superstitions are not conscience; they are ignorance obscuring and deadening conscience. every man is born with a guide within to point him to paths of virtue and truth, and one of the most important lessons which the growing soul has to learn is that when it is true to itself it may always trust that guide. the call of his destiny finds every man, and, when he hears it, he asks: how may i reach that goal? it is far away and the path is confused. then a voice within makes answer, and, if he heeds that, he will make no mistake. that voice, i believe, is the result of no evolutionary process, but is the holy god immanent in every soul, making his will known. evolution gradually gives to conscience a larger place, but there is no evidence that it is produced by any physical process. it may be hindered by physical limitations, but it can be destroyed by none. why are we so slow in learning that conscience, being divine, is authoritative and may be trusted? i know no answer except this: we so often confuse ignorance with conscience that at last we conclude that the latter is not trustworthy. but there we mistake. it is trustworthy. it never fails those who heed its message. that realization may now and then come early, but it seldom comes all at once. nevertheless it is a step to be taken before the progress of the soul can be either swift or sure. the moment that the soul realizes that god is not far away, but within; that all the divine voices did not speak in the past, but that many are speaking now; that whosoever will listen may hear within his own being a message as clear and sacred as any that ever came to prophet or teacher in other times, it will begin to realize the luxury of its liberty, and something of the grandeur of its destiny. truth and right are not fictions of the imagination, they are realities opening before the growing soul like continents before explorers. they always invite entrance and possession. they have horizons full of splendor and beauty and music. they alone can satisfy. but the soul has not yet fully escaped from the mists and fogs and glooms of the earth. it is surrounded by those who still wallow in animalism, and the sounds of the lower world are yet echoing in its ears. but at last its face is toward the light; the far call of its destiny has been heard; it knows itself to be in a moral order; it is assured that, however closely the body may be imprisoned, no bolts and no bars can shut in a spirit; that before it is a fair and favored land, far off but ever open; and, best of all, that within its own being, impervious to all influences from without, is a guide which may be implicitly trusted and which will never betray. why not follow its suggestions at once and press on toward that fair land of truth and beauty which so earnestly invites? ah! why not? here we are face to face with other facts. there are hindrances, many and serious, in the pathway of the soul, and they must be met and forced before that land can be entered. this is the time for us to consider them. hindrances and many, many are the souls life's movement fascinates, controls; it draws them on, they cannot save their feet from its alluring wave; they cannot leave it, they must go with its unconquerable flow; * * * * * they faint, they stagger to and fro, and wandering from the stream they go; in pain, in terror, in distress, they see all round a wilderness. --_epilogue to lessing's "laocoon"._ matthew arnold iv _hindrances_ when the soul has heard the far call of its destiny and realizes that it may respond to that call, and that it has, in conscience, a guide which will not fail even in the deepest darkness, it turns in the direction from which the appeal comes and begins to move toward its goal. almost simultaneously it realizes that it has to meet and to overcome numerous and serious obstacles. to the hindrances in the way of the spirit our thought is to be turned in this chapter. the moral failure of many men and women of superb intellectual and physical equipment is one of the sad and serious marvels of human history. what a pathetic and significant roll might be made of those who have been great intellectually and pitiful failures morally! it has often been affirmed that hannibal might have conquered rome, and been the master of the world except for the fatal winter at capua. antony, possibly, would have been victor at actium if it had not been for something in himself that made him susceptible to the fascination of the fair but treacherous egyptian queen. achilles was a symbolical as well as an historical character. there was one place--with him in the heel--where he was vulnerable, and through that he fell. socrates was like a tornado when inflamed by anger. napoleon laid europe waste and desolated more distant lands, but he was an enormous egotist and morally a blot on civilization. the life-history of many of the poets is inexpressibly sad. chatterton, shelley, byron, poe--their very names call up facts which those who admire their genius would gladly conceal. many artists are in the same category. it explains nothing to ascribe their moral pollution to their finer sensibilities, for finer sensibilities ought to be attended by untarnished characters. it is, perhaps, best not even to mention their names lest, thereby, we dull the appreciation of noble masterpieces which represent the better moods of the men. one of imperial genius was a slave to wine, another to lust, another was too envious to detect any merit in the work of others of his craft. there are statesmen of whose achievements we speak, but never of the men themselves; and there have been ministers of the gospel, unhappily not a few, who have suddenly disappeared and been heard of no more. into a kindly oblivion they have gone, and that is all that any one needs to know. what do such facts signify? that many, or most, of these men have been essentially and totally bad? or that they are moral failures? they signify only that they have not yet risen above the hindrances which they have found in their pathways. the world knows of the temporary obscuration of a fair fame; it does not see the grief, the tears, the gradual gathering of the energies for a new assault upon the obstacles in the road; and it does not see how tenderly, but faithfully, providence, through nature, is dealing with them. some time they will be brought to themselves--the eternal goodness is the pledge of that. it is not with this unseen and beneficent ministry of restoration, however, that i am now dealing, but with the awful wrecks and failures which are so common in human history, and concerning which most men know something in their own experiences. how shall they be explained?--since to evade them is impossible. in other words when a man is awake, when he feels that he is in a moral order, is free, and hears the call of his destiny, why is his progress so slow and difficult? no one has ever delineated this period in the soul's growth with greater vividness than bunyan. the valley of humiliation, the slough of despond, giant despair, doubting castle are all pictures of human life taken with photographic accuracy. what are some of these hindrances? the soul is free, but its abode is in a limited body. the movement of the soul is swift and unconstrained as thought. it is not limited by time. it may project itself a thousand years into the future or travel a thousand years into the past; but it dwells in the body and is more or less restrained by it. bodily limitation narrows experience and compels ignorance. it makes large acquaintance impossible. the flowers beneath the ice on the alps are small; the flowers of the tropics have the proportions of trees. thus environment modifies growth. the body cannot put fetters on the will, but it may hold in captivity the powers which acquire knowledge, withhold from the emotions persons worthy of affection, and make the range of objects of choice poor and pitiful. the soul has often been compared to a bird in a cage,--fitted for broad horizons but confined within narrow spaces. this hindrance is a very real one. the man who grows swiftly must be in the open world with beings to love and to serve ever within his reach. hence the life beyond death is often called the unhindered life because of its freedom from the body. the old story of "rasselas" is symbolical. in the happy valley a man might be as good, but he could not be as great and wise, as in the larger world. the soul will meet fewer temptations there, but those it does encounter will be more insistent and harder to escape. he who would respond to a call to service must needs have about him those whom he may serve. large views are for those who are able to rise to the heights. he who lives in a cave may be true to his little light, and surely is responsible for no more, but he will see far less than the one whose home is on the mountaintop. thus even bodily limitations, to which are attached no moral qualities, are hindrances to the growth of the being, whose destiny is not only purification but expansion:--its movement is not only toward goodness but also toward greatness; not only toward virtue but also toward power. the animal entail is one of the greatest mysteries of our mortal life. the soul in its moments of illumination feels that it is related to some person like itself, but far higher, and aspires to it. sir joshua reynolds' figure of "faith" in the famous window in the chapel of new college, oxford, suggests the attitude of the newly awakened soul. in freshness and beauty it is turning toward the light. but in human experience something occurs which sir joshua has not tried to depict. a clammy hand reaches up from the deeps out of which rise suffocating clouds, and that pure spirit finds itself enveloped in darkness and fastened to the earth. the humiliation is complete. what has occurred? only what has happened again and again; and what will continue to happen for no one knows how long. the animal has gotten the better of the spirit. the soul has sinned--for sin is little, if anything, but a spirit allowing itself to return to the fascinations of the animal conditions out of which it has been evolved, and from which it ought to have escaped forever. the animal entail is the chief hindrance to the aspiring spirit. the animal lives by his senses. he is content when they are satisfied. it can hardly be said that animals are ever happy. happiness is a state higher than contentment. paul said he had learned in whatsoever state he was to be content, but even he never said that in all states he had learned to be happy. animals are contented when their senses are gratified and they are savage when their senses are clamorous. lions and bears are dangerous when they are hungry, and cruel when other desires are obstructed. whatever the theory of evolution, from the beginning of its upward movement, the nearest, most potent, and most dangerous hindrance to the soul is this entail of animalism, which it can never escape but which it must some time conquer. the spirit and the body seem to be in endless antagonism, and yet the body itself will become the fair servant of the soul when once the question of its supremacy has been determined. the tendency to revert to animalism has been vividly depicted by the poets, and the clamorous and insistent nature of the passions portrayed by the artists. the liquor in the enchanted cup of comus may be called "the wine of the senses." its effect is thus described by milton. comus offers ... "to every weary traveler his orient liquor in a crystal glass, to quench the drought of phoebus; which, as they taste (for most do taste through fond, intemperate thirst) soon as the potion works, their human countenance, the express resemblance of the gods, is changed into some brutish form of wolf or bear, or ounce or tiger, hog or bearded goat." a famous passage from ovid's "metamorphoses"[ ] represents actæon as changed into a stag; but, if i read the fable aright, the glimpse of diana in her bath, while not an intelligent choice, was more than a mere accident--it was the uprising of innate sensuality; for even the greek gods were supposed to have had senses. [footnote : addison's translation, book iii, pages - .] "actæon was the first of all his race, who grieved his grandsire in his borrowed face; condemned by stern diana to bemoan the branching horns and visage not his own; to shun his once-loved dogs, to bound away and from their huntsman to become their prey; and yet consider why the change was wrought; you'll find it his misfortune, not his fault; or, if a fault it was the fault of chance; for how can guilt proceed from ignorance?" the story of circe is the common story of those who have yielded to the flesh. the companions of ulysses visited the palace of circe, were allured by her charms, and the result is read in these words: "before the spacious front, a herd we find of beasts, the fiercest of the savage kind. our trembling steps with blandishments they meet and fawn, unlike their species, at our feet." the strong words of milton are none too strong: "their human countenance the express resemblance of the gods, is changed into some brutish form." a common subject with artists has been the temptations of the saints. they have fled from luxury, and what they supposed to be moral peril, but have found no solitude to which they could go and leave their bodies behind. in the silences faces have appeared to them full of alluring entreaty, and more than one anchorite has found to his sorrow that he carried within himself the cause of his danger. a singularly vivid painting represents one of the saints in the desert, and clinging to him, with their arms around his neck, are two figures of exquisite physical beauty. their charms are so near and perilous that the pale and haggard man in desperation has shut his eyes, and in this extremity, with his one free hand, is frantically clinging to a cross. the artist has accurately depicted the condition in which the soul finds itself as it begins its growth;--its chief enemies are those of its own household. happy indeed is it for all that none see at the first the obstacles in their way. faint and far shines the splendor of the goal; the hindrances are reached one by one, and each one, for the moment, seems to be the last. but close and persistent as is the animal entail, it is not unconquerable. many a sir galahad, and many a woman fair and holy as his pure sister, have lived on this earth of ours. they were not always so; and their beauty and holiness are but the outshining of spiritual victory. is this environment of evil necessary to the development of the soul? we may not know; but we do know that it can be conquered, and some time and somehow will be conquered; and that then men, like ourselves, grown from the same stock, evolved from the lower levels, will constitute "the crowning race." "no longer half akin to brute, for all we thought and loved and did, and hoped, and suffered, is but seed of what in them is flower and fruit." these are a few samples of the hindrances which the soul must face in its progress through "the thicket of this world." but these are not all. hardly less serious is the ignorance which clothes it like a garment. it comes it knows not whence; it journeys it knows not whither, and apparently is attended by no one wiser than itself. hugo's awful picture of a man in the ocean with the vast and silent heavens above, the desolate waves around, the birds like dwellers from another world circling in the evening light, and the poor fellow trying to swim, he knows not where, is not so wide of the mark as some thoughtless readers might suppose. the soul is ignorant and timid, in the vast and void night, with its environment of ignorance and of other souls also blindly struggling. at the same time there is the consciousness of a duty to do something, of a voice calling it somewhere which ought to be heeded, and of having bitterly failed. the solitariness of the soul is also one of the most mysterious and solemn of its characteristics. the prophecy which is applied to jesus might equally be applied to every human being: he trod the wine-press alone. in all its deepest experiences the soul is solitary. craving companionship, in the very times when it seeks it most it finds it denied. every crucial choice must at last be individual. when sorrows are multiplied there are in them deeps into which no friendly eye can look. when the hour of death comes, even though friends crowd the rooms, not one of them can accompany the soul on its journey. it seems as if this solitariness must hinder its growth. perhaps were our eyes clearer we should see that what seems to retard in reality hastens progress. but to our human sight it seems as if every soul needed companionship and coöperation in all its deep experiences; and that the ancients were not altogether wrong in their belief in the presence and protection of guardian angels. but something more vital and assuring than that faith is desired. it is rather the inseparable fellowship of those who are facing the same mysteries and fighting the same battles as ourselves; but even that not infrequently is denied. is this all? there is another possibility which observation has never detected and which science is powerless to disprove. can we be sure that no malign spiritual influences hinder and bewilder? we cannot be sure. the common belief of nearly all peoples ought not to be rudely brushed aside. no one willingly believes in lies nor clings to them when he knows that they are lies. superstitions always have some element of truth in them, and the truth, not the error, wins adherents. the most that we can say, at this point, is that we do not know. it is possible that the common beliefs of many widely separated people have no basis in fact, that they are born of dreams and delusions; and, on the other hand, it is equally possible that the spaces which we inhabit, but which we cannot fully explore, have other inhabitants than our vision discerns, and that those beings may help and may hinder us in our progress. it is not wise to dogmatize where we are ignorant. while the scales balance we must wait. are the hindrances in the path of the soul without any ministry? that cannot be; for then they are exceptions to the universal law, that nothing which exists is without a purpose of benefit. all the analogies of nature indicate that human limitations are intended to serve some good end, since, so far as observation has yet extended, it has found nothing which is caused by chance. emerson says, "as the sandwich islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptations we resist;"[ ] and st. bernard says, "nothing can work me damage except myself; the harm that i sustain i carry about with me, and never am a real sufferer but by my own fault."[ ] [footnote : essay on compensation.] [footnote : quoted by emerson in essay on compensation.] and st. john says, "to him that overcometh will i give to eat of the tree of life."[ ] [footnote : revelation : .] the mission of the austere is the development of strength. concerning this suggestion we shall inquire later. the souls which have reached the serene summits have ever been those which have most resolutely faced the obstacles in their pathways. even apparent hindrances always exercise a beneficent ministry. as jesus was made perfect by the things which he suffered, so, in the cosmic plan, all souls must come to strength and perfection by the difficulties which they overcome and the enemies which they subdue. what should be the attitude of the soul in view of the hindrances by which it is environed? it should be taught to fight them at every point. nowhere is the kindness of nature more evident than in the patience and persistence with which this instruction is conveyed. nature withholds her favors until they are earned. new light comes only to those who have used-the light they had. strength is developed by resistance. growth is for those who place themselves where growth is possible. nature gives the soul nothing, but she always waits to coöperate with it. this lesson was impressed long ago. it ought never to require new emphasis. let the younger study the experiences of their elders. they will be saved many failures and much pain. the soul can never be coerced, but it may be taught. milton has enforced this great lesson in comus: "against the threats of malice or of sorcery, of that power which erring men call chance, this i hold firm-- virtue may be assailed, but never hurt, surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled; yet, even that which mischief meant most harm, shall in the happy trial prove most glory; but evil on itself shall back recoil, and mix no more with goodness, when at last gathered like a scum, and settled to itself, it shall be in eternal restless change self-fed, and self-consumed; if this fail the pillar'd firmament is rottenness and earth's base built on stubble." no one should believe, after all the growth of the ages, that the soul was made to be imprisoned in a fleshly prison. it was intended that it should burst its barriers and press toward the light. there is an eternal enmity between the serpent and the soul, and the serpent's head must be bruised, but the soul resisting all the forces and fascinations of the flesh, rising on that which has been cast down to higher things, slowly but surely, painfully but with ever added strength moves toward the ideal humanity which has never been better defined than as "the fullness of christ." meanwhile it is well to reinforce our faith by remembering that it is written in the nature of things that truth and goodness must prevail. this is a moral universe. error never can be victorious. it may be exalted for a time, but that will be only in order that it may be sunk to deeper depths. evil and error are doomed and always have been. evil is moral disease, and disease always tends toward death, while life always and of necessity presses toward larger, more beautiful, and more beneficent being. here let us rest. many things are dark and impossible of explanation, but we have already been taught a few lessons of superlative importance. we have learned that the soul is made for the light; that it can be satisfied only with love and truth; that every hindrance may be overcome; that the animal was made to be the servant of the spirit; that the body makes a good servant but a poor master; that strength comes to those who refuse to submit to the clamors of appetite: thus we have been led to see something of the way along which the soul has moved from animalism toward freedom and victory. and we have learned one thing more, viz., that the over-soul is not a dream, but a reality; that the individual may be in correspondence with the over-soul and from it be continually reinforced. or, to put our faith in sweeter and simpler form, we have learned by experience which cannot be gainsaid that god is a personal spirit, interested in all that concerns his children, and anxious for their growth; and that he can no more allow his love for them to be defeated than he could allow the suns and planets to break from their orbits. how much more is a man than a sun! therefore, since god is in his heaven, all must be right with the world and with man, and some time all the hindrances will be changed into helps, all obstacles be converted into strength, and "all hells into benefit." the austere we cannot kindle when we will the fire which in the heart resides; the spirit bloweth and is still, in mystery our soul abides. but tasks in hours of insight will'd can be through hours of gloom fulfill'd. with aching hands and bleeding feet we dig and heap, lay stone on stone; we bear the burden and the heat of the long day, and wish 'twere done. not till the hours of light return, all we have built do we discern. --_morality._ matthew arnold. v _the austere_ the soul has discovered that it is in a moral order, that it is a free agent, and that it has mysterious affinities with truth and right. it has taken a few steps, and with them has learned that its upward movement will not be easy. it next discovers that it has no isolated existence, but that it is surrounded by countless other similar beings all indissolubly bound together and having mutual relations. with the dawn of intelligence comes the realization of relations. this realization is dim at the first, but it is very real. soon the soul learns that the relations between it and other souls are so intimate that the interest of one is the interest of all. appreciation of relations is a long advance in the movement upward, and it necessitates other knowledge. the realization of relations leads, necessarily and swiftly, to the consciousness of responsibility. the process of this growth cannot be described in detail, but the path is clearly marked and its milestones may be numbered. each soul is always in a society of souls. each one, therefore, affects others, and is affected by them. it is free and, therefore, responsible for the influence which it exerts. moreover, it is bound to other souls by love, and love always carries with it the possibility of sorrow; for sorrow is usually only love thwarted. it is not far from the truth to say that when there is no love there is no sorrow, and that the possibilities of sorrow are always increased in proportion to the perfection of being. in time the soul finds itself not only one among myriads of souls, but it realizes that its relations to some are more intimate than to others. it needs not to seek the causes of this fact, since it cannot escape from the reality. thus it finds itself in families, in tribes, in nations, in social groups where the bonds are strong and enduring. some souls, more capacious than others, have a richer and more varied experience, and thus inevitably become teachers. the process goes on, and, with both teachers and scholars, the horizon expands and the strength increases with each new day. the soul has found that it is not a solitary being dazed and saddened by the consciousness of its powers, but that it is in a society in which all are similarly endowed, and that all are pressing toward the same goal. it has discovered that its growth is hastened, or hindered, by its environment; and that the spiritual environment is ever the nearest and most potent. each new step in this pilgrim's progress reveals something more wonderful than the opening of a continent. it is an entrance into a larger and more complex world. a strange fact now emerges. every enlargement of being, either of faculty or capacity, is attended by pain either physical or mental. "whom the lord loveth he chasteneth," seems to be a universal law rather than an isolated text. all life is strenuous because it is always attended by growth. the soul moves not only onward but upward, and climbing is always a difficult process. before a second step is taken the soul begins to experience suffering and sorrow; and as its growth advances it never afterward, so far as human sight has penetrated, escapes from them. why are they allowed? and what purpose do they serve? the soul exists in a body, and the body is the seat of sensations. those sensations, whether pleasing or painful, belong to the physical organs, but they affect the spirit, and escape from them is impossible. pain has a perceptible effect on the soul, even though the latter has no other relation to the body than that of tenant to a house. it suffers because of the intimate relations which it sustains to the organs through which it works. the individual soul is related to other souls. therefore it has plans and purposes concerning them, and it has affinities which are inseparable from existence in society. those purposes and affinities may be gratified or thwarted. the soul sometimes finds a response from the one whom it seeks and sometimes it does not. pain belongs to the body, and sorrow is an experience of the soul. the body is in constant limitations, subject to diseases and accidents, and the soul is affected by all that the body feels. because of these intimate relationships the soul is limited by ignorance, and defeated in its purposes. it becomes attached to other souls, and those attachments are either rudely shattered or roughly repulsed, and, consequently, the life of the soul is as full of sorrow as is a summer day of clouds. it faces its hindrances and rises by overcoming them. it finds pain besetting nearly every step of its advance, and the constant shadow of its existence is sorrow. along such a pathway it moves in its ascent and, in spite of all opposition, it is never permanently hindered; while sorrow and suffering continually add to its strength. the austere experiences through which all pass hasten their spiritual growth. they are ever ministers of blessing; they pay no visits without leaving some fair gifts behind. questions arise here which it is difficult to answer. why are such ministries needed? why could not the ascent of the spirit be along an easier pathway? why should it be necessary to write its history in tears and blood? inquiries like these are insistent. optimism assumes that the end always justifies the means, even when we are in the dark as to why other means were not used; and that it is better to comfort ourselves with the beneficent fact than to refuse to be comforted because we may not penetrate the depths of the cosmic process. the emphasis of thought may well rest here. the austere is never merely the severe. what seems to human sight to be evil and only evil, always has a side of benefit. the soul is purified and strengthened as it rises above animalism; it is made courageous by bodily pain; tears clarify its vision. even jesus is said to have been made perfect by the things which he suffered. the universal characteristic of life is growth, and growth ever reaches out of old and narrow toward new, larger and better environment. the soul needs strength, vision, sympathy, faith. these qualities are the fruit of experience. muscle is converted into strength by use; and its use is possible only as it finds something to overcome. vision is largely the fruit of training. the man on the lookout discovers a ship ahead long before the passenger on the deck. that fine accuracy of sight has come to him as he has battled with the tempests, and learned to distinguish between the whiteness of flying foam and the sunlight on a sail. clearness of spiritual vision is acquired in the same way. he who can see even to "the far-off interest of tears" has been taught his discernment by reading the meaning of nearer events. sympathy is the art of suffering with another without the definite choice to do so. one soul spontaneously enters into the condition of another and bears his pains and griefs as though they were his own; that is sympathy. but who ever bore the griefs of another before he himself had felt sadness? sympathy is a fruit that grows on the tree of sorrow. so intensely is this felt that even kindly words in hours of deep trial are ungrateful if they come from one who had had no hard experience of his own. in proportion as one has borne his own griefs he is presumed to be able to bear the griefs of others. he who has passed through the valley of the shadow, and who knows the way, is the only one whose hand is sought by another approaching the same valley. no human characteristic is more beautiful, or more appreciated, than sympathy; but its genuineness is seldom trusted unless the one offering it is known to have suffered himself. jesus is said to have been a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and, therefore, has led the long procession of the broken-hearted toward hope and peace. there is no other place known among men for the cultivation of sympathy except the school of suffering. if possible, faith even more than sympathy is dependent on struggle. there is no other conceivable means by which it can be acquired. it cannot be imparted. no multiplying of words increases faith. if one has been in the blackest darkness and some way, he knows not how, has been led out into light, it will be easier for him to think that the same experience may be realized again. if every sorrow has had in it some hidden seed of blessing; if the overcoming of hindrances has ever increased strength; if at the very moment that calamity seemed ready to destroy the storm has blown around, and this has occurred again and again, it is impossible to refrain from expecting, or at least hoping, that behind the darkness an unseen hand is making things to work for good. faith is essential to courage. he never cares to struggle who knows that failure is just ahead. courage is required as the soul progresses, and becomes more deeply conscious of the mysteries and enemies by which it is surrounded. faith results from the experience of beneficent leading. if one has been guided by love through many periods, and if that love has always been found waiting for its object on every corner of life, it will, ere long, be expected, watched for, and trusted. strength, vision, sympathy, courage, the fair attributes of the soul, all appear as it overcomes difficulties, fights doubts, goes deep into sorrow, and thus learns to realize that it is being led. it is easy to see how sorrow, pain, and death in the older legends and poetry were so often spoken of as beneficent angels. they are like those sisters of charity who hide beneath their long black bonnets serene and angelic faces. the austere in human life has never yet been explained, but it has been justified millions of times, and will be justified every time a human soul rises toward the goal for which all were created and toward which all, slowly or swiftly, are moving. these conclusions have many confirmations, and with some of them it will be worth while to spend a little time. every thinking man's experience assures him that he grows by overcoming. emerson has finely said that we have occasion to thank our faults, by which he means limitations; and he has also reminded us that the oyster mends its broken shell with pearl. we do not like overmuch to read with care our own experiences; but, when we are honest, we see that every struggle has left a residuum of added strength, that every loss has been a gain, that every calamity has opened doors into a larger world, and that what has been dreaded most has really most enriched us. experience is a wise teacher. history confirms the witness of experience. the strong man has always gained strength by struggle. the story of a few of the preëminent teachers is impressive reading. mahomet knew the bitter pangs of poverty; epictetus was a slave; socrates was regarded as a fanatic, if not a lunatic, by most of the people of athens; siddhartha is said to have been a useless and luxurious young man until, wearied with the monotony of his father's palace, he ventured into the larger world and saw wherever he went poverty, sickness, death. he was startled into activity by the want, woe, and misery through which his pathway led. nearly all moral and spiritual leaders have had to suffer and thus grow strong. mere genius has done little for human progress. it has made physical discoveries, but seldom touched the sphere of the soul. elijah heard the voice of god in the midst of the terrors of the wilderness in which he was ready to die; isaiah shared the usual fate of reformers and spoke his message into the ears of those who returned insult for warning. the story of job is a long tragedy,--the world's tragedy, the tragedy of the soul in all ages. what deeps of anguish dante fathomed before he could begin to write! who can read the story of "faust," as goethe has interpreted it, without feeling that in it he has given the world in thin disguise much of his own life-story? shakespeare alone, of men of genius of the first rank, seems to have learned comparatively few of his lessons in the school of suffering. but, possibly, if more were known of shakespeare, it would be found that lear, macbeth, and hamlet are but the expressions of lessons learned as he fought life's battle. the "in memoriam" of tennyson, the "de profundis" of mrs. browning, and the rich and glorious music of robert browning could have come only from souls which had been profoundly moved by grief and pain. all men listen most attentively to those who have gone farthest into the dark shadows. the austere in human experience always accomplishes a purpose of blessing; and the soul comes into such an environment, not for the purpose of being humiliated, but in order that its strength may be developed, its sight clarified, and its powers perfected. thus we reach a rational basis for optimism. it has been said that optimism must not only show that beneficent results are being accomplished in human life, but it must also justify the means by which such results are achieved. it is not enough to show that all will be well in the end; it must be shown that even grief, pain, loss, and death are ordained to be the servants of man. this is evident to all who allow themselves to reach to the deeper meanings of their limitations and sufferings. opposite conclusions have been reached by some of those who have studied the hard and harsh phenomena of human life. the dreamy hindu mind at first seemed to discern the truth that suffering is but the under side of blessing, and the hymns of the vedas are full of hope and anticipation of better times; but, under the stress of prolonged disappointment and measureless calamities, bewildered in his attempt to explain the mystery of suffering, the hindu at last came to deny its reality. but no bitter trials can be escaped by denial, and in india, to-day, disappointment and calamity are no less frequent than in elder ages. refusal to believe in darkness effects no change in a midnight. the negation of precipices makes the ascent of a mountain no easier, and the denial of sickness, sorrow, and death deliver none from their presence. on the other hand, the very rocks that are the most difficult to scale will lift the climber toward an ampler horizon; and he who places his feet upon his temptations and sorrows will see in his own life the increasing purpose that widens with the suns. slowly, and over many obstacles, the soul rises from its humiliation and presses toward the heights, and every forest passed and every mountain scaled adds to its stature, to the swiftness of its advance, and to the glory of its vision. the teaching of jesus concerning the ministry of the austere has greatly changed the popular estimate of the value of many of the experiences through which men pass. sorrow, pain, and death were formerly regarded as enemies, and only enemies, and they are still so regarded where the full force of his message is either not welcomed or not understood. the common opinion in many quarters, even to this day, is that suffering is either a hideous mistake in the universe, an awful nightmare, or a cruel mockery. paul, using language as men used it in his time, spoke of death as an enemy. that he was speaking popularly, rather than technically, is evident because he also said that the sting of death--that which made it dreaded--is sin. jesus, however, justified the method by which men are perfected; and his teaching harmonizes with what may be learned by a reverent scrutiny of the nature of things. the more carefully "the cosmic process" is studied, the clearer it becomes that events are so ordered that, sooner or later, everything helps toward richer and better conditions. a tidal wave or a pestilence may seem to be inexplicable, but even pestilence teaches men habits of thrift and cleanliness, and tidal waves warn them of their points of danger. what has made the average of human life so much longer than it was formerly? that very mysterious pestilence has turned attention toward its causes, and thus the race has been made cleaner, purer, more fit to endure. why do men live in houses with scientific plumbing, fresh air, and have well-cooked food? because that fierce teacher, pestilence, has taught them that any other course means weakness and death. whom nature loveth she chasteneth is a truth as clearly written in human history as "whom the lord loveth he chasteneth" is written in the bible. the true attitude toward the austere, for a philosophic as for a christian mind, is one of complacency. every severity is intended for benefit. by wars the enormity of war is made evident. by disease the necessity for observation of the laws of health is emphasized. even death, in the order of things, at last is a blessing, for one generation must give place to another, or the evils that malthus feared would be quickly reached. moreover death, in its proper time, is only nature's way of giving the soul its freedom. hindrances in its path do not indicate the presence of an enemy but of a friend who discovers the only sure way of securing its finest development. the cultivation of the philosophic and christian temper, which are practically the same, would make this a happier world. we could endure trials with more courage if we would but remember that they are as necessary to our growth as the cutting of a diamond is necessary to the revelation of the treasury of light which it holds. the heights of character are slowly reached, and, usually, only by the ministry of the austere; but once they are reached the horizon expands, and the soul finds in the clearer light peace if not joy. this course of reasoning does not make the mistake of regarding sin as less than dreadful. every sin has hidden in its heart a blessing; but sin as such is never a blessing. it may be necessary for providence to allow a spirit to sink again into animalism in order that it may be taught its danger, and made to realize that only through struggle can its goal be reached--but the animalism in itself is never beneficent. when we say that the process by which a man rises may be justified, we do not mean that all his choices are justifiable. the process of his growth provides for his fall, if he will learn in no other way, but it does not necessitate his fall; that is ever because of his own choice. a spirit may choose to return to the slime from which it has emerged. that choice is sin, but it can never be made without the protests of conscience which will not be silenced, and it is by those protests that a man is impelled upward again, and never by the sin in itself. no one was ever helped by his sin, but millions, when they have sinned, have found that the misery was greater than the joy, and this perpetual connection of sin and suffering is the blessed fact. sin is never anything but hideous. the more unique the genius the more awful and inexcusable his fall. even out of their sins men do rise, but that is because there sounds in the deeps of the soul a voice which becomes more pathetic in its warning and entreaty, the more it is disregarded. those who desire to justify sin say that it is the cause of the rising. it may be the occasion, but it is never the cause. the occasion includes the time, place, environment,--but the cause is the impelling force; and sin never impels toward virtue. satan has not yet turned evangelist. because in the past the soul has risen, one need not be unduly optimistic to presume that, in spite of opposition, it will meet no enemies which it will not conquer, and find no heights which it will not be able to scale. prophecy is the art of reading history forward. the spirit having come thus far, it is not possible to believe that it can ever permanently revert to the conditions from which it has emerged; neither can we believe that it will fail of reaching that development of which its every power and faculty is so distinct a prophecy. no light has ever yet penetrated far into the mystery of human suffering, sorrow, and sin. why they need to be at all, has been often asked, but no one has furnished a reply which satisfies many people. with the old insistent and pathetic earnestness millions are still "knocking at nature's door" and asking wherefore they were born. hosts of others are looking out on desolation and grief, thinking of the tears which have fallen and the sobs which are sure to sound in the future, and asking with eager and pleading intensity, why such things need be. out of the heavens above, or out of the earth beneath, no clear answer has come. as we wonder and study, still deeper grows the mystery. three courses are open to those who are sensitive to the hard, sad facts of the human condition. one is to say that all things in their essence are just as they seem; that sorrow, sin, death none can escape, that they are evils, and that a world in which they exist is the worst of possible worlds, and that there is neither god nor good anywhere. then let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die, and the quicker the end the sweeter the doom. another way is simply to confess ignorance. out of the darkness no voice has come. the veil over the statue of the god of the future has never been lifted, and inquiry concerning such subjects is folly. to this i reply agnosticism is consistent, but it is not wise. because it cannot explain all things it turns from the clues which may yet lead out of the labyrinth. the other course, and the wiser, is to use all the light that has yet been given and from what is known to draw rational conclusions concerning what has not yet been fully revealed. deep in the heart of things is a beneficent and universal law. in accordance with that law hindrances are made to minister to the soul's growth, the opposition of enemies is transmuted into strength, and moral evil resisted becomes a means of spiritual expansion and enlightenment. the re-awakening i, galahad, saw the grail, the holy grail, descend upon the shrine: i saw the fiery face as of a child that smote itself into the bread, and went; and hither am i come; and never yet hath what my sister taught me first to see, this holy thing, fail'd from my side, nor come cover'd, but moving with me night and day, fainter by day, but always in the night.... * * * * * and in the strength of this i rode, shattering all evil customs everywhere, and past thro' pagan realms, and made them mine, and clash'd with pagan hordes, and bore them down, and broke thro' all, and in the strength of this come victor. --_the holy grail._ tennyson. vi _the re-awakening_ as despondency and a feeling of failure comes to every soul with the realization of its mistakes and sins, so there will some time come to all a period of re-awakening. this statement is the expression of a hope which is cherished in the face of much opposing evidence. nevertheless, that this hope is cherished by so many persons of all classes is a credit to humanity. it is difficult to believe that in the end an infinitely wise and good god will fail of the achievement of his purpose in regard to a single one of his creatures. the saddest fact in the ascent of the soul is sin. however it may be accounted for, it cannot be evaded, but must be honestly and resolutely faced. sin is the deliberate choice to return to animalism, for a longer or shorter time, by a being who realizes that he is in a moral order, that he is free, and who has heard the far-off call of a spiritual destiny. it is the choice, by a spirit, of the condition from which it ought to have forever escaped. imperfection and ignorance are not, in themselves, blameworthy and should never be classified as sins. weakness always palliates a wrong choice. an evil condition is a misfortune; it does not justify condemnation. sin always implies a voluntary act. that all men have sinned is a contention not without abundant justification. the better the man the more intensely he is humiliated by the consciousness of moral failure. after long-continued discipline, after much progress has been made, the soul again and again chooses evil; and, after it ought to have moved far on its upward career, it is found to be a bond-slave of tendencies which should have been forever left behind. this is the solemn fact which faces every student of human life. it is not a doctrine of an effete theology but a continuous human experience. the consciousness of moral failure is terrible and universal. this consciousness requires neither definition nor illustration. experience is a sufficient witness. who has been able exhaustively to delineate the soul's humiliation? Æschylus and sophocles, shakespeare and goethe, shelley, tennyson, and browning have but skimmed the surface of the great tragedy of human life. hamlet, lear, macbeth, faust, and wilhelm meister, beatrice cenci, the sad, sad story of guinevere, and the awful shadows of the ring and the book--how luridly realistic are all these studies of the downfall of souls and the desolation of character! if they had expressed all there is of life it would be only a long, repulsive tragedy; but happily there is another side. to that brighter phase of the growth of the soul we turn in this chapter. what is the difference between the awakening of the soul and its re-awakening? are they two experiences? or different phases of the same experience? the awakening is nearly simultaneous with the dawn of consciousness. it is the adjustment of the soul to its environment--the realization of its self-consciousness as free, as in a moral order, and as possessing mysterious affinities with truth and right. this realization is followed by a period of growth, during which many hindrances are overcome, and in which the ministries of environment, both kindly and austere, help to free it from its limitations and to promote its advance along the spiritual pathway. but while the soul dimly hears voices from above it has not yet, altogether, escaped from the influence of animalism. it dwells in a body whose desires clamor to be gratified. it is like a bird trying to rise into the air when it has not yet acquired the use of its wings. malign influences are still about it, and earthly attractions are ever drawing it downward. it falls many times. i do not mean that it is compelled to fall, but that, as a matter of fact, its lapses are frequent and discouraging. in the midst of this painful movement upward, there sometime comes to the soul a realization of a presence of which it has scarcely dreamed before. it begins to understand that it is never alone, that its struggle is never hopeless because god and the universe, equally with itself, are concerned for its progress. it is humiliated by its failures, but it has learned that, however many times it may fail and however bitter its disappointment, in the end it must be victorious because neither principalities nor powers, neither things on the earth nor beyond the earth, can forever resist god. thus hope is born, and he who one moment cries, who shall deliver from this body of death? the next moment with exultation exclaims, i thank god through jesus christ, our lord. the light which shines into the soul from jesus christ is the revelation of the coöperation of the deity, and of the forces of the universe, with every man who is moving upward. the realization that, however deep the darkness, humiliating the moral failure, constant and imperious the solicitations of animalism, "the nature of things" and the everlasting love are on the side of the soul is its re-awakening. it now not only knows that it is free, in a moral order, and that voices from a far-off goal are calling it, but also that those who are with it are more than those who can be against it. thus hope, confidence, power to resist, and faith even in the midst of failure dawn, and will never be permanently eclipsed. the re-awakening of the soul is now complete. this experience is traditionally called conversion. it is usually associated with an appropriation of the teaching of jesus christ, and inevitably follows an appreciation of his words and his work. but all the revelations of the christ have not been through the historic jesus. in every land, and in every age, souls have come to this new consciousness. it was said of isaiah that he saw the lord; and of melchizedek that he was the priest of the most high god. the former was a hebrew, but the latter was not in what was to be the chosen line of succession. the assurance that they are never alone has found many in what has seemed impenetrable darkness, and they have risen and moved upward. instances of this kind are not limited to christian lands, although they are most common where the christian revelation is known. i cannot doubt that those who have not had this vision on the earth will have it some time and somewhere. the divine power and purpose to save, and to save to the utter-most, are revealed with perfect clearness in the teachings of jesus christ. nothing could be more explicit than his message that god loves all men, and that it is his will that all should repent and come to the knowledge of the truth. this stage of advance may be called the crisis in the ascent of the soul. before this it has moved slowly and with faltering steps. henceforth it will move more confidently and swiftly. but that does not mean that it will find that hindrances are all removed, or that no unseen hand will draw it downward. some of the bitterest hours are to follow--days and, possibly, longer periods of spiritual obscuration; darkness like that of jesus in which he cried, "my god, my god, why hast thou forsaken me." who can explain the appalling humiliation of a man when, as if a star had fallen from heaven, he sinks into awful and inexplicable selfishness or sensuality? it is not necessary that we explain, but we should remember that the goodness of god has so ordered things that even disgrace may lead to stronger faith, clearer vision, and tenderer sympathy. austere ministries are still needed; only fire will consume the dross. the re-awakening of a soul is not its perfecting; but it is its realization that the process of perfecting must go on, and will go on, if need be along a pathway of shame and agony, until all that attracts to the earth and sensuality has disappeared, and the spirit, like a bird released, rises toward the heavens. the law that whatsoever a man soweth that shall he reap will never be transcended, and if an enlightened spirit ever chooses to sink once more into the slime it may do so; but it will at the same time be taught with terrible intensity the moral bearing of the physical law that what falls from the loftiest height will sink to the deepest depth. at last the soul realizes that it is in the hands of a sympathetic, holy, and loving person, a being who cannot be defeated, and who, in his own time and way, will accomplish his own purposes. that vision of god is the re-awakening, an inevitable and glorious reality in spiritual progress. what are the causes of this re-awakening? the causes are many and can be stated only in a general way. moreover, spiritual experiences are individual, and the answer which would apply to one might not to another. the shock which attends some terrible moral failure, not infrequently, is the proximate cause of the re-awakening of the soul. there is a deep psychological truth in the old phrase, "conviction of sin." men are thus convicted. some act of appalling wrong-doing reveals to them the depths of their hearts and forces them in their extremity to look upward. hawthorne, in his story, "the scarlet letter," has depicted the agony of a soul, in the consciousness of its guilt, finding no peace until it dared to do right and to trust god. in the "marble faun," in the character of donatello, the same author has furnished an illustration of one who was startled into a consciousness of manhood and responsibility by his crime. it is the revelation of a soul to itself, not of god to the soul. in donatello we see a soul awakened to self-consciousness and responsibility, but in "the scarlet letter" we have the example of a man inspired to do his duty by the revelation of god. adoniram judson was brought to himself by hearing the groans of a dying man in a room adjoining his own in a new england hotel. luther was forced to serious thought by a flash of lightning which blinded and came near killing him. pascal was returning to his home at midnight when his carriage halted on the brink of a precipice, and the narrowness of his escape aroused him to a realization of his dependence upon god. the sense of mortality, and the wonder as to what the consequences of wrong-doing in "the dim unknown" may be, have been potent forces in the re-awakening of souls. still others have been given new and gracious visions of "the beauty of holiness." they have seen the excellence of virtue, and in its light have learned to hate the causes of their humiliation, and to press forward with courage and hope. speculations concerning the causes of this spiritual change are easy, but they are of little value. observation has never yet collected facts enough to adequately account for the phenomena. probably the most complete and satisfactory answer that was ever given to such questions was that of jesus when he was treating of this very subject: "the wind bloweth where it listeth, thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth." the mystery of the soul's re-awakening has never been fathomed. sometimes there has been flashed upon conscience, apparently without a cause, a deep and awful sense of guilt. whence did it come? what caused it? calamities many times sweep through a life as a tornado sweeps over a field of wheat, and when they have passed there is more than an appreciation of loss; there is a vision of the soul's unworthiness and humiliation. again death comes exceedingly near, and, in a single hour, the solemnities of eternity become vivid, and the soul sees itself in the light of god. and again, the essential glory of goodness is so vividly manifest that the soul instinctively rises out of its sin, and presses upward, as a man wakens from a hideous nightmare. the more such phenomena are studied, the more distinct and significant do they appear and the more impossible becomes the effort to explain them. they may be verified, but they can never be explained. they are the results of the action of the spirit of god on the spirit of man. is this answer rejected as fanciful or superstitious? then some of the most brilliant and significant events in the history of humanity are inexplicable. what caused the revolution in the character of augustine by which the sensualist became a saint? was it the study of plato? or the prayers of monica? or the preaching of ambrose? we know not; rather let us say it was the spirit of god. who can define the process by which wilberforce was changed from the pet of fashionable society to one of the heroes in the world's great crusade against injustice and oppression? such inquiries are more easily started than settled. i repeat, the only rational and convincing word that was ever spoken on this subject is that of jesus. the spirit of god, whose ministry is as still as the sunlight, as mysterious as the wind, and as potent as gravitation, was the one to whom he pointed. how has this epoch in the ascent of the soul been treated in literature? i refer with frequency to the literary treatment of spiritual subjects because poets, dramatists, and writers of fiction, more than any other class of authors, have studied the soul in its depths, in its inspirations, and in the process by which it rises and presses toward its goal. the illustrations of this subject in the scriptures are almost idyllic in their simplicity and beauty. there is more than flippancy in the remark that adam's fall was a fall upward. the statement is literally true. the fall was no fiction, but a condition of enlightenment and growth. the exit from eden was the beginning of the long, hard climb toward the city of god. the very moment when isaiah saw uzziah, the king, stricken with leprosy, he saw the lord. the classical delineation of a soul attaining the higher knowledge is that of the prodigal son, who, when he came to himself, saw clearly that his father was waiting to welcome him. the "idylls of the king" are a kind of "pilgrim's progress." in various ways they trace, and with matchless music rehearse, the growth of souls and their victories over spiritual enemies. one of the most pathetic stories ever told is that of the beautiful queen guinevere, who by shame and agony learned that "we needs must love the highest when we see it;" and who never appreciated the great love in which she was enfolded until arthur, "moving ghost-like to his doom," had gone to fight his last great battle in the west. the world owes george macdonald gratitude it will never repay;--such spiritual souls are never paid in the coin of this world. in "robert falconer," he taught his time with a lucidity and sweetness that none but tennyson and browning have equaled, and that not even they have surpassed, that a "loving worm within its clod were lovelier than a loveless god upon his throne," and in "thomas wingfold" he has traced with epic fidelity the growth of a soul from moral insensibility to manly strength and vision. the description of the process by which wingfold is brought to see that he, a teacher in the church, is a fraud and a hypocrite, and by which he is then lifted up and made worthy of his vocation as a minister of the glorious gospel of the blessed god is a wonderful piece of spiritual delineation. with guinevere the external humiliation was an essential stage in her soul's development; but with wingfold there was no public disgrace,--only the not less poignant shame of a man who, looking into his own heart, finds nothing but selfishness and duplicity. his condition was a matter between himself, his friend, and his god; but none the less the humiliation was the means by which his soul's eyes were opened and his heart fired with a passion for reality. one result of the soul's re-awakening is the realization that it has relations to god and that they are at once the nearest, the most vital, and the most enduring of all its relations. before, it had felt the call of duty and had recognized that it had affinities with truth and right; but now it has come into the consciousness of sonship. god is not distant and unrelated, but near and personally helpful. in a very real sense he is father. he is interested in the welfare of his children; and his will has now become the law of their lives. the first awakening is to the consciousness of a moral order and of freedom; the second awakening is to the consciousness of god and of a near and vital relation with him. the path of progress is still full of obstacles; there are still attractions for the senses in animalism and solicitations from something malign outside; but never again will the soul be without the realization that it is in the hands of a compassionate, as well as a just, god. i am inclined to think that the elder calvinists were right in their contention that when the soul has once come to this saving knowledge of god it can never again "fall from grace," or from the consciousness of its relation to the one mighty to save. this does not mean that there may not be repeated and awful moral lapses. the soul's realization of god does not imply that it has become perfected. it has taken a long step in its ascent; it is now conscious of its destiny, and of the power which is working in its behalf; but far away stretch the spiritual heights and, before they can be reached, many a cliff must be scaled and many a glacier passed; and few reach those altitudes without many a savage fall, and without frequent hours of weariness, doubt, and despair. the sufferings and the chastisements of those who have come to this altitude often increase as the vision becomes clearer. the difference between the former condition and the present is this: in the former there was growth toward god without the conscious choice of god; but in the latter the soul sees and chooses for itself that toward which it has, heretofore, been impelled by the "cosmic process." that is a solemn and glad moment when, in the midst of the confusion, the soul hears faint and far the call of its destiny; but the one in which it realizes that it is related to god, and chooses his will for its law, is far more glad and solemn. that consciousness may be obscured, but never again will it utterly fail. the soul that knows that it came from god, and is moving toward god, never can lose that knowledge, nor long cease to feel the power of that divine attraction. a practical question at this stage of our inquiry concerns the relation of one soul to another. may those who have realized this experience help others to attain to it so that the process may be hastened and made easier? must those who have been enlightened wait for those who are dear to them to be awfully humiliated by sin, or terribly crushed by sorrow, before the light can fall upon their pathway? is there no way by which a soul may be brought to the knowledge of god except by bitter trials? one individual may help another to acquire other knowledge,--must it make an exception of things spiritual? that cannot be. what one has learned, in part at least, it may communicate to another, and the constant and growing passion with those who know god is to tell others of him. all plans of education should include the communication of the highest knowledge. he who seeks the physical or mental development of his boy and cares not to crown his work by helping him to a realization that he is a child of god, and a subject of his love, has sadly misconceived the privilege of education. all curricula should move toward this consciousness as their consummation and culmination. geology, biology, physiology, the languages, philosophy, the science of society should be so studied as to lead directly to him in whom all live and move and have their being. the home, the school, the church should be organized so as to obviate, in great measure, the necessity of learning the deepest truths in the school of suffering. no holier privilege is given to one human soul than that of whispering its secret into the ears of another who has not yet attained the wisdom which comes only by living. god be merciful to the parent who is anxious about the mental culture of his child and never tells him of the deeper possibilities of his life, or never repeats to him the messages which he has heard in silent and lonely hours. the growth of a soul in the knowledge of god may be measured by the intensity of its desire to help other souls to the same knowledge. what will the re-awakened soul do? it will be as individual and distinctive in its action as before. the divine life in the souls of men manifests itself in ways as various and numerous as solar energy is manifested in nature. variety in unity is the law of the spirit. every person will be led to do those things, to hold those beliefs, and to minister in the ways for which he has been prepared. the experience of one can never be made the model for another, and the message which the spirit speaks in the ears of one may never be spoken in the ears of another. uniformity is neither to be expected nor to be desired. the soul which realizes that it belongs to god will choose to live for him, and in its own way will forever move toward him. henceforward his will will be its law. this is all we know and all we need to know. the place of jesus christ i say, the acknowledgment of god in christ accepted by thy reason, solves for thee all questions in the earth and out of it, and has so far advanced thee to be wise. --_a death in the desert._ browning. 'tis the weakness in strength that i cry for! my flesh that i seek in the god-head! i seek and i find it. o saul, it shall be a face like my face that receives thee; a man like to me, thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever: a hand like this hand shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! see the christ stand! --_saul._ browning. vii _the place of jesus christ_ in the ascent of the soul do light and power come to its assistance from outside and from above? is evolution alone a sufficient guarantee that it will some time reach its goal? these are not so much questions of theory as of fact, and as such will be treated in this chapter. light and power have come to the race in its struggles upward from one source as from no other. in history one figure appears colossal and unique. whether we classify jesus christ with men, or regard him as a special divine manifestation is of little consequence in our inquiry. if he is the consummate flower of the evolutionary process, then, because of some unexplained influence, that process reached a degree of perfection in him that it has reached in no other. if it pleased god in a single instance to hasten the process, the result is not less inspiring and illuminating than it would have been if the divine purpose had been directly and instantly accomplished. the teachers and leaders have ever been helpers of their fellow-men. in evolution, as in the race of life, some always move more swiftly than others; and those who are far in advance may, if they choose, become the servants of those who move more slowly. one being has appeared in the midst of the ages who is so far superior to all others that he may be regarded as the revelation of the soul's true goal, but who is, at the same time, so unlike others as to convince many, at least, that he is also the revelation in humanity of a higher power which is cooperating with the soul in its ascent. in this chapter no attempt will be made to meet the various questions that the formal theologians have raised. i cannot feel that such subjects as "satisfaction," "expiation," "plan of salvation" are of any practical importance, and i leave them to those who care for them. in the meantime let us ask, what aid does the soul need in its passage through its life on the earth? it needs light and power. we do not meditate long on the soul's advance without realizing that it has been constantly reinforced from outside itself. this phase of our subject will be considered in the chapter on "the inseparable companion." it may, i think, be said that what the soul needs more than anything else is light, and that all necessary light has been furnished. jesus said, "i am the light of the world." that statement is literally true. there may be room for perplexity as to the credibility of parts of the new testament, and as to what is called the miraculous element in history. there is also room for difference of opinion as to the nature of the person of jesus, and as to his supernatural mission; but few would deny that, if they could feel sure that he was actually from above, they would accept his message because it contains all the ethical and spiritual knowledge that men need in their earthly lives. a single assumption is made at the beginning of our study. it is as follows: what satisfies our minds and hearts, in their hours of deepest need and brightest illumination, should always be accepted as true until it is proven to be false. the profoundest subjects of thought and life are illuminated by the ministry and the teaching of jesus christ. the last word concerning these subjects has not yet been spoken. even our bible is but a collection of scattered rays of the true light. what vaster revelations may come to men in future ages no one can predict. as growth goes on, the soul will be fitted to receive messages which it could not now understand; but all that men need to know in their present stage of development is clearly revealed in the teaching, and the example, of the man of nazareth and calvary. he is the brightest light on the deepest and darkest problems. let us try to understand and define the place of jesus christ in the ascent of the soul. jesus christ has given the world a rational and satisfying doctrine of god. other teachers have tried to answer the inquiry, does god exist? jesus treated that question as an astronomer treats the sun. no sane scientist would fill his pages with speculations as to the reality of the sun. it moves and shines in the heavens; beginning with that fact, the astronomer asks concerning the function which the sun performs in the solar system and in the universe. jesus discarded speculation and found the key to the doctrine of god in the family, the simplest and most elemental of human institutions. there may be wide differences concerning the nature of government, the sanctions of law, etc., but there is no room for debate concerning the meaning of the parental relation. it interprets itself. tell a child that a man is his father, and he can be told no more. the name interprets the relation. in earlier times the vastness of the creation was but dimly appreciated, and then the idea of god was equally contracted. jesus taught that the deity, whether the conception of him was small or large, was to be interpreted in terms of fatherhood. what an ideal father is to his family god is to the race and to the universe. that meant one thing when the father was little more than the protector of a tribe; it means something greater, but not essentially different now. the conception of the universe is one of the most revolutionary that ever entered the human mind. the conception of a tribe is larger than that of a family; of a nation larger than that of a tribe; of the race larger than that of the nation; but the conception of the universe, with its myriads of worlds and possible multiplicity of races, is the amazing contribution which science has made to the thought of to-day. while the conception of the deity has been enlarged the principle of interpretation remains unchanged. are we thinking of jehovah the god of israel? he is the father of the tribe. has our idea expanded so as to include all the nations? god is the father not of a limited number but of all that dwell upon the earth. has the horizon been lifted to take in heavenly heights? are we now thinking of immensities, eternities, and the cosmic process? the teaching of jesus is not transcended; we still continue to interpret in terms of fatherhood, and say all time, all space, all men, all purposes and processes in the infinities and eternities are in the hands of the father. but when we have ascended to such a height what does the word father mean? exactly the same in essence that it meant in the humblest of judean households among which jesus moved. the father there was the one who made the home, sustained it, defended it, watched over it by day and by night; in exactly the same way the followers of jesus think of the spirit who pervades all things. he creates, he cares for, he defends, he provides, he loves, he causes all processes to work for blessing to the intelligent beings who are his children. jesus in a peculiar way identified himself with the deity. that does not mean that all the divine omnipotence and glory were in that man of nazareth, but it does mean that all of the deity that could be expressed in terms of humanity were visible in him, so that those who saw jesus saw god as far as he could be manifested in the flesh. beyond that veil were abysses and heights of being which could not be expressed in human terms; but in all the spaces we may dare to believe that there is nothing essentially different from what was revealed in that unique man. a bay makes a curve in the atlantic seaboard; its shallow waters are all from the deeps of the sea. tides that move along all the seas, and forces which reach to the stars, fill that basin among the hills. the bay is the ocean, but not all of it; for if we were to sail around the earth we should find the same body of water reaching out to vaster spaces. even so the person of jesus included all of god that humanity can contain, but bethlehem and jerusalem, gethsemane and calvary were to the deity as some land-locked harbor to the immensities of the universe. in him love reached to enemies, to the outcast, to those who had been called refuse and rubbish, to men of all classes in all the ages, to lepers, beggars, criminals, lunatics, harlots, thieves, little children; those who appreciated and those who hated alike were all included in the infinite purpose of blessing. those who have seen the love of jesus, and its ministries, have seen the father; but beyond the love of galilee and calvary reach depths of love which even the cross is powerless to express. divine sympathy and divine affection bind all men in a universal family; this we know, and this is all we know. that teaching is so simple that a child can understand it; so profound that no philosopher has ever transcended it; and so satisfying that neither child nor philosopher would have it changed either as to its simplicity or its fullness. jesus furnishes the light which the soul needs on the nature of man. wonderfully has holman hunt elaborated this truth in his picture "the light of the world." the ideal humanity never had more beautiful expression than in that great sermon in color. the poise of the figure of jesus indicates strength and self-control; the thorns on the brow tell their story of sorrow and pain; the hand at the door shows that one man at least is mindful of the welfare of his brother; the radiance on the face and the inspiration in the eyes are the outshining of the goodness which dwells within; while the light from the whole person, which reaches far into the gloom, shows that the more nearly perfect the being the more beneficent and beautiful his influence must be. is jesus christ the brightness of the father's glory? he reveals also the beauty and helpfulness, the love and the service of the ideal man. he is the pattern of our common humanity. are we in the midst of a process of evolution? and is the man that is to be still far in the distance? when he shall walk this earth he will be the spiritual reproduction of jesus, changed only to meet the requirements of other times and new conditions. the revelation of the ideal humanity was hardly less revolutionary than that of the enlarged universe. formerly men were regarded as things, commodities to be bought and sold, creatures without souls, objects to be used. but jesus taught that all men are children of god; therefore that they have the very life of god; therefore that they are created for his eternity, and will forever approach his perfection. this vision of the perfected race has been at work changing national boundaries, destroying hoary institutions, undermining thrones, and making a new world. a glance shows the revolutionary quality of his teaching. slavery was the curse of every land. with force on the one side and weakness on the other oppression was inevitable. jesus taught that even weakness may be divine, and lo! from every civilized land slavery has already gone, and from the world it is fast disappearing. according to the orthodox economic doctrine, supply and demand was the law that should govern the relation between employer and employee. the largest profit and the smallest wages was the watchword. as the teaching of jesus has penetrated further into the dealings of man with man employers are beginning to realize that labor has to do with human beings; that manhood is enduring and that conditions are ephemeral; and that whosoever oppresses his brother, even in the name of economic law, at last will have to reckon with the almighty. thus a new and more beneficent social order is slowly but surely emerging. the doctrine of the survival of the fittest is, even now, applied to men where the teaching of jesus that providence has made a way for the survival of the unfit is unknown or ignored. in all lands the revelation in jesus of the ideal manhood, and of the destiny toward which all men are moving is changing and glorifying human society. he is the one whom "the low-browed beggar," and the criminal with a vicious heredity, are some time to approach. is it difficult to select the one phrase of all human utterances which has exerted the largest influence in ameliorating the human condition? would it not be,--"inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these, ye did it unto me." the identification of humanity with deity, the revelation of the divine in the human, the solemn truth that no one can injure or neglect his brother without, at the same time, violating all that is sacred and holy in the universe is the culminating point in the revelation of man to himself. in the light which jesus sheds on humanity all men appear in their enduring rather than their transitory relations. the life and teaching of jesus make the awful and insoluble mystery of suffering endurable. he satisfies no curiosity on this subject. why suffering is permitted he does not tell us. he never allowed himself to be diverted from his one purpose, which was not to solve problems but to improve conditions. if any one approaches the new testament expecting to find an answer to his speculative questions he will be disappointed; but if he asks, how may i so use the conditions in which i am placed that they will minister to my spiritual purification and power? he will receive a definite and satisfying reply. why need sorrow, suffering, sin, and death invade the fair realm into which man has been born? other teachers seek to answer this question but jesus is silent. how may sorrow, suffering, and even moral evil be made ministers of an upward movement? on this subject jesus speaks with a tone of authority. among the world's teachers he was the first to declare that while austere experiences are not good in themselves they may, uniformly, become means of moral and spiritual progress. the sweet may always be found in the bitter. sorrow may always be made a blessing. tears never need be wasted. struggle always adds to strength; and sympathy is multiplied when one bears the grief and carries the burden of another. do not brood over what you are called to endure, but seek for the secret of spiritual help which is hidden within, and you will find that on every grief and every pain you may rise, as on stepping-stones, to higher things. jesus was the supreme optimist. those who study life and history in the light which shines from him see that no human being walks with aimless feet. they do not think of men as unrelated units, but as bound by love to one another, and as living under the eye and in the strength of god. in that light sorrow and pain may be justified, even though in themselves they are hateful. the poison which destroys life, if rightly used, will save life. apart from god and his purpose of love, nothing is more to be dreaded than pain; but in his hands pain becomes the servant and not the master of men. i can think of nothing more dreary than the study of human life and history apart from the interpretations put upon them by jesus. then one generation seems to follow another, and the long procession, even though the character of those composing it steadily improves, always ends at the same goal,--the grave. millions live and die like the beasts that perish. they aspire, struggle, and are determined to rise, but just when they are fitted to endure, and to enter upon ampler spheres of service, the curtain falls on the tragedy, the stage scenery is changed, a new company of players takes their places, and the farce, for it is a farce as well as a tragedy, goes on from century to century, and there is no meaning in anything. if that were the true interpretation of life, on earth's loftiest mountain there might well be raised a temple in honor of death; and around it all the races of men be invited to join in the chorus, "happy is the next one who dies!" but a better interpretation of human life's mystery has been given. jesus looked over its apparent desolation and confusion and poured upon it divine light. he taught that it is not the father's will that even one should perish. men are not being ground in an infinite mill, but they are being refined and purified by the only processes which will develop in them both strength and beauty. out of confusion harmony will come, and out of the battle of the elements peace will dawn at last. to those who know that pain and sorrow are ministers of strength and sympathy, that by them narrow horizons are widened and deserts made to blossom, human life does not seem so confused and terrible as it has sometimes been pictured. jesus makes evident the upward movement of the race, and shows, let me repeat, that it is "under the eye and in the strength of god." he was made perfect through suffering. the thorns on his brow tell their own pathetic story. the passion vine above his head, and beneath his feet, indicate that even his sufferings are not without a purpose of blessing, and therefore are fully justified. and now we approach the saddest of all the dark experiences through which the soul passes,--the mystery of sin. of its enormity i have already spoken; but what about its origin, its uses, and its continuance? the question of its origin jesus does not even mention. it is not recognized as having any uses. it may be made an occasion of good, but it is never ordained in order that good may come. hardly any other subject occupies so large a place in the teachings of jesus. it was said of him, "his name shall be called jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins;" and of him paul wrote, "god commendeth his love toward us in that when we were yet sinners christ died for us." the terrible blight of moral evil, whatever its genesis, cannot be explained away. jesus passed by all other questions and devoted the largest part of his ministry, as a teacher, to showing how the soul may escape from the power, and be delivered from the bondage, of sin. this is the practical problem. as one surveys the race the imperative inquiry concerns deliverance. what light does jesus shed upon this mystery? he shows that sin is an incident in the ascent of the soul, and not an end; that it is hateful and unnatural; and that all the strength and goodness of god are pledged to its removal. the soul will be allowed to be in bondage only so long as is necessary for its complete emancipation. moral evil is tolerated at all not because it is a good in itself, but in order that the soul may learn that its safety and strength are to be found only in conformity to the will of god. jesus reveals the way of escape and thus confers upon the race the greatest of possible blessings. this he does by the revelation of the fatherhood of god, which is not only compassionate but also holy. because god is the father of all souls, when any one ceases to do evil and begins to do well, or in other words repents, he finds a welcome and help waiting for him. and jesus clearly indicates, also, that in the constitution of the soul, and in the inexorableness of moral law, there is a deep remedial agency which is ever active, giving no individual rest until it finds it in god. the tragedy of the cross was preeminently a revelation. the cross is the manifestation, in terms of human life, of the passion of the universe and of god. there must be suffering in all who are good, until sin disappears. the cross is the revelation of the eternal god in sacrifice for the redemption of souls in bondage to selfishness and animalism. jesus taught that sin is to be abolished. by means of the revelations of holiness, the sacrifices of love, the remedial agency in the universe, and by his own new life the forces of evil are to be broken, and the soul allowed to enter into its freedom as a child of god. this is not a subject for definition and dogmatism. the greatest things cannot be defined, but they may be appropriated. the light, the air, gravitation and all elemental forces transcend definition. the love of god revealed on the cross is too holy and too transcendent for "scheme and plan." it may be accepted in a spirit of worship, but it can be comprehended no more than the process by which rain and soil are transmuted into nourishment, and light into physical strength and beauty. the cross is the pledge of the redemption of the soul through the love and power of god; and beyond that we have no knowledge except that wherever that cross has been lifted up men have been drawn unto truth and virtue, love and brotherhood. more than poetry and sentiment has found expression in a popular hymn which thrills with a power which has been verified again and again in human history: "in the cross of christ i glory, towering o'er the wrecks of time all the light of sacred story gathers round its head sublime." jesus has furnished no clew to the origin of moral evil, but he has given to the hope that it is to be overcome in the individual, the race, and the universe, the testimony of his teaching and the emphasis of his death. which is the greater mystery, life or death? a satisfying answer is impossible, since we cannot think of one without thinking of its opposite. what is life? whence is it? why is it? such are some of the questions which arise and elicit no response when one meditates upon the mystery of living. what is death? what purpose does it serve? is it an end or a beginning? such are some of the inquiries which cannot be escaped when one, for even a few moments, looks, as all some time must look, on the still and peaceful face of one who has ceased to breathe. who shall answer our questions? of all who have attempted to fathom these depths one alone has brought a message which is satisfying both to the minds and hearts of those who think. does any light from jesus penetrate the mystery of death? what others have groped after he has declared. he taught that the universe is like a house of many rooms, and that dying is but passing from one room to another. in his own experience he illustrated his teachings. he ministered to his disciples; he communed with those whom he loved until their hearts burned within them. then he disappeared and has been seen no more. but why did he appear at all after death? was it not to confirm the message of the transfiguration that those who seem to die only change the mode of their existence, and continue their companionships and ministries even after they have laid aside their bodies? in the passage in the gospel of matthew, which may be called the parable of the judgment, jesus taught that the moral order is not changed by the transition from bodily to disembodied existence. the thoughts which men think, and the actions which they perform, affect the substance of the soul. evil works misery and virtue leads to happiness beyond the grave as well as here. seed sown on the earth may grow to its harvest in the ages that lie beyond. this is all the light on this subject that we need now. death removes no one beyond the watch and care of the infinite love. in the home of the heavenly father his children pass from place to place, as he calls. jesus appeared to those who loved him, and was recognized by them, and that indicates that, whatever the changes of the future, the spiritual body will be recognized by all who love. the moral order is universal, and no change will touch the everlasting distinctions between right and wrong, or diminish the obligation to choose the right and refuse the wrong. these are some of the lessons which are impressed upon us as we meditate upon the life and teachings of jesus and their relation to the ascent of the soul. he is the light of all souls. into the darkness his glory has been extending and expanding from his own time until now. if we may judge the future from the past, it is easy to believe that this radiance will not fail from among men until all realize that life and death, time and eternity, humanity and history, are beset behind and before by the divine fatherhood; that the goal of the race is the fullness of christ; that the severest experiences sometimes achieve the best results; that sin will not forever darken the history of humanity; that death is a passage not an abyss; an opening not a closing; a beginning not an ending; and that beyond stretch opportunities of limitless life and immortal growth. the inseparable companion the prayers i make will then be sweet indeed, if thou the spirit give by which i pray: my unassisted heart is barren clay, which of its native self can nothing feed: of good and pious works thou art the seed, which quickens only where thou say'st it may unless thou show to us thine own true way, no man can find it: father! thou must lead. do thou, then, breathe those thoughts into my mind by which such virtue may in me be bred that in thy holy footsteps i may tread; the fetters of my tongue do thou unbind, that i may have the power to sing of thee, and sound thy praises everlastingly. --_sonnet from michael angelo._ wordsworth. viii _the inseparable companion_ as the soul moves along its upward pathway it gradually becomes conscious of many inspiring truths. among the most delightful and helpful of these is the fact that it is never alone, but is one of a great company all pressing toward the same goal and all passing through substantially the same experiences. in the midst of these companionships, which are variable, and of these experiences which can seldom be predicted, it slowly becomes aware that there is one companionship which is constant, beneficent, and singularly illuminating. the realization of this fellowship is intensely individual. of it others may speak, but concerning it they can give little information. the full consciousness is always a personal one. having once enjoyed communion with the over-soul it is difficult to imagine that any are ever without this supreme spiritual privilege. sometimes the sense of spiritual coöperation is so vivid and continuous, so compassionate and helpful, as to be almost startling--in those moments when it seems to beset us behind and before. the process by which a soul becomes conscious that it is forever attended by a companion, whose one object seems to be to help it toward the spiritual heights, will repay the most careful examination. to that delightful and difficult study we will now turn. before it has advanced far on its pathway the soul becomes painfully aware of the dangers by which it is surrounded and of the obstacles which it must overcome. the road before it seems to be infested with enemies. its defeats are frequent and humiliating. it learns much by experience; but the more it learns the clearer it seems to discern the difficulties which it must meet. in the midst of the confusion and failure it slowly becomes aware that warning voices are speaking, and that they are loudest when moral peril is near. this is one of those simple facts which may be verified by every thoughtful man, but which no thoughtful man would ever dream of trying to explain. so simple and elemental is this truth that it may best be enforced by commonplace illustrations, and by something like a personal appeal. a very distinguished man was one day walking with a friend along a street in edinburgh, when they came to one of the numerous wynds which lead from the main thoroughfare into the midst of huge and gloomy buildings. there the man stopped and asked to be excused while he entered the wynd. returning, after a moment, he explained his act by saying that, in his young manhood, he had been tempted to do something which would have wrecked his life. just as he came to the place that he had visited there sounded in his ears such a vivid warning as made it morally impossible for him to proceed on his course of wrong-doing. he felt sure that that voice was from above, for his whole nature, until that instant, seemed to have been set on what would have led to moral ruin. another person testified that he was once on the verge of doing what would have brought him undying disgrace when, as if she had been drawn out of the air, his mother stood before him, looking reproachfully at him. thus the fascination of temptation was broken by what he always believed to have been a veritable spiritual presence. another experience is perfectly attested. a man in a distinguished position did wrong, and was in peril of still greater wrong when something, he could not have explained what, not only warned him but kept warning him and following him so that he could not escape. if he closed his eyes his danger became more vivid; if he stopped his ears voices of reproach found their way in. he loved his wrong and would move toward it, but then invisible hands seemed to hold him back until the time of danger was past, and he was confirmed in right ways. such experiences are too numerous and varied to be doubted. no facts are better attested. it may be said that they are only the usual warnings of conscience. be it so. then what is conscience? the factors in the problem are not materially changed, for the phenomena of conscience are as remarkable, constant, and verifiable as light and heat. most men who have recorded their experiences, and who have observed with care the workings of their own faculties, have been conscious of being attended by some invisible presence warning them against evil. the explanation of this phenomenon may be left for later consideration. closely allied to warnings against moral danger, which are so vivid as sometimes to be almost audible, are the evidences of what may be called spiritual protection. the idea of guardian angels and tutelary deities arose naturally and inevitably. many who have been astonishingly delivered from spiritual peril have been able to find no other explanation of their escape. those who receive the confidences of their fellow-men have little difficulty in believing such a story as was once confided to me. an able and prominent man who had, resolutely as he thought, turned from a course of conduct which threatened disaster, found himself drawn toward the evil from which he supposed that he had been forever delivered. the attraction seemed to be resistless. again and again he was on the verge of falling when the fall would have been ruin. then something made it morally impossible for him to enter upon the path which he had determined to follow. the means used to dissuade him were various. sometimes a friend would call, then a duty would intervene, then some obligation would press until, to use his own way of phrasing it,--"it seemed as if some unseen person who could read my thoughts and desires was walking by my side and, as fast as i was in danger of yielding to evil, ordering events so as to prevent me from doing what i wanted to do." few men who are trying to live on spiritual levels would hesitate to acknowledge that they have been the subjects of similar protection. the peculiar feature about it all is that the agents used are so often entirely unconscious of the influence which they are exerting. an unseen hand seems to be guiding our moves on the chess-board of life, so as to check us every time that we are inclined to play falsely. i do not mean that all are persuaded toward virtue, but i do mean that enough are protected from moral evil and spiritual peril to justify the belief that such ministries are around all; and that those who choose to do wrong do so in the face of spiritual appeals which, if they would but give them heed, would make resistance of evil easy and successful. if any one who reads these words doubts my conclusions, let him study his own life, with a little care, and learn for himself whether there are not many hours in which he is almost persuaded to accept the ancient doctrine of guardian angels. this phase of the spiritual experience is rendered still more vivid when we remember that the souls of men are perpetually dissatisfied with present attainments, and ever eager in their efforts to explore the unseen. the history of human thought, if it could be written, would show that the mind has never been satisfied with what it has possessed, and that each new glimpse of truth has stimulated still more ardent inquiry. the more it is pondered the more impressive this fact becomes. the soul seems to have had just before it, in all the stages of its development, a spiritual forerunner opening a way into larger and fairer realms. this consciousness is not akin to a passion for wealth. a man with enormous riches often ceases to acquire, and devotes himself to the enjoyment of what he possesses; but who ever heard of a thoughtful man who felt that he might cease investigating and devote himself to the pleasures of knowledge? such instances there may have been, but they are not numerous and have never been recorded. of course there are many, who in no true sense can be called seekers after truth, who do not trouble themselves with questions about the unseen. they chew the cud of custom with all the placidity of good-natured oxen. they do not live,--they simply exist. it is possible for any man to shut his eyes to the light, but that does not banish the light. it envelops him, and pours its splendors around him, regardless of his wilful blindness. millions are so engrossed with selfishness, or animalism, that they catch the accents of no spiritual message, but those appeals are never hushed. the deafness of the multitudes who will not hear does not prove that no voices are calling. in some way men have been kept dissatisfied with their ignorance and persistent in their search for truth. i make no distinction between sacred and secular here because all truth is sacred. scientist and theologian alike have to do with reality. whether we examine the tracks of an extinct animal on ancient rocks, or bow our heads in prayer, we are facing a real world which is steadily enlarging. for centuries men have sought the causes of things; they have been made to feel that they ought to do right, and then have been inspired with a passion to discover the right. this is very wonderful. the being who has almost limitless powers of physical enjoyment, whose senses are exquisitely fitted for pleasure, is not satisfied with pleasure, but, in obedience to unseen attractions, ever seeks for higher things. whence does this eagerness come? is it from man himself? then our problem is great indeed, for, at one and the same time, something within himself impels him upward, and another something drags him downward. but the point for special consideration now is that the soul is never satisfied with anything but truth, that the history of thought is the record of the search for truth, that every new discovery has acted as a stimulus to still more ardent exploration, and that the search is always for elemental realities, the causes of phenomena, for "things as they are." the promise of jesus was fulfilled long before it was spoken. some one, in all the ages, has been leading into truth and showing things to come; and the process was never more evident than after all these years of intellectual and spiritual progress. i say some one has led. by that i mean a personal spirit, unseen, but ever present; for how could he whose home is in the mire be supposed, steadily and unwaveringly, to reach toward the skies unless there was some attraction in the skies? the only attraction for one spirit is another spirit. this age-long, unwavering passion for truth and progress, the wisest of men have believed to have been inspired by providence or god or by guardian angels--which after all are only other ways of stating the doctrine of jesus concerning the holy spirit. another phase of this subject is the power, which has seemed to come from outside the soul, to sustain and help those who have been called to endure bitter and long-continued sorrow and pain. those who feel themselves to be weak as water under the stress of severe trial, almost without previous suggestion, assume the proportions of heroes. they endure and suffer with patience what would crush those who are only physically brave and strong. a woman who seemed to have few resources in herself, suddenly lost four children. in speaking of it, she very simply but forcefully, said: "i could never have endured it myself." she believed that her fragility had been reinforced by one stronger than herself. exceptional physical courage will account for deeds of amazing heroism like that displayed at the sinking of the merrimac in the harbor of santiago. some persons are thus gifted by nature, as others have a poetic temperament. but exhibitions of physical valor, stimulated by the consciousness of world-wide applause, are very different from the patience with which weak persons accept heavy burdens without a murmur, and carry them apparently without assistance, sustained only by the consciousness of being right. how shall we explain the singular devotion of monica to augustine? by mother-love? but mother-love might have been content with the greatness of her son, and his regard for her. she bore on her heart "the salvation of his soul," and would not cease in her quest for his spiritual welfare. a profligate father, the degraded ideals which justified vice, distances which seemed to be almost world-wide, did not daunt her. without haste and without rest she sought to bring her gifted son to his saviour. he had fame, and at least all the wealth that he needed, but monica never faltered in her prayers, or in her service, until her son bowed before the cross, albeit for years she carried a heavy heart. the age of martyrdom has passed but not the age in which men of vision and strength have to serve their fellow-men with neither pecuniary compensation nor expressed approval. and yet the number is steadily increasing who quietly undertake herculean tasks for their fellow-men, knowing that they will be neither appreciated nor understood, but, instead, will have to suffer social ostracism, which is sometimes quite as hard to endure as physical martyrdom. when a strong and earnest man undertakes a service in which he must be misunderstood, and seldom if ever applauded, when he chooses suffering with joy in order that he may serve others, when he is willing to accept discomfort, social hunger, physical pain, and without complaint continue in such a path, although opportunities of worldly emolument and honor make their appeals to him, it is difficult to explain the phenomena by simply saying that he is finding strength in some hitherto unknown chamber of his own personality. it would be easy to make a list of illustrations, long and pathetic, of those who have patiently endured tribulation, who have accepted heavy burdens and carried them without flinching that others might be relieved, who have had physical deformity, depression of mind, and pain of body, and yet who have never faltered as to their duty even when the way was dark. the world's noblest heroes are to be found among those who suffer but still endure and aspire in the night and silence, clinging to duty when no one understands, and much less approves. such heroisms need explanation, and they have it in the inspiration and the regeneration which are mediated by the inseparable spiritual companion. phenomena like those of which i have thus far been speaking have been observed in every age and every land. some like socrates have felt themselves warned against evil courses; others like augustine have been protected from moral and spiritual death; others like sakya-muni have been led to give up wealth and power for truth and service; others, who could draw upon no hidden source of strength, have been sustained in the midst of trials which have seemed heavy enough to crush; and, most wonderful of all, in spite of all vices and crimes, all darkness and ignorance, all bondage to ignoble ideals and slavery to commercialism and pleasure, the race of man has never been content with things as they have been. as the moon draws the tides by unseen attractions, so by unseen attractions the souls of men have been made dissatisfied, and drawn toward truth and beauty, love and holiness; and this desire for some better country has never been absent. the passage from egypt to the promised land is the eternal parable of humanity, which is always getting out of some egypt, with its slavery and tyranny, and pressing toward some intellectual and spiritual canaan. this is one of the most marvelous facts in the history of our race--its discontent with things as they are, its faith in something better, and the perfect confidence with which it embarks on unknown seas in its search for ampler and fairer worlds. the history of the past is the record of the weak receiving strength, of the wicked being made uncomfortable in their wickedness, of limited and provincial creatures reaching out to broad and high horizons, of weakness, suffering, agony, willingly endured in the confidence that relief and blessing will come at last, though far off, to all. moreover, there is no indication of any cessation of such phenomena. in these days, when we say that no man should be asked to affirm anything which he cannot verify, voices of warning and entreaty are vivid, the consciousness of protection is distinct, support in trial is frequent, and the evidence that some force, or some person, is steadily leading humanity toward truth and righteousness is as convincing and constant as ever. what shall be said of these facts which are so numerous and so evident as to make an effort at classification and explanation imperative? four answers to this inquiry are possible. is the old doctrine of guardian angels true? possibly we may be, individually, under the care of spiritual beings who are appointed for that service. that conviction often prevails, although so far as i have observed, not usually in association with perfect sanity. a man of noble bearing and grave and solemn manner who was talking about using the telephone for trans-atlantic communication, once declared that all men living now are under the leadership of those who have gone, and that the great of other times are continuing their work through those now on earth. he added: "i am confident of my success for i am the representative in these days of sir isaac newton." subsequent events proved that sir isaac newton must have lost most of his common sense since his departure from the earth, or he would have chosen a more rational representative. this theory in no way solves the problem before us, but rather complicates it, because it does not explain how the relation of souls is adjusted. that there may be some truth in this speculation may be freely granted. one text at least appears to give it a little confirmation: "are not their angels ministering spirits sent forth to minister to such as shall be the heirs of salvation." that seems to teach that some who have never dwelt in earthly bodies are the appointed ministers of those who live on the earth. many other persons dismiss this subject by saying that all souls, like all objects in nature and events in history, are parts of an everlasting and universal process, and that speculation is useless and a weariness to the flesh. that is the easiest way out of the difficulty, but it can be taken only by ignoring the facts. are all ideas concerning spiritual ministry delusions? then how shall we account for the imagination which is capable of giving birth to such magnificent dreams? and we may venture to ask also--who started this movement in which we are all involved? how comes it that in this cosmic loom such a wondrous fabric is being woven, if there is no pattern, and no weaver, and will be no one to enjoy the work when it is finished? possibly no one is warned against sin, impelled toward virtue, supported in sorrow, led into larger visions of truth; and, possibly, truth and right are also dreams, and the mind itself a delusion; and, possibly, there is nothing but delusion. then all study and struggle are useless; let us go to sleep. but, some one else says, perhaps the phenomena of which you speak are, in one sense, realities but caused by reactions of the soul on itself. first it imagines that some spiritual leadership is desirable, and then it concludes that that leadership is discernible. in other words, sorrow, sin, relief, joy, truth, right, are only imaginations born of other imaginations. if any are satisfied with such reasoning the task of enlightening them is hopeless. there is another explanation of the sublime, ancient, and world-wide facts which are before us. it is the answer of jesus, which is simple, profound, rational, and satisfying. he told his disciples, when they were grieving that they should see him no more, that they would always have with them the spirit of truth who would convict of sin, show things to come, and lead into all truth. that spirit in the scriptures is called by one of the sweetest and dearest names in the languages of men--the comforter. some have wrongly imagined that the new testament teaches that the presence of the comforter is a new event in human history. not so. the spirit of truth inspired and sustained the apostles and martyrs as he had sustained the patriarchs and prophets and the same spirit which is represented as descending upon jesus at his baptism brooded upon the face of the waters when the earth was without form and void. jesus teaches that god, as a spirit, has never been absent from his creation and never out of touch with the spirits of men. in the beginning he created; later he inspired, supported, taught, comforted; and always and everywhere he is present to sustain, to lead, to comfort, to help, to save, and to bless. how simple, rational, and satisfying is this interpretation of the phenomena of human history! we study our own spiritual experiences and discover that when we have been in danger of being contented with moral failure we have been made ashamed and disgusted by it; that when we have been on the verge of yielding to temptation we have been strangely and almost preternaturally protected; that when sorrows have come which would have crushed our unaided strength we have experienced strange peace and have had undreamed-of strength; and that never for a moment have we found rest or peace except as they have come to us in hand with truth and right. a wider study shows us that our experiences are in harmony with the common human experience. all forces and all events, in all ages, have been working for the welfare of individuals, society, the whole world. a steady, unfailing, universal attraction has been drawing the human race away from animalism, error, sorrow, war, separation and division, toward righteousness, truth, love, brotherhood, the life of the spirit, and the unity and happiness of the children of god. that attraction is interpreted by jesus in a simple and beautiful way. he has taught us that the same being who created the universe, and who has revealed and is revealing himself in creation, in history, and in the earthly ministry of the christ, is now, always has been, and always will be in the most intimate, personal, and loving relations with men. he warns them against evil, protects them in danger, comforts them in sorrow, lifts their thoughts and desires toward the true, the beautiful, and the good; and what he is doing for individuals he is also doing for humanity and the universe. this is the culmination of the christian revelation. this is to be the consummation and splendor of the kingdom of god. all the disciples of jesus are followers of the spirit of truth. the spirit of truth is the inspiration of all that is vital and enduring in literature, art, government, society; and each individual, and "the whole cosmic process" are being led by him toward the beatitude of the children of god. nurture and culture o happy house! whose little ones are given early to thee, in faith and prayer,-- to thee, their friend, who from the heights of heaven guards them with more than mother's care. o happy house! where little voices their glad hosannas love to raise, and childhood's lisping tongue rejoices to bring new songs of love and praise. o happy house! and happy servitude! where all alike one master own; where daily duty, in thy strength pursued, is never hard nor toilsome known; where each one serves thee, meek and lowly, whatever thine appointments be, till common tasks seem great and holy, when they are done as unto thee. --_o happy house._ karl j.p. spitta. ix _nurture and culture_ in the ascent of the soul two forces are ever at work: one is internal and the other external. the internal is that which promotes growth; it is resident within the soul, and, while it may be modified by conditions, it is in no sense dependent on them. but environment is a potent factor in all progress. life necessitates growth, but environment determines the end toward which it will move. environment in large part is composed of the circumstances into which we are born, of the spiritual companionship from which none can escape, and of the training which is provided by parents and friends. so much of the environment as is furnished by others we will call nurture, and those influences and instruments of advancement which the soul chooses for itself we will call culture. this discrimination is not entirely accurate, but it is sufficiently so for our present purpose. it at least indicates the lines along which our thought will move. according to this definition nurture has to do with that period of our existence when we are not able wisely to make choices for ourselves. it is for those persons who are in infancy and early youth, and also for those whose normal development has been thwarted or hindered. the influences of the home, and of the church so far as they are related to its younger members, are in the line of nurture rather than of culture. culture, on the other hand, is something which a responsible being seeks for himself, to the end that his power may be increased and his faculties have harmonious development. the soul grows according to its innate tendencies; it is also subject to attractions from without. all souls are bound together; and all, whether they wish or not, vitally and permanently affect those by whom they are surrounded. hence nurture and culture alike are both conscious and unconscious. the growth of the soul is largely affected by the nurture which it receives. this is usually provided for it by parents, or by those who take the places of the parents; and, where possible, their unwearying efforts should be to remove all obstacles from the pathway of their children, to surround them with a pure and helpful environment, and to provide them with such training as will make their progress inevitable and easy. the importance of wholesome domestic influences cannot be exaggerated. their part in the formation of character is greater than that of all others, because they touch the powers and faculties of the child during those years in which it is most plastic. neither the school nor the university can ever entirely counteract the effect of the home. the whole period of childhood is one in which the soul is under tutelage, and in which more is done for it by others than by itself. it can no more select its own environment than it could have chosen its parents, or the time and place of its birth. for a few years it is utterly dependent. the question as to how its growth may most wisely be promoted is, therefore, one of surpassing importance. the object of nurture is to provide an unhindered path along which the soul may move, to bring into full and free exercise all the powers which it possesses, and to secure for them development and harmony. to insure for each individual soul in the struggle of life a fair opportunity to be itself is the end of nurture. emerson has said that at birth every child is loaded with bias, and that the purpose of culture is to remove all impediment and bias, and to secure a balance among the faculties so as to leave nothing but pure power. the same may be said as to the object of nurture. since impediment and bias are never a part of the essence of the soul, the statement that the aim of nurture is to furnish a full and free opportunity for each individual to secure a normal development is, practically, identical with what emerson has said of culture. what are the agencies which have most to do with promoting the ascent of the soul? the first is atmosphere. in a bright, clear, sunshiny atmosphere the body attains its most healthful growth. so with the soul. atmosphere is one of those intangible things that every one understands and no one can easily define. it is composed of a thousand different elements. the atmosphere of a household is the spirit by which it is pervaded. are all reverent, earnest, cheerful, optimistic? do love and mutual helpfulness prevail? do the members of the family live as if god were a near and blessed reality, and right and duty were more sacred than life? then there will be an atmosphere of hopefulness, devotion, service, reverence, pure religion, which will affect all as sunlight and air, unconsciously but evidently, grow into the beauty and fruitfulness of meadows and gardens. the rare spirituality, the urbane manner, the exquisite regard for others, the dignity and deference which are found in some persons have no explanation except that they have been absorbed from the households in which their early lives were passed. nurture is chiefly a matter of mental and spiritual atmosphere. attraction is always stronger than compulsion. a child born into conditions in which love prevails, where truth, duty, honor, are reverenced, and where all dwelling together seek the highest things, will need neither instruction in morals nor motives in religion. it will naturally turn toward truth and righteousness. it will revere virtue and worship god as inevitably and spontaneously as it breathes. we are all influenced more by the words which we hear and the examples which we see than by the lessons given us to learn, by the spirit of a man, or an institution, rather than by rules. persons show the conditions in which they have been reared by their choice of words, their bearing, the subjects of their conversation, by their mental and spiritual attitude. reverence is seldom found except in an atmosphere of reverence, and sincerity grows among those who are sincere. it is a moral necessity that some men should be earnest and enthusiastic, and impossible for their neighbors to be other than cringing and mean. the largest element in environment is atmosphere, and in the development of character environment is quite as potent as heredity. indeed, in the sphere of the spirit, as in that of the body, heredity is always modified by environment. the chief factor in nurture, therefore, is atmosphere. if that is healthful, growth will be toward beauty and strength; if that is malarial, no antiseptic force but the grace of god will be able to counteract its influence. next to atmosphere as an element in nurture i place ideals. for these children are usually dependent on their elders. they reverence what they are taught to revere. ideals are placed before them by example and by precept. children grow like those whose deeds attract them, and they seek those ideals toward which they are most wisely directed. laws are never as potent in the formation of character as examples. men are made brave by the sight of bravery, and honorable by contact with those who will swear to their own hurt and change not. there is deep philosophy in the saying that the songs of a people influence their institutions and history more than legal enactments, for songs are usually of bravery, of love, of victory. they create ideals; they excite enthusiasm. the marseillaise and the watch on the rhine send thrills through the blood of those who hear them because in the most vivid way they suggest patriotism and heroism. a good man inspires goodness. philanthropy makes others philanthropic. one courageous act sometimes makes heroes of a hundred common men. if a father would have his son physically brave, and he is a wise parent, he will not waste time in urging him to undertake some forlorn hope, but he will read to him the story of the greeks at thermopylæ, of marshal ney at waterloo, of nathan hale and his holy martyrdom, of nelson at trafalgar. if he would have that son a helper and servant of his fellow-men he will tell him the story of pastor fliedner and his work at kaiserwerth, of florence nightingale at the crimea, of wilberforce and buxton, whittier and garrison in their efforts to awaken their fellow-men to the enormity of human slavery. the strongest force for making a young man brave and generous, honorable and christian, is the example of a father possessing such qualities. men are usually like their ideals, and their ideals in large part are created by the examples of those who are most admired and loved. but example is not all. training also does much. conduct is but the expression of thought. if one can determine what shall be the subject of another's thinking, he will have gone a long way toward fixing his character. this is a fact which deserves more attention than it has yet received in plans for the education of the people. parents have no holier privilege than that of directing the thought of their children. by their own conversation, by the friends whom they invite to their homes, by the books which are given a place on their tables, by the amusements to which they take their families, they determine for them the channels in which their minds shall run. as a man thinketh in his heart so is he. boys usually dwell upon the same subjects as their fathers, unless the fathers by skilful conversation are able to hide the subjects to which they give most time. children usually admire what their parents admire, and shun what they shun. the organic unity of the household is a large factor in individual and social progress. both by direct effort, and by the indirect operation of example, it furnishes subjects for the youthful mind. the personality, whose seat is in the will, is never determined, but it is very largely influenced both by the example of those who are admired and by the thoughts which they suggest. environment in large part is composed of atmosphere, example, and ideals. all these are provided for the growing child by others. he has little or no voice in saying what they shall be. and environment has more to do with the progress of the soul toward full and free self-expression even than what is called education. education is more by atmosphere, example, and mental suggestion than by teachers and text-books. when we speak of nurture we usually think of the period of discipline in school and church; but we often make the mistake of not taking into account the fact that the most effective training is seldom that which comes directly from teachers. it is rather that which is derived indirectly from the atmosphere, example, and ideals by which the child is surrounded in his home. if i could determine those for a child i should dread very little any malign force in the shape of an incompetent teacher. schools, in reality, are only for the unfinished work of the homes. they may make the child better than his home, and they may undo the good work which it has done; but, usually, what the home is the child will be some time. the agencies of nurture, by which a soul is helped on its upward pathway, are atmosphere, example, ideals, and direct training. of these the least important is the last, although the value of that is self-evident. by the intellectual and spiritual air that we breathe, by the sight of heroic and consecrated service, by the possibilities of noble achievement the best that is in a man or a boy is usually drawn out. afterward the teacher may take him in hand and, by training, remove the impediment and bias and thus make a balance in the faculties, or take out of his way the obstacles which oppose his progress; but he seldom does very much toward determining the direction in which the child will move. that is decided by others in the years which are most plastic. the soul naturally, and inevitably, grows toward truth and god. how could it be otherwise, since its being is derived from him? but a part of the mystery of growth is the influence of environment, and early environment is almost altogether composed of the circumstances and influences into which one is born. the question of nurture, therefore, is of vital importance. what shall one generation do for those which are to come after it? each soul may hinder or help the growth of countless other souls. the influence of those nearest is always most potent for good or ill. impediment is increased, and bias exaggerated, by evil example. the effort to rise becomes easy when the way is seen to be full of those whom we love and honor going before us toward the heights, and it is difficult when no familiar face is seen. nurture is not so much a matter of teacher and text-book, of church and catechism, as of atmosphere, example, and inspiration. it is the effect of the contact of one pure and noble soul upon another; it is something which father, mother, and friends give to the child; it is the result of the spirit in which they impart instruction and of the reverence and consecration which shine from their lives. the best and only enduring nurture is that of a sweet, serene, optimistic, and thoroughly christian environment. with that, inherited tendencies toward weakness and evil will go of themselves,--indeed will seem never to have had existence. but all too soon the time comes in which the soul faces its own responsibility, and realizes that it must choose for itself what its course shall be. it has learned, if it has observed, that there is ever with it an unseen leadership, and it has heard, faint and far, the call of a noble destiny. what shall it now do for itself? shall it choose simply to exist? shall it yield to the limitations and solicitations of the body? or, shall it seek to prepare itself by discipline, and the cultivation of right choices, for the goal whose intimations it has heard? nurture, if it has been wise, has been the forerunner of culture. atmosphere and example have inspired lofty ideals, but those ideals, if they are to be realized, will require training. matthew arnold, quoting bishop wilson, has said that culture "is a study of perfection." in other words, it is the means which are used for the perfection of the soul. shall we choose to leave ourselves to grow like trees in a forest, however they may, or shall we seek those conditions which will make progress sure and swift? culture is always a matter of choice; and it is vastly more than anything which can be taught in the college or university. the cultured man is he who has learned so to use the forces and conditions of life as to make them minister to his perfection. the one most cultured may come out of a factory, and the man of least culture may be found in a university. indeed colleges and universities, not infrequently, are haunts of provincialism and of dread of enthusiasm. the object of culture is the perfection of the spirit to the end that all that hinders, or limits, may disappear and only pure power, clear vision, and full self-realization remain. those whose growth is most evident are ever eager to use all experiences as means of progress. they study books in order that they may better understand what others have thought concerning the mystery of existence; they discipline their minds in order that they may the better serve their fellow-men; they seek fineness of manner and beauty of expression to the end that their utterance of truth may be more persuasive and convincing. culture and the discipline of life are identical. consequently, the wise man chooses to put himself where he will best be taught by the events through which he passes, by what he sees, and by what he may learn from others. it matters little who have been the teachers, or what have been the schools,--the real teacher is always life, and the real university is the human experience. i do not make light of the benefit which may be derived from books and institutions of learning, but i do insist on the recognition of the deeper fact that the lessons which no one can afford to neglect are those which can be taught only by overcoming obstacles. we can learn how to live only in the school of life. the most vital books are always those which tell us what others have done, and of the paths by which they have been led to power. what shall the soul do for itself in order that it may promote its own growth? it must first recognize where the sources of knowledge and strength are to be found, and then put itself where it will feel the touch of the vitality which can come only from other souls. quickly enough every man reaches the time in which he may determine his own environment. when we are young others choose our circumstances for us, but when we become older we select them for ourselves. that means much. no monarch is mighty enough to compel me to associate with those who will hinder my progress. he only is a slave whose mind and will are in bondage. my body may be with boors but, at the same time, my spirit may be holding companionship with seers and sages. i may be compelled to work in a mine like john the apostle, but i, too, like him may hear one speaking whose voice is as the sound of many waters, and whose eyes are like a flame of fire. our real associates are ever our spiritual companions; and no one can force another to hold fellowship with those who are either intellectually or spiritually uncongenial. and we also select our own subjects of thought. who can govern the thinking of another? at the very moment when one, who is stronger, is rejoicing in what seems his supremacy, our thoughts may be ranging through the spaces, and finding companionships among the stars. and we choose our own examples. in youth they were put before us according to the will of others, but later our heroes come to us at our bidding, and no one can shut the gates against them. whom shall we admire? let them be men of the spirit, who have sought truth and hated lies, "who have fought their doubts and gathered strength," who would rather suffer wrong than do wrong. the perfection of being is the end of effort, therefore we will read what will best help our growth in vision, in moral earnestness, in spiritual sensibility; therefore our books shall treat of subjects which will ennoble; our amusements shall be pure and clean; and our chief companionships shall be with the prophets and masters, the noble and the good, because by associating with them we shall become like them. intellectual acuteness, mastery of faculty, elegance of expression, are something very different from insight into the meaning of life. the cultured man is he who has learned his relations to his fellow-men, who recognizes his obligations toward them; and his relations to the unseen and his duty toward it. discipline which will produce such results will ever be sought by the awakened soul. it will be satisfied with nothing less. the relation of nurture and culture to the ascent of the soul is now evident. both are the agencies by which all impediment and bias are to be removed, and by which the soul is to come to the realization of pure power. they are the means by which complete self-realization is to be attained; they are the study of perfection. nurture is what is done for the soul by parents and friends in its plastic years; culture is the means which the soul chooses in order that its growth may be hastened. nurture is chiefly promoted by lofty examples, noble ideals,--in short, by beneficent environment; but culture is attained by the conscious effort of the individual, by his own choice of healthful environment, worthy example, inspiring companionships, and, perhaps still more, by long and patient study of the facts of our mortal life, of the revelations which have come from the unseen, and of the prophecies of the future which are within the soul. there is a deep and almost terrible significance in the text, "no man liveth to himself." every person is independent and free and yet is bound to every other. most delicate and vital of all human relations is that of parent and child. how far one may be responsible for the other may be difficult to decide, but that the one influences the other, inevitably and forever, is beyond question. in many ways the child is what he is made by the parent. therefore the welfare of the child as a spirit, and not merely as a body, should be a continual study. he who has dared to become a parent can never honorably shirk the duty of nurture. the connection between souls is a great mystery, but the mystery does not lessen the obligation. we are responsible not only for the existence of our children, but equally for their growth. it is the parent's privilege to make sure that they start on the journey of life properly equipped, and with no undue obstacles in their pathway--to make them realize that they are not only his children but also children of god; and that they are to live not only in time but in eternity. the training of the body is needful, and that of the mind still more so, but that of the spirit is absolutely essential to its welfare. therefore plans and provisions for nurture first, last, and always should be to the end that the soul may realize that it is from god, and that its goal and glory are union with him. and those who realize that they are free, that they are in a moral order, that a noble destiny awaits them, should make everything in thought, in study, in association, in companionship, bend toward the perfection of being, the development of power, and the realization of the life of the spirit. nurture does much for every man, his parents and friends also do much but, at last, when all mysteries are disclosed and self-revelation is complete, it may be found that each one does quite as much for himself as any one else, or every one else, does for him. is death the end? it's wiser being good than bad; it's safer being meek than fierce; it's fitter being sane than mad. my own hope is, a sun will pierce the thickest cloud earth ever stretched; that after last, returns the first, though a wide compass round be fetched; that what began best, can't end worst, nor what god blessed once, prove accurst. --_apparent failure._ browning. x _is death the end?_ we have been studying the ascent of the soul in the successive stages of its development, from the dawn of consciousness to the measure of progress which our race has now attained. but a dark shadow falls across that history. no one has yet lived who has reached what all have believed to be the fullness of his possible development. at a certain period in physical history what we call death intervenes, and we are left wondering as to whether that is the end of all, or whether the soul persists and continues its advance unhindered by bodily limitations. that death is the end of the body, in its present form, no one doubts; but whether the relations of the soul to the body are so intimate and enduring that what vitally affects one affects the other is a subject concerning which there has been eager and constant inquiry, and but little real knowledge. job's question, "if a man die shall he live again?" is the common question of humanity. the importance of the subject is attested by the prominence which it has always had in human thought. philosophers have given it foremost place in their speculations. science, while seeking to explore every part of the physical universe, never escapes from the fascination of this question. is the death of the body the end of the spirit? or, if we have not sufficient material for a positive statement, is there enough to make a strong affirmation of probability? we are facing the deepest mystery which is ever presented to thinking men. heretofore we have been trying to follow a history clearly marked in the progress of humanity; now we can only balance probabilities. but all that has been learned concerning the nature and development of the spirit of man not only warrants, but compels, the belief that death is not the end of the soul; and that to assert that it is, is to deny the revelations of the universe, and to insist that there is nothing but irony and mockery where there ought to be reason and wisdom. in treating this subject i can but repeat thoughts which have been emphasized again and again; but it is so vital, and so near to the welfare of all, that old arguments become new, and interest in them increases, the more frequently they are emphasized. on what do we base our faith that the soul exists after death? that it does is clearly the faith not only of religious teachers but of many of the latest and most eminent scientists. many expounders of evolutionary philosophy unite in telling us that "the cosmic process" having reached man, a spiritual being, can go no further in the physical order; that evolution will never produce a higher being than a spirit, but that the "cosmic" force will still persist and be utilized in the expansion and perfection of spirits. in treating this subject little attention will be given to the scriptural argument, for there is little if any difference of opinion concerning the teaching of jesus and that of the writers of the new testament. they are united and consistent in assuming the persistence of being. that belief underlies all their appeals to the solemn sanctions of the moral law which they derived from the future life. jesus himself said, "if it were not so, i would have told you;" and nearly, if not quite all the apostles base their warnings and their invitations on motives which reach beyond the death of the body. the masters of other religions have been equally positive. in some form or other they have asserted the continued existence of the spiritual nature in man. but we turn, for the moment, from these and consider such evidence as may be derived from the soul itself, and from what is known of its progress. there is no evidence that when the body dies the soul dies with it. it may not be possible to prove the reverse; all that we know is that the vital functions cease, and that the body decays. no eye ever saw the soul, and no dissection ever discovered the place of its dwelling. is that ethereal something which we call soul simply the result of the organization of atoms? or is the body like a house in which a spiritual tenant dwells? at least this may be affirmed: no one has yet been able to prove that the soul and body die together. then there is no reasonable presumption against the continuance of being. no spirit, so far as we know, has returned to the earth in visible form, and spoken its message; and yet, for aught we know, we may be surrounded every day by spiritual beings, moving unseen along the avenues upon which we walk, and entering without invitation the houses which we inhabit. at this point it is enough simply to grant that presumptions are, perhaps, evenly balanced. if one asks for proof that the spirit persists, the only reply must be a socratic one--can you prove that it is vitally connected with the body? belief in the existence of the soul after death seems to be an innate belief. it has been ascribed to the influence of the superstition about ghosts; but that superstition is only an unscientific form of the larger faith in the persistence of being. where did this conviction originate? we think only of such things as have been experienced. no thought is ever entirely original. even imagination cannot create anything absolutely unlike anything which ever existed. all the fabled beings who, according to the ancient mythology, filled the spaces and waters, were but human creatures adapted to imaginary environments. faith in the existence of the soul after death could not have originated in the soul itself; to believe that would be to contradict the laws of thought. it seems to have been born with the soul, and yet not to be a part of it. the common conviction of continuance of being can be explained only on the assumption that it is an innate idea. that this assumption starts, perhaps, quite as many questions as it settles may be granted. nevertheless, it is the only way in which this fact in mental and spiritual history can be accounted for. not only is belief in persistence of being innate, but it is also universal. it has been found in every land, in every time, in every religion. dr. matthewson has finely argued that the savage worships a fetish because he is seeking something which does not change[ ]. he knows that he dies; he worships that which he thinks does not die. a piece of wood or a stone, at first, seems to him more enduring than a man; therefore he worships the fetish. gradually his eyes are opened and he realizes that the man is more enduring than the thing. then the object of his worship is lifted from something material to a spiritual being. the belief in immortality is coterminous with belief in the deity; the two forms of faith are always found together. the cultured greek, the mystic egyptian, the idealistic indian, the savage who inhabits the forests of africa, or who formerly dwelt in the forests of america, alike have believed in some land of spirits to which their loved ones have gone and to which they themselves, in turn, will also go. every age and every time, alike, have borne witness to the strength and vitality of this faith. [footnote : distinctive messages of the old religions, p. .] but still more convincing to me than any of the suggestions which have gone before, is the fact that it is irrational to suppose that the soul dies with the body. if that were true, how could we account for the enormous waste in discipline and culture, in education and affection? what is the meaning of the love that binds human beings together, if after a short "three-score-and-ten career" it utterly ceases to be, and being and affection alike go into oblivion? how can our systems of education be justified, if the soul is perfected only to be destroyed? on everything else man spends time, labor, affection in proportion to the possibility of its endurance. he never seeks that which he knows will be taken from him and destroyed as soon as it is perfected. an artist would not spend a lifetime on a picture, or a sculptor in finishing a statue, if he knew that when his work was completed it would be instantly sunk in the depths of the sea. we devote a large part of our lives to education; we cultivate our minds; our affections are disciplined; we spend time, money, labor for years for the culture of our children; can it be that all this preparation is for something which never can be realized? in the midst of the loftiest manifestations of the soul's power the body ceases to be. with indescribable bravery a warrior lays down his life, a fireman rescues a child from a burning building, a life-boatman goes through the surf to a sinking ship, and, at that very moment when he proves himself best fitted to live, death comes and he is seen no more. it cannot be proven that this is not the end, but it is not reasonable to believe that this is the end. if it is, human life is utterly without significance, and he is most to be commended who quickest escapes from its misery and mockery. moreover the inequalities of the human condition are strangely prophetic. much has been made of this argument in the past,--job and socrates both felt its force. the value of it has often been discredited, but without reason. how shall the bitter injustice which is frequently found on the earth be explained? some have an abundance of wealth, some have literally nothing. some enjoy the best of health and strength all their days, while others pass their years in suffering and trial. some are surrounded by families and fairly revel in love and friendship, and others lead lonely lives toward a welcome end. some are strong and brave, and able to act a part in the drama of life; others are weak, obscure, unknown, and, for aught that they or we can see, might as well have never been. the law of heredity sweeps down from the past and brings a terrible legacy to many who spend all their days in trying to escape from what has been forced upon them. what shall we say concerning those who are born in lust and must live in the midst of the vice of a great city, and who, in turn, give birth to a lustful and vicious brood? have they had a fair chance? will their children have? such questions have puzzled the most earnest thinkers of all time, and there has seemed to be but one explanation. job seemed to be in darkness, until at last there flashed upon his mind this question, which is also a modified affirmation, "if a man die shall he live again?" if he live again, then it is possible that what seems to be unjust may be righted; and those who have known only suffering and pain during their dwelling in the flesh, may some time enter into the fruition of their discipline in the joy and victory of the endless life. the more this argument is pondered the stronger its force becomes. it carries conviction to all who are deeply sensitive to the common human experience, and who at all understand the misery and the suffering of human existence. one in the fullness of his physical strength may think little about it, but that deformed girl who asked her mother after service one easter day, "mother, is it true that in heaven i shall be as straight as you and father?" is a type of millions of others. some suffer in body and some in mind; some have a heredity of insanity or vice--they are born with shackles on their faculties. if they ever have a fair chance to grow noble and beautiful, morally and spiritually, it must be after their bodies have been laid aside. it cannot be said that they do not now desire benefit and blessing, but it is evident that it is impossible for their longing to be gratified. the conviction that this is a moral and rational universe compels us to believe that some time and somewhere those who suffer will escape from their pain, that those who are burdened with the evil that has been inherited from past generations will rise above it, and that the soul will be given an unhindered opportunity for growth and advancement. the inequalities in the human condition almost compel us to believe that the death of the body cannot be the end of the spirit. a little light on this subject comes from the faith of the world's greatest teachers. as there are, now and then, those who see farther than others with the physical eye, so there have been a few teachers who have been rightly called seers, because their eyes have penetrated farther into the mysteries of the universe than have those of their fellow-men. among the seers of the ages, i think that the two whom all would recognize as being preëminent are socrates and jesus--the one the finest flower of the intellectual development of greece, and the other the consummation of the hopes and visions of the most spiritual people that the world has ever known. both socrates and jesus believed in god, and both have taught the world, with no uncertain sound, of their faith in immortal life. the latter was clearly an axiom with jesus, for he said to his disciples in effect, "if there had been any question about it i would have told you;" and almost with his last breath socrates compelled his disciples to think of him as immortal, for he told them that, though his body might be buried anywhere, he defied both friend and foe to catch his soul. socrates and jesus represent the belief of the world's greatest seers. the deep and abiding confidence of the teachers, who increasingly command our admiration as the years go by, is not to be entirely disregarded. we may care little what those tell us who walk by our sides in the dark valleys or on the dusty plains; but there are others who have climbed to the crests of the loftiest mountains, and who have looked into a world of which we have only dreamed. when they come down we listen because we know that they have had visions. even so it is in our intellectual life. a few men have risen above the common levels of humanity, as the alps above the plains of lombardy. they have spoken concerning what they have seen. they have had glimpses of god--the soul of the universe, and of the persistence of individuals in the realm that lies beyond the grave. i might not let my faith be determined by their testimony alone, but when what they say is confirmed by many other voices speaking in the soul, and sounding through the history of the world, it is easy to believe that they have spoken of things which have been revealed to them. another confirmation of our conviction of the reality of life after death may be stated as follows: it is not possible for us to think of the heroes and singers of the ages as having less endurance than the words which they have uttered and the deeds which they have performed. milton's and shakespeare's bodies have long been dead. the great dramatist has recorded a dire curse on any one who should move his bones. in the chancel of the church of the holy trinity at stratford-on-avon those bones are supposed to rest. but the plays that shakespeare wrote are still the wonder of the world, and the glory of the english race. is it possible to believe that the man was less enduring than his work? is it possible to believe that shakespeare's plays and milton's epic will exist, perhaps, for a thousand years, while the dramatist himself has utterly ceased to be? you open a neglected drawer of your desk and come suddenly upon a letter written by a friend of half a century ago; the paper is a little soiled, but as firm as ever; the ink is hardly faded; the words are all clearly formed and full of inspiration; and you hold that letter in your hand and ask yourself, "was the man who penned these lines less enduring than the paper on which he wrote, or than the ink with which he wrote?" such questions are not arguments, and yet they have the force of arguments. it is not possible in our better moments to feel that the great and good, by whom this world has been lifted to its present condition, have gone entirely into nothingness. it was said of our lord, "it was not possible that such a man should be holden of death." and it is not possible for us to believe, in our inmost souls, that those who become a part of our being, whose love is of more value to us than our own lives, whose memory is the dearest treasure that we possess, by some accident, a taint in the food or the water, can utterly pass from existence. if it were possible to believe that, then the most miserable creature on the earth would be man, for he would know of his greatness, and know also that his greatness is a mockery and a sham. in hours of doubt, let us lean hard upon the question, "is it possible that those with whom we have walked and worked, conversed and communed, and by whom we have been helped and blessed, should forever cease to be, while the houses in which they live, and the tools with which they labor, will endure for generations?" the soul is full of prophecies. only as there may be continuance of being can these prophecies have fulfillment. the feeling of dependence, the desires for friendship which are never satisfied, the powers of body and of mind which are capable of a development which they never receive on earth, are prophecies of a life beyond death. not the least among the reasons for our belief that death is not the end of the soul is the fact that the soul itself is a prophecy of its own immortality. it is always best to believe the best. this world and human life may be interpreted on the materialistic hypothesis; then matter is all and death is the gloomy _finale_ to the tragedy of existence. or they may be interpreted according to the spiritual hypothesis; then within the body dwells the spirit; then the latter is but a tenant of the former. if the house is destroyed the tenant goes elsewhere. if we interpret the world, and human life, according to the materialistic theory all the beauty and joy of existence on the earth will disappear. we will then live for a little time; and our loves, our disciplines, and our victories alike will be only delusions soon to be mercifully ended by death. possibly that is true; but, if it is true, then this universe is the embodiment of the most dismal, desolate, and diabolical thought that it is possible for a human being to conceive. on the spiritual hypothesis all experiences are intended for the perfection of the soul. bodily limitations, physical sufferings, animal solicitations, may all be used so as to promote the development and perfection of the spirit. when the body can do no more the soul will emerge purified and strengthened by contact with that which is physical. it will then move from the narrow quarters in which it has dwelt into some larger and fairer room in the great palace of god. once more, i confess, we cannot demonstrate the truth of this faith, but it is always best for ourselves and for the world to believe the best. with this faith human life is nobler, and human effort more persistent and enduring than it would be without it. at the end "the finished product" will be larger, and more perfect, if there is something to strive for than if hope is destroyed the moment that aspiration is born. i should be willing to rest my faith in immortality upon this one argument. a rational being should be satisfied only with a rational answer to his questions; a moral being should be satisfied only with a moral solution of his problems. this universe is neither rational nor moral if the soul ceases to be at the death of the body. on the other hand, if the soul passes into another and ampler sphere all the mysteries are explained, and there is meaning even in the darkest passages of human experience. all things work together for good to those who are willing to be led toward the higher things. these are some of the reasons, with which all thinking persons are familiar, for believing that the soul continues its growth after the body has been laid aside. evolution has opened a new vista in human thought. there had been vague suggestions of it before, but evolution has done much to confirm faith by its clear and strong testimony. it prophesies the eternal growth of the spirit. these prophecies are harmonious with those of the soul, and with the positive teachings of the christian revelation. this then is our conclusion:--in the process of time, in accordance with natural law, our bodies will be laid aside, some in one way and some in another, but the soul that has dwelt in these bodies will become free. in ways of which we know not, and of which it would be presumption to speak, its perfecting will be continued. what teachers will take it in hand then is beyond our knowledge; but we are confident that its individual existence will continue, that its perfection will be along moral and spiritual lines, that it will grow forever and forever in intelligence, in love, in the power of rational choice, and into harmony with him from whom it has come and whose glory will be its perfection. to believe less would be to refuse to listen to the voices which speak within and the voices which speak without,--it would be to believe in an irrational and immoral universe rather than a rational and moral one. our souls have a right to be heard, and their prophecies have in them an element of certainty. he who listens to the voices which speak within will never believe that the death of the body is the end of his personal being. the suggestion of a state of existence from which sin, sorrow, and death shall be forever absent, into which there shall enter nothing that maketh a lie, and where sacrificial love is the everlasting light, is the highest and most satisfying ideal for human life that has ever been spoken or imagined; and that which completely satisfies the heart cannot at the same time be repudiated by the intellect. let us, therefore, reverently confess that we believe in "the life everlasting." prayers for the dead thy voice is on the rolling air; i hear thee where the waters run; thou standest in the rising sun, and in the setting thou art fair. what art thou then? i cannot guess; but tho' i seem in star and flower to feel thee some diffusive power, i do not therefore love thee less: my love involves the love before; my love is vaster passion now; tho' mixed with god and nature thou, i seem to love thee more and more. far off thou art, but ever nigh; i have thee still, and i rejoice; i prosper, circled with thy voice; i shall not lose thee tho' i die. --_in memoriam._ tennyson. xi _prayers for the dead_ the wisest of men have little to guide them when they approach that mysterious realm from which no traveler has ever returned. with humility and the consciousness that we must, at the best, walk in the twilight, i take up one of the most mysterious and fascinating of themes. no one has any right to speak positively on such a subject, and i shall not do so. those who have the assurance of sight when they write about what lies beyond the grave are both to be envied and to be pitied,--envied because of their confidence, pitied because they may be self-deceived. let me make my exact purpose as plain as i can by an illustration. a dear friend, one with whom you have associated for years, enters the silent life. the morning following, as has long been your custom, you offer your prayers to the heavenly father, and, as usual, mention that friend by name. suddenly you stop and say to yourself, "i can no more offer that petition, for my friend is now beyond the need of my poor prayers." then, suddenly and swiftly, come the questions, although my friend is called dead is he any less alive than when he was in the body? will not all that constituted his personality continue to grow in the future as in the past? does the death of the body do anything more than change the mode of the spirit's existence? and the result is that you say to yourself, "i will continue to pray for my friend, for, if he is alive now, every reason which led to prayers before his death justifies their continuance." from more than one person i have heard words similar to these which i have put into this hypothetical form; and because of these expressions of sane and sacred experience i am led to ask my readers to follow me in the consideration of a subject which is seldom mentioned, except with incredulity, by most protestants. no one who may not appreciate the importance of this subject should be either troubled or heedless. we learn our lessons concerning the profounder mysteries simply by living. no one can be blamed for not appreciating what he is not yet, either intellectually or spiritually, ready to receive. providence takes good care of us. when we are prepared for the reception of any truth it usually finds us. this subject has been regarded with suspicion by two classes of thinkers: protestants who have revolted from the extent to which praying for the dead has been carried in the roman catholic church, and the much smaller number who hold what they delight in affirming is "the true theology," and who have insisted that when men die their state is irrevocably and forever fixed, the good going at once into the perfect bliss of heaven and the wicked into the suffering of hell. it will be more profitable for us to deal with the positive side of our subject than to attempt to clear away misconceptions and half truths. what is meant by prayers for the dead? exactly the same as prayers for those in the body. when the body dies the soul, or the essential man, is not touched by death. the personality is that which thinks, chooses, lives. your mother is not the form on which your eyes rested, or the arms which encircled you, but the thought, the devotion, the affection concealed, yet revealed, by the body, and which use it for their instrument. in reality we never saw our dearest friends; what we saw was color, form, but never the spirit. that is disclosed through the body, but is not identified with it. now just as we have prayed for a mother, or a child, or a friend whose physical form is familiar, but whose personality we have seen only in its revelations, so we continue to pray for that loved one which we do not see any more, or any less, after what is called death. in other words, instead of thinking of any as dead, we think of all as alive, although many of them are in the unseen sphere. love and sympathy have never been dependent on the body except for expression, and there is no evidence that they ever will be. sympathy and affection, thought and will, are matters of spirit; and why may not spirit feel for spirit and minister to spirit, when the body is laid aside? your hands, your feet, your lips did not pray for your child; your spirit prayed for his spirit, and now that his body is laid aside, like a worn-out garment, you may keep on doing just what you did before. this is what is meant by prayers for the dead. i am well aware that it may seem to some that these statements rest largely on assumptions, but they are not baseless assumptions. one other assumption must be made before we can proceed in our study, and that one is the truthfulness of the christian teaching that death is not cessation of being, but only the decay of the bodily organism. how may prayers for the dead be justified? are they taught as a duty in the scriptures? the privilege rests not so much on particular exhortations as upon the whole christian teaching concerning immortality. god is the god of the living. bishop pearson in his exposition of the apostles' creed has an impressive passage, which i quote: "the communion of saints in the church of christ with those who are departed is demonstrated by their communion with the saints alive. for if i have a communion with a saint of god, as such, while he liveth here, i must still have communion with him when he is departed hence; because the foundation of that communion cannot be removed by death. the mystical union between christ and his church ... is the true foundation of that communion.... but death, which is nothing else but the separation of the soul from the body, maketh no separation in the mystical union, no breach of the spiritual conjunction, and consequently there must be the same communion, because there remaineth the same foundation."[ ] [footnote : quoted in welldon's "hope of immortality," page .] jesus taught that death is but a change of the form of existence. on the mount of transfiguration moses and elijah appeared alive, and as interested in human affairs. if death is not cessation of being, but only a change in the form of its manifestation, why should we think that human sympathy ends when breathing ceases, and why should we conclude that mutual service may be rendered impossible by "a snake's bite or a falling tile." tennyson in "in memoriam" gives the christian doctrine exquisite expression, "eternal form shall still divide the eternal soul from all beside; and i shall know him when we meet." jesus teaches the reality of immortality he represents those gone from us as not dead but as still living and still interested in human affairs. if his teaching is true, is it not as reasonable to try to serve those of our loved ones who are out of the body as those who are in the body? so far as we can see, the only way in which we can serve them is by prayer, although they may, possibly, minister to us in other ways. if immortal existence means the possibility of unceasing growth, then every reason which prompts prayer for those who are bodily present remains a motive when they have entered the state which is purely spiritual. but what efficacy will prayers for the dead have? my answer is two-fold. all the efficacy that prayer ever has. if death is relative only to a single state of existence, and if those whom we call dead are living, and still free agents, then they may still choose good and evil, and they may still grow toward virtue. choice always implies a possibility of freedom; and freedom is a necessity when there is moral responsibility. if prayer helps any one, why not those who have passed from our sight? surely we must believe them still to possess the power of choice and, therefore, that of choosing evil as well as good. you ask why pray at all. my answer is simple and free from all attempts at casuistry: simply because we must. prayer is not so much a christian doctrine as a human necessity. it is as natural as breathing. by prayer i mean not only spoken petitions but, equally, the longing and pleading of the soul, either blindly or intelligently, for things which are beyond our reach, and which only a higher power can provide. those longings may have formal expression, and they may not. prayer so far as it is petition is the soul pleading with the unseen for what it deeply desires. i do not suppose that god needs light from any mortal man, but all men do need many things from him, and, as naturally as children present their desires to earthly parents, even though they know them to be already favorable, we go with our deeper needs to our heavenly father. much time has been wasted in trying to formulate a rational basis for prayer. when a child in the smaller family no longer asks his father to accede to his wishes, when he no more pleads with his father for his brother or his sister, then it will be time enough to inquire if, in the larger family which we call humanity, we may do without prayer. until then let us believe, "more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of." leaving now the apologetic side of the subject, which is alluring, we observe one evident blessing which always attends praying for the dead. it keeps ever before our minds the thought that they are actually alive. it makes the doctrine of the communion of saints a sacred reality. if i may in this essay be allowed to assume a hortatory tone i will say, if you have been in the habit of praying for your friend, do not give it up simply because he has ceased to breathe. as regularly as ever continue to pray for him, and he will be to you more than a memory. what would have been but an occasional remembrance will then be a daily communion; and what would have been only formal praying to god will be an hour, or a moment, of association with those who will grow nearer and dearer, and not farther and vaguer, with the passing years. the hour of devotion will thus be hallowed, because it will be a holy tryst with absent friends, as well as a time for making our requests known to our heavenly father. who can exaggerate the delight and benefit of such an exercise? what sources of strength are to be found in spiritual association with our beloved! if we are thus helped why should we presume that they may not also, by such sweet hours, be strengthened for their duties? i know this may seem fanciful. i ask no one to follow me who is not ready to do so. i do not speak dogmatically, but with great earnestness, when i say that prayer for our beloved after they are gone is a privilege and a help--i would fain believe both to them and to us. but it may be objected that the moral state of men is fixed at death, and that nothing that we or they can do can influence it by a hair's breadth. that this has been a popular opinion is true; and it is equally true that many have supposed that all who have had faith on the earth are in bliss; and that all who have been without faith are in misery; and that the beatitude of all the good is equal and alike, and that the misery of all unbelievers is the same. such inferences, though held by many for whose scholarship and character i have profound reverence, seem to me to be contrary to scripture, to the analogies of nature, and to the moral sense. such a theory is contrary to christian scriptures; for the parable of the talents shows that some will have greater and some lesser reward; and the parable of dives and lazarus has relation only to hades, or to the state which in the thought of that time intervened between death and the judgment. this theory is contrary to the analogies of life on earth. here change indicates not a finality but a new opportunity. every crisis of life is an opening into a newer and larger world. why should we say that what we call death, alone of all the changes through which we pass, leads to that which is unchangeable? the theory is contrary to the moral sense of all earnest souls. who does not have to compel himself to believe, and that with difficulty, that death determines forever the fate of all, and that there is neither possibility of progress nor of going backward after the body is laid aside? let me quote a noble passage from bishop welldon: "but if a variety of destinies in the unseen world, whether of happiness or of suffering, is reserved for mankind, and yet more, if the principle of that world is not inactivity but energy or character or life, it is reasonable to believe that the souls which enter upon the future state with the taint of sin clinging to them, in whatever form or degree, will be slowly cleansed by a disciplinary or purifactory process from whatever it is that, being evil in itself, necessarily obstructs or obscures the vision of god." he continues, "and this is the benediction of human nature, to feel that, as souls upon earth are fortified and elevated by the prayers offered for them in the unseen world, so too by our prayers may the souls which have passed behind the veil be lifted higher and higher into the knowledge and contemplation and fruition of god."[ ] [footnote : the hope of immortality, page .] we do not know that death forever determines the condition of the soul. on the other hand, as i grow older, the idea seems to me to be opposed to scripture, to the analogies of nature and history, to reason, and to the universal moral sense. if any one should object to prayers for the dead because the privilege and duty seem so distinctively a doctrine of the roman catholic church, my only reply is that we should never ask who are the advocates of any teaching, but, only, is it true? each branch of the church emphasizes some phase of truth. the roman church has given more prominence to prayers for the dead than protestants, and because of that it will have the gratitude of many honest souls who cannot believe that they are entirely and forever severed from those whom they have loved and still love. i am well aware that there are many difficult questions concerning this subject which it is impossible for me to answer. some truths are clearly revealed and of others we have only glimpses. concerning some we feel more than we know, and feelings which are not selfish are prophetic. what an earnest and inquiring spirit feels must be true is quite as likely to be found true as conclusions which seem to have been reached by a process of faultless logic. i fully believe that we are justified in praying for those who have departed this life, that the good may grow better, that the clouds which obscure the vision of the unbelieving may be removed, that all taints of animalism may be washed away; and that we should pray even for the wicked, that the disciplinary processes through which they are passing may some time and somehow lead them to submit their wills to the love and truth of god. we may pray for our loved ones, not simply by way of asking something for them, but in order that there may be a meeting place,--a time for communion and fellowship between those here and those beyond the veil. that meeting place must be found in our common approach to god. does this teaching seem mystical and fanciful? what if it does? it is in line with the human heart's deepest desires, and with the soul's immortal aspirations. what they most earnestly affirm in their hours of deepest need, and highest illumination, cannot be altogether without foundation in reason and in the scriptures. the unity of life cannot be too strongly emphasized. life is one. it is all under the eye and in the strength of god. it has to do with spirit; death, if there is any such thing, has to do with matter. spirits always grow because they always live. the universe is not composed of two hemispheres, in the upper one of which are to be gathered all the good and in the lower all the evil. it is saner and better to believe that the universe is a sphere in which, in their own places, are all the spirits of men, some beautiful with the holiness of god; some only beginning to rise toward him, like seed that has broken the soil and begun to move toward the light; and still others like seed whose possibilities are all hidden, but which are not destroyed and which some day also will hear the divine call, feel the touch of god's light, and begin to move toward him. we live in the midst of mystery. in the future we shall probably find that our best attempts at rational answers to many questions have gone wide of the mark. the most that any of us can do is to be true to ourselves, and to respond to every call from above. in the midst of the gloom of mortal existence it is safe to follow our hearts. we long to commune with those who have gone, to help them and to be helped by them. this longing is natural and rational. that it is not without reason is proved by the example of our master, who, after his death, is represented as ministering to those whom he loved, and who, we are told, ever liveth to make intercession for us. what our hearts desire, what harmonizes with reason, what is confirmed by the revelations and example of our divine teacher, will persuade none far from the path which leads to light and felicity. those whom men call dead, it is best to believe, have but entered upon another phase of the eternal life of the spirit. the roman church has an act or service called "the culture of the dead." it means the "practice of the presence" of those who, though gone from us, in spirit are with us. the creed has an article which reads, "i believe in the communion of saints." the christian year has one day called "all saints' day." we shall not be far from the traditions of the church when we pray for our beloved, whether they be in the body or out of the body. those who would realize the beatitude of this privilege should remember the truth in this stanza from "in memoriam:" "how pure at heart and sound in head, with what divine affections bold, should be the man whose thought would hold an hour's communion with the dead." the goal but thee, but thee, o sovereign seer of time, but thee, o poet's poet, wisdom's tongue, but thee, o man's best man, o love's best love, o perfect life in perfect labor writ, o all men's comrade, servant, king, or priest,-- what _if_ or _yet_, what mole, what flaw, what lapse, what least defect or shadow of defect, what rumor, tattled by an enemy, of inference loose, what lack of grace even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's,-- oh, what amiss may i forgive in thee, jesus, good paragon, thou crystal christ? --_the crystal._ sidney lanier. xii _the goal_ if the cosmic process in the physical sphere culminated with the appearance of man, and if, since that culmination, its movement has been toward the perfection of the soul, it is fit and proper that this book should end with a study of the goal toward which the human spirit is pressing. is it possible for us, with our limitations, to have an adequate conception of the man that is to be "when the times are ripe" and the "crowning race" walks this earth of ours?--or, if not this earth, at least, dwells in the spiritual city? the fascination of this subject has been widely recognized. the answer must be secured from many sources. only in imagination can we follow the lines along which the spirit will move in the far-off ages, and yet our conclusions will not be wholly imaginative, for the direction in which those lines are tending is clearly perceived. under the circumstances, therefore, imagination may not be an untrustworthy guide. we are now to deal with prophecies, some of them easy and some of them difficult to read. but reading prophecies is not prophesying. i shall not prophesy, but rather endeavor to understand and to interpret a few of the many voices which have spoken, and are speaking, on this subject. the soul is itself a prediction of what it is to be. it utters a various language. the growth of intelligence is prophetic. savage tribes suggest the original condition of primitive man. the pigmies in africa afford hints of adam and eve, cain and abel. from such as they, and from lower types still, the race has slowly and painfully risen. in them a certain rude intelligence appears. they have cunning rather than reason. they are half akin to brute and half akin to man. a kind of selfish intelligence characterizes their thinking. they lack a sense of proportion and relation. before the ant a man looms as large as a mountain before us. an insect does not see things as they are but as they seem to it. growth in intelligence necessitates a truer appreciation of proportions and relations. the pigmy also sees little but himself, but years and experience leave behind them wisdom. the civilized races have all risen from barbarism and savagery--that is, from a state of imperfect thinking as well as of imperfect loving and choosing. experience and culture bring larger knowledge and a more equable balance of the faculties. no man should be measured by his achievement in any one field of endeavor. he may paint like titian and be as voluptuous; he may write tragedies like shakespeare and have no logic; he may be a gatherer of facts like darwin and have no power of philosophic analysis. the intellect grows steadily toward perfection of vision and logical strength, and also and quite as significantly, toward harmony in the development of all the powers of thought. the contrast between the selfish cunning of an african pigmy and the large and noble minds which are steadily multiplying, is a prophecy of the man who will dwell on this earth when the vision is clear and the power of rational judgment is perfected. the prophecy of the soul is not less evident in the emotional nature. at first the soul is either so imperfect, or so limited by the body, that it seems to be nothing but a creature of emotions. it loves, but its affections are selfish and egotistic. what may be called the epochs in its growth are finely treated by coleridge in "the ancient mariner" and by tennyson in "in memoriam." the ancient mariner felt only selfish affection. he had no love for "being as being." he killed the albatross with as little heed as he disregarded his fellow-men; but the ministries of his misery were multiplied until, at length, he was able to see something beautiful even in the writhing green sea-serpents that followed the ship of death on which he sailed. that was the first sign of the larger interest which had long been growing within him, and which was to continue to grow until he could say, "he prayeth best who loveth best all things both great and small." "in memoriam" is the record of the expansion of a soul through its increase in love. at the beginning of his grief the poet sings, dolefully and hopelessly, through his tears, "he is not here; but far away the noise of life begins again, and ghastly thro' the drizzling rain on the bald street breaks the blank day." but the soul is growing secretly and surely as wheat grows in winter. the christmas bells ring out their music and at first are almost hated, but they break through the shell of sorrow and let in a faint echo of the world's great suffering and the world's great joy. thus human sympathy is enlarged just a bit. in successive years the music of the christmas bells is heard more distinctly, the sorrow of the world becomes more audible, sympathy reaches farther. at last the poem which began with a _miserere_ ends with a marriage, and he who could at first write that dreary line, "on the bald street breaks the blank day" testifies to the beneficence of the path in which he had been led in this wise and beautiful stanza, "regret is dead, but love is more than in the summers that have flown, for i myself with these have grown to something greater than before." from dwelling in a prison with grief as a jailer he has caught a vision of the, "one far off divine event to which the whole creation moves." this expansion of the soul is not difficult to follow. traces of it may be seen in the enlarged sympathy, the growing brotherhood, and in the rapidly increasing conviction that even nationalities are only temporary expedients for bringing the day when love shall be the universal law. the charities and philanthropies which are blossoming in every city and country district, the consciousness of responsibility for the poor and weak, the angel songs which are heard in the midst of battle, and the gradual disappearance of war, are all vague but true prophecies of what the soul will be when love is perfected. the knowledge of past progress is an inspiration, and the imagination of what will be a glorious hope. a single clause in the apocalypse has long seemed to me as fine a statement of the condition which will prevail, when this prophecy is a reality, as could be phrased,--"the lamb is the light thereof." light is the medium in which objects are visible, and the lamb is the symbol of sacrificial love. the great dreamer, in his vision, beheld a time when spirits would see in sacrificial love as now we see physical objects in the medium of light. to those who have studied the expansion of individual souls, and who then have contrasted the selfishness of earlier social conditions with the love of men as it is revealed in the laws, institutions, ministries of to-day, this dream of the apostle rises in the distance as a new continent to a voyager over the wide and desolate ocean. equally prophetic is the advance which has been made from the passion of savage barbarism, or infantile wilfulness, to the moral reason of the present day as seen in the highest types of humanity in civilized lands. wilfulness characterizes the childish nature and passion the savage nature. but with the growth of the soul choices are differentiated from impulses, and more and more regularly are inspired by intelligence and unselfish affection. this progress toward intelligent and unselfish choice distinguishes the movement toward civilization. here, again, the advance made by the individual soul and by the race are equally prophetic. with the years the choices become more rational and loving. time mellows all men somewhat, and forces a little wisdom into the hardest heads. even slight growth prophesies that which shall be swifter when conditions are more favorable. the soul is a prediction of clearer vision, truer thought, more unselfish love and wiser choices. it is a prophecy of the perfect man. history is also prophetic of larger souls. the stream of human history, after it has been followed backward a few thousand years, leads into the region of legend and myth--that is, to a time when history could not be written because there was no writing, and when all truth was conveyed in symbolical forms. that means toward a time of narrow experience, and of knowledge far more limited than the present. memory, in those days, was enormously and abnormally capacious and retentive, but there was no appreciation of humanity. few lessons from the experiences of others were possible, because the mind was filled with merely tribal legends. what was called early civilization was only relatively splendid. there was unsurpassed poetry but no science, ample brawn but diminutive brain, much passion but little love. out of the darkness of the past the stream of history, very narrow and shallow at first, has emerged and steadily expanded and deepened. men are now equally intense but far clearer in vision, nobler in purpose, and purer in character. their laws year by year have become more humane, their sympathies less contracted, their institutions more civilized. nature's secret drawers have been unlocked. we are sometimes told that science has added much to the store of man's knowledge but nothing to the strength of his mind or the nobility of his character. that is a serious mistake. with the enlarged visions of the universe, with clearer conceptions of our cosmic relations, with the national neighborliness which is now a necessity, the capacity and the quality of the soul must change. nay, it has already changed, for we inhabit the same lands over which savages formerly roamed, and we find in the earth and air what they never found; and when we look up into the great wide sky and say, "the heavens declare the glory of god," we are not thinking of a tribal deity, or a partial, and more or less passionate, monarch enthroned in the midst of his splendors, but of the king eternal, immortal, invisible. knowledge tends to enlarge the mind by which it is acquired. all faculties are strengthened by use. history has moved along a bloody pathway, or, to revert to the figure of a stream, is indeed a river of "tears and blood." the horrors of the process by which the race has been lifted can hardly be exaggerated. i do not forget them while i put stronger emphasis on the fact that the outcome of all the struggle of individuals, the conflict of classes, and the wars of nations has been a nobler and purer quality of soul,--not less heroic but more sacrificial, not less strong but far more virtuous. the growth of the individual soul is mirrored in the progress of the race. when we have learned to read aright the history of the world, we are informed as to the interior forces which have made civilization. events are expressions of thoughts; institutions are manifestations of soul. if there has been progress in institutions there must have been an equal progress in the souls which are the real forces by which progress is always won. as history has been the evolution of humanity toward finer forms, so it is the assurance that the forces which have been at work in the past will not cease, but steadily continue until "the pile is complete." the perfect society will be composed of perfected individuals. history as prophecy is harmonious with soul as prophecy. the future state of the soul has been the subject of rare fascination for the world's great thinkers. nearly all religions have a forward look. "the golden age" lies far in the distance, but it has commanded the faith of all the seers. it has sometimes been a dream concerning individuals, and again a vision of the perfected society, but in reality the two are one, for the social organism is but a congeries of individuals. bacon dreamed of new atlantis, sir thomas more saw the fair walls of utopia rising in the future, plato defined the boundaries of the ideal republic, augustine wrote of the glories of the _civitate dei_, and tennyson with matchless music has sung of the crowning race:-- "ring out old shapes of foul disease; ring out the narrowing lust of gold; ring out the thousand wars of old, ring in the thousand years of peace. ring in the valiant man and free, the larger heart, the kindlier hand; ring out the darkness of the land, ring in the christ that is to be." the common characteristic of these social ideals is their dependence on the culture of individuals. with the incoming of "the valiant man and free," the man of "larger heart and kindlier hand," there is a reasonable hope that the darkness of the land will disappear. with that deep look into the inmost secrets of human experience which sounds strangely autobiographical, browning wrote in "rabbi ben ezra," "praise be thine! i see the whole design, i, who saw power, see love now perfect too; perfect i call thy plan; thanks that i was a man! maker, remake, complete,--i trust what thou shalt do!" "therefore i summon age to grant youth's heritage, life's struggle having so far reached its term; thence shall i pass, approved a man, for aye removed from the developed brute; a god though in the germ." those last lines condense browning's creed concerning man. he is "for aye removed from the developed brute," and is "a god in the germ." browning holds that while in the future there will surely be expansion of soul, evolution as a physical process is at an end. henceforward there will be no passing from one species to another. species have to do with physical organisms, not with spirits. soul in man is but god "in the germ." emerson and matthew arnold have written much about education. the one foretells a day when the soul, after mounting and meliorating, finds that even the hells are turned into benefit; and the other makes his own the thought of bishop wilson that culture is a study of perfection, and that the soul must ever seek increased life, increased light, and increased power. education is the word of the hour and of the century. it is believed to be the panacea for all ills, individual and social. but, precisely, what does this passion for education signify if not that, either intelligently or otherwise, all believe in the perfectibility of the soul, and that it will have all the time that it needs for the process. the absorbing devotion to intellectual training suggests the inquiry as to whether many who affirm that they are agnostic concerning immortality are not in reality earnest in their faith; for why should they seek the culture of that which fades, as the flowers fade; when it approaches life's winter? but, whether faith in continuance of being is firm or frail, few doubt the perfectibility of spirit, because, beyond almost all things, they are seeking its perfection. literature, which is but the thoughts of the great souls of successive periods recorded, prophesies a day when all that hinders or taints shall be done away, and when the divine in the germ shall have grown to large and fair proportions. if there were no other light the outlook would still be inspiring. it is well sometimes to ask ourselves what we were made to be--not these bodies which are clearly decaying--but these spirits which seem to grow younger with the passage of time. i have sometimes thought that the very idea of second childhood is itself a prophecy of the soul's eternal youth. certain it is that we are the masters of the years. the oldest persons that we know are usually the youngest in their sympathies and ideals. sorrow and opposition should not destroy, but only strengthen the spiritual powers. intelligence grows from more to more. the sure reward of love is the capacity and opportunity for larger love. virtuous choices gradually become the law of liberty. these facts are index fingers pointing toward large and loving, strenuous and sympathetic manhood. and toward such human types, as a matter of fact, the race has been moving. the expectation of the seers and prophets, also, has been of a golden age in which all souls will have had time, and opportunity, of reaching the far-off but splendid goal. believing, as we do, that death is never a finality, but that it is only an incident in progress; that instead of being an end it is only freedom from limitation, we find ourselves often vaguely, but ever eagerly, asking, to what are all these souls tending? toward a state glorious beyond language to utter we deeply feel. but has no clearer voice spoken? at last we have reached the end of our inquiry. if any other voices speak they must sound from above. we stand by the unseen like children by the ocean's shore. they know that beyond the storms and waves lie fair and wealthy lands, but the waters separate and their eyes are weak. so we stand before the future, and ask, toward what goal are all this education, experience and discipline tending? are they perfecting souls which at last are to be laid away with the bodies which were fortunate enough to win an earlier death? it would be impiety to believe that. then indeed should we be put to "permanent intellectual confusion." if all the voices of the soul are mockeries, then life is worse than a mistake--it is a crime. the solution of the mystery is now before us. the man that is to be has walked this earth, and wrought with human hands, and lived and labored and loved, and passed into the silent land. is jesus the unique revelation of the divine? there may be many to question that, but there are few, indeed, who doubt that he embodied all of the perfect humanity which could be expressed within the limitations of the body. he represented himself as essential truth and very life. he condensed duty into such love as he manifested toward men. he embodied the heroism of meekness, the courage of self-sacrifice, the vision of goodness. he was an example of all that is strong, serene, sacrificial, in the midst of the lowest and most unresponsive conditions. so much we see, and the rest we dimly, but surely, feel. it was reserved for paul, in a moment of inspiration, to put into a single phrase a description of the goal of the human spirit, as something which may be forever approached but never reached, in these words, "till we all attain unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of christ." the fullness of christ! that is the soul's final destiny. it was the far call of that goal which it faintly heard at its first awakening and which has never entirely ceased to sound in his ears. who shall explore the contents of that great phrase? it is a subject for meditation, for prayer, but never for discussion. he who approaches it in a controversial spirit never understands it. what are the qualities of the character of christ? some of them lie on the surface of the story. he never doubted god, or, if so, but for a single moment; he was unselfish; he lived to love and to express love; he had some mysterious preternatural power over nature--such, perhaps, as science is approaching in later times; kindness, sympathy, helpfulness, purity, shone from his words and actions. he declared that the privilege of dying to save those who despised him was a joy. he lived in the limitations of the human condition and, therefore, on the earth only hints of "his fullness" are discernible. the full revelation is to be the endless study of those who are able to see and to appreciate things as they are. but we may ask ourselves whither these lines tend. when the intelligence, the love, the compassion, the mercy, the purity, the moral power and spiritual grandeur which only in dim outline are revealed in the christ, have perfect manifestations, what will the vision be? the very thought transcends the farthest flights of the poet's imagination and the most daring speculations of philosophers. in "the fullness of christ" is the soul's true goal. for that all men, and not the elect few, were created. that is the revelation of the divine plan for humanity. toward that evolution has been slowly, and often painfully, pressing from those dim æons when the earth was without form and void. when man appeared as the flower of all the cosmic process he started at once toward this goal. and with great modesty, and simply because i believe in god and that his love cannot be defeated, i dare to hope that, sometime and somehow, after all the pains of retribution and moral discipline have done their inevitable work, after all the fires of gehenna have consumed the desire to sin, after hades and purgatory have been passed, the souls which, for a time, have dwelt in these mortal bodies, purified and without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, will be given the beatific vision and permitted to realize the height and depth, the length and breadth of "the fullness of christ." "that one face, far from vanish, rather grows, or decomposes but to recompose, become my universe that feels and knows." index achilles, . actæon, . adam's fall, . adjustment to environment, , . adjustment to knowledge of freedom, . Æschylus, . ambrose, . ancient mariner, . angelo, michael, , . animal entail, . arnold, matthew, , , , . atmosphere in nurture, . attraction vs. compulsion, . augustine, , , , , , . austere experiences, . awakening vs. re-awakening, . bacon, lord, . bernard, st., . books, the most vital, . browning, robert, , , , , , , . browning, mrs. e.b., . byron, lord, . bunyan, john, . bushnell, horace, . buxton, sir thomas fowell, . cenci, beatrice, . chatterton, . circe, . comforter, the, . companionship, spiritual, . comus, , . conscience, , . conversion, . creationism, . crisis in ascent of the soul, . cross, the revelation of divine sacrifice, . culture, . culture, a study of perfection, . culture and life, . cultured man, the, . dante, . death, light on, . death of the body, . diana, . donatello, . dubois-reymond, . edinburgh, incident in, . education, prophecy of soul's growth, . emerson, , , . emanation, . environment, influence of, . environment, of what composed, . epictetus, . evolution and immortality, . experience, individual, . expiation, . falconer, robert, . faust, , , . fetish worship, . fiske, john, . fliedner, pastor, . freedom, realization of, . galahad, sir, . garrison, william lloyd, . god, rational doctrine of, . god revealed in christ, . god cannot be defeated, . goethe, . golden age, . grace, falling from, impossible, . grail, the holy, . growth a means of knowledge, . guardian angels, , . guinevere, , , . hale, nathan, . hamlet, . hannibal, . hawthorne, nathaniel, , . helps in trial, . heredity, . heroism in silence, . hesperus, . hindu swami, . hindu mother, . hindrances, ministry of, . history, prophetic, . hope for all, . hugo, victor, , . hunt, holman, light of the world, . ideals, influence of, . ideal man seen in jesus christ, . idylls of the king, . immortality, ode to, wordsworth, . immortality in the new testament, . immortality in the ethnic religions, . immortality, belief in, innate, . immortality, belief in, universal, . immortality, unbelief in, irrational, . immortality and the great teachers, . inequalities in human condition, . in memoriam and growth of the soul, . intelligence, growth in, prophetic, . isaiah, . jesus the soul's goal, . jesus the supreme optimist, . judson, adoniram, . kaiserwerth, . lanier, sidney, . learning by experience should be unnecessary, . life the best teacher, . life, unity of, . life's mystery illumined, . light of the world, hunt's, . luther, martin, . macbeth, . macdonald, george, . mahomet, . malthus, . man, light on his nature, . manhood, the ideal, . marble faun, . marseillaise, the, . matthewson, dr. geo., . marguerite, . melchizedek, . milton, john, , , , . moral order, . morally excellent, the, how discern, . moral failure, , . moral evil inexplicable, . more, sir thomas, . napoleon, . nelson, lord, . new college, oxford, . newton, sir isaac, . ney, marshal, . nightingale, florence, . nurture, . nurture, part of parents in, . nurture, vitally important, , . optimism, . optimism, rational basis of, . over-soul, , . ovid, metamorphoses, . parents' duty to children, . pascal, . paul, . pearson, bishop, . personality, , . pigmies, . pilgrim's progress, . plato, . plan of salvation, . poe, edgar a., . prayer, . prayers for the dead, objections, . prayers for the dead, definition, . prayers for the dead, how justified, . preëxistence, . prodigal son, , . prometheus, . prophecy, . protestants and doctrine of prayers for the dead, . rabbi ben ezra, . re-awakening of the soul, . re-awakening vs. awakening, . responsibility, . resurrection of christ, . reynolds, sir joshua, . ring and the book, . roman church and prayers for the dead, . sakya muni, . santiago, . satisfaction, . saul, browning's, . scarlet letter, the, . self-realization, . shakespeare, , , . shelley, , . siddhartha, . sin always evil, . sin a reality, . sin, mystery of, . socrates, , , , . sophocles, . soul, solitary, . souls in society, . soul, what awakens, . soul, definition, . soul, origin, . soul, limited by body, . soul, full of prophecies, . spartans, . spirit evidence of being of god, . spiritual protection, . spirits attract spirits, . spirit, the eternal, . spitta, karl j.p., . subconscious action, . sympathy, definition, . sympathy, results from severe experience, . suffering no mistake, . suffering made endurable, . temptations of saints, . tennyson, , , , , . thoughts important in character, . training an element in nurture, . transfiguration of christ, . truth, search for, . truth finds those prepared for it, . ulysses, . universe, moral, . universe, the idea of, . utopia, . vedas, hymns of, . warning voices, . watch on the rhine, . welldon, , , . whittier, john g., . wilberforce, william, , . wilson, bishop, , . wingfold, thomas, . wordsworth, , , , . the soul stealer by c. ranger-gull author of "the serf," "the harvest of love," "the price of pity," "a story of the stage," etc., etc. london f. v. white & co., limited , bedford street, strand, w.c. richard clay & sons, limited bread street hill, e.c., and bungay, suffolk. contents chap. page i. mr. eustace charliewood, man about town ii. unexpected entrance of two ladies iii. news of a revolution iv. the second lover arrives v. a conspiracy of scientists vi. "will you walk into my parlour?" vii. england's great sensation viii. the chivalrous baronet ix. gratitude of miss marjorie poole x. a man about town pays a debt xi. beef tea and a phosphate solution xii. the tomb-bound man xiii. lord malvin xiv. donald megbie sees possibilities xv. hail to the lovers! xvi. strange occurrence in the temple xvii. marjorie and donald megbie xviii. plans xix. a death-warrant is presented to a prisoner xx. thoughts of one in durance xxi. how they all went to the house in regent's park xxii. the doom begins xxiii. the doom continues xxiv. mr. wilson guest makes a mistake xxv. at last! xxvi. two final pictures the soul stealer chapter i mr. eustace charliewood, man about town upon a brilliant morning in the height of the winter, mr. eustace charliewood walked slowly up bond street. the sun was shining brightly, and there was a keen, invigorating snap in the air which sent the well-dressed people who were beginning to throng the pavements, walking briskly and cheerily. the great shops of one of the richest thoroughfares in the world were brilliant with luxuries, the tall commissionaires who stood by the heavy glass doors were continually opening them for the entrance of fashionable women. it was, in short, a typical winter's morning in bond street when everything seemed gay, sumptuous and debonair. mr. eustace charliewood was greeted several times by various friends as he walked slowly up the street. but his manner in reply was rather languid, and his clean-shaven cheeks lacked the colour that the eager air had given to most of the pedestrians. he was a tall, well-built man, with light close-cropped hair and a large intelligent face. his eyes were light blue in colour, not very direct in expression, and were beginning to be surrounded by the fine wrinkles that middle age and a life of pleasure imprint. the nose was aquiline, the mouth clean cut and rather full. in age one would have put mr. charliewood down as four and forty, in status a man accustomed to move in good society, though probably more frequently the society of the club than that of the drawing-room. when he was nearly at the mouth of new bond street, mr. charliewood stopped at a small and expensive-looking hairdresser's and perfumer's, passed through its revolving glass doors and bowed to a stately young lady with wonderfully-arranged coils of shining hair, who sat behind a little glass counter covered with cut-glass bottles of scent and ivory manicure sets. "good-morning, miss carling," he said easily and in a pleasant voice. "is proctor disengaged?" "yes, mr. charliewood," the girl answered, "he's quite ready for you if you'll go up-stairs." "quite well, my dear?" mr. charliewood said, with his hand upon the door which led inwards to the toilette saloons. "perfectly, thank you, mr. charliewood. but you're looking a little seedy this morning." he made a gesture with his glove which he had just taken off. "ah well," he said, "very late last night, miss carling. it's the price one has to pay, you know! but proctor will soon put me right." "hope so, i'm sure," she answered, wagging a slim finger at him. "oh, you men about town!" he smiled back at her, entered the saloon and mounted some thickly carpeted stairs upon the left. at the top of the stairs a glass door opened into a little ante-room, furnished with a few arm-chairs and small tables on which _punch_ and other journals were lying. beyond, another door stood half open, and at the noise of mr. charliewood's entrance a short, clean-shaved, jewish-looking man came through it and began to help the visitor out of his dark-blue overcoat lined and trimmed with astrachan fur. together the two men went into the inner room, where mr. charliewood took off his coat and collar and sat down upon a padded chair in front of a marble basin and a long mirror. he saw himself in the glass, a handsome, tired face, the hair too light to show the greyness at the temples, but hinting at that and growing a little thin upon the top. the whole face, distinguished as it was, bore an impress of weariness and dissipation, the face of a man who lived for material enjoyment, and did so without cessation. as he looked at his face, bearing undeniable marks of a late sitting the night before, he smiled to think that in an hour or so he would be turned out very different in appearance by the jewish-looking man in the frock coat who now began to busy himself with certain apparatus. the up-stairs room at proctor's toilette club was a select haunt of many young-middle aged men about town. the new american invention known as "vibro massage" was in use there, and proctor reaped a large harvest by "freshening up" gentlemen who were living not wisely but too well, incidentally performing many other services for his clients. the masseur pushed a wheeled pedestal up to the side of the chair, the top of which was a large octagonal box of mahogany. upon the side were various electric switches, and from the centre of the box a thick silk-covered wire terminated in a gleaming apparatus of vulcanite and steel which the operator held in his hand. proctor tucked a towel round his client's neck, rubbed some sweet-smelling cream all over his face and turned a switch in the side of the pedestal. immediately an electric motor began to purr inside, like a great cat, and the masseur brought the machine in his right hand, which looked not unlike a telephone receiver, down upon the skin of the subject's face. what was happening was just this. a little vulcanite hammer at the end of the machine was vibrating some six thousand times a minute and pounding and kneading the flesh, so swiftly and silently that charliewood felt nothing more than a faint thrill as the hammer was guided skilfully over the pouches beneath the eyes, and beat out the flabbiness from the cheeks. after some five minutes, proctor switched off the motor and began to screw a larger and differently-shaped vulcanite instrument to the end of the hand apparatus. mr. charliewood lay back, in a moment of intense physical ease. by means of the electrodes the recruiting force had vibrated gently through the nerves. new animation had come into the blood and tissues of the tired face, and already that sensation of youthful buoyancy, which is the surest indication of good health, was returning to his dissipated mask. "now then, sir," said proctor, "i've screwed on a saddle-shaped electrode, and i'll go up and down the spine, if you please; kindly stand up." once more the motor hummed, and mr. charliewood felt an indescribable thrill of pleasure as the operator applied straight and angular strokes of the rapidly vibrating instrument up and down his broad back, impinging upon the central nerve system of the body and filling him with vigour. "by jove, proctor," he said, when the operation was over at last, and the man was brushing his hair and spraying bay rum upon his face--"by jove, this is one of the best things i've ever struck! in the old days one had to have a small bottle of pol roger about half-past eleven if one had been sitting up late at cards the night before. beastly bad for the liver it was. but i never come out of this room without feeling absolutely fit." "ah, sir," said mr. proctor, "it's astonishing what the treatment can do, and it's astonishing what a lot of gentlemen come to me every day at all hours. my appointment book is simply filled, sir, filled! and no gentleman need be afraid now of doing exactly as he likes, till what hour he likes, as long as he is prepared to come to me to put him right in the morning." after making an appointment for two days ahead, mr. charliewood passed out into the ante-room once more. during the time while he had been massaged another client had entered and was waiting there, lounging upon a sofa and smoking a cigarette. he was a tall, youngish looking man, of about the same height and build as mr. charliewood, clean-shaved, and with dark red hair. he looked up languidly as proctor helped charliewood into his fur coat. the first arrival hardly noticed him, but bade the masseur a good-day, and went out jauntily into bond street with a nod and a smile for the pretty girl who sat behind the counter of the shop. it was a different person who walked down bond street towards piccadilly--a mr. charliewood who looked younger in some indefinite way, who walked with sprightliness, and over whose lips played a slight and satisfied smile. it was not far down bond street--now more bright and animated than ever--to mr. charliewood's club in st. james's street, a small but well-known establishment which had the reputation of being more select than it really was. swinging his neatly-rolled umbrella and humming a tune to himself under his breath, he ran up the steps and entered. a waiter helped him off with his overcoat, and he turned into the smoking-room to look at the letters which the porter had handed him, and to get himself in a right frame of mind for the important function of lunch. in a minute or two, with a sherry and bitters by his side and a parascho cigarette between his lips he seemed the personification of correctness, good-humour, and mild enjoyment. very little was known about eustace charliewood outside his social life. he lived in chambers in jermyn street, but few people were ever invited there, and it was obvious that he must use what was actually his home as very little more than a place in which to sleep and to take breakfast. he was of good family, there was no doubt about that, being a member of the norfolk charliewoods, and a second son of old sir miles charliewood, of king's lynn. some people said that eustace charliewood was not received by his family; there had been some quarrel many years before. this rumour gained general belief, as charliewood never seemed to be asked to go down to his father's place for the shooting, or, indeed, upon any occasion whatever. there was nothing against eustace charliewood. nobody could associate his name with any unpleasant scandal, or point out to him as being in any way worse than half a hundred men of his own position and way of life. yet he was not very generally popular--people just liked him, said "oh, eustace charliewood isn't half a bad sort!" and left it at that. perhaps a certain mystery about him and about his sources of income annoyed those people who would like to see their neighbour's bank-book once a week. charliewood lived fairly well, and everybody said, "how on earth does he manage it?" the general opinion being that his father and elder brother paid him an allowance to keep him outside the life of the family. about one o'clock mr. charliewood went into the club dining-room. the head waiter hurried up to him, and there was a somewhat protracted and extremely confidential conversation as to the important question of lunch. as the waiter would often remark to his underlings, "it's always a pleasure to do for a gentleman like mr. charliewood, because he gives real thought to his meals, chooses his wine with care and his food with discrimination, not like them young men we get up from hoxford and cambridge, who'll eat anything you put before 'em, and smacks their lips knowing over a corked bottle of wine." "very well," mr. charliewood said, "robert, the clear soup, a portion of the sole with mushrooms, a grilled kidney and a morsel of camembert. that will do very well. a half bottle of the ' neirsteiner and a grand marnier with my coffee." having decided this important question, mr. charliewood looked round the room to see if any of his particular friends were there. he caught the eye of a tall, young-looking man with a silly face and very carefully dressed. this was young lord landsend, a peer of twenty-one summers, who had recently been elected to the baobab tree club, and who had a profound admiration for the worldly wisdom of his fellow member. the young man got up from his table and came over to mr. charliewood. "i say, charlie," he said, "i'm going to motor down to richmond this afternoon, just to get an appetite for dinner; will you come?" charliewood was about to agree, when a waiter brought him a telegram upon a silver tray. he opened it, read it, crushed the flimsy pink government paper in his hand and said-- "awfully sorry, landsend, but i've just had a wire making an appointment which i must keep." he smiled as he did so. "ah," said the young gentleman, with a giggle, prodding his friend in the shoulder with a thin, unsteady finger. "ah, naughty, naughty!" with that he returned to his place, and mr. charliewood lunched alone. once he smoothed out the telegram again, and read it with a slight frown and an anxious expression in his eyes. it ran as follows-- _be here three this afternoon without fail._ _gouldesbrough._ when mr. charliewood had paid his bill and left the dining-room, the head waiter remarked with a sigh and a shake of the head that his pet member did not seem to enjoy his food to-day. "which is odd, thomas," concluded that oracle, "because a finer sole-oh-von-blong i never see served in the club." charliewood got into a cab, gave the driver the name and address of a house in regent's park, lit a cigar and sat back in deep thought. he smoked rather rapidly, seeing nothing of the moving panorama of the streets through which the gondola of london bore him swiftly and noiselessly. his face wore a sullen and rather troubled expression, not at all the expression one would have imagined likely in a man who had been summoned to pay an afternoon call upon so famous and popular a celebrity as sir william gouldesbrough, f.r.s. there are some people who are eminent in science, literature, or art, and whose eminence is only appreciated by a small number of learned people and stamped by an almost unregarded official approbation. these are the people who, however good their services may be, are never in any sense popular names, until many years after they are dead and their labours for humanity have passed into history and so become recognized by the crowd. but there are other celebrities who are popular and known to the "man in the street." sir william gouldesbrough belonged to the latter class. everybody knew the name of the famous scientist. his picture was constantly in the papers. his name was a household word, and with all his arduous and successful scientific work, he still found time to be a frequent figure in society, and a man without whom no large social function, whether public or private, was considered to be complete. he was the sort of person, in short, of whom one read in the newspapers--"and among the other distinguished guests were sir henry irving, sir alma tadema, mr. rudyard kipling, and sir william gouldesbrough." he had caught the popular attention by the fact that he was still a comparatively young man of five and forty. he had caught the ear and attention of the scientific world by his extraordinary researches into the lesser known powers of electric currents. moreover, and it is an unusual combination, he was not only an investigator of the lesser known attributes of electricity who could be ranked with tessler, edison, or marconi, but he was a psychologist and pathologist of european reputation. he was said by those who knew to have probed more deeply into mental processes than almost any man of his time, and for two or three years now every one who was on the inside track of things knew that sir william gouldesbrough was on the verge of some stupendous discovery which was to astonish the world as nothing else had astonished it in modern years. eustace charliewood appeared to be an intimate friend of this great man. he was often at his house, they were frequently seen together, and the reason for this strange combination was always a fruitful subject of gossip. serious people could not understand what gouldesbrough saw in a mere pleasant-mannered and idle clubman, of no particular distinction or importance. frivolous society people could not understand how mr. charliewood cared to spend his time with a man who took life seriously and was always bothering about stupid electricity, while in the same breath they rather admired charliewood for being intimate with such a very important person in england as sir william gouldesbrough undoubtedly was. for two or three years now this curious friendship had been a piquant subject of discussion, and both sir william's and mr. charliewood's most intimate friends had spent many pleasant hours in inventing this or that base and disgraceful reason for such a combination. yet as the cab rolled smoothly up portland place mr. charliewood did not look happy. he threw his cigar away with a petulant gesture, and watched a street arab dive for it among the traffic with a sneer of disgust. he unbuttoned his heavy astrachan coat; it felt tight across his chest, and he realized that his nerves were still unstrung, despite the efforts of the morning. then he took a cheque-book from his pocket and turned over the counterfoils till he came to the last balance. he frowned again, put it away, and once more leant back with a sigh of resignation. in a few more minutes the cab drew up at a brick wall which encircled a large house of red brick, a house built in the georgian period. only the top of the place could be seen from the street, as the wall was somewhat unusually high, while the only means of entrance was a green door let into the brickwork, with a brass bell-pull at one side. in a moment or two the door opened to charliewood's ring, and a man-servant of the discreet and ordinary type stood there waiting. "good afternoon, sir," he said. "sir william expects you." charliewood entered and walked along a wide gravel path towards the portico of the house, chatting casually to the butler as he went. it could now be seen that sir william gouldesbrough's residence was a typical mansion of george the first's reign. the brick was mellowed to a pleasant autumnal tint, the windows, with their white frames and small panes, were set in mathematical lines down the façade, a flight of stone steps led up to the square pillared porch, on each side of which a clumsy stone lion with a distinctly german expression was crouching. the heavy panelled door was open, and together the guest and the butler passed into the hall. it was a large place with a tesselated floor and high white painted doors all round. two or three great bronze urns stood upon marble pedestals. there was a big leather couch of a heavy and old-fashioned pattern, and a stuffed bear standing on its hind legs, some eight feet high, and with a balancing pole in its paws, formed a hat rack. the hall was lit from a square domed sky-light in the roof, which showed that it was surrounded by a gallery, up to which led a broad flight of stairs with carved balustrades. the whole place indeed was old-fashioned and sombre. after the coziness of the smart little club in st. james's street, and the brightness and glitter of the centre of the west end of town, charliewood felt, as indeed he always did, a sense of dislike and depression. it was all so heavy, massive, ugly, and old-fashioned. one expected to see grim and sober gentlemen in knee-breeches and powdered hair coming silently out of this or that ponderous doorway--lean, respectable and uncomfortable ghosts of a period now vanished for ever. "will you go straight on to the study, sir?" the butler said. "sir william expects you." charliewood did not take off his coat, as if he thought that the interview to which he was summoned need not be unduly prolonged. but with his hat and umbrella in his hand he crossed the hall to its farthest left angle beyond the projecting staircase, and opened a green baize door. he found himself in a short passage heavily carpeted, at the end of which was another door. this he opened and came at once into sir william gouldesbrough's study. directly he entered, he saw that his friend was sitting in an arm-chair by the side of a large writing-table. something unfamiliar in his host's attitude, and the chair in which he was sitting, struck him at once. he looked again and saw that the chair was slightly raised from the ground upon a low daïs, and was of peculiar construction. in a moment more he started with surprise to see that there was something extremely odd about sir william's head. a gleam of sunlight was pouring into the room through a long window which opened on to the lawn at the back of the house. it fell full upon the upper portion of the scientist's body, and with a muffled expression of surprise, mr. charliewood saw that sir william was wearing a sort of helmet, a curved shining head-dress of brass, like the cup of an acorn, from the top of which a thick black cord rose upwards to a china plug set in the wall not far away. "good heavens, gouldesbrough!" he said in uncontrollable surprise, "what----" as he spoke sir william turned and held up one hand, motioning him to silence. the handsome and intellectual face that was so well known to the public was fixed and set into attention, and did not relax or change at charliewood's ejaculation. the warning hand remained held up, and that was all. charliewood stood frozen to the floor in wonder and uneasiness, utterly at a loss to understand what was going on. the tremor of his nerves began again, his whole body felt like a pincushion into which innumerable pins were being pushed. then, with extreme suddenness, he experienced another shock. somewhere in the room, quite close to him, an electric bell, like the sudden alarm of a clock on a dark dawn, whirred a shrill summons. the big man jumped where he stood. at the unexpected rattle of the bell, sir william put his hand up to his head, touched something that clicked, and lifted the heavy metal cap from it. he placed it carefully down upon the writing-table, passed his hand over his face for a moment with a tired gesture, and then turned to his guest. "how do you do?" he said. "glad to see you, charliewood." chapter ii unexpected entrance of two ladies for a moment or two eustace charliewood did not return his host's greeting. he was not only surprised by the curious proceeding of which he had been a witness, but he felt a certain chill also. "what the deuce are you up to now, gouldesbrough?" he said in an uneasy voice. "another of your beastly experiments? i wish you wouldn't startle a fellow in this way." sir william looked keenly at the big man whose face had become curiously pallid. there was a tremendous contrast in the two people in the room. gouldesbrough was a very handsome man, as handsome as charliewood himself had been in younger days, but it was with an entirely different beauty. his face was clean shaved, also, but it was dark, clear-cut and ascetic. the eyes were dark blue, singularly bright and direct in glance, and shaded by heavy brows. the whole face and poise of the tall lean body spoke of power, knowledge, and resolution. one man was of the earth, earthy; the other seemed far removed from sensual and material things. yet, perhaps, a deep student of character, and one who had gone far into the hidden springs of action within the human soul, would have preferred the weak, easy-going sensualist, with all his meannesses and viciousness, to the hard and agate intellect, the indomitable and lawless will that sometimes shone out upon the face of the scientist like a lit lamp. charliewood sat down in obedience to a motion of his host's hand. he sat down with a sigh, for he knew that he had been summoned to sir william gouldesbrough's house to perform yet another duty which was certain to be distasteful and furtive. yes! there was no hope for it now. for the last few years the man about town had been under the dominion of a stronger will than his, of a more cunning, of a more ruthless brain. little by little he had become entangled within the net that gouldesbrough had spread for him. and the lure had been then and afterwards a lure of money--the one thing charliewood worshipped in the world. the history of the growth of his secret servitude to this famous man was a long one. money had been lent to him, he had signed this or that paper, he had found his other large debts bought up by the scientist, and at the end of three years he had found himself willy nilly, body and soul, the servant of this man, who could ruin him in a single moment and cast him down out of his comfortable life for ever and a day. no living soul knew or suspected that there was any such bond as this between the two men. even charliewood's enemies never guessed the truth--that he was a sort of jackal, a spy to do his master's bidding, to execute this or that secret commission, to go and come as he was ordered. as yet all the services which charliewood had rendered to sir william, and for which, be it said, he was excellently paid, were those which, though they bordered upon the dishonourable and treacherous, never actually overstepped the borders. gouldesbrough employed charliewood to find out this or that, to make acquaintance with one person or another, to lay the foundation, in fact, of an edifice which he himself would afterwards build upon information supplied by the clubman. there was no crime in any of these proceedings, no robbery or black-mail. and what happened after he had done his work charliewood neither knew nor cared. of one thing, however, he was certain, that whatever the scientist's motives might be--and he did not seek to probe them--they were not those of the ordinary criminal or indeed ever bordered upon the criminal at all. all that charliewood knew, and realized with impotence and bitterness, was that he had allowed himself to become a mere tool and spy of this man's, a prober of secrets, a walker in tortuous by-paths. "what did you wire to me for?" charliewood said in a sulky voice. "what do you want me to do now?" sir william looked quickly at his guest, and there was a momentary gleam of ill-temper in his eyes, but he answered smoothly enough. "my dear charliewood, i wish you wouldn't take that tone. surely we have been associated too long together for you to speak to me in that way now. it has suited your convenience to do certain things for me, and it has suited my convenience to make it worth your while to do them. there is the whole matter. please let's be friendly, as we always have been." charliewood shrugged his shoulders. "you know very well, gouldesbrough," he said, "that i am in your hands and have got to do anything you ask me in reason. however, i don't want to insist on that aspect of the question if you don't. what did you wire to me for?" "well," sir william said, passing a cigar-box over to the other, though he did not smoke himself, "there is a certain man that i am interested in. i don't know him personally, though i know something about him. i want to know him, and i want to know everything i can about him too." "i suppose," charliewood answered, "that there is no difficulty for you in getting to know anybody you want to?" he said it with a slight sneer. "oh, of course not," sir william answered, "but still in this case i want you to get to know him first. you can easily do this if you wish, you are sure to have some mutual acquaintances. when you get to know him make yourself as pleasant as you can be to him--and nobody can do that more gracefully than yourself, my dear boy. become his intimate friend, if possible, and let me know as much as you can about his habits and objects in life. i don't want you to spare any expense in this matter if it is necessary to spend money, and of course you will draw upon me for all you require in the matter." charliewood held up his cigar and looked steadily at the crust of white ash which was forming at the end. "what's the man's name?" he asked without moving his eyes. "his name," said sir william lightly, "is rathbone, a mr. guy rathbone. he is a barrister and has chambers in the temple. a youngish man, i understand, of about seven and twenty." at the name charliewood gave a momentary start. he allowed a slight smile to come upon his lips, and it was not a pleasant smile. gouldesbrough saw it, flushed a little and moved uneasily, feeling that although this man was his servant there were yet disadvantages in employing him, and that he also could sting when he liked. directly sir william had mentioned the name of the person on whose actions and life, not to put too fine a point on it, he was ordering his henchman to become a spy, charliewood knew the reason. he realized in an instant what was the nature of the interest sir william gouldesbrough took in mr. guy rathbone, barrister-at-law. the famous scientist, long, it was said in society, a man quite impervious to the attractions of the other sex and the passion of love, had but a few months ago become engaged. wealthy as he was, distinguished, handsome and attractive in his manner, there had not been wanting ladies who would have very gladly shared and appropriated all these advantages. like any other unmarried man in his desirable position, the scientist had been somewhat pursued in many drawing-rooms. of late, however, the pursuit had slackened. match-making mothers and unappropriated daughters seemed to have realized that here was a citadel they could not storm. six months ago, therefore, society had been all the more startled to hear of sir william's engagement to miss marjorie poole, the only daughter of old lady poole of curzon street. marjorie poole was the daughter of a rather poor baronet who had died some years before, the title going to a cousin. lady poole was left with a house in curzon street and a sufficient income for her own life, but that was all. and among many of the women who hunt society for a husband for their daughters, as a fisherman whips a stream for trout, the dowager was one of the most conspicuous. it was said that she had angled for sir william with an alertness and unwearying pursuit which was at last crowned by success. more charitable people, and especially those who knew and liked miss poole, said that the girl would never have lent herself to any schemes of her mother's unless she had been genuinely fond of the man to whom she was engaged. there had been much talk and speculation over the engagement at first, a speculation which had in its turn died away, and which during the last few weeks had been again revived by certain incidents. eustace charliewood, whose whole life and business it was to gather and retail society gossip, was very well aware of the reason which made people once more wag their heads and hint this or that about the gouldesbrough engagement. mr. guy rathbone had appeared upon the scene, a young barrister of good family but of no particular fortune. several times mr. rathbone had been seen skating with miss poole at prince's. at this or that dance--sir william gouldesbrough did not go to dances--rathbone had danced a good deal with miss poole. many envious and linx-like eyes had watched them for some weeks, and men were beginning to say in the clubs that "young rathbone is going to put the scientific johnny's nose out of joint." it was this knowledge which caused the little sneering smile to appear on charliewood's face, and it gave him pleasure to detect the human weakness of jealousy in the inscrutable man who held him so tightly in his grip. "well, all right," charliewood said at length. "i'll do what you want." "that's a good fellow," sir william answered, smiling genially, his whole face lighting up and becoming markedly attractive as it did so, "you've always been a good friend to me, charliewood." "my banking account is very low just at present," the other went on. "then i'll write you a cheque at once," sir william answered, getting up from his chair and going to the writing-table in the corner of the room. charliewood's face cleared a little. then he noticed his cigar had been burning all down one side. he dropped it into an ash-tray and put his hand in his coat pocket to find a cigarette. he took out an ordinary silver case, when his eye fell upon the crest engraved upon the cover. he started and looked again, turning it so that the light fell full upon it. the crest of the charliewood family was a hand with a battle-axe and the motto, "ne morare," and in the usual custom it was engraved upon charliewood's own case. but this was not the charliewood crest. it was a wyvern charged on a shield, and the motto consisted of the single word "gardez." he gave a startled exclamation. "what's the matter?" sir william said, turning round sharply. "i've got some other fellow's cigarette-case," charliewood answered in amazement, opening it as he did so. there was only one cigarette in the case, but there were several visiting-cards in one compartment, and moreover the name of the owner was cut in the inside of the lid. the case dropped from charliewood's fingers with a clatter, and he grew quite pale. "what is it?" his host inquired again. "have you been playing some infernal trick on me, gouldesbrough?" charliewood said. "no; why?" "because this cigarette-case, by some strange chance, is the cigarette-case of the man we've been talking about, this guy rathbone!" he stood up, thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of the fur coat as he did so. then he pulled out a letter, stamped and addressed and obviously ready for the post. "good heavens!" he said, "here's something else. it's a letter for the post." "who is it addressed to?" sir william asked in a curious voice. charliewood looked at it and started again. "as i live," he answered, "it's addressed to miss poole, a, curzon street!" there was a curious silence for a moment or two. both men looked at each other, and mingled astonishment and alarm were on the face of either. the whole thing seemed uncanny. they seemed, while concocting something like a plot, to have trodden unawares into another. suddenly charliewood stamped his foot upon the ground and peeled off his overcoat. "i've got it," he cried. "why, of course i've seen the very man myself this morning. this is his coat, not mine. i went to a hairdresser's this morning and left my coat in the ante-room while i was going through a massage treatment. when i came out there was a man waiting there for his turn, and i must have taken his coat in exchange for mine. and the man was this mr. guy rathbone, of course. you know these dark blue coats lined with astrachan are quite ordinary, everybody is wearing them this year. and i noticed, by jove, that the thing seemed a little tight in the cab! it's about the oddest coincidence that i've ever come across in my life!" sir william bowed his head in thought for a minute or two. "well, this is the very best opportunity you could have, my dear fellow," he said, "of making the man's acquaintance. of course you can take him back the coat and the cigarette-case at once." "and the letter?" charliewood said swiftly. "the letter to miss poole?" sir william looked curiously at his guest. "i think," he said slowly, "that i'll just spend half-an-hour with this letter first. then you can take it away with the other things. i assure you that it will look just the same as it does now." charliewood shrugged his shoulders. "have it your own way," he said contemptuously, "but don't ask _me_ to open any letters to a lady, that's all." sir william flushed up and was about to make an angry reply, when the door of the study was suddenly thrown open and they saw the butler standing there. there was a rustle of skirts in the passage. "lady poole and miss poole, sir," said the butler. chapter iii news of a revolution marjorie and lady poole came into the room. for two at least of the people there it was an agonizing moment. but a second before, sir william gouldesbrough had been proposing to steal and open a letter written by another man to his _fiancée_. but a second before, mr. eustace charliewood, the well-known society man, had sullenly acquiesced in the proposal. and now here was marjorie poole confronting them. "we thought we'd come to tea, william," lady poole said effusively, going forward to shake hands with her future son-in-law. "ah, mr. charliewood, how do you do?" she gave him a bright nod, and he turned to marjorie, while her mother was shaking hands with the scientist. charliewood's face was flushed a deep red, and his hand trembled so that the tall girl looked at him in some surprise. marjorie poole was a maiden for whom many men had sighed. the oval face with its pure olive complexion, the large brown eyes, clear as a forest pool, the coiled masses of hair, the colour of deeply ripened corn, made up a personality of singular distinction and charm. she was the sort of girl of whom people asked, "who is she?" and if younger sons and other people who knew that they could never win and wear her, said that she was a little too reserved and cold, it was only a prejudiced way of expressing her complete grace and ease of manner. "how are you, mr. charliewood?" she said in a clear, bell-like voice. "i haven't seen you since the carr's dance." "well, to tell the truth, miss poole," charliewood answered with a voice that had a singular tremor in it, "you startled me out of my wits when you came in. just a moment before, sir william had mentioned your name, and we were both thinking of you when, as quick as one of those ridiculous entrances on the stage, pat upon the very word, the butler threw open the door and you came in." "oh, a stage entrance!" marjorie answered. "i don't like stage entrances;" and turning away she went up to her _fiancé_, making it quite clear that, whatever her opinions about the conventions of the boards might be, she did not like mr. charliewood. the big, light-haired man stayed for a moment or two, made a few conventional remarks, and then wished his host farewell. as he crossed the hall he began mechanically to put on the heavy astrachan coat upon his arm, then, with a muttered curse which surprised the butler, he took it off again and hurriedly left the house. "well, and how are you, william?" said lady poole, sitting down by the fire. "are you going to give us some tea? we have been paying calls, and i told marjorie that we would just come on and see how you were, in case you might be in. and how is the electricity going? why don't you invent a flying-machine? i'm sure it would be more useful than the things you do invent. how charming it would be to step out of one's bedroom window into one's aëriel brougham and tell the man to fly to the savoy!" gouldesbrough did not immediately reply, but old lady poole was used to this. she was a tall, florid old thing, richly dressed, with an ample and expansive manner. now that sir william had proposed and the forthcoming marriage was an accepted thing, the good lady felt her duty was done. having satisfied herself of sir william's position, his banking account and his general eligibility, she cared for nothing else, and she had grown quite accustomed to the little snubs she received from his hands from time to time. gouldesbrough was looking at marjorie. his deep blue eyes had leapt up from their usual intense calm into flame. the thin-cut lips were slightly parted, the whole man had become humanized and real in a single moment. the sinister suggestion had dropped from him as a cloak is thrown off, and he remembered nothing of the plot he had been hatching, but only saw before him the radiant girl he adored with all the force of his nature and all the passion of a dark but powerful soul, to which love had never come before. "how are you, dearest?" he said anxiously. "do you know that i haven't heard from you or seen you for nearly four days? tell me all that you have been doing, all that you have been thinking." "four days, is it?" lady poole broke in. "well, you know, my dear william, you will have plenty of time with marjorie in the future, you mustn't attempt to monopolize her just at present. there have been so many engagements, and i'm sure you have been entirely happy with the electricity, haven't you? such a comfort, i think, to have a hobby. it gives a real interest in life. and i'm sure, when a hobby like yours has proved so successful, it's an additional advantage. i have known so many men who have been miserable because they have never had anything to do to amuse them. and unless they take up wood-carving or fretwork or something, time hangs so heavily, and they become a nuisance to their wives. poor sir frederick only took up tact as a hobby. though that was very useful at a party, it was horribly boring in private life. one always felt he understood one too well!" up to the present marjorie had said nothing. she seemed slightly restless, and the smile that played about her lips was faint and abstracted. her thoughts seemed elsewhere, and the scrutiny of the deep blue eyes seemed slightly to unnerve her. at that moment the butler entered, followed by a footman carrying a tea-table. marjorie sank down with a sigh of relief. "i'm so tired," she said in a quiet voice. "mother's been dragging me about to all sorts of places. william, why do you have that horrid man, eustace charliewood, here? he always seems about the house like a big tame cat. i detest him." gouldesbrough winced at the words. he had put his hand into the side-pocket of his coat, and his fingers had fallen upon a certain letter. ah! why, indeed, did he have charliewood for a friend? his answer was singularly unconvincing, and the girl looked at him in surprise. he was not wont to speak thus, with so little directness. "oh, i don't know, dear," he answered. "he's useful, you know. he attends to a lot of things for me that i'm too busy to look after myself." again marjorie did not answer. "what have you been doing, william?" she said at length, stirring the tea in her cup. "i've been thinking about you principally," he answered. she frowned a little. "oh, i don't mean in that way," she answered quickly. "tell me about real things, important things. what are you working at now? how is your work going?" he noticed that something like enthusiasm had crept into her voice--that she took a real interest in his science. his heart throbbed with anger. it was not thus that he wished to hear her speak. it was he himself, not his work, that he longed with all his heart and soul this stately damsel should care about. but, resolute always in will, completely master of himself and his emotion, he turned at once and began to give her the information which she sought. and as he spoke his voice soon began to change. it rang with power. it became vibrant, thrilling. there was a sense of inordinate strength and confidence in it. while old lady poole leant back in her chair with closed eyes and a gentle smile playing about her lips, enjoying, in fact, a short and well-earned nap, the great scientist's passionate voice boomed out into the room and held marjorie fascinated. she leant forward, listening to him with strained attention--her lips a little parted, her face alight with interest, with eagerness. "you want to hear, dearest," he said, "you want to hear? and to whom would i rather tell my news? at whose feet would i rather lay the results of all i am and have done? listen! even to you i cannot tell everything. even to you i cannot give the full results of the problems i have been working at for so many years. but i can tell you enough to hold your attention, to interest you, as you have never been interested before." he began to speak very slowly. "i have done something at last, after years of patient working and thought, which it is not too much to say will revolutionize the whole of modern life--will revolutionize the whole of life, indeed, as it has never been changed before. all the other things i have done and made, all the results of my scientific work have been but off-shoots of this great central idea, which has been mine since i first began. the other things that have won me fame and fortune were discovered upon the way towards the central object of my life. and now, at last, i find myself in full possession of the truth of all my theories. in a month or two from now my work will be perfected, then the whole world will know what i have done. and the whole world will tremble, and there will be fear and wonder in the minds of men and women, and they will look at each other as if they recognized that humanity at last was waking out of a sleep and a dream." "is it so marvellous as all that?" she said almost in a whisper, awed by the earnestness of his manner. "i am no maker of phrases," he replied, "nor am i eloquent. i cannot tell you how marvellous it is. the one great citadel against which human ingenuity and time have beaten in vain since our first forefathers, is stormed at last! in my hands will shortly be the keys of the human soul. no man or woman will have a secret from me. the whole relation of society will be changed utterly." "what is it? what is it?" she asked with a light in her eyes. "have you done what mother said in jest? have you indeed finally conquered the air?" he waved his hand with a scornful gesture. "greater far--greater than that," he answered. "such a vulgar and mechanical triumph is not one i would seek. in a material age it is perhaps a great thing for this or that scientist to invent a means of transit quicker and surer than another. but what is it, after all? mere accurate scientific knowledge supplemented by inventive power. no! such inventions as the steam-engine, printing, gun-powder, are great in their way, but they have only revolutionized the surface of things; the human soul remains as it was before. what i now know is a far, far loftier and more marvellous thing." in his excitement he had risen and was bending over her. now she also rose, and stared into his face with one hand upon his arm. "oh, tell me," she said, "what in life can be so strange, so terrible in its effects as this you speak of?" "listen," he answered once more. "you know what light is? you know that it can be split up into its component parts by means of the prism in the spectroscope?" "every child knows that to-day," she answered. "good!" he replied. and he went on. "i am putting this in the very simplest possible language. i want you to see the broadest, barest, simplest outlines. do you know anything of the human mind? what should you say hypnotism was, for instance, in ordinary words?" "surely," she replied, "it is the power of one brain acting upon another." "exactly," he said, "and in what way? how is a brain, not physically touching another brain, able to influence it?" "by magnetism," she replied, "by"--she hesitated for a word--"by a sort of current passing from one brain to another." he held out both his hands in front of him. they were clasped, and she saw that his wrists were shaking. he was terribly excited. "yes," he went on, his voice dropping lower and lower and becoming even more intense, "you have said exactly the truth. the brain is a marvellous instrument, a sensitive instrument, an electric instrument which is constantly giving out strange, subtle, and hitherto uninvestigated currents. it is like the transmitter at the top of signor marconi's wireless telegraphy station. something unseen goes out into the air, and far away over the mother of oceans something answers to its influence. that is exactly what happens with the human brain. countless experiments have proved it, the scientists of the world are agreed." "then----?" she said. "supposing i had discovered how to collect these rays or vibrations, for that is the better word, these delicate vibrations which come from the human brain?" "i think i begin to see," marjorie said slowly, painfully, as if the words were forced from her and she spoke them under great emotion. "i think i begin to see a little light." "ah," he answered, "you are always above ordinary women. there is no one in the world like you. your brain is keen, subtle, strong. you were destined for me from the first." once more, even in the midst of her excitement, a shade passed over her face. she touched him on the arm again. "go on! tell me! not this, not that. tell me about the work!" "i," he repeated, "i alone of all men in the world have learnt how to collect the invisible vibrations of thought itself. now, remember what i told you at first. i mentioned light, the way in which light can be passed through a prism, split up into its component parts, and give the secret of its composition to the eye of the scientist. not only can _i_ collect the mysterious vibrations of the human brain, but _i_ can pass them through a spectroscope more marvellous than any instrument ever dreamt of in the history of the world. i can take the vibrations of thought, and discover their consistency, their strength, their meaning." she stared at him incredulously. "even yet," she said, "i fail to see the ultimate adaptation of all this. i realize that you have discovered a hitherto unproved truth about the mechanism of thought. that is an achievement which will send your name ringing down the avenues of the future. but there seems to be something behind all you are telling me. you have more to say. what is the _practical_ outcome of all this, this theoretical fact?" "it is this," he answered. "i hold in my hands the power to know what this or that person, be it a king upon his throne, a girl on her wedding day, or a criminal in the dock, is thinking at any given moment." she started from him with a little cry. "oh no," she said, and her face had grown very white indeed. "oh no, god would not allow it. it is a power only god has." he laughed, and in his laugh she heard something that made her shrink back still further. it was a laugh such as lucifer might have laughed, who defied a power which he would not acknowledge to be greater than his. "you will never do that," she said, "wonderful as you are." "marjorie," he answered, "i am a man with a brain that theorizes, but never ventures upon a statement that cannot be proved by fact. if i tell you this, if i hint broadly at the outcome of my life's work, i am doing so, believe me, because i have chapter and verse for all i say, because i can prove that it has passed from the dim realms of theory and of hope into the brilliant daylight of actual achievement!" she stared at him. his words were too much for her mind to grasp immediately. it was an intense moment. but, as in real life intense moments generally are, it was broken by a curious interruption. a voice came thickly from the arm-chair by the fire, where old lady poole had been reclining in placid sleep. it was the strange voice of one who sleeps, without expression, but perfectly distinct. "i will not have it, cook--(indistinguishable murmur)--explained when i engaged you--will _not_ have men in the kitchen!" sir william and marjorie looked at each other for a moment with blank faces. then, all overstrung as they were, the absurdity of the occurrence struck them at the same moment, and they began to laugh softly together. it was a little pleasant and very human interlude in the middle of these high matters, and at that moment the great man felt that he was nearer to marjorie than he had been before at any other moment of the afternoon. she no longer hung entranced upon his impassioned and wonderful words, she laughed with him quite quietly and simply. lady poole snored deeply, and no longer vocalized the drama of her domestic dream. suddenly marjorie turned back once more to sir william. "it's only mother dreaming about one of the servants we have had to send away," she said. "what a stupid interruption! now, go on, go on!" her voice recalled him to his marvellous story. "tell me what is the actual achievement," she said. "it is this. when you speak into a telephone the vibrations of your voice agitate a sensitive membrane, and by means of electricity the vibrations are conveyed to almost any distance. when madame melba sings into the gramophone, her voice agitates the membrane, which in its turn agitates a needle, which in its turn again makes certain marks upon a waxen disc." "yes, go on, go on!" "when i put a certain instrument upon the head of a man or a woman, when i surround the field of emanation by a shield which captures the vibrations, they are conducted to a receiver more delicate and sensitive than anything which has ever been achieved by scientific process before. that receiver collects these vibrations and can transmit them, just in the manner of a telephone or telegraph wire, for almost any distance." "and at the other end?" marjorie asked. "it has been a difficulty of ten long, anxious, unwearying years." "and now?" "now that difficulty has been finally overcome." "therefore?" "what a person thinks in london can be sent in vibrations along a wire to paris." "i see. i understand! but when there they can only be transmitted to another brain, of course. you mean that you have invented a more marvellous system of telegraphy than has ever been invented before. for instance, i could sit here in this room and communicate with you with absolute freedom in paris. how wonderful that is! what a triumphant achievement! but--but, william, marvellous as it is, you do not substantiate what you said just now. the secrets of thought may be yours, but only when the sender wills it." "ah," he answered, with a deep note of meaning coming into his voice. "if i had only discovered what you say, i should have discovered much. but i have gone far, far away from this. i have done much, much more. and in that lies the supreme value of my work." once more they were standing together, strained with wonder, with amazement and triumph passing between them like the shuttle of a loom; once more she was caught up into high realms of excitement and dawning knowledge, the gates of which had never opened to her brain before. "to come back to the phonograph," sir william said. "the marks are made upon the waxen disc, and they are afterwards reproduced in sound, recorded upon metal plates to remain for ever as a definite reproduction of the human voice. now, and here i come to the final point of all, i have discovered a means by which thought can be turned into actual vision, into an actual expression of itself for every one to read. what i mean is this. i have discovered the process, and i have invented the machine by which, as a person thinks, the thought can be conveyed to any distance along the wire, can be received at the other end by an instrument which splits it up into this or that vibration. and these vibrations actuate upon a machine by the spectroscope, by the bioscope, which show them upon a screen in the form of either pictures or of words as the thoughts of the thinker are at that moment sent out by the brain in words or pictures." "then what does this mean?" "it means that once my apparatus, whether by consent of the subject or by force, is employed to collect the thought vibrations, then no secrets can be hidden. the human soul must reveal itself. human personality is robbed of its only defence. there will be no need to try the criminal of the future. he must confess in spite of himself. the inviolability of thought is destroyed. the lonely citadel of self exists no longer. the pious hypocrite must give his secret to the world, and sins and sinners must confess to man what only god knew before." marjorie sat down in her chair and covered her face with her hands. various emotions thronged and pulsed through her brain. the stupendous thing that this man had done filled her with awe for his powers, with terror almost, but with a great exultation also. she did not love him, she knew well that she had never loved him, but she realized her influence over him. she knew that this supreme intellect was hers to do with as she would. she knew that if he was indeed, as he said, master of the world, she was mistress of his mind, she was the mistress of him. the mysterious force of his love, greater than any other earthly force which he could capture or control, had made him, who could make the minds of others his slaves and instruments, the slave of her. yes! love! that, after all, was the greatest force in the whole world. here was a more conclusive proof than perhaps any woman had ever had before in the history of humanity. love! even while the inmost secrets of nature were wrested from her by such a man as this, love was still his master, love was still the motive power of the world. and as she thought that, she forgot for a moment all her fears and all her wonder, in a final realization of what all the poets had sung and all the scientists striven to destroy. her blood thrilled and pulsed with the knowledge, but it did not thrill or pulse for the man whose revelations had confirmed her in it. the man whom she had promised to marry was the man who had confirmed her in the knowledge of the truth. and all he had said and done filled her with a strange joy such as she had never known before. at that moment sir william came towards her. he had switched on the electric light, and the room was now brilliantly illuminated. in his hand he held a large oval thing of brass, bright and shining. at that moment, also, old lady poole woke up with a start. "dear me," she said, "i must have taken forty winks. well, i suppose, my dear children, that i have proved my absolute inability to be _de trop_! what are you doing, william?" "it's a little experiment," sir william said, "one of my inventions, lady poole. marjorie, i want you to take off your hat." marjorie did so. with careful and loving hands the great man placed the metal helmet upon her head. the girl let him do so as if she were in a dream. then sir william pressed a button in the wall. in a few seconds there was an answering and sudden ring of an electric bell in the study. "now, marjorie!" sir william said, "now, all i have told you is being actually proved." he looked at her face, which flowered beneath the grotesque and shining cap of metal. "now, marjorie, everything you are thinking is being definitely recorded in another place." for a moment or two the significance of his words did not penetrate to her mind. then she realized them. lady poole and the scientist saw the rapt expression fade away like a lamp that is turned out. horror flashed out upon it, horror and fear. her hands went up to her head; she swept off the brilliant helmet and flung it with a crash upon the ground. then she swayed for a moment and sank into a deep swoon. she had been thinking of mr. guy rathbone, barrister-at-law, and what her thoughts were, who can say? chapter iv the second lover arrives on the evening of the day in which she had fainted, marjorie poole sat alone in the drawing-room of her mother's house in curzon street. it was a large, handsome place, furnished in the empire style with mirrors framed in delicate white arabesques, and much gilding woven into the pattern. the carpet was a great purple expanse covered with laurel wreaths of darker purple. there was but little furniture in the big, beautiful place, but it was all airy, fantastic and perfect of its kind. there was a general air of repose, of size and comely proportion in this delightful room. here, an old french clock clicked merrily, there were two or three inlaid cabinets, and upon the walls were a few copies of some of watteau's delightful scenes in the old courtly gardens of versailles. marjorie wore a long tea-gown, and she was sitting quite alone in the brilliantly lit place, with a book in her hand. the book was in her hand indeed, but she was not reading it. her eyes were fixed upon the opposite wall, though they saw nothing there. her thoughts were busy and her face was pale. she had recovered from her swoon in a minute or two, and found her mother fussing round her and her lover generally skilful in doing all that was necessary. and a short time afterwards she had driven home with lady poole. what she had heard, the very strain of hearing and being so intensely interested in it, had taken her strength away. then had come the words when sir william told her that the very thoughts that she was thinking at that moment were being in some mysterious way recorded and known. and she knew that she had been thinking of another man, thinking of him as an engaged girl should never think. but as she had returned to consciousness, sir william had told her kindly and simply that if she had feared her thoughts, whatever they might be, were known to him, she need fear no longer. "there was no one," he said, "observing any record of vibrations from your dear mind. do you think that i should have allowed that, marjorie? how could you think it of me?" she had driven home relieved but very weary, and feeling how complex life was, how irrevocable the mistakes one made from impulse or lack of judgment really were. ambition! yes, it was that that had brought her to where she was now. her heart had never been touched by any one. she never thought herself capable of a great love for a man. from all her suitors she had chosen the one who most satisfied her intellectual aspirations, who seemed to her the one that could give her the highest place, not only in the meaningless ranks of society, but in and among those who are the elect and real leaders of the world. and now? well, now she was waiting because guy rathbone was coming to the house. a letter from him had arrived just before dinner. she had expected it by an earlier post, the post by which all his letters usually came, and she had been impatient at its non-arrival. but it had come at last, and she was sitting in the drawing-room waiting for him now. he was on intimate terms in that house, and came and went almost as he would, old lady poole liking to have young people round her, and feeling that now marjorie's future was satisfactorily settled, there was no need to bar her doors to people she was fond of, but who, before the engagement, she would have regarded as dangerous. even as marjorie was thinking of him, the butler showed guy rathbone into the room. marjorie got up, flushing a little as she saw him. "mother's very tired," she said; "she's not well to-night, and so she's gone to bed. perhaps you'd rather not stay." he sat down, after shaking hands, without an answer in words. he looked at her, and that was his answer. he was a tall young man, as tall as sir william, but more largely built, with the form and figure not of the student but rather of the athlete. his face was clean-shaven, frank, open and boyishly good-looking; but a pair of heavy eyebrows hung over eyes that were alert and bright, robbing the upper part of his face of a too juvenile suggestion. his head was covered with dark red curls, and he had the walk and movements of perfect health and great physical power, that had once led a dyspeptic friend at the oxford and cambridge club to remark of him, that "rathbone is the sort of fellow who always suggests that he could eat all the elephants of india and pick his teeth with the spire of strasburg cathedral afterwards." there was force about him, the force of clean, happy youth, health, and a good brain. it was not the concentrated force and power of sir william, but it was force nevertheless. and as he came into the room, marjorie felt her whole heart go out to him, leaping towards him in his young and manly beauty. she knew that here indeed was the one man that would satisfy her life for ever and a day. he was not famous, he was clever without having a great intellect, but for some reason or other he was the man for her. she knew it, and she feared that he was beginning to know she knew it. he was sitting in the chair, when he turned and looked her straight in the face. "i have come to-night," he said, "to say something very serious, very serious indeed. i am glad lady poole isn't here, just for to-night, marjorie." "i've told you you oughtn't to say marjorie," she said. "well," he answered, "you've called me guy for a good long time now, and one good turn deserves another." he smiled, showing a perfect and even row of teeth, a smile so simple, hearty and spontaneous that once more that furiously beating heart of hers seems striving to burst its physical bonds and leap to him. then he passed his hand through his hair, and his face immediately became full of perplexity and doubt. "i should have been here before," he said, "only i was detained. i met a man who happened to take my overcoat to-day in mistake for his own from the hairdresser's. he turned out to be a decent sort of chap, and i couldn't get rid of him at once. but that's by the way. i've come here to say something which is awfully difficult to say. i've fought it out with myself, and i've wondered if i should be a bounder in saying it. i'm afraid i'm going to say something that a gentleman oughtn't to say. i don't know. i really don't know. but something within tells me that if i don't say it i should be doing something which i should regret all my life long. but you must forgive me, and if after what i've said to you you feel that i oughtn't to have done so, i do beg you will forgive me, marjorie. will you forgive me?" her voice was very low. "yes," she said in almost a whisper. "you are engaged to another man," he said. "i don't know him, i have never seen him. i know he is a great swell and very important. a year ago, if anybody had told me that i was going to talk to a girl who was engaged to another man as i'm going to talk to you, i should probably have knocked him down. shows one never knows, doesn't it, marjorie?" she began to breathe quickly. her breast rose and fell, her agitation was very manifest. the tears were beginning to well up in her eyes. she hated herself for this visible emotion; she did her best to control it, but it was utterly impossible, and she knew that she was telling him even now what she knew also he most desired to hear. he got up from his chair, big, forceful, manly and young, and was by her side in a moment. "marjorie," he said, "dear, sweet girl, i can't help telling you, however wrong it may be. i love you, i love you deeply and dearly. i am quite certain, i don't know how, but i'm certain, and nothing in the world could persuade me i wasn't, that i'm the man who was made for you, and that you're the girl who was made for me. i can't put it poetically, i don't know how to say it beautifully, as the johnnies say it in the novels and on the stage, but, darling, i love you." there was a catch and a break in his voice; a sob had come into it. then he went on. "do you know, marjorie, i can't help thinking somehow that you must have made a mistake--" he was kneeling now by the side of her chair. his arms stole round her, she made no motion to forbid it. it was a moment of absolute surrender, a surrender which she had no power to withstand. and now he held her in his strong arms, his kisses fell upon her lips, her head was on his shoulder, she was sobbing quietly and happily. with no word of avowal spoken, she gave herself to him at that moment. he had felt, and his whole body was shaken with joy and triumph, that come what might, she was his in spirit if indeed she could never be his in any other way. it was a great moment for those two young lives. young man and maid, knowing themselves and each other for the first time. it wasn't romantic, exactly, there was nothing very striking about it, perhaps, but it was sweet--ah! unutterably sweet! * * * * * he was walking about the room. "you must tell him," he said, "dearest. you'll have to go through so much more than i shall, and it cuts me to the heart to think of it. you'll have to face all the opposition of everybody, of your people, of society and the world generally. and i can't help; you'll have to go through this alone. it's a bitter thought that i can't help you. dear, dare you fight through this for me? are you strong enough? are you brave enough?" she went up to him, and placed both her hands upon his shoulders, looking straight into his face. "i have been wicked," she said, "i have been wrong. but perhaps there were excuses. until one has felt love, real love, guy, one doesn't realize its claims or the duties one owes it. i was ambitious. i liked william well enough. he interested me and stimulated me. i felt proud to think that i was to be the companion of a man who knew and had done so much. but now the mere thought of that companionship fills me with fear. not fear of him, but fear of the treachery i should have done my nature and myself if i had married him. i don't know what will happen, but here and now, guy, whatever may be the outcome, i tell you that i love you, and i swear to you, however wrong it may be, whatever violence i may be doing to my plighted troth, i tell you that, however great the unworthiness, i will be yours and yours alone. i know it's wrong, and yet, somehow, i feel it can't be wrong. i don't understand, but--but----" he took her in his arms once more and held her. it was late, and he was going, and was bidding her farewell. he knelt before her and took her hand, bowing over it and kissing it. "good-night," he said, "my lady, my love, my bride! i am with you now, and shall be with you always in spirit until we are one--until the end of our lives. and whatever may be in store in the immediate future i shall be watching and waiting, i shall be guarding you and shielding you as well as i can, and if things come to the worst, i shall be ready, and we will count the world well lost, as other wise lovers have done, for the sacred cause and in the holy service of love." so he bowed over her slim white hand and kissed it, looking in his beauty and confidence and strength like any knight of old kneeling before the lady he was pledged to serve. and when he was gone, and she was alone in her room up-stairs, marjorie was filled with a joy and exhilaration such as she had never known before. yet there seemed hanging over the little rosy landscape, the brightly-lit landscape in which she moved, a dark and massive cloud. she dreamt thus. she dreamt that this cloud grew blacker and blacker, and still more heavy, sinking lower and lower towards her. then she saw her lover as a knight in armour cutting upwards with a gleaming sword until the cloud departed and rushed away, and all was once more bathed in sunlight. she knew the name of that sword. it was not excalibur, it was love. chapter v a conspiracy of scientists sir william gouldesbrough had been up very late the night before. he came down from his room on a grey morning a fortnight after the day on which he had told marjorie something of his hopes. it was nearly twelve o'clock. he had not retired to rest until four upon the same morning. and when he had at last left the great laboratories built out of the back of the house, he had stumbled up to his room, a man drunk with an almost incredible success--a success of detail so perfect and complete that his intelligence staggered before the supreme triumph of his hopes. but the remaining portion of the night, or rather during the beginning of the chill wintry dawn, he had lain alone in his great georgian bedroom, watching the grey light filtering into the room, flood by flood, until the dark became something more terrible, something filled with vast moving shadows, with monstrous creatures which lurked in the corners of the room, with strange half lights that went and came, and gave the wan mirrors of the wardrobe, of the mantel-shelf, a ghost-like life only to withdraw, and then once more increase it. and as this great and famous man lay in this vast lonely room without power of sleep, two terrible emotions surged and throbbed within him,--two emotions in their intensity too great for one mind to hold. one was the final and detailed triumph of all he held dear in the world of science and in the department of his life's work. the other was the imminent and coming ruin of his heart's hope, and the love which had come to him, and which had seemed the most wonderful thing that life could give. yes, there he lay, a king of intellect, a veritable prince of the powers of the air, and all his triumph was but as dust and ashes and bitterness, because he knew that he was losing a smaller principality perhaps, but one he held dearer than all his other possessions. emperor of the great grey continent of science, he must now resign his lordship of the little rosy principality of love. so, as he came down-stairs close upon mid-day of the winter's morning--a tall distinguished figure in the long camel's-hair dressing-gown, with its suggestion of a monk's robe--the butler who was crossing the hall at the time was startled by the fixed pallor of his face. the man went up to him. "excuse me, sir william," he said, "but you're working too hard. you're not well, sir. you mustn't overdo it. i have got you a sole and mushrooms for breakfast, sir, but i should not advise you to touch it, now i've seen you. if you'll allow me to offer my advice, i should suggest a bowl of soup." "thank you, delaine," sir william answered. "but i don't think i could even take anything at present. will you send my letters into the study?" "yes, sir william," the man replied, "and i shall make so bold as to bring you a bowl of soup in half-an-hour, as well." gouldesbrough crossed the great gloomy hall and entered the study. a bright fire was glowing on the hearth, the place was all dusted, tidy and cheerful, even though the world outside was a blank wall of fog. he stood up in the middle of the room. tall, columnar, with a great dignity about him, had there been any one there to see. it was a dual dignity, the dignity of supreme success and the dignity of irremediable pain. the butler came in with the letters upon a copper tray. there was a great pile of them, and as the man closed the door after he put the tray upon the writing-table, sir william began to deal the letters like a pack of cards, throwing this and that one on the floor, with a shuffling movement of the wrist, and as he did so his eyes were horrid in their searching and their intensity. at last he came to the one he sought. a letter addressed to him in a bold but feminine handwriting. as his fingers touched it a loud sob burst out into the silence of the room. with shaking fingers he tore it open, standing among the litter of the unopened letters, and began to read. he read the letter right through, then walked to the mantel-piece, leaning his right arm upon it as if for support. but the tension was now a little relaxed. he had come down to find the worst, to meet the inevitable. he had met it, and there was now neither premonition of the moment of realization nor the last and torturing flicker of despairing hope. this was the letter. it began without preface or address-- "you must have known this was coming. everything in your manner has shown me that you knew it was coming. and for that, unhappy as i am, i am glad. i have a terrible confession to make to you. but you who are so great, you who know the human mind from your great height, as a conquering general surveys a country from a mountain-top, you will understand. when you asked me to marry you and i said 'yes,' i was pleased and flattered, and i had a tremendous admiration and respect for you and for all you have done. then when we came to know each other, i began to see the human side of you, and i had, and if you will let me say so, still have, a real affection for you. and had it not been that something more powerful than affection has come into my life, i would have been a true and faithful wife and companion to you. "but you have seen, and you must know, that things are changed. are we not all subject to the laws of destiny, the laws of chance? is it not true that none of us on our way through the world can say by whom or how we shall be caught up out of ourselves and changed into what we could not be before? oh, you know it all. you of all men know it! "i need not here speak in detailed words, because from things you have seen you know well enough what i am about to say, of whom i would speak if i could. but it is enough, william, to tell you what you already know. that i love some one else, and that if i am true to myself, which is after all the first _duty_ of all of us, i could never marry you. i can never be to you what you wish or what i would like to be as your wife. i am stricken down with the knowledge of the pain all this will give you, though, thank god, it is not a pain for which you are unprepared. i dare not ask your forgiveness, i can say nothing to console you. i have acted wickedly and wrongly, but i cannot do anything else but what i am doing. "forgive, if you can. think kindly, if you can, of marjorie." now he knew. he folded the letter gently, kissed it--an odd action for a man so strong--and put it in the inside pocket of his coat, which pressed next his heart. then he rang the bell. "ask mr. guest to come," he said. "very well, sir william," the butler answered, "but mr. charliewood has just arrived." "then ask him in," gouldesbrough answered. charliewood came into the room. "by jove!" he said, "you look about as seedy as i've ever seen you look!" sir william went up to him and put his hand upon his shoulder. "look here," he said, "i've had a smack in the face this morning, charliewood. you know what it is, i need not tell you. and look here, too, i'm going to ask you to help me as you've never helped me before. i'm afraid, old fellow, i've often been a nuisance to you, and often rather rubbed in the fact that you owe me money, and that you've had to do things for me. forgive me now, if you will. i'm going to call upon you for active friendship." "oh," charliewood answered, "we won't talk about friendship between you and me. i've done what i had to do and there's enough." sir william still held him by the shoulder. "you don't really feel that, charliewood?" he said in a quiet voice, and as he did so the magnetism of his personality began to flow and flood upon the weaker man and influence him to kindliness. "well, well," he said, "what is it now? i suppose we've been running round a vicious circle and we've come to the last lap?" "that's just about it," sir william answered. "just let me say that this is the last service i shall ever ask from you. i'll give you back all the i.o.u.'s and things, and i'll give you enough money to put yourself absolutely right with the world, then we'll say good-bye." charliewood started. "that's awfully good of you," he said. "i don't think that i want to say good-bye. but still, what is it?" "rathbone," sir william answered, pronouncing the name with marked difficulty. "it's all over then?" charliewood answered. "yes." "i thought it would be. i have told you all that has been going on, and i knew it would be." "she's written to me this morning," gouldesbrough said. "a kind letter, but a letter finishing it all." then the weaker, smaller man became, as so often happens in life, the tempter--the instrument which moves the lever of a man's career towards the dark sinister side of the dial. charliewood was touched and moved by the unexpected kindness in his patron's voice. "don't say it's finished," he said; "nothing is finished for a man like you, with a man like me to help him. of course it's not finished. you have not always been all you might to me, william, but i'll help you now. i'll do anything you want me to do. buck up, old boy! you will pass the post first by a couple of lengths yet." "how?" "well, what were you going to ask me to do?" they looked each other in the face with glowing eyes and pale countenances, while a horrible excitement shone out upon them both. at that moment the door opened very quietly, and an extraordinary person came into the room. he was a short, fat, youthful-looking man, with a large, pink, and quite hairless face. the face was extremely intelligent, noticeably so, but it was streaked and furrowed with dissipation. it told the story not of the man who enjoyed the sensuous things of life in company, and as part of a merry progress towards the grave, but it betrayed the secret sot, the cunning sensualist private and at home. this man was mr. guest, sir william's faithful assistant in science, a man who had no initiative power, who could rarely invent a project or discover a scientific fact, but a man who, when once he was put upon the lines he ought to go, could follow them as the most intelligent sleuth-hound in the scientific world. wilson guest was perhaps the greatest living physicist in europe. he was of inestimable value to his chief, and he was content to remain between the high red-brick walls of the old house in regent's park, provided with all he needed for his own amusements, and instigated to further triumphs under the ægis of his master. "well, what is it?" said this fat, youthful and rather horrible-looking person. "we've come to grips of the great fact, guest," sir william answered, still with his hand upon charliewood's shoulder. the pink creature laughed a hollow and merciless laugh. "i knew it would come to this," he said, "since you have added another interest to your scientific interests, gouldesbrough. why have you called me in to a consultation?" gouldesbrough's whole face changed; it became malignant, the face of a devil. "i'm going to win," he said. "i've had a knock-down blow, but i'm going to get up and win still! mr. rathbone must disappear. that can be easily arranged with the resources at our command." guest gave a horrible chuckle. "and when we've got him?" he said. "he must disappear for always," gouldesbrough answered. "quite easy," guest replied. "quite easy, william. but, _not until we've done with him, shall he_?" "what do you mean?" "why, isn't it the last condition of our experiments that we should have some one a slave, a dead man to the world, to use as we shall think fit? here's your man. do what you like to him afterwards. let's make your rival a stepping-stone to your final success." then the three men looked at each other in fear. charliewood and sir william gouldesbrough were pale as linen, but the short, fat man was pink still, and laughed and chuckled nervously. chapter vi "will you walk into my parlour?" mr. eustace charliewood's chambers were in jermyn street. but few of his many friends had ever seen the interior of them. such entertaining as the man about town did--and he was always one of those who were entertained, rather than one of those who offer hospitality--was done at his club. the man who looked after the place and valeted his master was therefore the more surprised when charliewood had called him up one morning after breakfast. "look here, william," charliewood had said, "i've got a gentleman coming to dinner. we've some business to talk over, so i shan't dine him at the club. i suppose you can manage a little dinner here?" "certainly, sir, if necessary," the man answered. "of course you're not in the habit of dining at home, and you've not got your own things. that is if you mean a proper little dinner, sir." "i do, i do, william," his master answered hurriedly. "but, there, that needn't matter," the man answered, "we can have everything in if you like, sir." "that will be best," charliewood answered. "i leave everything to you, william. except," he added as an afterthought, "the menu. i want a small dinner, william, but quite good. shall we say a little _bisque_ for the soup? then perhaps a small normandy sole. afterwards a chicken cooked _en casserole_. as an _entrée_ some white truffles stewed in sillery--you can get them in glass jars from falkland & masons--and then a morsel of brie and some coffee. that will do, i think." "and about the wine, sir?" said william, astonished at these unaccustomed preparations, and inwardly resolving that mr. eustace charliewood had discovered a very brightly plumed pigeon to pluck. "oh, about the wine! well, i think i'll see to that myself. i'll have it sent up from the club. you've an ice-pail for the champagne, haven't you, william?" "yes, sir, we certainly have _that_." "very good then. we'll say at eight then." william bowed and withdrew. all that day the various members of this or that fast and exclusive club round about st. james's street, noticed that eustace charliewood was out of form. his conversation and his greetings were not so imperturbably cheerful and suave as usual. he took no interest in the absorbing question as to whether young harry rayke--the earl of spaydes' son--would after all propose to lithia varallette, the well-known musical comedy girl. the head waiter of the baobab club noticed mr. charliewood was off his food, and everybody with whom the man about town came in contact said that "richard was by no means himself." as the evening drew on, a dark, foggy evening, which promised as night came to be darker and foggier still, charliewood's agitation increased, though just now there was no one to see it. he walked down st. james's street, past marlborough house, and briskly promenaded the wide and splendid avenue which now exists in front of buckingham palace. the fog made him cough, the raw air was most unpleasant, and it was no hour for exercise. but, despite the cold and misery of it all, charliewood continued his tramp backwards and forwards. when he returned to his chambers in jermyn street, about seven o'clock, he found that his clothes were wet with perspiration, and only a hot bath before dressing for dinner and a couple of bromide tabloids in a wine-glass full of milk seemed to bring him back to his ordinary condition. when, however, he went into his little dining-room, to all outward appearances he was the usual eustace charliewood of the pavements and club-rooms of the west end. the room was comfortable. a bright fire glowed upon the hearth, shining upon the high-class sporting prints, the subdued wall-paper, the comfortable padded chairs, and the shelves loaded with bachelor nick-nacks and sporting trophies of his youth. in one corner was a little round table set for two, gleaming with glass and silver and lit by electric lights covered with crimson shades. it was all very warm and inviting. he looked round it with satisfaction for a moment. then, suddenly, as he stood on the hearth-rug, he put his plump, white hand with the heavy seal ring upon it, up to his throat. the apple moved up and down convulsively, and for a single moment the whole being of the man was filled with overmastering fear of the future and horror and loathing for himself. the spasm passed as quickly as it came, the drug he had taken asserted its grip upon the twitching nerves, the man whose whole life was discreet adventure, who was a soldier of social fortune, who daily faced perils, became once more himself. that is to say, to put it in two words, his better angel, who had held possession of him for a moment, fled sorrowfully away, while the especial spirit deputed to look after the other side of him happened to chance that way, and remembering he had often found a hospitable reception from mr. eustace charliewood, looked in, found his old quarters duly swept and garnished, and settled down. charliewood's rooms were on the ground floor. in a minute or two, it was about a quarter to eight, he heard someone upon the steps outside, in jermyn street, and then the electric bell whirr down below in the kitchen. he rushed out into the hall. it generally took william some time to mount from the lower regions, which were deep in the bowels of the earth, and no doubt mr. charliewood kindly desired to spare the butler the trouble of opening the door. so, at least, william thought, as he mounted the kitchen stairs and came out into the hall to find mr. charliewood already helping his guest off with his coat and showing him into the dining-room. william did not know that there were any special reasons in mr. charliewood's mind for not having his guest's name announced and possibly remembered by the servant. "well, my dear rathbone, how are you?" charliewood said, and no face could have been kinder or more inviting and pleasant to see than the face of the host. "awfully good of you to come and take me like this, but i thought we should be more comfortable here than at the club. there are one or two things i want to talk over. i'll do you as well as i can, but i can't answer for anything. you must take pot luck!" guy rathbone looked round the charming room and laughed--a full-blooded, happy laugh. "i wish you could see my chambers in the temple," he said. "but you fellows who live up this end do yourselves so jolly well!" "i suppose one does overdo it," charliewood answered, "in the way of little comforts and things. it's a mistake, no doubt, but one gets used to it and was brought up to it, and so just goes on, dependent upon things that a sensible man could easily do without. now, sit down and have a sherry and bitters. dinner will be up in a minute. and try one of these cigarettes. it's a bad plan to smoke before dinner, i know, as a rule, but these little things just go with the sherry and bitters, and they are special. i get them over from rio. they're made of black brazilian tobacco, as you see; they're only half as long as your finger, and instead of being wrapped in filthy, poisonous rice paper, they're covered with maize leaves." rathbone sank into the luxurious chair which his host pointed out to him, took the sherry, in its heavily cut glass, and lit one of the cigarettes. he stretched out his feet towards the fire and enjoyed a moment of intense physical ease. the flames and the shaded electric lights shone upon his fine and happy face, twinkled upon the stud in his shirt front, and showed him for what he was at that moment--a young gentleman intensely enjoying everything that life had to give. in a moment or two more dinner was served. "you needn't wait, william," charliewood said, as they sat down to the _hors d'oeuvre_. "just put the soup on and i'll ring when we're ready." "so good of you to ask me," rathbone said. "i should have gone to the oxford and cambridge club, had a beef-steak, looked at the evening papers, and then returned to chambers to write letters. rather a dismal proceeding on a night like this!" "hadn't you anything on to-night, then?" charliewood asked carelessly. "not a single thing," rathbone answered. "i've been cutting all my engagements during the last week or two, telling people i was going out of town. i've got a special reason for working very hard just now." charliewood started, and a slight gleam came into his eyes. "good idea, that!" he said, "telling people you're going out of town when you want to be quiet for a week or two!" "it is," rathbone replied. "at most of the houses i'm in the habit of going to just now every one thinks i'm away. i've been living the life of a recluse, as far as society goes." charliewood slightly lifted a glass of pol roger. "here's success to the work, my dear boy," he said jovially. "and i congratulate myself on the odd accident which brought us together. and of course i don't know you very well, rathbone, and i am sure i should hate to be impertinent in any way. but still, as you know, i go about everywhere, and one can't help hearing things. and, besides, i'm in a special position in regard to a certain matter, too. here's my best wish for your happiness in the future, in another way!" he looked straight into the young man's eyes as he said this, and as he did so rathbone, whose glass was lifted in response, began to colour until his whole face became crimson. "i haven't offended you?" charliewood said quickly. "oh--er--not a bit, of course," rathbone answered with manifest uneasiness. "but i didn't know that anything had got about. i didn't know that you knew. oh, confound it," he concluded, "i don't want to talk about my own affairs; i----hang it all, charliewood, tell me straight out what you mean." "i repeat," charliewood answered, "that i haven't known you very long, and therefore i am very chary of in any way infringing the natural reticence that should be between men in our position. still, you know who i am; everybody knows all about me, and i should like you to believe that i am really a friend." as he said this, though his face was full of frankness and kindliness once more, charliewood felt that sick loathing of himself he had experienced just before his guest had arrived. there was a throbbing at his temples, his throat felt as if it were packed with warm flour. he hurriedly gulped down some champagne and went on. "everybody knows by this time," he said in a quiet voice, "that--that--well, old chap, that there has been a sort of set to partners and a change in certain quarters." at that moment william appeared with the fish, charliewood having rung for him at the psychological moment, knowing that the little interlude would give his guest time to collect his thoughts. when the man had once more left the room, rathbone, who had been biting his lips in perplexity and drumming upon the table with his fingers, bent towards his host. "i see you know all about it," he said; "and, upon my word, if you'd let me, i should like to talk things over with you from one point of view." "my dear rathbone," charliewood replied, "say nothing whatever to me unless you like, but understand that what you did say would be said in absolute confidence, and that if the experience of a man older in social life, and accustomed to all its vagaries, can help you, i give it to you with all my heart." "now i call that very good of you, charliewood," the young man answered. "i'll tell you straight out, what you probably already know, and i'll ask you for a hint as to what i ought to do. miss poole"--he mentioned the name with obvious reluctance--"has found that she made an--er, well, a sort of mistake in her affections. i have no doubt it's all over london that she's written to sir william gouldesbrough telling him so." "throwing him over, in fact," charliewood said. "if you like to put it so," the other answered, "and of course that is just what it amounts to." "well then?" charliewood said. "i feel in a sort of way that i've done an awfully caddish thing," rathbone went on. "fortunately, i am not in gouldesbrough's set. i don't know him at all. at the same time it's awfully bad form to make love to a girl who's engaged to any one else. and that, unconsciously, is just what i seem to have been doing for a very long time. but, believe me," he concluded with a singular simplicity and boyishness, "i really couldn't help it." charliewood laughed a little and then sighed to himself. "i quite understand," he said; "these things do and will happen, and it wasn't your fault at all. but i do think it's very wrong if a girl who finds that she has made a mistake doesn't put it right before it becomes unavoidable." "do you really?" rathbone cried. "well, do you know, that's just my point of view, and it relieves me to hear you say so." "and do you know," charliewood replied, "that i'm probably the most intimate friend william gouldesbrough has in the world?" rathbone started. "good lord!" he said. "then--what--then--why? and you really mean that you can be friends with me?" "that's just what i do mean," charliewood answered; "and now we've got to the point, i will tell you frankly that though our meeting was a pure accident in the first place, i am awfully glad that we did meet and that you are here to-night. i have talked the whole matter over with poor dear sir william a good deal lately. he has done me the honour to make me his confidant in the matter. two or three days ago i mentioned that i knew you." "what did he say?" rathbone asked quickly. "i can't tell you his words," charliewood answered, "but i can tell you their purpose. and it was a wonderful revelation to me of the strength and beauty of my old friend's character. he's a fine fellow, rathbone, and when you know him you'll say so too." "know him?" rathbone said. "my dear charliewood, surely you see that it's impossible that i should meet a man to whom i have unconsciously done such a great injury." "ah," charliewood answered, "you don't know william. it is just the possibility which makes his character so fine. practically, what he said to me was this. 'you know this young fellow, eustace. is he a decent sort of man? a gentleman in ideas, as well as in position, clean living and all that?' 'as far as i know,' i answered, 'he's just so in every way.'" once more rathbone coloured up to the eyes. charliewood went on. "then william unburdened himself to me fully. 'i only want marjorie poole to be happy,' he said, 'and when the proper time arrives i shall just write and tell her so. i was fond of her, deeply fond of her; what man would not be? i thought if she cared for me that she would be a worthy mistress of my house, and an ideal partner to share my fortune and the position i have won. but i am much older than she is. i am immersed, as you know, in grave, scientific pursuits, and i quite realize that i could not give her what as a young girl she has a right to expect. i don't say that i relinquish my claim upon her without a pang, but i have other interests, and my wife and love could in any case only be a part of my life. do you know what i should like to do more than anything else, eustace?' 'what?' i said. 'why,' he continued, 'to meet this young mr. rathbone. to tell him all that i am telling you, perfectly frankly, to shake him by the hand, and, by jove, to be the best man at his wedding, if he'd let me. then i shall get back to my inventions with a quiet mind, knowing that the only girl who has ever touched me in the least degree is safe and happy.'" rathbone pushed back his chair and jumped up. "why, heavens," he said, "what a noble fellow! there's a _man_, if you like. i can quite see it all, charliewood, and you've relieved my mind of a tremendous weight. i can see it all quite distinctly. one of the most distinguished and charming men of the day sees a beautiful and intellectual girl and thinks the time has come when he must marry. of course, he can't really know what _love_ is, like a younger man or a man who has not made his mark in the world. he can't feel what i feel, for instance. and so he bows to the inevitable, and in the kindest and most chivalrous way wants to make every one happy. charliewood! it's just like a story-book!" "i don't read 'em myself much, the papers do for me. but, 'pon my soul, since you put it in that way, so it is." mr. charliewood quite forgot to add what sort of story-book. even the most popular novels of to-day don't always have the traditional happy ending. "sit down, old fellow," charliewood said with great kindness. "you mustn't miss this chicken, it is a rather special dish, and i'm going to ring for william." "oh, hang chicken!" rathbone answered, his face glowing. "never abuse your dinner," charliewood answered. "only people who are not able to dine do that. you never know when you may dine again." as he said this the wicked exhilaration at having successfully played with sure and dexterous fingers upon this young and impressionable nature flowed over the older man. an evil joy in his own powers came to him--a devilish satisfaction in his knowledge of the horrid future. for a moment the tenant who had lately taken up his abode within mr. eustace charliewood was looking out of his host's eye. rathbone laughed carelessly. then, after the waiter had once more entered and left the room, he bent over the table and began to speak more earnestly. "i suspect," he said, "that i owe you a great deal in this matter, charliewood, more than you would care to confess. now tell me, don't i?" charliewood waved his hand. "oh, we won't go into that part of the question," he said. "but there's just one thing i would like to say. your feeling in the matter has been quite splendid, rathbone. i admire you for the way you have felt and spoken since you have been telling me about your engagement, from first to last. such a lot of men would have congratulated themselves upon winning the girl away from the other fellow without a thought of what the other fellow would feel. now look here, i do think you owe william this much reparation----" "anything in the world i can do----" rathbone was beginning. "well, there's one thing you can do," charliewood answered, "you can satisfy him that you're the sort of man to whom he would care to surrender miss poole. he is willing and anxious to make friends with you. in fact, i know he is most anxious to meet you. i admit that it may be rather an awkward meeting for you, but i think that you owe it to him, considering the way in which he regards the whole affair." "of course i will meet him," rathbone answered. "i shall be proud to meet a man like that. any time you like." "well, i don't want to press things, rathbone; but, personally, i should say there was no time like the present. we are sure to find gouldesbrough in to-night after dinner. suppose we walk up to regent's park and call on him. i know you will be received in the kindest way, in a way you never suspected before we talked the matter over." "we'll do it," rathbone answered, "and i shall leave his house to-night feeling a great burden has been removed from me." charliewood made no answer to this last remark but merely pushed the champagne-bottle over to his guest. * * * * * an hour afterwards the two men, both with the astrachan coats which brought them so curiously together turned up about their ears, were walking briskly towards oxford street. the fog was very heavy and few people were about, though charliewood said he knew exactly how to find the way. "you needn't worry," he said, "we'll go up portland place, and i can find sir william's house without the least trouble. in fact, i think it would be a mistake to take a hansom on a night like this. the roads are horribly greasy. you can't see the lights of any vehicle a few yards ahead, and we're just as likely to be run into as not. of course, if you'd rather ride----" "not a bit," rathbone answered, "exercise will do me good, and i shall feel calmer and more prepared for the interview. i'm not a sybarite like you are, and after a dinner like you've given me i should not be nearly in such good form unless i did have a walk." "right oh!" charliewood replied; "then come along. we will walk fast to keep warm." they went on, neither talking much, because of the thick fog that stung the nostrils and the eyes and poured down the throat when the mouth was opened. in about three-quarters of an hour they had passed up portland place, turned to the left and were drawing near the house they sought. "it's not very far now," charliewood said. he shook as he said so, and his voice had a very muffled sound. "don't you talk, old fellow," rathbone answered. "i can see you're cold, and this fog plays the deuce with the lungs. do keep quiet; there's no need to say anything. i'll follow where you lead." they stood at last before the little door in the high wall of sir william gouldesbrough's house. in the distance the faint rumble of london came to their ears, but there was not a soul about. nobody saw them as charliewood opened the door with a pass-key, explaining to rathbone that sir william had given him the key in order to save the servants coming through the garden. "i'm always in and out of the house," he explained, still with the cold and fog in his voice. they opened the door, and it clicked behind them. rathbone brushed against some laurel bushes. "i say," he said, "how dark it is here! you must conduct me, charliewood, up this path. let me take your arm." he took his friend's arm, noticing with wonder how the cold seemed to have penetrated the bones of his host; for the big man's whole body was trembling. the gravel crunched beneath their feet as they walked for thirty yards or so. then rathbone saw a dim light above his head. it was the lamp which hung in the porch. his feet knocked against the step. "here we are," charliewood said; "six steps, and then the front door." once more charliewood produced a key, opened the massive door of the hall, and entered with his friend. "take off your coat," he said, as rathbone looked round wonderingly at the big, gloomy and dimly-lit place. "this is rather miserable, but gouldesbrough has got a little snuggery down the passage, where we shall be quite comfortable. are you ready? very well, then, come along." the house seemed absolutely still, save for charliewood's echoing footsteps as he led the way towards the door on the right-hand side of the wide staircase. rathbone followed him. as he did so the sombre emptiness of the place began to steal over his nerves and influence them, coupled, no doubt, with the expectation of the coming interview. he shuddered a little, and wished that he was back again in the cosy little room in jermyn street. then a green baize door opened, they passed through, and it swung back noiselessly behind them. chapter vii england's great sensation in the course of a week or so london, and shortly afterwards the whole of england, realized that a new and absorbing sensation was dawning. perhaps there is nothing which more excites the popular mind than the sudden disappearance of anybody from whatever class of society. it began to be realized, whispered and hinted at in the newspapers that a young and rising barrister of good family, named mr. guy rathbone, of the inner temple, had suddenly vanished. it was but a year or two before that the whole of the country had been thrilled by the sad case of miss hickman. the event and the excitement it had raised at the time were still fresh in the public mind; and when it began to be rumoured that something even more sensational than that had taken place, the press began to be on the alert. in ten days' time such as were known of the facts of mr. guy rathbone's apparent departure from ordinary life had become the topic of the hour. the newspapers were filled with columns of surmises. hour by hour, as the evening papers of london and the provinces appeared, new theories, clues, explanations filled the leader pages and the contents' bills. the "rathbone mystery," as it was called, absorbed the whole interest of the country. an announcement of war would have been momentarily disregarded by the man in the street, while he yet remained unsatisfied as to the truth about the young gentleman who seemed to have been utterly wiped out from the world of men and women, to have vanished into thin air without a trace of his movements or a single clue as to his whereabouts. all that was accurately known was summed up again and again in the press and in general conversation, and it amounted to just this and no more. mr. guy rathbone was in fairly prosperous circumstances; he had an income of his own, was slowly but steadily climbing the laborious ladder of the bar, was popular in society, and, as far as could be ascertained, had no troubles of any sort whatever. it was shown that rathbone was not in debt, and practically owed nothing whatever, except the ordinary current accounts, which he was accustomed to settle every quarter. he had a fair balance at the bank, and his securities, which provided him with his income, were intact. his life had been a singularly open one. his movements had never suggested anything secret or disreputable. his friends were all people in good circumstances, and no one had ever alleged any shady acquaintances against him. he was in perfect health, was constantly in the habit of taking exercise at the german gymnasium, still played football occasionally, and held a commission in the inns of court volunteers. he had never been observed to be downcast or despondent in any way. in short, there was no earthly reason, at any rate upon the surface, for a voluntary withdrawal on his part from the usual routine of his life. the idea of suicide was frankly scouted by both friends, acquaintances and business connections. people do not destroy themselves without a real or imaginary reason, and this young man had always been regarded as so eminently healthy-minded and sane, that no one was prepared to believe even that he had made away with himself in a sudden fit of morbidity or madness. it was shown that there had been no taint of insanity in his family for several generations. the theory of suicide was clearly untenable. this was the conclusion to which journalists, police, and the new class of scientific mystery experts which has sprung up during the last few years unanimously came. moreover, in the london of to-day, or even in the country, it is a most difficult thing for a man to commit suicide without the more or less immediate discovery of his remains. there was not wanting the class of people who hinted at foul play. but that theory was immensely narrowed by the fact that no one could have had any motive for murdering this young man, save only a member of the criminal classes, who did so for personal gain. it was quite true that he might have been robbed and his body cunningly disposed of. such things have happened, such things do, though very rarely, happen in the london of to-day. but the class of criminal who makes a practice and livelihood of robbery with violence, of attempted or actual murder, is a small class. every member of it is intimately known to the police, and scotland yard was able to discover no single suspicious movement of this or that criminal who might reasonably be concerned in such an affair. moreover, it was pointed out that such criminals were either invariably brought to justice or that, at any rate, the _fact_ that some one or other unknown has committed a murder is invariably discovered within a week or so of the occurrence. for fourteen days the hundreds of people engaged in trying to solve this mystery had found no single indication of foul play. where, then, was guy rathbone? was he alive? was he dead? nobody was prepared to say. the one strange circumstance which seemed to throw a tiny light upon the mystery was this. for a fortnight or so before his disappearance, mr. rathbone, usually in the habit of going a good deal to dinner-parties, dances, and so on, had declined all invitations. many people who had invited him to this or that function now came forward and announced that their invitations had been declined, as mr. rathbone had said he was going out of town for a short time. inquiries in the temple showed that mr. rathbone had not been out of town at all. he had remained almost entirely in his chambers, and even his appearances in the law courts, where he had only done three days' actual work for the last week or two, had been less frequent than usual. rathbone was in the habit of being attended to by a woman who came early in the morning, lit the fires, prepared his bath and breakfast, and then swept the chambers. the woman generally arrived at seven and left about twelve, returning again for an hour about six in the evening, to make up the fires and do anything else that might be required. rathbone either lunched in the inner temple or in one of the fleet street restaurants. if not dining out, he generally took this meal at the oxford and cambridge club, of which he was a member. the waiters in the temple hall said that his attendance had not been quite as regular as usual in the fortnight or so before his disappearance, but they certainly thought that they had seen him every other day or so. the woman who looked after the chambers stated that mr. rathbone had remained indoors a good deal more than usual, seeming to be engrossed in law books. on several occasions when she had arrived at six in the evening, she had found that he did not require his dress clothes put out, and had asked her to bring him in some sandwiches or some light food of that description, as he intended to work alone far into the night. these slight divergencies from his ordinary habits were, every one agreed, significant of something. but what that something was nobody knew, and the wild suggestions made on all sides seemed to provide no real solution. the last occasion upon which mr. rathbone had been seen by any one able to report the occurrence was in the early morning at breakfast. mrs. baker, the bed-maker, had cooked the breakfast as usual, and had asked her master if he would excuse her attendance in the evening, as she had a couple of orders for the adelphi, in return for displaying the bills of the theatre in a little shop she kept with her daughter in a street off holborn. "my master seemed in his usual spirits," the good woman had said in an interview with a member of the staff of the _westminster gazette_. "he gave me permission at once to go to the theatre, and said that he himself would be out that evening. there was no trace of anything unusual in his manner. when i arrived in the morning and opened the outer doors of the chambers with my pass key, i went into the study and the sitting-room as usual, lit two fires, turned on the bath, made a cup of tea and took it to mr. rathbone's bedroom. there was no answer to my knock, and when i opened the door and went in, thinking he was over-sleeping himself, i found the bed had not been slept in. this was very unusual in a gentleman of mr. rathbone's regular habits. it would not have attracted my notice in the case of some gentlemen i have been in the habit of doing for, who were accustomed to stay out without any intimation of the fact. but i did think it strange in the case of mr. guy, always a very steady gentleman. i waited about till nearly one o'clock, and he did not return. i then went home, and did not go to the chambers again till six o'clock, when i found things in the same state as before, the fires burnt out, and no trace of anybody having entered. as i left the inn i asked the porter if he had seen mr. rathbone, and he replied that he had not returned. the same thing happened for the next two days, when the porter communicated with the authorities of the inn, and an inspector of police was called in." the interview disclosed few more facts of importance, save only one. this was that mr. rathbone had dressed for dinner on the night of his disappearance. his evening clothes were not in the wardrobe, and the morning suit he had been wearing at breakfast was neatly folded and placed upon a chest of drawers ready for mrs. baker to brush it. this seemed to show indubitably that the barrister had no thought of being absent from home that night. there the matter had rested at first. meanwhile, as no new discovery was made, and not the slightest ray of light seemed to be forthcoming, the public interest was worked up to fever heat. rathbone had few relations, though many friends. his only surviving relative appeared to be his uncle, a brother of his mother, who was the dean of bexeter. the clergyman was interviewed, and stated that he generally received a letter from his nephew every three weeks or so, but nothing in the most recent letter had been unusual, and that he was as much in the dark as any ordinary member of the public. this much was known to the man in the street. but in society, while the comment and amazement was no less in intensity, much more was known than the outside world suspected. for some time past every one had remarked the apparent and growing intimacy between the lost man and miss marjorie poole, who was engaged to the famous scientist, sir william gouldesbrough, f.r.s. how far matters had gone between the young couple was only conjectured, but at the moment of rathbone's disappearance it was generally believed that miss poole was about to throw over sir william for his young rival--this was the elegant way in which men talked in the clubs and women in their drawing-rooms. nothing is hidden now-a-days, and the fierce light of publicity beats upon the doings of the countess and the coster-monger alike. the countess may, perhaps, preserve a secret a little longer than the coster-monger, and that is the only difference between them in this regard. accordingly, on the fifteenth or sixteenth day of the mystery, a sensational morning paper published a special article detailing what professed to be an entirely new light upon the situation. if statements affecting the private and intimate life of anybody can be called in good taste, the article was certainly written with a due regard to proprieties, and with an obvious attempt to avoid hurting the feelings of any one. but, as it was pointed out in a prefatory note, the whole affair had passed from the regions of private life into the sphere of national interest, and therefore it was the duty of a journal to give to the world all and every fact which had any bearing upon the affair, without fear or favour. this last article, which created a tremendous sensation, was in substance as follows:-- it hinted that a young lady of great charm, and moving in the highest circles, a young lady who had been engaged for some little time to one of the most distinguished englishmen of the day, had lately been much seen with the vanished man. the gossip of society had hinted that this could mean nothing more or less than the young lady had been mistaken in the first disposal of her affections, and was about to make a change. how did this bear upon the situation? during the next day or two, though no names were actually printed, it became generally known who the principal characters in the supposed little drama of love really were. everybody spoke freely of old sir frederick poole's distinguished daughter, of lady poole of curzon street, and of sir william gouldesbrough. when the article first appeared everybody began to say, "ah, now we shall have the whole thing cleared up." but as the days went on people began to realize that the new facts threw little new light upon the mystery, and only provided a possible motive for mr. guy rathbone's suicide. and then once more people were compelled to ask themselves if mr. rathbone really was in love with miss poole, and had found that either she would have nothing to say to him, or that she was inevitably bound to sir william gouldesbrough in honour. then when, how and where did he make away with himself? and to that question there was absolutely no answer. chapter viii the chivalrous baronet lady poole and her daughter had been living in rooms in the great palace hotel at brighton for a fortnight. marjorie, utterly broken down by the terrible mystery that enveloped her, and shrinking from the fierce light that began to beat upon the details of her private life, had implored her mother to take her from london. there had been a terrible scene between the old lady and her daughter when, the day after marjorie had written to sir william gouldesbrough telling him that she could not marry him, she had confessed the truth to lady poole. in her anger and excitement the elder woman had said some bitter and terrible things. she was transformed for a space from the pleasant and easy-going society dame into something hard, furious, and even coarse. marjorie had shrunk in amazement and fear from the torrent of her mother's wrath. and finally she had been able to bear it no longer, and had lost consciousness. allowances should be made for the dowager. she was a worldly woman, good and kind as far as she went, but purely worldly and material. the hope of her life had seemed gained when her daughter became engaged to sir william. the revelation that, after all, the engagement was now broken, was nothing more than a delusion, and that a younger and ineligible man, from the worldly point of view, had won marjorie's affection, was a terrible blow to the woman of the world. all her efforts seemed useless. the object of her life, so recently gained, so thoroughly enjoyed, was snatched away from her in a sudden moment. but when marjorie had come to herself again, and the doctor had been summoned to treat her for a nervous shock, she found her mother once more the kindly and loved parent of old. lady poole had been frightened at her own violence, and repented bitterly for what she had said. she tended and soothed the girl in the sweetest and most motherly way. and without disguising from marjorie the bitter blow the girl's decision was to her, she told her that she was prepared to accept the inevitable, and to re-organize all her ideas for the future. and then had come the black mystery of guy's utter vanishing from the world of men and women. lady poole had always been fond of guy rathbone, and now, by a curious contradiction of nature, when she had schooled herself to realize that it was on this man her daughter's life was centred, the old lady was terribly and genuinely affected at guy's disappearance. no one could have been more helpful or more sympathetic during these black hours, and she gladly left curzon street for brighton, in order that she might be alone with her daughter and endeavour to bring her back in some measure to happiness, or, if not happiness, to interest in life. soon after marjorie had written her letter to sir william, lady poole had received a reply from the scientist, enclosing a short note for her daughter. it had been a wonderful letter. the writer said that he could not disguise from himself that he had seen, or at least suspected, the way things were going. "terrible," he said, "as this letter of your daughter's has been to me, it would yet ill-become me not to receive it as a man. i had hoped and believed that a very happy life was in store for me with marjorie and for her with me. then i saw that it was not to be, and marjorie's letter comes as no surprise, but as only the definite and final end of my dream. dear lady poole, do realize that, despite all this, it will always be my duty and my privilege to be the friend of you and of your daughter if you and she will permit me to be so. i have told her so often how i love her, and i tell her so even now. but love, as i understand it, should have the element of self-sacrifice in it, if it is true love. i will therefore say no more about my personal feelings, except in one way. just as my whole life would have been devoted to making your daughter happy, so i now feel it is my duty to devote myself as well as i can to making her happy in another way. she has chosen a man no doubt more worthy to be her husband than i should ever be. you will forgive a natural weakness if i say no more on this point, but the great fact is that she has chosen. therefore, i say that my only wish is for her life-long happiness, and that all my endeavours, such as they are, will be still devoted to that end. let them be happy, let them be together. and if i can promote their happiness, even though my own heart may be broken, believe me, dear lady poole, it is my most fervent wish. "will you give marjorie the enclosed little note of farewell? i shall not trouble her more, until perhaps some day in the future we may still be friends, though fate and her decision have forbidden me to be anything more to her than just that. "believe me, my dear lady poole, "in great sorrow and in sincere friendship, "william gouldesbrough." so the two ladies had gone to brighton, and while the press of the united kingdom was throbbing with excitement, while hundreds of people were endeavouring to solve the terrible mystery of guy rathbone's disappearance, the girl more nearly interested in it than any one else in the world stayed quietly with her mother at the pleasant sea-side town, and was not molested by press or public. marjorie had become, even in these few days, a ghost of her former self. the light had faded out of her eyes, they had ceased to appear transparent and had become opaque. her beautifully chiselled lips now drooped in pathetic and habitual pain, her pallor was constant and unvarying. she drank in the keen sea breezes, and they brought no colour to her cheeks. she walked upon the white chalk cliffs and saw nothing of the shifting gold and shadow as the sun fell upon the sea, heard nothing of the harmonies of the channel winds. her whole heart was full of a passionate yearning and a terrible despair; she was like a stately flower that had been put out of its warm and sheltered home into an icy blast, and was withered and blackened in an hour. kind as her mother was, marjorie felt that there was nobody now left to lean upon, to confide in. a girl of her temperament needs some stronger arm than any woman can provide, to help and comfort, to keep awake the fires of hope within her, and nothing of the sort was hers. in all the world she seemed to have no one to confide in, no one to lean upon, no one who would give her courage and hope for the black and impenetrable future. at the end of the first fortnight, marjorie knew, though her mother only just referred to the matter, that letters were daily arriving from sir william gouldesbrough. one evening lady poole, unable to keep the news from her daughter any longer, told her of these communications. "i dare say, darling," the old lady said, "i may give you pain, but i think you really ought to know how wonderfully poor dear william is behaving in this sad affair. though it must be terribly hard for him, though it must fill him with a pain that i can only guess at, he is moving heaven and earth to discover what has become of your poor boy. he is daily writing to me to tell me what he is doing, to inform me of his hopes, and i tell you, marjorie, that if human power can discover what has happened to guy, william gouldesbrough will discover it. do realize, dear, what a noble thing this is in the man you have rejected. whenever i receive his letters i can't help crying a little, it seems so noble, so touching, and so beautiful of him." marjorie was sitting at the table. the ladies dined in their private rooms, and it was after the meal. her head was in her hands and her eyes were full of tears. she looked up as her mother said this, with a white, wan face. "ah, yes, dear," she replied, "there is no doubt of that, william was always noble. he is as great in heart as he is in intellect. he is indeed one of the chosen and best. don't think i don't realize it, mother, now you've told me, indeed i _do_ realize it. my whole heart is filled with gratitude towards him. no one else would have done as much in his position." "you do feel that, do you, dear?" lady poole said. "oh, indeed i do," she answered, "though i fear that even he, great as his intellect is, will never disperse this frightful, terrible darkness." lady poole got up and came round to where her daughter was sitting. she put her hand upon the shining coil of hair and said-- "dear, do you think that you could bear to see him?" "to see william?" marjorie answered quickly with a curious catch in her voice. "yes, darling, to see william. would it give you too much pain?" "but how, why, what for?" "oh, not to revive any memories of the past, there is nothing further from his thoughts. but this morning he wrote me the very sweetest letter, saying that in this crisis he might be able to give you a little comfort." "has he discovered anything, then?" marjorie asked. "i fear not as yet. but he says that at this moment you must feel very much alone. as you know, he is doing all that a mortal man can. of course, i have told him how broken you are by it all, and he thinks that perhaps you might like to hear what he is doing, might like to confide in him a little. 'if,' he says in his letter, 'she will receive me as a brother, whose only wish is to help her in this terrible trial, can i say how proud and grateful i shall be to come to her and tell her what i can?'" marjorie gave a great sob. it was too much. in her nervous and weak condition the gentle and kindly message her mother had given her was terribly affecting. "how good he is!" she murmured. "yes, mother, if only he would come i should like to see him." "then, my dear," lady poole replied, "that is very easily arranged, for he is in the hotel to-night." marjorie started. her mother went to a side table on which was a little portable telephone. she held the receiver to her ear, and when the clerk from the down-stairs office replied, asked that sir william gouldesbrough should be told at once that lady poole would be very glad to see him in number . marjorie rose and began to pace the room. a growing excitement mastered her, her hands twitched, her eyes were dilated. perhaps she was at last going to hear something, something definite, something new, about guy. there was a knock at the door. a waiter opened it, and sir william gouldesbrough came into the room. chapter ix gratitude of miss marjorie poole as the man to whom she had been engaged came into the room, marjorie rose to meet him. she was not embarrassed, the hour and occasion were too serious for that, and she herself was too broken down for any emotions save those that were intensely real and came from an anguished heart. she went up to him, all pale and drooping, and took him by the hand. "thank you, william," she said in a low voice, and that was all. but in her words gouldesbrough realized all that she was powerless to say. he heard, with an inward thrill and leap of the pulses, an immense respect for him, which, even in the days of their engagement, he had never heard. always, marjorie had reverenced his attainments, never had she seemed to be so near to him as a _man_ as now. he looked straight into her eyes, nor did his own flinch from her direct and agonized gaze. the frightful power of his dominating will, the horrible strength of his desire, the intensity of his purpose, enabled him to face her look without a sign of tremor. he, this man with a marvellous intellect and a soul unutterably stained by the most merciless perfidy, was yet able to look back at her with a kind, sorrowful, and touching glance. gouldesbrough wore no metal helmet which should make the horror of his thoughts and knowledge plain for marjorie to see. the man who had committed a crime as foul and sinister as ever crime was yet, the man who was responsible for the pale face of the girl he loved, the drooping form, the tearful eyes, yet smiled back at her with a mask of patient resignation, deference, and chivalry. "i am so glad you've come, william," lady poole said; "and i'm sure, distressing as all these circumstances are, we cannot thank you enough for what you have done and are doing. no one else in your position would have done so much. and on marjorie's behalf and on my own i thank you with a full heart." sir william bowed. then lady poole, voluble as she usually was, and unabashed in almost every circumstance hesitated a little. the situation was certainly very delicate, almost unparalleled, indeed, and it was certainly quite outside even her wide experience. but her voice had a genuine ring of thankfulness and gratitude, and the real woman emerged from the veneer of worldliness and baffled ambition. there was a pause for a moment, no one of the three spoke a single word. then lady poole, by an intuition, said and did exactly the right thing--perhaps old sir frederick's "hobby of tact" had not been without its use after all! she sank into a chair. "there's no need for any explanation, i can see that," she said with a sigh of relief. "with any other man it would have been so different, but it's all right, william, i can see it in your manner and in your presence here. then let me say once and for all, that both marjorie and i feel at last we have got some one with us who will help us. we have been terribly alone. we have both felt it most poignantly. after all, women do want a man in a crisis! you, dear william, are the last man we should have thought of asking to help us, and yet you are the first man who has come to do so." "dear lady poole," gouldesbrough answered in a quiet voice, "i think perhaps i see a little of what you mean. i am not sure, but i think i do. and i regard it as the greatest privilege and honour to come to you with an offer of help and assistance in your trouble." he turned to the younger lady. "marjorie," he said, "you must treat me just like a brother now. you must forget all that has passed between us, and just lean on me, rely on me, use me. nothing could make me more happy than just that." lady poole rose again. who shall say in the volatile brain of the good dame that already in the exhilaration of sir william's presence and kindness, new hopes and ambitions were not reviving? lady poole was a woman, and she was an opportunist too. woman-like, her mind moved fast into an imaginary future; it had always done so. and it is possible that upon the clouded horizon of her hopes a faint star began to twinkle once more. who shall blame lady poole? "now, my dears," she said in a more matter of fact voice, "i think perhaps you might be happier in discussing this matter if i were to go away. under the circumstances, i am perfectly aware that it's not the correct thing to do, but that is speaking only from a conventional standpoint, and none of us here can be conventional at a moment like this. if you would rather have me stay, just say so. but it is with pride and pleasure that i know that i can leave you with marjorie, william, even under these miserable circumstances and in this unhappy business." gouldesbrough smiled sadly. "it is as marjorie wishes," he said. "but i know that marjorie knows she can trust me." the great man saw that once more the girl lifted her eyes and looked at him with something which was almost like reverence. never before had he seen her look at him like this. once more the evil joy in the possibility of victory after all leapt through his blood. no thought nor realization of the terrible thing he had done, of the horrors that he and the pink-faced man in regent's park were even now perfecting, came to trouble that moment of evil pride. everybody had always said, everybody who had been brought into contact with him, always knew that sir william gouldesbrough was a strong man! lady poole waited a moment to see if her daughter made any sign of wishing her to remain, and finding that there was none, for marjorie was standing with drooping head and made no movement, the dowager swept out of the room with rustling skirts, and gently closed the door. sir william and marjorie were left alone. the man of action asserted himself. "sit down, marjorie," he said in a commonplace tone, "and just let me talk to you on pure matters of fact. now, my dear, we haven't seen each other since you wrote me the letter telling me that our engagement was a mistake. you know what my reply to that was, and i believe and trust you know that i shall remain perfectly true to both the spirit and actual words of that communication. that's all we need say now, except just this: i loved you dearly and i love you dearly now. i had hoped that we might have been very happy together and that i might have spent my life in your service. but that was not to be in the way that i had hoped. at the same time, i am not a man easily moved or changed, and if i cannot be yours in one way, dear girl, i will be yours in another. however, that's all about that. now, then, let me tell you how hard i have been trying to discover the truth of this astounding disappearance of poor mr. guy rathbone." a low sob came from the girl in the chair. it was a sob not only of regret for her lost lover, but it had the same note of reverence, of utter appreciation, of her first words. "you are too good," she said. "william, i have treated you horribly badly. you are too good. oh, you are _too_ good!" "hush!" he said in a sharp staccato voice. "we agreed that aspect of the question wasn't to be spoken of any more. the past is the past, and, my dear little girl, i beg you to realize it. you loved poor guy rathbone, and he seems to have been wiped out of ordinary life. my business is to find him again for you, so that you may be happy. i have been trying to do the utmost in my power for days. i have done everything that my mind could suggest, and as yet nothing has occurred. now, marjorie, let's just be business-like. tell me what you think about the matter, and i will tell you what i think. see if our two brains cannot hit on something which will help us." "william," she said with a full note, a chord rather, of deep pain in her voice--"william, i don't know what to think. i can't understand it. i am lost in utter darkness. there seems no possible reason why he should have gone away. i can only think that the worst has happened, and that some terrible people must have killed him." "but why?" "oh," she answered almost hysterically, "he was so beautiful and so strong. they must have killed him because he was so different to other men." she did not see the tall man who sat before her wince and quiver. she did not see his face change and contort itself into malignancy. she did not realize that these innocent words, wrung from a simple distressed and loving heart, meant awful things for the man she longed for. "but, marjorie," the voice came steady and strong, "you know that is just a little fantastic, if you will forgive me for saying so. people don't go about injuring other people because they are better-looking or have finer natures than themselves. they only say unkind things about them, they don't kill them, you know." "oh, of course, you are right, william," she answered, "and i hardly know what i'm saying, the pain of it all is so great. but then, there _is_ nothing to say. i can't understand, i can hardly realize what has happened." "for my part," sir william answered, "i have left no stone unturned to discover the truth. i have been in communication with every force or agency which might be able to explain the thing. and no one has given me the slightest hint, except perhaps----" she leapt up from her chair, her pale face changed. "yes?" she cried, "what is it? what is that?" her breath came thick and fast. sir william remained sitting in his chair and his head was bowed. "sit down, marjorie," he answered; "i didn't mean to say that." "but you said it," she replied. "ah! my ears are very keen, and there was something in your voice which had meaning. william, what is it? what is it?" "nothing," he answered in a deep, decisive voice. but the voice brought no conviction to her ears. she had detected, or thought she had detected, the note of an inner knowledge when he had first spoken. she crossed the room with rapid strides and laid her white hand upon his shoulder. "you've _got_ to tell me," she said imperiously. and her touch thrilled him through and through with an exquisite agony and an exquisite joy. "it's nothing," he repeated. now there was less conviction than ever in his voice. she laughed hysterically. "william," she said, "i know you so well, you can't hide anything from me. there's something you can tell me. whatever it may be, good or bad, you've just _got_ to tell me." at that he looked up at her, and his face, she saw, was drawn and frightened. "marjorie," he said, "don't let any words of mine persuade you into any belief. since you ask me i must say what i have got to say. but mind you, i am in no way convinced myself that what i am going to tell you is more than mere idle supposition." "tell me," she whispered, and her voice hissed like escaping steam. "well, it's just this," he said, "and it's awfully hard for me even to hint such a thing to you. but, you know, rathbone had recently made rather a friend of poor eustace charliewood. i like charliewood; you never did. a man's point of view and a girl's point of view are quite different about a man. but of course i can't pretend that charliewood is exactly, well--er--what you might call--i don't know quite how to put it, marjorie." "i know," she said with a shudder of disgust "i know. go on." "well, just before rathbone disappeared those two seemed to have been about together a good deal, and of course charliewood is a man who has some rather strange acquaintances, especially in the theatrical world. that is to say, in the sub-theatrical world. marjorie, i hardly know how to put it to you, and i think i had better stop." "go on!" she cried once more. "well," he said wearily, "rathbone was a good fellow, no doubt, but he is a young man, and no girl really knows what the life of a young man really is or may be. i know that charliewood introduced rathbone to a certain girl. oh, marjorie, i can't go on, these suspicions are unworthy." "terribly unworthy," she cried, standing up to her full height, and then in a moment she drooped to him, and once more she asked him to go on. he told her of certain meetings, saying that there could have been, of course, no harm in them, skilfully hinting at this or that, and then testifying to his utter disbelief in the suspicions that he himself had provoked. she listened to him, growing whiter and whiter. at last his hesitating speech died away into silence, and she stood looking at him. "it might be," she whispered, half to herself, "it might be, but i do not think it _could_ be. no man could be so unutterably cruel, so unutterably base. i have made you tell me this, william, and i know that you yourself do not believe it. he could not be so wicked as to sacrifice everything for one of those people." and then sir william rose. "no," he said, "he couldn't. i feel it, though i don't know him. marjorie, no living man could leave you for one of the vulgar syrens of the half world." she looked at him for a moment as he put the thing in plain language, and then burst into a passion of weeping. "i can't bear any more, william," she said between her sobs. "go now, but find him. oh, find him!" chapter x a man about town pays a debt the people in the luxurious smoking-room of the great palace hotel saw a pale, ascetic-looking and very distinguished man come in to the comfortable place and sit down upon a lounge. "do you know who that is?" one man whispered to another, flicking the ash off a cigar. "no; who is he?" his companion answered. "that's sir william gouldesbrough." "oh, the great scientific johnny, you mean." "yes, they say that he is going to turn the world topsy-turvy before he's done." "the world's good enough for me," was the reply, "and if i'd my way, these people who invent things should all be taken out and shot. i'm tired of inventions, they make life move too quickly. the good old times were best, when it took eight hours to get from brighton to london, and one could not have telegrams from one's office to worry one." "perhaps you're right," said the first man. "but still, people look at things differently now-a-days. at any rate, gouldesbrough is said to be one of the leading men in england to-day." "he doesn't look happy over it," replied his companion. "he looks like a death's-head." "well, you know, he's mixed up in the rathbone mystery in a sort of way." "oh yes, of course; he was engaged to the girl who chucked him over for the johnny who has disappeared, wasn't he?" "that's it. just watch him, poor wretch; doesn't he look pipped?" "upon my word, the perspiration's standing out on his forehead in beads. he seems as if----" "as if he had been overworking and overeating. he wants a turkish bath, i expect. now then, jones, what do you really think about the fall in south africans? will they recover in the next two months? that's what i want to know; that's what i want to be certain of." sir william had just left the up-stairs apartments of the pooles. he had rung for the lift and entered, without a word to the attendant, who had glanced fearfully at the tall, pale man with the flashing eyes and the wet face. once or twice the lift-man noticed that the visitor raised his hand to his neck above the collar and seemed to press upon it, and it may have been fancy on the lift-man's part--though he was not an imaginative person--but he seemed to hear a sound like a drum beating under a blanket, and he wondered if the gentleman was troubled with heart-disease. gouldesbrough pressed the little electric bell upon the oak table in front of him, and in a moment a waiter appeared. "bring me a large brandy and soda," he said in a quiet voice. the waiter bowed and hurried away. the waiter did not know, being a foreigner, and unacquainted with the tittle-tattle of the day, that sir william gouldesbrough, the famous scientist, was generally known to be a practical teetotaller, and one who abhorred the general use of alcoholic beverages. when the brandy came, amber in the electric lights of the smoking-room, and with a piece of ice floating in the liquid, sir william took a small white tabloid from a bottle in his pocket and dropped it into the glass. it fizzed, spluttered, and disappeared. then he raised the tumbler to his lips, and as he did so the floating ice tinkled against the sides of the glass like a tiny alarum. "nerves gone," the stock-broking gentleman close by said to his friend, with a wink. in five minutes or so, after he had lit a cigarette, gouldesbrough rose and left the smoking-room. he put on his coat in the hall and went out of the front door. it was not yet late, and the huge crescent of electric lights, which seemed to stretch right away beyond hove to worthing, gleamed like a gigantic coronet. it was a clear night. the air was searching and keen, and it seemed to steady the scientist as he walked down the steps and came out from under the hotel portico on to the pavement. a huge round moon hung over the sea, which was moaning quietly. the lights in front of the alhambra music hall gleamed brightly, and on the promenade by the side of the shore innumerable couples paced and re-paced amid a subdued hum of talk and laughter. the pier stretched away into the water like a jewelled snake. it was brighton at ten o'clock, bright, gay, and animated. sir william was staying at the brighton royal, the other great hotel which towers up upon the front some quarter of a mile away from the palace, where marjorie and lady poole were. he strode through the crowds, seeing nothing of them, hearing nothing but the beat of his own heart. even for a man so strong as he, the last hour had been terrible. never before in all his life, at the moment of realization when some great scientific theory had materialized into stupendous fact, when first marjorie had promised to marry him--at any great crisis of his life--had he undergone so furious a strain as this of the last hour. he came out of the palace hotel, knowing that he had carried out his intentions with the most consummate success. he came out of it, realizing that not half-a-dozen men in england could have done what he had done, and as the keen air smote upon his face like a blow from the flat of a sword, he realized also that not six men in england, walking the pleasant, happy streets of any town, were so unutterably stained and immeasurably damned as he. as he passed through the revolving glass doors of his own hotel, and the hall-porters touched their caps, he exerted all the powers of his will. he would no longer remember or realize what he had done and what it meant to him. he would only rejoice in his achievement, and he banished the fear that comes even to the most evil when they know they have committed an almost unpardonable sin. he did not use the lift to go to his sitting-room on the second floor; he ran lightly up the stairs, wanting the exercise as a means of banishing thought. he entered his own room, switched on the electric light, took off his coat, and stood in front of the fire, stretching his arms in pure physical weariness. yes! that was over! another step was taken. once more he had progressed a step towards his desire, in spite of the most adverse happenings and the most forbidding aspects of fate. the unaccustomed brandy at the palace hotel, and the bromide solution he had dropped into it, had calmed his nerves, and suddenly he laughed aloud in the rich, silent room, a laugh of pure triumph and excitement. even as the echoes of his voice died away, his eyes fell upon the table and saw that there was a letter lying there addressed to him. the address was written in a well-known handwriting. he took it up, tore open the envelope and read the communication. it was this-- "i have been down here for several days, trying to escape from london and the thoughts which london gives me. but it has been quite useless. i saw to-day, quite by chance, in the hotel register, that you have arrived here. i did not think that we were ever likely to meet again, except in the most casual way. i hope not. since i have been here, the torture of my life has increased a thousand-fold, and i have come to the conclusion that my life must stop. i am not fit to live. i don't blame you too much, because if i hadn't been a scoundrel and a wastrel all my life, i should never have put myself in your hands. as far as your lights go, you have acted well to me. you have paid me generously for the years of dirty work i have done at your bidding. for what i have done lately, you have made me financially free, and i shall die owing no man a penny, and with no man, save you only, knowing that i die without hope--lost, degraded and despairing. don't think i blame you, william gouldesbrough, because i don't. when i was at eton, i was always a pleasure-loving little scug. i was the same at oxford. i have been the same in all my life in town. i have never been any good to myself, and i have disappointed all the hopes my people had for me. it's all been my own fault. then i became entangled with you, and i was too weak to resist the money you were prepared to pay me for the things i have done for you. "but it's all over now. i have gone too far. i have helped you, and am equally guilty with you, to commit a frightful crime. lax as i have always been, i can no longer feel i have any proper place among men of my own sort. all i can say is that i am glad i shall die without anybody knowing what i really am. "i write this note after dinner, and, finding the number of your room from the hotel clerk, i leave it here for you to see. i am going to make an end of it all in an hour or two, when i have written a few notes to acquaintances and so on. i can't go on living, gouldesbrough, because night and day, day and night, i am haunted by the thought of that poor young man you have got in your foul house in regent's park. what you are doing to him i don't know. the end of your revenge i can only guess at. but it is all so horrible that i am glad to be done with life. i wish you good-bye; and i wish to god--if there is really a god--that i had never crossed your path and never been your miserable tool. "eustace charliewood." as sir william gouldesbrough read this letter, his whole tall figure became rigid. he seemed to stiffen as a corpse stiffens. then, quite suddenly, he turned round and pushed the letter into the depths of the glowing fire, pressing the paper down with the poker until every vestige of it was consumed. he strode to the door of the room, opened it, came out into the wide carpeted corridor and hurried up to the lift. he pressed the button and heard it ring far down below. in a minute or two there came the clash of the shutting doors, the "chunk" of the hydraulic mechanism, and he saw the shadow of the lift-roof rising up towards him. the attendant opened the door. "will you take me up to the fourth floor, please," he said, "to mr. eustace charliewood's room?" "mr. charliewood, sir?" the man replied. "oh, yes, i remember, number . tall, clean-shaved gentleman." "that's him," sir william said. "i have only just learnt that he has been staying in the hotel. he is an old friend, and i had no idea he was here." the iron doors clashed, the lift shot upward, and the attendant and sir william arrived at the fourth floor. "down the corridor, sir, and the first turning on the right," the lift-man said. "but perhaps i'd better show you." he ran the ironwork gates over their rollers and hurried down the corridor with sir william. they turned the corner, and the man pointed to a door some fifteen yards away. "that's it, sir," he said. "that's mr. charliewood's room." even as he spoke there was a sudden loud explosion which seemed to come from the room to which he had pointed--a horrid crash in the warm, richly-lit silence of the hotel. the man turned to sir william with a white face. "come on," he said, forgetting his politeness. "something has happened. come, quick!" when they burst into the room they found the man about town lying upon the hearth-rug with a little blue circle edged with crimson in the centre of his forehead. the hands were still moving feebly, but what had been eustace charliewood was no longer there. chapter xi beef tea and a phosphate solution sir william gouldesbrough remained in brighton for three days. eustace charliewood had died in two minutes after the lift-man and the scientist had burst into the room. the suicide had said no word, and indeed was absolutely unconscious from the moment the shot had been fired, until his almost immediate death. sir william had made all the necessary arrangements. he had communicated with old sir miles charliewood, of norfolk, he had expedited the arrangements for the inquest, and he was, as the newspapers said, "overcome with grief at the death of his old and valued friend." during the three days, the demeanour of the famous scientist was reported on with great admiration in all quarters. he had known of nothing to cause mr. eustace charliewood any trouble or worry, and he was struck down by the loss he had sustained. "it shows," many of the leading people in brighton said to each other, "that science is, after all, not the de-humanizing agency it is popularly said to be. here is perhaps the most famous scientific man of the age, grieving like a brother for his friend, a mere society man of charming manners and without any intellectual attainments. melancholy as the occasion is, it has served to bring out some fine and noble traits in a man whose private life has always been something of a mystery to the public." the inquest was a short one. there were few witnesses. one or two intimate friends of the dead man came down from london--club friends these--and testified that they knew of nothing which could have prompted the suicide, though the dead man had been noticed to be somewhat depressed for the last fortnight or so. sir william himself, in a short but learned exposition given during the course of his evidence, pronounced it as his opinion that eustace charliewood had been suddenly seized by one of those unexplainable impulses of mania which, like a scarlet thread, sometimes lurk unsuspected for years in the pearly cells of the brain. his view was accepted by the coroner and the jury, and the usual verdict of temporary insanity was returned. "he was," sir william had said at the close of the evidence and in a voice broken with deep feeling, "the best and truest friend i have ever had. our walks in life were utterly different. he took no interest in, nor did he understand, my scientific work. and i, on the other hand, took very little part in the social duties and amusements which made up the greater part of mr. eustace charliewood's life. perhaps for that very reason we were the more closely drawn together. no one will ever know, perhaps, the real underlying goodness, generosity and faithfulness in my dead friend's character. i cannot go into details of his private life, i can only say that the mysterious seizure which has robbed society of one of its ornaments, has taken from the world a gentleman in every thought and deed, a type of man we can ill afford to lose in the england of to-day." young lord landsend, who, with mr. percy alemare, had attended the inquest from london, looked at his friend with a somewhat cynical smile, as the deep voice of sir william gouldesbrough faltered in its peroration. mr. percy alemare replied to the smile with a momentary wink. both of the young men were very sorry that eustace charliewood had dropped out so suddenly. they had liked him well enough, but they certainly had not discerned the innate nobility of character, so feelingly set forth by sir william gouldesbrough, and so fully reported by the newspaper-men present. afterwards, in the hotel, old sir miles charliewood had shaken the scientist warmly by the hand. "what i have heard you say, sir," he said, "comforted me very much. i wish poor eustace's eldest brother had been here to hear you say it. but james is in india with his regiment. eustace did not come to us at charliewood hall. there were family reasons of long standing, why there was a breach between his family and himself. these, sir william, i will not enter into here. but death heals all breaches, and remembering eustace as a bright and happy boy at eton, before we became estranged, i feel a father's natural sorrow. but let me say, sir william, once more, that you have lightened that sorrow somewhat. i had regarded my son as living a useless and selfish life upon the allowance i was in the habit of paying into his bank. to hear that there was an underlying strata of goodness and nobleness in his character is indeed a solace." sir william had bowed, and old sir miles, a courtly old gentleman of great age, whose grief had not prevented him from making an excellent dinner the evening before, and from passing somewhat acrid criticisms upon the hotel wine, drove away to the station, smoking a cigar, and feeling that the troublesome and unpleasant episode was well over. thus, mr. eustace charliewood, man about town, made his sudden exit from vanity fair. thus, sir william gouldesbrough, f.r.s., had another secret to lock up in the sombre recesses of his brain. during the three days that he had been forced to remain in brighton by the tragedy, sir william had seen something of the two ladies at the palace hotel. both lady poole and marjorie during that time had come insensibly to lean upon him, and to ask his advice about this or that. a terrible gap had been created in marjorie's life, and though gouldesbrough could not fill it, he came at the right moment to comfort and sustain. before he returned to london, sir william had gradually glided into a new relation with the girl to whom he had been engaged. he found his power over her had increased. she was more dependent and subservient in her great trouble than she had ever been during the time when she was promised to be his wife, and he must sue for favours. and gouldesbrough noticed also that, though the girl's grief seemed in no way lessened her hopes of ever seeing guy rathbone again seemed to be dwindling. the cunning words that he had spoken, the little hint of a vulgar circe was perhaps beginning to germinate within marjorie's brain. she was too loyal to believe any such statement, but, nevertheless, it had an unconscious influence with her. at any rate, she began to cease discussion of the mystery, and there was the hinting of a coming resignation to the hard and impenetrable fact. this at least was what sir william gouldesbrough deduced. trained watcher of the mind and human impulse as he was, psychologist of marvellous knowledge and penetration, he began to see, or so he thought to himself, that all was not yet lost, that it might well be that the events of the last few weeks would some day--not yet or soon, but some day--place him upon a higher pedestal than ever before. on the evening of the fourth day after his arrival, sir william gouldesbrough returned to town. in the afternoon he had driven with lord landsend and percy alemare to the cemetery. it had been a cold and blustering afternoon, and the plain hearse and the single carriage that followed it had trotted through the semi-deserted streets until the grave-side was reached. the shivering vicar of a neighbouring church, whose turn it was to take the cemetery duty for the week, had said the words of the burial-service, and in some half-an-hour all that was mortal of mr. eustace charliewood had disappeared for ever and a day. he would never stroll up bond street in his fur coat any more. never again would he chat with the head-waiter upon the important question of a lunch. no longer would mr. proctor, the masseur, set the little rubber hammers to beat out the lines of dissipation upon that weak and handsome face. mr. eustace charliewood had resigned his membership of the st. james's street clubs, and had passed out of vanity fair into the night. after the funeral, gouldesbrough went to say good-bye to lady poole and marjorie. his last words to them were these-- "i shall go on," he said, "doing all that i can in every possible way. and everything that i do i will let you know, and if i can discover the slightest clue to this terrible mystery, you shall hear it at once. but don't buoy yourself up with false hopes, that is all i ask. none of us can say what the future may have in store, but for my part i have not much hope. it may seem a cruel thing for me to say, marjorie, but i think it is my duty to say it. bear up and be brave, and remember that i am always close by to do anything i can in any and every way to help you and your mother." and when he had gone, the two ladies, sitting in the twilight before the glowing fire in the open hearth of the hotel sitting-room, had felt that something, some one, who had become necessary to them, had departed. sir william gouldesbrough travelled up to victoria in a pullman car. he sat in his arm-chair before a little table, on which was a pile of evening papers. during the first ten minutes he had glanced through all of them, and only one part of the news' columns claimed his attention--this was the portion of the paper devoted to the "rathbone mystery." he noticed that already the clamour and agitation was beginning to die down. the shrewd purveyors of news were beginning to realize that the mystery was not likely to be solved, and that the public appetite was satiated with it. the two columns or more which had been usual in the early days of rathbone's disappearance, had now dwindled to a single three-quarters of a column. sir william realized that the public interest was already dying out. for a few minutes, when he had methodically folded the papers in a pile, he allowed his thoughts to dwell upon the recent incidents at brighton. charliewood had killed himself. what did that mean? it simply meant that eustace charliewood was out of the way. the baronet had not a single regret in his mind. despite the geniality of his manner to his late henchman, when circumstances had seemed to require that, he had regarded him as simply a servant and a tool, and as of considerably less importance in the scheme of things than, say, a delicate induction coil, or a new drum armature. then there was marjorie. in his quick summarizing way, allowing no emotion to enter his brain at the moment, sir william reviewed that aspect of his brighton visit too. well, that also was satisfactory. things were going indeed far better than he had hoped. he had accomplished exactly what he had meant to do, rather more indeed, and he had done so with singular success. his position with lady poole and her daughter was perhaps stronger than it had ever been, even in the days when his position was, so to speak, an official one. good again! and with that, the cool, hard intellect dismissed personal affairs entirely, and with a sigh of relief the physical body of the man leant back in his chair, while the brain went swiftly and gladly into the high realms of science. at victoria, sir william's motor brougham was waiting, and he was driven swiftly through the lighted streets of london towards his own house in regent's park. he smoked a cigar and bent forward, looking at the moving panorama of people under the gas-lamps, as a man sits in an arm-chair and lets the world defile before him. and as he watched the countless throngs, streams that moved and pulsed in the arteries of the great city as the blood moves and pulses in the veins and arteries of man, he was filled with a tremendous exultation and pride. soon, ah, soon! he would be master of every single mind and soul that, housed in its envelope of flesh, flitted so rapidly past the windows of the swift-moving machine in which he sat. no secrets, great or small, noble or petty, worthy or evil, would be hidden from him, and he, alone, by the power of his intellect and the abnormal force of his will, had wrested from nature the most stupendous and mysterious of all her secrets. there was but little more to be done now, before the great invention would be shown to the leading scientists of the world. already slight hints, thin rumours of what was being done in the laboratories of regent's park, were beginning to filter through the most important scientific circles. a paper read by sir william at the british association, a guarded article contributed to the _nineteenth century_, propounding some most daring theories as to the real action of the mind, had already prepared some of the shrewdest brains in europe for a possible revelation of something stupendously startling in the realms of scientific achievement. a few keen and brilliant brains had realized, if sir william was right, even in these preliminary conclusions, whither the conclusions tended. lesser scientists who could not see so far, knew nothing. the man in the street was only aware that the great scientist had been working for years upon abstruse problems which had no interest for him whatever. but, nevertheless, in the highest circles, there was an indubitable stir and rumour. yes! but little now remained to be done before absolute perfection of the invention was obtained. a few more experiments, more delicate and decisive than any that had gone before, still remained to be made. the apparatus itself was completed. its working under certain conditions was certain. it was still necessary, however, to test it by means of continuous experiments upon a living human brain. during the last year of their work, gouldesbrough and wilson guest had begun to realize this last necessity with increasing conviction. they saw that the coping-stone of the marvellous edifice which they had slowly built up through the years, was now resolving itself into this, and this alone. neither had said as much to each other in so many words, until some four months ago. then, upon one memorable night, when, excited by drink to an unusual freedom and openness of speech, guest had voiced the unspoken thought of his master and himself. a human brain, a living human brain, in a living human body was an absolute and final requirement. there were not wanting, there never have been wanting, scientific enthusiasts who will submit themselves to experiment. but in this case a voluntary subject was impossible, for reasons which will presently appear. it became a definite problem with the two men as to how, and by what means, they should obtain a living creature who should be absolutely subject to their will. and then chance had provided sir william with the unique opportunity. he had seen his way to rid himself of a hated rival, and to provide a subject for experiment at one and the same time. he had not hesitated. brains so far removed from the ordinary sphere of humanity as his never hesitate at anything. guy rathbone had disappeared. the motor stopped at the door in the great, grim wall which surrounded sir william's house. he said good-night to the chauffeur who looked after his two cars at a garage some half-a-mile away, and opened the wicket with his key. as he walked through the dark garden and saw the great square block of the house looming up before him, it was with a quickening sense of anticipation and pleasure. all the worries of his life were momentarily over and done with, he was coming back to his great passion, to his life work, the service of science! it was about ten o'clock, and as he opened the front door and came into the hall, everything was silent and still. he lifted up the padded stick which hung beside the dinner-gong and struck the metal, standing still while the deep booming note echoed mournfully through the house. the butler did not answer the summons. sir william realized that the man must be out; wilson guest had probably given the servants an evening's holiday for some purpose of his own. he crossed the dimly-lit hall, pushed open the baize door which led to the study, and entered his own room. the fire was burning brightly, the electric lights glowed, but the place was quite empty. on his writing-table were a pile of letters, on a round table set beside the fire was a cold chicken and a bottle of claret. obviously his first surmise had been right, and the servants were out. he left the study, proceeded onwards down the passage and unlocked another door, a door through which no one but himself and guest were allowed to penetrate, a door that was always kept locked, and which led to the laboratories, mechanical rooms, and invention studios, which had been built out at the back of the house over what were once the tennis lawns, and occupied a considerable area. locking the door behind him, sir william went on down a short passage. the first door on the right had the letter "a" painted on it in white. he opened this door and looked in. the room was empty, though it was brilliantly lit. it was a place filled with large tables, on which there were drawing instruments, sheets of figures and tracings. guest was not there. closing the door again and passing onward, sir william entered the chemical laboratory, a long, low place, lit by a sky-light in day, and by electricity at night. as he opened the door quietly, he heard sounds of movement. and then immediately, at the far end of the laboratory, he saw the man he was looking for. the place was in entire darkness save at one end, where two incandescent bulbs glowed above an experiment table. the assistant was bending over a bunsen burner above which a large glass tube was clamped, in which some liquid was boiling. suddenly he heard sir william's advancing footsteps, and leapt up. for a single moment the grey-pink hairless face was suffused with furtive terror at the sound. it shone out in the light of the lamps clear and distinct, though the lower part of the body was hidden by the darkness. "here you are then," gouldesbrough said. "the whole house seems deserted." guest sighed with relief, and then began to titter in his curious, almost feminine, way-- "by jove!" he said, "you startled me, william. i had no idea when you'd be back. my nerves are like lumps of wet velvet. he! he!" his hand shook as he came forward to greet his chief. sir william knew well that this man was a consistent and secret drunkard, and he never made any comment on the fact. guest was at liberty to do exactly as he pleased, to gratify his vices to the full--because guest, drunk or sober, was a complete and brilliant helper, and because sir william not only could not do without him, but knew that the man was his, body and mind, so long as he was allowed to indulge himself as he would. yet, as the greater man shook hands with the lesser, he was conscious of a sudden thrill of repulsion at the filthy fears of the sensualist. "yes, i'm back," gouldesbrough answered, "and everything has gone very well. i suppose you have seen that eustace charliewood killed himself?" "yes, i did," guest answered, "and for a few hours i was considerably troubled about it. then i saw by the paper that you were down there, so i knew it would be all right. he never said anything, of course, or left anything behind him?" "only a letter to me, which i destroyed." "good," guest answered, and his interest in eustace charliewood and his end ceased immediately. "well, i've lots to tell you. i've gone as far as i could on my own lines, but i've been longing for you to come back. my dear william, it's simply splendid! how right you have been always! how absolutely necessary it was to have a living brain to experiment on!" "how is the man, in good health?" "well, of course there's been a considerable waste of tissue, and the absolute lack of exercise has had its effect. but the cell is well ventilated with an electric fan which i keep constantly going, and i allow the subject to read two or three hours every day--such books as he may ask for. the rest of the time i turn out the light, after i have fixed on the cap. i find that the thought images thrown upon the screen in room "d" are more vivid when the subject is kept in darkness. still, speaking as a whole, the physical health is good, and it's singular how vivid the thought pictures are, which shows that the cerebrum is in a perfectly strong and healthy condition. as you know, it is from that part of the brain we get all our voluntary and actual pictures; therefore, we are to be congratulated that there is no weakness in that regard so far. still, when you came in, i was just preparing a phosphate solution which i'm going to mix with the subject's soup, which he will take in an hour or so. three or four days' phosphate treatment will intensify the vibrations within the magnetic field of the cap. i was doing this in view of your return, when we shall really begin to experiment seriously." "have you had any trouble, physical trouble i mean, with the subject?" gouldesbrough asked. "oh, no," guest replied indifferently. "of course he's as strong as a horse, but the aluminium fetters and the system of india-rubber cord that you suggested, have proved all that was necessary. i can render him quite helpless directly i get inside the cell and before he could possibly reach me. then fitting the cap is a simple matter. the head is rigid in the vulcanite depression which encloses the neck, and there is no resistance at all." "good," gouldesbrough answered. "curiously enough, i found that design in a strange old book published at the time of the reformation, detailing some of the methods of the holy office in spain, with appropriate wood cuts." guest chuckled horribly. "of course as yet," gouldesbrough went on in calm, even tones, "the subject has not the slightest idea what the experiments mean? he doesn't know why you fit on the receiver? he is quite in the dark?" "entirely," guest answered, "and he is at a loss to imagine what we are doing to him." "ah, well," gouldesbrough replied, "when we do tell him----" "it will be lovely," the assistant replied, tittering once more, "to watch the pictures that come on the screen when he knows that we are reading his inmost thoughts when he tries to control them, to alter them, and fails in his agony! when he realizes that he doesn't belong to himself any more!" the creature rubbed its plump and delicate hands together in an ecstasy of evil enjoyment. "i suppose," gouldesbrough said with some slight hesitation, "you've gathered a good deal of the fellow's opinions, memories, etc., lately?" "never had such an amusing time in all my life," guest answered. "i've gone down and put on the cap and tied him up, and i've come up and sat alone in front of the screen in room "d," turned on the generating current and sat in an arm-chair with a bottle of whisky at my side, and laughed till i cried! you'll learn a few home truths about yourself, william, before very long. the curious thing is, that whenever your picture comes upon the screen, it's all distorted. you are a fairly passable-looking man, as men go, william, but you should see yourself as this man sees you in his brain." he laughed once more, malicious and horrible laughter which echoed high up in the sky-light of this weird and empty place. gouldesbrough made an impatient movement. "how do you mean?" he said. "well," guest answered, intensely enjoying the situation, "i've seen a good many pictures of nasty ugly looking devils and monsters, and i've been in the weirtz museum at brussels, but no artist who ever painted or drew, and no man who ever modelled in wax, ever made such a face as this man's brain makes of you, when he thinks of you!" gouldesbrough laughed grimly. "poor devil," he said indifferently, "he naturally would. but i'm glad we have got such an excellent brain for experiment. the pons varolii must be exceptionally active." "i should think it was," guest answered. "you should see the pictures that come on the screen when he is thinking of marjorie poole!" gouldesbrough started. "how do you mean?" he said. "well," guest replied, turning off the blue flame of the bunsen burner, and stirring the mixture in the test-tube with a glass rod--"well, marjorie poole's a pretty girl, but when this man calls her up in his memory, she's a sort of angel. you know what a difficulty we had when we got over the lithium lines in the ash of the muscular tissue of the blood, which had to be translated through the new spectroscope into actual colour upon the screen? well, we did get over it, but when the subject thinks of marjorie poole, the colour all fades out of the picture, the actual primary colours, i mean. the girl flashes out into the dark in white light, like a sort of angel! and the first time i saw it i jumped up from my chair, shut off the connecting switch and turned up the lamps. it was so unlike any of the other pictures we have ever got, and for a moment i thought i had been over-doing it a little in the whisky line." gouldesbrough stopped the strange inhuman creature in his unholy amusement. "well, i'm going to bed now," he said. "we'll begin work to-morrow. i saw some supper put out for me in the study." "right oh," guest answered. "good-night then, william. i'm going to take the beef broth and phosphates to our brain down below in the cell." chapter xii the tomb-bound man mr. guest had visited his victim and had gone. supper was over. beef-tea and phosphorous! and mr. guest had said his mocking words of good-night. "sleep well, mr. rathbone! i shall not be compelled to ask you to wear that pretty metal cap until to-morrow, so i won't turn out the light. you have a book to read, you've had your supper, and i wish you a pleasant time alone. no doubt you will occupy your leisure in thinking of miss marjorie poole. you'll recall that occasion in a certain room hung with pink, when you kissed her by the side of the piano in the white and gold case! i know you often recall that happy incident." he had closed the heavy steel door with a last chuckle of malice and power, leaving the prisoner white and shaking with fear. how did this sinister and devilish gaoler know his intimate thoughts? he groaned deeply, and then, as he had done a thousand times before, gazed round the place in which he was in terror-struck amazement. where was he? _what_ was this horrible prison with all its strange contrivances, its inexplicable mysteries? he was in a large stone cell, brilliantly lit at this moment by two incandescent electric bulbs in the vaulted ceiling far above his head. a long time ago now, how long he could not have said, he was gerald rathbone, a man living in the world, seeing the sunlight and breathing the air of day. he had been gerald rathbone, moving honourably among his fellow men, seeing human faces, hearing the music of human voices, an accepted lover, and a happy man. that was long ago, a dream, a vision which was fading away. it seemed years since he had heard any voice but that of the pink, hairless man who fed him and whose slave he had become. once more the prisoned thing that had been gerald rathbone gazed round the cell, striving with terrible intensity of thought to understand it and penetrate its mysteries. here he had been put and here he had remained ever since that sickening moment when he had been talking to sir william gouldesbrough. he had been standing in front of the baronet, when his arms had been gripped from behind and unseen fingers held a damp cloth, with a faint sickly and aromatic smell, over his face. a noise like the rushing of great waters sounded in his ears, there was a sense of falling into a gulf of enveloping blackness. he had awakened in the place which he was now surveying again, with frightful and fascinated curiosity. in the brilliant light of the electric bulbs every object in the cell was clearly seen. the place was not small. it was oblong in shape, some sixteen feet by twelve. the walls were built of heavy slabs of portland stone cemented together with extreme nicety and care. the door of the cell was obviously new. it was a heavy steel door with a complicated system of locks--very much like the door of a safe. the whole place, indeed, suggested that it had been used as a strong-room at some time or other. there was no window of any kind in the cell. in the centre of the arched roof there was a barred ventilator, and close by an electric fan whirled and whispered unceasingly. the sound made by the purring thing as it revolved two thousand times a minute was almost the only sound gerald rathbone heard now. the floor of the cell was covered with cork carpet of an ordinary pattern. the victim cast his glance on all this without interest. then, as if he did so unwillingly, but by the force of an attraction he could not resist, he stared, with lively doubt and horror rippling over his face, at something which stood against the opposite wall. he saw a long narrow couch of some black wood, slanting upwards towards the head. the couch stood upon four thick pedestals of red rubber, which in their turn rested upon four squares of thick porcelain. the whole thing had the appearance of a shallow box upon trestles, and at the head was a curious pillow of india-rubber. at the side of this thick pad was a collar-shaped circlet of vulcanite clamped between two arms of aluminium, which moved in any direction upon ball-pivots. he stared at this mysterious couch, trying to understand it, to realize it. he rose from the narrow bed on which he sat, and advanced to the centre of the cell--to the centre, but no further than that. around his waist a circlet of light steel was welded, and from it thin steel chains ran through light handcuffs upon his wrists, and were joined to steel bands which were locked upon his ankles. and all these chains, hardly thicker than stout watch-chains, but terribly strong, were caught up to a pulley that hung far above his head and, in its turn, gave its central chain to another pulley and swivel fixed in the roof. in the half of his cell where his little bed was fixed, the prisoner had fair liberty of movement, despite his shackles. he could sit or lie, use his hands with some freedom. but whenever he attempted to cross the invisible line which divided one part of the cell from the other, the chains tightened and forbade him. he stood now, straining to the limit of his bonds, gazing at the long couch of black wood, with its rubber feet, its clamps and collar at the head. above the mysterious couch, upon a triangular shelf by the door, was something that gleamed and shone brightly. it was a cap of metal, shaped like a huge acorn cup, or a bishop's mitre. from an ivory stud in the centre of the peak, coils of silk-covered wire ran to a china plug in the wall. rathbone stood upright for several minutes gazing at these things. then with a long, hopeless sigh, to the accompanying jingle of his fetters, he turned and sat down once more upon his bed. as prisoners do, he had contracted the habit of talking aloud to himself. it was a poor comfort--this mournful echo of one's own voice!--but it seemed to make the profound solitude more bearable for a moment. he began a miserable monologue now. "i _must_ understand it!" he said. "that is the first step of all, if i am to keep my brain, if there is ever to be the slightest chance of escape, i must understand this terrible and secret business. "what are these fiends doing to me? "let me go through the whole thing slowly and in order." he began to reconstruct the scenes of his frequent torture, with the logic and precision with which he would have worked out a proposition of euclid. it was the only way in which he could keep a grip upon a failing mind; a logical process of thought alone could solve this horrid mystery. what happened every day, sometimes two or three times a day? just this. he would be lying on his bed, reading, perhaps, if the electric lights were turned on. there would be a sudden creak and rattle of the big pulleys high up in the roof, a rattle which came without any warning whatever. then the central chain, to which all the other thinner chains were fastened, would begin to tighten and move. slowly, inch by inch, as if some one were turning a winch-handle outside the cell, the chain wound up into the roof. as it did so, the smaller chains, which were fixed to the steel bands upon his limbs, tightened also. struggle as he might, the arrangements and balance of the weights were so perfect that in less than a minute he would be swinging clear of the bed, as helpless as a bale of goods at the end of a crane. then the upward movement of the chain would stop, the door open with a clicking of its massive wards, and guest would come in. in a moment more gerald always found himself swung on to the long black couch. his neck was encircled by the collar of thick vulcanite, his head was bent upwards by means of an india-rubber pillow beneath it, his hands and feet were strapped to the framework of the couch. and finally guest would take the metal cap and fix it firmly upon his head, pressed down to the very eyes so that he could in no way shake it off. the man would leave the cell, sometimes with a chuckle or a malicious sentence that seemed full of hidden meaning, sometimes in silence. and then the electric light invariably went out. rathbone never knew how long he was forced to remain thus in the dark, the subject of some horrible experiment, at the nature of which he could only guess. the period seemed to vary, but there was no possible test of time. long ago time had ceased to exist for him. release would come at last, release, food and light--and so the dreadful silent days went on. "what are these devils doing to me?" the hollow voice of reverie and self-communing cut into the silence like a knife. "it must be that i am being made the victim of an awful revenge and hatred. charliewood was the decoy and tool of gouldesbrough; it was all planned from the first. marjorie was never really relinquished by gouldesbrough. he meant all along to get me out of the way, to get marjorie back if he could. all this is clear enough. i thought i was dealing with an honourable gentleman, and a great man, too great to stoop even to anything petty or mean. i have been dealing with desperate and secret criminals, people who live hideous double lives, who walk the world and sit in high places and do unnameable evil in the dark. yes! that is clear enough. even now, perhaps, my darling is once more in the power of this monster gouldesbrough!" the thin voice failed and died away into a tortured whimper. the tall form shook with agony and the rattle of the steel chains mingled with the "purr," "purr" of the electric fan in the roof. by a tremendous effort of will rathbone clutched at his thoughts again. he wrenched his mind back from the memory of his dreadful plight to the solving of the mystery. till he had some glimmering of the _meaning_ of what was being done to him, he was entirely hopeless and helpless. he began to murmur to himself again. "in the first place gouldesbrough has got me out of the way successfully. i have disappeared from the world of men, the field is clear for him. but he has not killed me. for some reason or other, dangerous though it must be for him, he is keeping me alive. it surely would have been safer for him to have murdered me in this secret place, and buried me beneath the stone flags here? i am forced to conclude that he is keeping me for an even worse revenge than that of immediate extinction. it is torture enough to imprison me like this, of course. but, if the man is what i feel he is--not man, but devil--would he not have tortured me in another way before now? there are dreadful pains that fiends can make the body suffer. one has read of unbearable agonies in old books, in the classics. yet nothing of the sort has been done to me yet, and i have been long in this prison. my food has been plentiful and of good quality, even definitely stimulating i have thought at times. "it is obvious then that i am not to be subjected to any of the horrors one has read of. what _is_ being done to me? when, each day, i am fixed rigidly upon that couch, and the brass helmet is put upon my head, what is going on? i cannot feel any sensation out of the ordinary when i am tied down there. i am no weaker in body, my faculties are just as unimpaired when i am released as they were before. at least it seems so to me. i can discover no change in me either, mental or physical. "something is being done by means of electricity. the coils of wire that lead from the helmet to the plug in the wall show that. the way in which the couch is insulated, the vulcanite collar, the rubber pillow, all lead to the same conclusion. at first i thought that a torturing current of electricity was to be directed into the brain. that my faculties, my very soul itself, were to be dissolved and destroyed by some subtle means. but it is not so. there is no current coming to me through the wire. nowhere does my head touch metal, the cap is lined throughout with rubber. but yesterday, as my gaoler held up the helmet to examine it before putting it on my head, i had an opportunity of seeing the whole interior for the first time. "there was very little to see! at the top was a circular orifice which seemed to be closed by a thin disc of some shining material. that was all. it looked just like the part of a telephone into which one speaks. my brain, my body, are not being acted upon. nothing is being slowly instilled into my being. _can it be that anything is being taken away?_" he bent his head upon his hands and groaned in agony. all was dark and impenetrable, there was no solution, no help. he was in the grip of merciless men, in the clutch of the unknown. the electric light in the cell went out suddenly. chapter xiii lord malvin if sir william gouldesbrough represented all that was most brilliant, modern, and daring in the scientific world of europe, lord malvin stood as its official figure-head. he was the "grand old man" of science, and was regarded by every one as a final court of appeal in all such matters. he was of a great age, almost eighty, in fact, yet his health was perfect, his intellect unimpaired, and his interest in human events as keen and vigorous as that of a man but half his age and in the full prime and meridian of life. in science, he represented what the president of the royal academy represents in art, or the lord chief justice in the law, and although he had almost ceased independent investigations, he was always appealed to and consulted when anything new and revolutionary in science was discovered or promulgated by any of the younger men. the younger men themselves, while allowing their chief's vast knowledge and experience, his real and undeniable eminence, were apt to call him conservative, and to hint that he was of an alien generation. they would say that his judgment was sometimes obscured by his veneration and love for the past, and because he found himself unable to leap so rapidly to conclusions as they did, they put him down as an old fogey who had done valuable and remarkable work in his time, but who ought to be content with his peerage and immense fortune and retire to the planting of cabbages or the growing of roses in the country. in the public eye, nevertheless, lord malvin remained as familiar and necessary a part of the english landscape as st. paul's; and, whenever a great man died and the newspapers enumerated the few remaining veterans of the commonwealth, lord malvin was usually the first to be mentioned. for many years there had been an antagonism between lord malvin and sir william gouldesbrough. it was not personal so much as scientific, an abstract and intellectual antagonism. when sir william's star first began to rise above the horizon--he was only mr. gouldesbrough then--lord malvin had recognized his talent as an inventor, but deprecated many of his theories. these ideas, these possibilities for the future which gouldesbrough was fond of giving to the world in lectures and reviews, seemed horribly dangerous, subversive, and fantastic to the older man. he said so in no uncertain voice, and for some years, though he was always kind and civil to gouldesbrough, he certainly did much to discount the rising star's power of illumination. but as time went on, each daring theory put forth by gouldesbrough passed into the realm of actual fact. lord malvin saw that sir william had been almost invariably right. he saw that the new man not only told the world that some day this or that marvel would come to pass, but immediately afterwards set to work and himself made it come to pass! lord malvin was a noble man as well as a nobleman--sometimes a rare combination to-day--and he confessed himself in the wrong. directly he saw that he had been mistaken, and that sir william was no charlatan, but one of the most daring and brilliant scientists the world had ever known, the peer gave the newer man all the weight of his support. nevertheless, while forced by circumstance and gouldesbrough's justification of his own ideas into a scientific brotherhood, lord malvin, who constantly met the other, found a new problem confronting him. while he had not believed in gouldesbrough's theories, lord malvin had rather liked him personally. now that he was compelled to believe in gouldesbrough's theories, lord malvin found that he experienced a growing dislike for the man himself. and as he was a fair and honourable man, lord malvin did everything he possibly could to rid himself of this prejudice, with the result that while his efforts to do so were quite unavailing, he redoubled his kindness and attentions to the man he disliked. all the scientific world knew that sir william was perfecting some marvellous discovery. in berlin, paris, petersburg, vienna, and buda pesth, learned savants were writing to their _confrères_ in london to know what this might be. the excitement was intense, the rumours were endless, and it is not too much to say that the whole scientific intellect of the globe was roused and waiting. now when a number of leading brains are agitated upon one subject, something of that agitation begins to stir and move in the outside world. already some hints had got about, and the press of europe and america was scenting some extraordinary news. the whole business had at length culminated in the giving of a great reception by lord malvin. everybody who mattered was asked, not only in the scientific but also in the general world. and everybody knew, that not only was the reception given in sir william gouldesbrough's honour, but that he would say something more or less definite about what he had in hand. in short, a pronouncement was to be made, and the ears of every one were tingling to hear it. among the idle and frivolous section of society the promised revelation had become the topic of the hour. everything else was quite forgotten. gerald rathbone's disappearance was already a thing of the past. eustace charliewood's suicide had not lasted for the proverbial nine days as a subject of talk. but here was something _quite_ new! something all the more attractive because of its mystery. some people said that sir william had invented a way in which any one might become invisible for a few pence. this suggested delightful possibilities to every one, save only the newly rich, whose whole endeavour was to be seen. on the other hand there was a considerable section of people who asserted that sir william had succeeded in supplying the lesion in the brain of the ape, and that now that intelligent animal would be able to talk, own property, and become recognized as a british citizen. every one began to read the _jungle book_ again, and a serious proposal was made in an imperialistic journal that england might thus colonize and secure the unexplored forests of central africa, by means of drilling and civilizing the monkeys of the interior. a gorilla-general was to be appointed, who should know the english language, but no other, and it was thought that by this means the british dominions and population would be enormously increased. the "smart set" especially welcomed this recruitment of their numbers. in city circles both these conjectures were scouted. the well-informed insisted that sir william had discovered a method of solidifying alcohol, so that in future one would buy one's whiskey in chunks, and one's champagne in sticks like barley sugar. lord malvin lived in portland place, in one of those great stone houses which, however sombre without, are generally most pleasant and attractive within. he was unmarried, and his niece dorothea backhouse acted as hostess and generally controlled his domestic affairs. the stately rooms were crowded with well-known people of all sorts and conditions. yet this assembly differed from others in a marked manner. all the society people who lived solely for amusement had been invited, and were there. but mingled with the butterflies, one saw the ants and bees. by the carefully groomed, and not ill-looking face of a young and fashionable man about town, could be seen the domed forehead, and the face gashed and scored with thought, of some great savant or deep thinker. it was indeed an unusual assemblage that passed through the large and brilliant rooms, laughing and talking. in the blue drawing-room, kubelik had just arrived and was beginning to play. every one crushed in to hear the young maestro. melba was to sing a song, perhaps two, later on in the evening, and the ball-room was filled with supper-tables. in so much lord malvin's party did not differ in any way from that of any other famous and wealthy london host. there was the same light and sparkle of jewels. the warm air was laden with perfume, the same beautiful and tired faces moved gracefully among all this luxury. but the men and women who worked and thought for the world were in this portland place palace also. they talked together in eager and animated groups, they paid little or no attention to this or that delight which had been provided for them. all these things were phantoms and unreal to these people. the real things were taking place within the brain as they conversed together. the army of intellect was massing within the citadel of thought, to wrest new territory from the old queen nature, mistress of the kingdom of the unknown. lord malvin and his niece had received their guests at the head of the grand staircase. now, when almost every one had arrived, the great scientist had withdrawn to an inner room at the end of a long series of apartments, and stood there talking with a small knot of friends. this inner drawing-room was the culminating part of the suite, the throne room as it were; and the people standing there could look down a long and crowded vista of light and movement, while the yearning and sobbing of kubelik's violin came to their ears in gusts and throbs of delicious sound. lord malvin, a tall, upright old man with a long white beard, a high white brow beneath his velvet skull-cap, and wearing a row of orders, was talking to sir harold oliver. sir harold was the principal of a great northern university, a slim, hard-faced man of middle age, and the pioneer in the movement which was allowing a place to both philosophy and psychology in modern science. a third person stood there also, a youngish man of middle height, mr. donald megbie, the well-known journalist and writer on social and religious matters. donald megbie held rather a curious position in the literary world. he was the friend of many great people, and more often than not his pen was the vehicle chosen by them to first introduce their ideas and discoveries to the general public. when it was time to let the man in the street know of some stupendous discovery, megbie was called in, and his articles, always brilliant and interesting, explained the matter in popular terms for the non-technical mind. "so gouldesbrough has not yet come?" sir harold oliver said. "not yet," lord malvin answered. "i have had a telegram from him, however, to say that he is compelled to be rather later than he had expected. i have told the butler to wait in the hall for him, and to bring him straight through here directly he arrives." "a remarkable man," said mr. megbie, in that low and pleasant voice which had become so familiar in high places--even in the private rooms of cabinet ministers it was said--during the last few years. "a man none of us can afford to ignore," sir harold answered with a slight sigh of impatience. megbie smiled. "my dear donald," sir harold went on, "please don't smile in that superior sort of manner. i know what you are thinking. you're thinking 'how these scientists love one another.' you are accusing me of envy, jealousy and uncharitableness. i'm not jealous of gouldesbrough, great as his attainments are, and i'm sure i don't envy him." "any one might be forgiven a little envy on such an occasion as this," megbie answered. "i confess that if i thought every one of importance in london were met together in lord malvin's house to welcome _me_, to hear what _i_ was going to do next, i should be rather more than pleased." lord malvin smiled kindly, but the noble old face grew sad for a moment. "ah!" he said, "you are young, mr. megbie. i thought as you think when i was your age. but one finds out the utter worthlessness of fame and applause and so on, as one grows older. the work itself is the thing! yes! there, and therein only, lies the reward. all else is vain and hollow. i am a very old man, and i am near my end. i suppose i may say that such honours as can be given have fallen to my share. yet i can honestly say that i would give them all up, i would efface myself utterly if i thought that i was on the brink of the discovery which i believe william gouldesbrough has made and will tell us something of to-night!" the other two started. a deep note of seriousness had come into the voice of the venerable old man. it portended something, something vast and far-reaching, and they all stood silent for a moment occupied with their own thoughts. the distant music of piano and violin rose higher and higher in keen vibrating melody. there was a note of triumph in it which seemed to accentuate the gravity and importance of lord malvin's words. the triumphant notes of the man who was coming were singing and ringing through the halls and chambers of this great house! the music ceased suddenly, and there was a great clapping of hands. at that moment the three men waiting in the inner room saw a tall, black figure moving towards them, the figure of a man on whom people were beginning to press and converge, a figure that smiled, bowed, stopped continually to shake hands and receive greetings, and made a slow progress towards them. sir william gouldesbrough, the man of the future, radiant, honoured and successful, was arriving to greet lord malvin, the man of the past. chapter xiv donald megbie sees possibilities so sir william gouldesbrough passed through the crowds of friends and acquaintances who crowded round him in a welter of curiosity and congratulation, and came into the inner room, where lord malvin, sir harold oliver and mr. donald megbie were waiting to receive him. tall, suave, and self-contained, he bowed and shook hands. then there was a moment's pause--they were waiting for him to speak, expectant of what he should say. "i am sorry, lord malvin," he began, "that i have arrived so late at your party. but i was conducting an experiment, and when i was half-way through i found that it was going to lead me much further than i thought. you know how that happens sometimes?" "perfectly, sir william, and the fact is a scientist's greatest pleasure very often. now, may i ask you--you will excuse an old man's impatience--may i ask you if you have finally succeeded? when i last saw you the composition of the spectrum presented a difficulty." "that i have now completely overcome, lord malvin." lord malvin trembled, actually trembled with excitement. "then the series of experiments is complete?" "quite. and more than that, i have done, not once or twice but many times, exactly what i told you i hoped to do. the thing, my lord, is an accomplished fact, indisputable--_certain_!" lord malvin turned to sir harold oliver and megbie. "gentlemen," he said in a clear voice but full of a profound emotion. "the history of life is changed. we all must stand in a new relation to each other, to society and to the world." donald megbie knew that here was a chance of his literary lifetime. lord malvin would never have spoken in this way without due consideration and absolute conviction. something very big indeed was in the air. but what was it? the journalist had not an idea as yet. he looked eagerly at the aquiline, ascetic face of the inventor, marked the slight smile of triumph that lingered round the lips, and noted how the eyes shone, brilliantly, steadily, as if they were lighted up from behind. megbie had seen many men in many countries. and as he looked keenly at sir william gouldesbrough two thoughts came into his mind. one was something like this--"you are certainly one of the most intellectual and remarkable men now living. you are unique, and you stand upon a pedestal of fame that only one man in several generations ever reaches. all the same, i shouldn't like to be in your power or to stand in your way!" and moreover the question came to the quick analytic brain of the writer whether the brilliance of those lamp-like eyes was wholly natural, was wholly sane. these twin thoughts were born and over in a flash, and even as he thought of them megbie began to speak. "now that lord malvin has told us so much, sir william," he said, "won't you tell us some more? i suppose you know that all the world is waiting for a pronouncement?" "the world will know very soon, mr. megbie," gouldesbrough answered pleasantly. "in about a fortnight's time i am sending out some invitations to some of our leading people to witness the result of my experiments in my laboratories. i hope i may have the pleasure of seeing you there also. but if you wish it, i will certainly give you a slight idea of the work. since the public seem interested in what i am doing, and something seems to have leaked out, i am quite willing that they should know more. and of course there is no one to whom i would rather say anything than yourself." megbie bowed. he was tremendously excited. brother writers who did not make a tenth of his income and had not a quarter of his eminence were wont to say that his ears twitched when in the presence of a great celebrity. this no doubt was calumny, but the journalist stood in an attitude of strained attention--as well a man might stand when the secret of the hour was about to be revealed to him in preference to all other men. gouldesbrough bowed to lord malvin. "i'm going to have half-an-hour's conversation with mr. megbie," he said. "meanwhile, my lord, i wonder if you would give sir harold oliver a slight technical outline of my processes? and of course, as i understand this is to be in some sense a night on which your friends are to be given some general information, i shall place myself entirely in your hands as to any revelations you may think proper to make." he moved off with the journalist, leaving the two other men already fallen into deep talk. "where shall we go, mr. megbie?" he said, as they came out into a large room hung with old flemish tapestry and full of people. "there is a little conservatory down a corridor here," megbie answered. "i expect we should be quite undisturbed there. moreover, we could smoke, and i know that you are like me, sir william, a cigarette-smoker." "that will do very well, then," gouldesbrough answered, and they walked away together. every one saw them go. ladies nodded and whispered, gentlemen whispered and nodded to each other. the occasion was perfectly well understood. sir william was telling donald megbie! by supper time it would be all over the rooms and the _eastminster gazette_ to-morrow afternoon would have all the details. "megbie is always chosen in affairs of this sort." "that's megbie, the writing johnny, who sort of stage-manages all these things." "the ubiquitous donald has got him in his grip, and we shall soon know all the details"--these were the remarks made upon every side as the two men strolled through the rooms. then an incident that was much commented on next day in society, occurred quite suddenly. it created quite a little sensation and gave rise to a great deal of gossip. sir william and mr. megbie came to a part of the room where lady poole and her daughter marjorie were standing talking to general mayne of the war office. lady poole saw the scientist. "ah, william!" she said, somewhat loudly, and quite in her old manner of the days when sir william and marjorie were engaged. "so here you are, blazing with triumph. every one's talking of you, and every one has been asking marjorie if she knows what it is you've invented this time!" megbie, who knew both lady poole and her daughter, but did not wish to enter into a conversation just at this important moment, bowed, smiled at the old lady and the girl, and stood a little aside. gouldesbrough took lady poole by the hand and bent over it, saying something in a low voice to her. and once more society nodded and whispered as it saw the flush of pleasure in the lady's face and her gratified smile. again society whispered and nodded as it saw marjorie poole shake hands with her _ex-fiancé_, and marked the brightness of her beautiful eyes and saw the proud lips moving in words of friendship and congratulation. what gouldesbrough said in answer to marjorie was this-- "it is so kind and good of you to be pleased, marjorie. nothing is more valuable to me than that. i am going to have half-an-hour with donald megbie now. i find that it's usual to tell the general public something at this stage. so i'm doing it through megbie. he's safe, you know, and he understands one. but after that, will you let me take you in to have some supper? do please let me! it would just make everything splendid, be the final joy, you know!" "i should be very churlish to refuse you anything to-night, william," she answered sadly, but with great pride for him in her voice. "haven't you done almost everything for me? you've done what no other living man would have done. i shall be very glad and feel very proud if you will come back here for me after you have talked to donald megbie." gouldesbrough went away with the journalist. in five minutes every one in lord malvin's house was saying that marjorie poole was engaged to sir william gouldesbrough once more. marjorie watched the two men go away. her heart was full of pride and pain. she rejoiced that all this had come to the chivalrous gentleman who had been her lover and plighted husband. she felt each incident of his growing triumph with intense sympathy and pleasure. he had been so good to her! from the very first he had been splendid. if only she could have loved him, how happy would her lot have been as mate and companion to such a man as this! she was not worldly, but she was of the world and knew it well. she realized most completely all the advantages, the subtle pleasures that would belong to the wife of this great man. the love of power and dominion, the sense of a high intellectual correspondence with the finest brain of the day, the incense of a lofty and chivalrous devotion--all these, yes, all these, would be for the girl sir william loved and wedded. she half-wondered if such devotion as his had proved to be ought to go unrewarded. was it _right_? had any girl a real excuse for making a man like william gouldesbrough unhappy? guy rathbone had faded utterly out of life. the greatest skill, the most active and prolonged inquiry had failed to throw the slightest light upon his disappearance. as a person, guy had ceased to exist. he lived only as a memory in her heart. a dear memory, bitter-sweet--ah, sweet and bitter!--but no more a thing of flesh and blood. a phantom, a shadow now and for evermore! * * * * * sir william and donald megbie sat in a small palm house talking earnestly together. a tiny fountain sent up its glittering whip of water from a marble pool on which water-lilies were floating, while tiny iridescent fish swum slowly round their roots. there was a silence and fragrance in the pleasant remote place, the perfume of exotic flowers, the grateful green of giant cacti which rested the eye. concealed electric lights shed their radiance upon fern, flower, and sparkling water, and both men felt that here was a place for confidences and a fit spot in which matters of import might be unfolded. both men were smoking, and in the still warm air, the delicate grey spirals from the thick turkish cigarettes rose with a fantastic grace of curve that only the pencil of a flaxman could have given its true value. "i am all attention, sir william," megbie said. "well, then, i will put the thing to you in a nutshell, and as simply as possible. when you come to the demonstration at my house in a few days' time, you will be able to gather all the details and have them explained to you. i am going to give you a simple broad statement here and now. for years i have been investigating the nature of thought. i have been seeking to discover what thought really is, how it takes place, what is its _mechanical_ as well as its psychical value. now, i claim that i have discovered the active principle of thought. i have discovered how to measure it, how to harness it, so to speak; how to use it, in fact, just as other investigators in the past have harnessed and utilized electricity!" megbie started. "i think i see," he said hurriedly. "i think i see something--but go on, sir william, go on!" gouldesbrough smiled, pleased with the agitation the man who sat by him showed so plainly. he went on--"hitherto that which observes--i mean the power of thought, has never been able, strictly speaking, to observe itself. it can never look on at itself from the outside, or view itself as one of the multitude of things that come under its review. it is itself the origin of vision, and the eye cannot see its own power of seeing. i have altered all this. thought is a fluid just as electricity is, or one may say that it is a peculiar form of motion just as light is. the brain is the machine that creates the motion. i have discovered that the brain gives off definite rays or vibrations which rise from it as steam rises from a boiling pot. that is the reason why one brain can act upon another, can influence another. it explains personal magnetism, hypnotism and so on. what i have done is this: i have perfected a means by which these rays can be collected and controlled. i can place an apparatus upon your head which will collect the thought vibrations as you think and produce them." "and then, sir william?" "then i can conduct those rays along a wire for any distance in the form of an electric current. finally, by means of a series of sensitive instruments which i will show you at the forthcoming demonstration, i can transmute these vibrations into actual pictures or words, and throw them upon a screen for all the world to see. that is to say, in actual words, whatever any one is thinking is reproduced exactly as he thinks it, without his having any power to prevent it. thought, which had hitherto been locked up in the brain of the thinker and only reaches us through his words with whatever modification he likes to make, will now be absolutely naked and bare." there was a silence of a minute or two as sir william stopped speaking. the journalist was thinking deeply, his head bowed upon his hands. he looked up at last and his face was very pale. little beads of perspiration stood out upon his forehead. his eyes were luminous. "it is too big to take in all at once," he said. "but i see some things. in the first instance, your discovery means the triumph of _truth_! think of it! the saying that 'truth shall prevail' will be justified at last!" gouldesbrough nodded, and the writer went on, his voice warming into enthusiasm as he continued, his words pouring out in a flood. "no one will lie any more because every one will realize that lying will be useless, when your machine can search out their inmost secrets! in two generations deceit will have vanished from the world. we shall invest in no company unless the directors submit themselves to the scrutiny of your invention. we shall be able to test the genuineness of every enterprise before embarking upon it! again, your invention means the triumph of _justice_! there will be no more cases of wrongful imprisonment. no man will suffer for a crime he did not commit! oh, it's wonderful, beyond thinking! the cumbrous machinery of the law-courts will be instantly swept away. the criminal will try himself in spite of himself, he will give the secret of his actions to the world! the whole of life will be changed and made bright! we shall witness the final triumph of all--_the triumph of love_! man or maid will be each able to test the reality and depth of each other's affection! there will be no more mercenary marriages, no betrayals of trusting women. and from these unions of love, pure and undefiled by worldly considerations, a new and finer race will spring up, noble, free and wise! and you, you the man sitting here by my side, have done all this!" his voice failed him for a moment, and the burning torrent of his words was still. in the rush and clamour of the new ideas, in the immeasurable vastness of the conception, speech would not go on. then he started, and his face grew paler than before. "forgive me," he said, "forgive me if i seem to doubt. it is all so incredibly wonderful. but you have really _done_ this, sir william? you are not merely hoping to do it some day? you are not merely advancing along the road which may some day lead to it?" "i have actually done it, mr. megbie, completely, utterly, certainly. and in a few days you shall judge for yourself. but it is certain." "but it is infinite in its possibilities!" the journalist went on. "another thing that i see quite clearly will result is this. the right man in the right place will be an accomplished fact in the future. we shall find out early in the life of a child exactly in what direction its true power lies. to-day we find that circumstance and the mistakes of parents and guardians are constantly putting children into walks of life for which they are not in the least fitted. the result is a dreadful waste of power. we see on every side clergymen who ought to be business men, business men who ought to be painters or musicians, clerks who are bad clerks, but who would make excellent soldiers. your marvellous discovery will change all this for ever. every day the growing brain of the child will be tested. we shall find out exactly what its true thoughts are; children will cease to be inarticulate and unable to give us a true idea of themselves as they so often are at present. teaching will become an exact science, because every schoolmaster will be able to find out how much his teaching is appreciated and understood, and how little, as the case may be. and we shall discover other and even more portentous secrets! we shall know what is passing in the minds of the dying who cannot speak to us! we shall know the truth about a future state, inasmuch as we shall be able to find out whether the mind does indeed receive warnings and hintings of the other world at the moment of passing! then, also, i suppose that we shall be able to penetrate into a world that has been closed to us since the human species began! we shall know at last in what strange way animals think! the pictures that pass into the brain of the dog, the horse, the tiger, through the physical eyes, will be made clear for us to see! we shall wrest his secret from the eagle and see the memories of the primeval forest which linger in the minds of the jaguar and ape!" the little fountain in the centre of the conservatory tinkled merrily. the electric bulbs in the glass roof shed a soft light upon the broad green leaves of the tropical plants, which seemed as if they had been cunningly japanned. two men in modern evening dress sat talking together, while distant sounds of talk and laughter floated in to them from the great and fashionable drawing-rooms beyond. it was an ordinary picture enough, and to the superficial eye one without special significance or meaning. yet, at that moment and in that place, a stupendous revelation was being made. a tale which the wildest imagination would have hesitated to give a place in the mind was being poured into the ears of one who was the mouthpiece of the public. to-morrow all the world would be thinking the thoughts, experiencing the same mental disturbance, that donald megbie was experiencing now. the cables would be flashing the news through vast cities and over the beds of mighty oceans to the furthest corner of the habitable globe. megbie realized something of this. "i feel my responsibility very acutely," he said. "you have put into my hands one of the greatest chances that any writer for the public press has ever had. before i begin to write anything, i must be alone to think things over. you may well imagine how all this has startled me. for the thinking man it almost has an element of terror. one feels an awe that may in any moment change to fear! when i first saw mount blanc i felt as i do now." sir william gazed keenly at his companion. megbie was obviously unstrung. it was curious to see how this revelation had gripped and influenced the keen, cool-headed man of the world, curious and full of a thrill, exquisite in its sense of power and dominion. the tall figure of the scientist towered over that of the other man. gouldesbrough had risen, the usual reserve of his manner had dropped away from him, and great tides of exultation seemed to carry him swiftly and irresistibly to the very heart of human things. during the long years of experiment and toil, gouldesbrough had occasionally known these moments of savage ecstasy. but never had he known a moment so poignant, so supreme as this. as he stood there the thought came to him that he alone stood apart from all created men in the supremacy of intellect, in the majesty of an utter sovereignty over the minds of mankind. the rush of furious emotion mastered him for a moment, so terrible was it in its intensity and strength. "yes," he cried, with a wild gesture of his arm and in a high vibrating voice. "yes! you are right! you have said what all the world is about to say. i have stormed the heights of the unknown! the secrets of all men's hearts are mine, and i claim an absolute knowledge of the soul, even as god claims it!" megbie started from his reverie. he stared at the tall, swaying figure with fascinated eyes as he heard the bold and terrible words. was it not thus that lucifer himself had spoken in milton's mighty poem? and how had the star of the morning fallen? once more the thought flashed into his mind that there was something of madness in those blazing eyes. however great things this man had done, were not these words of tremendous arrogance the symptom of a brain destined to blaze up for a moment in mighty triumph and then to pass into the dark? who could say? who could tell? suddenly megbie realized that sir william was speaking in an ordinary voice. "forgive me," he was saying quietly, and with a half laugh. "i'm afraid i let myself go for a moment. it's not a thing i often do, you know; but you were so appreciative. now you will please let me run away. i am afraid i have already been here too long. i have promised to take miss poole in to supper." he shook hands and walked hurriedly away. megbie sat where he was for a few moments longer. he intended to leave the house quietly and go home to his chambers in the temple, perhaps looking in at one of his clubs on the way. he did not want the innumerable questions, the pressure of the curious, which he knew would be his lot if he remained any longer in portland place. his mind was in a whirl, entire solitude would alone enable him to collect his thoughts. he rose to leave the conservatory, when he saw something bright upon the chair on which sir william gouldesbrough had been sitting. it was a cigarette-case. megbie realized that gouldesbrough had forgotten it. being unwilling to seek out the scientist, megbie put the case into his pocket, meaning to send it round to sir william's house in the morning. then he went swiftly into the hall, and managed to get away out of the house without being questioned or stopped. it was a clear, bright night. there was less smoke about in the sky than usual, and the swift motion of the hansom cab was exhilarating. how fortunate sir william was! so the journalist thought, as he was driven through the lighted streets. he stood upon a supreme pinnacle of fame, and beautiful marjorie poole--a girl to make any man happy--was being kind to him again. the romantic and mysterious rathbone incident was over and done with. miss poole's fancy for the young barrister must have only been a passing one. but what a dark and mysterious business it had all been! megbie had known guy rathbone a little. he had often met him in the temple, and he had liked the bright and capable young fellow. for a moment the writer contrasted the lot of two men--the one he had just left, great, brilliant, and happy; the other, whom he had known in the past, now faded utterly away into impenetrable dark. he sighed. then he thought that a cigarette would be refreshing. he found he had no cigarettes of his own, but his fingers touched the case sir william had left behind him in the conservatory. good! there would be sure to be cigarettes in the case. he drew it out and opened it. there were two cigarettes in one of the compartments. but it was not the sight of the two little tubes of paper that made the writer's eyes dilate and turned his face grey with sudden fear. cut deeply into the silver he saw this-- guy rathbone, inner temple, london, e.c. chapter xv hail to the lovers! when he had left donald megbie, sir william gouldesbrough went back to the room in which he had last seen marjorie poole. he found her the centre of a circle of friends and acquaintances. lady poole was sitting by her daughter's side, and was in a high good humour. gouldesbrough saw at once that while he had been talking with donald megbie in the conservatory, lord malvin had done as gouldesbrough had asked him. every one knew, with more or less accuracy, of what the new invention consisted. if the excitement and stir of expectation had been noticeable at the beginning of the evening, it was now doubly apparent. the rooms hummed like a hive with excited talk, and it was obvious that society considered it had received a remarkable sensation. sir william knew that things were moving in the direction he wished, when he saw marjorie poole holding a little court in this manner. she was always a very popular girl and knew everybody. but to-night was not ordinary. it was plain that both marjorie and lady poole were being courted because of their relationship to sir william gouldesbrough. of course everybody knew the past history of the engagement. but now it seemed almost certain that it would be renewed. gouldesbrough realized all this in a moment, and with intense satisfaction. the assumption that he and marjorie were once more engaged, or on the verge of being so, could not but contribute towards the fact. yes, it was a propitious hour. everything was in his favour; this was his grand night, and he meant that it should be crowned by the renewal of the promise of the girl he loved. as he went up to the group he seemed wonderfully strong and dominant. marjorie's eyes fell upon him and brightened as they did so. certainly there was no one else like this man! gouldesbrough wanted to carry marjorie away to the supper-room at once, but he was not to escape so easily. he was surrounded at once, and congratulations were fired at him from every side. the old duchess of marble arch, an ancient dame painted to resemble a dairy-maid of one and twenty, laid a tremulous claw-like hand, blazing with rings, upon gouldesbrough's arm. she was a scandal-monger who had ruined homes, a woman who had never done an unselfish action or ever had a thought that was not sordid, malevolent or foul. yet she was a great lady, a princess in vanity fair, and even sir william could not disregard her, so great and important was this venerable hag. "well," she began in her high impertinent voice, "so you have outdone aladdin, i hear, sir william. really i congratulate you on your thought-trap or whatever it is. i suppose we shall have you in the upper house soon! i wish you could manage to catch some thoughts for me on the stock exchange. couldn't you have your machine taken down to capel court? i should very much like to know what some of the gentlemen who deal in south africans are thinking just now. the market is really in the most abominable state. and do please bring the machine to one of my at homes. it would give me intense pleasure to know what is going on in the minds of some of my friends. we could install it in one of the smaller drawing-rooms, behind a screen. no one would know, and we could catch thoughts all the evening--though i expect the machine would want disinfecting after the first half-hour. i will see that there is some condy's fluid ready." she moved away chattering shrilly. young lord landsend succeeded her. that nobleman showed very evident traces of living as hard as his purse and his doctor would let him, and his pale countenance was stamped with a congratulatory grin. "'pon my soul, sir william," he said, "this thing you've made is really awfully jolly, you know. topping idea really. hope you wont go fishin' round for my thoughts!" there was a general laugh at this, and some one was heard to remark that they didn't think that sir william gouldesbrough would make any very big hauls in that quarter! "but how splendid of you, sir william!" said mrs. hoskin-heath, a pretty dark-haired woman with beautiful eyes. "it is really marvellous. now there will be a real meaning in the saying 'a penny for your thoughts!' shall you have penny-in-the-slot machines on all the stations of the twopenny tube? so nice while one is waiting for a train. just imagine how nice it will be to let your _cher ami_ know how much you like him without having to say any actual compromising words! you are a public benefactor, sir william." another voice broke in upon gouldesbrough's impatient ear. "how do you do, sir william? it is a great pleasure to meet you on such an occasion as this, an occasion which, if i may say so, is really historic! you may not remember me, but i had the privilege of meeting you at brighton not long ago. my name is charliewood, sir miles charliewood; we met on the melancholy occasion of my poor second son's--er--death. you were very kind and helpful." gouldesbrough shook hands with the old baronet. a shadow passed over his face as he did so, and he would have given much to have avoided the sight of him--not to have known at all that sir miles was in portland place on this night of triumph. gouldesbrough was one of those men who had solved the chief problem of life. like napoleon, he was master of his own mind. his mind did not dominate him, as the minds of most of us do. he controlled it absolutely and never allowed thoughts of one part of his life to intrude upon those of another. and now, with the frightful egotism of supreme self-will, he actually felt aggrieved at this sudden meeting. it was, he thought, hard at this radiant, happy moment! he did not want to be reminded of the past or of the terrible and criminal secret of the present. why should the pale ghost of eustace charliewood come to trouble him now? his partner in an unspeakable infamy, the tool he had used for the satisfaction of his devilish desires was dead. dead, gone away, no longer in existence. that he, gouldesbrough, was morally the murderer of the distracted man whom he had forced into crime troubled him not at all. it never had troubled him--he had learned to be "lord of himself." and now, in this moment of unprecedented triumph, the wraith of the dead man rose up swiftly and without warning to be a spectre at the feast. it was hard! but he turned to sir miles charliewood and was as courteous and charming as ever. his marked powers of fascination did not desert him. that strange magnetism that was able to draw people to him, to make them his servants and slaves, surrounded him now like the fabled "aura" of the theosophists. he bent over the pompous little man with a smile of singular sweetness. "forget?" he said. "my dear sir, how could i forget? it is charming to see you again. i hadn't an idea you knew lord malvin or were interested in scientific affairs. your congratulations are very welcome to me, though you have said far more than i deserve. i hope we shall meet again soon. i am generally at home in regent's park in the afternoons. it would have made me very happy if poor eustace could have been with us to-night. he was one of my most intimate friends, as you know. and i may tell you that he took a great interest in the experiments which have now culminated so satisfactorily for me. poor dear fellow! it is a great sorrow to me that he is not with us. well, well! i suppose that these things are arranged for us by a power over which we have no control, a force beyond our poor power of measuring or understanding. good-night, good-night, sir miles. do come and see me soon." he bowed and smiled, with marjorie upon his arm, and then turned away towards the supper-room. and he left sir miles charliewood--who had not cared twopence for his son during his lifetime--full of a pleasing melancholy and regret for the dead man. such is the power of success to awake dormant emotions in flinty hearts. such is the aroma and influence which "doth hedge a king" in any sphere of modern life! sir william walked away with the beautiful girl by his side. he felt the light touch of her fingers upon his arm, and his blood raced and leapt with joy. he felt a boy again, a happy conquering boy. yes, all was indeed well upon this night of nights! as they entered the supper-room and found a table, lord landsend saw them. he was with mrs. pat argyle, the society actress, and his cousins the young duke and duchess of perth. landsend was a fast young man of no particular intellect. but he was kind, popular, and not without a certain personal charm. he could do things that more responsible and important people couldn't do. as he saw the hero of the occasion and the night come in with marjorie poole, an inspiration came to the rackety young fellow. he jumped up from his chair and began to clap loudly. there was a moment's dead silence. everybody stopped talking, the clink and clatter of the meal was still. then the little duchess of perth--she was miss mamie q. oildervan, of new york--took landsend up. she began to clap too. as she had three hundred thousand a year, was young, cheeky and delightful, she was a leader of society at this moment. every one followed suit. there was a full-handed thunder of applause. lord landsend lifted a glass of champagne high in the air. "here's to the wizard of the day!" he shouted merrily. "here's to the conqueror of thought!" there was another second of silence. during it, the duke of perth, a boy fresh from oxford, caught the infection of the moment. he raised his glass also--"and to miss poole too!" he said. people who had spent years in london society said that they had never experienced anything like it. a scene of wild excitement began. staid and ordinary people forgot convention and restraint. there was a high and jocund chorus of congratulation and applause. the painted roof of the supper-room rang with it. society had let itself go for once, and there was a madness of enthusiasm in the air. sir william gouldesbrough stood there smiling. he entered into the spirit of the whole thing and bowed to the ovation, laughing with pleasure, radiant with boyish enjoyment. he felt marjorie's hand upon his arm quiver with excitement, and he felt that she was his at last! she stood by his side, her face a deep crimson, and it was as though they were a king and queen returning home to the seat and city of their rule. it was so public an avowal, chance had been so kind, fortune so opportune, that sir william knew that marjorie would never retrace her steps now. it was an announcement of betrothal for all the world to see! it was just that. lady poole, who was supping with sir michael leeds, the great millionaire who was the prop and mainstay of the english church, pressed a lace handkerchief to her eyes. the bewildering enthusiasm of the moment caught her too. she rose from her seat--only a yard or two away from the triumphant pair--and went up to them with an impulsive gesture. "god bless you, my dears!" she said in a broken voice. marjorie bowed her head. she drooped like a lovely flower. fate, it seemed to her, had taken everything out of her hands. she was the creature of the moment, the toy of a wild and exhilarating environment. she gave one quick, shy glance at sir william. he read in it the fulfilment of all his hopes. then old lord malvin came down the room, ancient, stately and bland. "my dears," he said simply, "this must be a very happy night for you." sir william turned to the girl suddenly. his voice was confident and strong. "my dear marjorie," he said, "how kind they all are to us!" a little group of four people sat down to the table beneath the crimson-shaded light. lord malvin, the most famous scientist and most courtly gentleman of his time. sir william gouldesbrough, the hero of this famous party--to-morrow, when donald megbie had done his work, to be the hero of the civilized world. lady poole. sweet marjorie poole, in the grip of circumstances that were beyond her thinking. and no one of the four--not even sir william gouldesbrough, f.r.s.--gave a thought to the man in the living tomb--to guy rathbone who was, even at that moment, tied up in india-rubber and aluminium bonds for the amusement of mr. guest, the pink, hairless man of regent's park. mr. guest was drunk of whisky, and sat happy, mocking his prisoner far down in the cellars of sir william's house. other folk were drunk of success and applause in portland place. but donald megbie was awake in the inner temple, and his thoughts were curious and strange. donald megbie had left the party too early in the evening. he was drunk of nothing at all! chapter xvi strange occurrence in the temple like most writers, donald megbie was of a nervous and sensitive temperament. both mental and physical impressions recorded themselves very rapidly and completely upon his consciousness. he arrived at the inner temple with every nerve in a state of excitement, such as he had hardly ever known before. he walked down the dim echoing ways towards the river, his chambers being situated in the new buildings upon the embankment. a full moon hung in the sky, brilliant and honey-coloured, attended by little drifts of amber and sulphur-tinted clouds. but the journalist saw nothing of the night's splendour. he almost stumbled up the stairs to the first floor. a lamp was burning over the door of his rooms, and his name was painted in white letters upon the oak. he went in and turned on the electric light. then, for a moment, he stood still in the hall, a richly-furnished place surrounded on all sides by doors painted white. his feet made no sound upon the thick persian carpet, and the whole flat was perfectly still. he felt uneasy, curiously so, as if some calamity was impending. the exhilaration of his stirring talk with sir william gouldesbrough--so recent, so profoundly moving--had now quite departed. his whole consciousness was concentrated upon a little box of metal in the pocket of his overcoat. it seemed alive, he was acutely conscious of its presence, though his fingers were not touching it. "by jove!" he said to himself aloud, "the thing's like an electric battery. it seems as if actual currents radiated from it." his own voice sounded odd and unnatural in his ears, and as he hung up his coat and went into the study with the cigarette-case in his hand, he found himself wishing that he had not given his man a holiday--he had allowed him to go to windsor to spend a night at his mother's house. a bright fire glowed in the grate of red brick. it shone upon the book-lined walls, playing cheerily upon the crimson, green and gold of the bindings, and turned the great silver inkstand upon the writing-table into a thing of flame. everything was cheerful and just as usual. megbie put the box down on the table and sank into a huge leather arm-chair with a sigh of relief and pleasure. it was good to be back in his own place again, the curtains drawn, the lamps glowing, the world shut out. he was happier here than anywhere else, after all! it was here in this beautiful room, with its books and pictures, its cultured comfort, that the real events of his life took place, those splendid hours of solitude, when he set down the vivid experiences of his crowded life with all the skill and power god had given him, and he himself had cultivated so manfully and well. now for it! tired as his mind was, there lay a time of deep thinking before it. there was the article for to-morrow to group and arrange. it was probably the most important piece of work he had ever been called upon to do. it would startle the world, and it behoved him to put forth all his energies. yet there was something else. he must consider the problem of the cigarette-case first. it was immediate and disturbing. how had this thing come into sir william's possession? what communication had gouldesbrough had with guy rathbone? that they were rivals for the hand of miss poole megbie knew quite well. every one knew it. it was most unlikely that the two men could have been friends or even acquaintances. indeed megbie was almost certain that rathbone did not know sir william. was that little shining toy on the table a message from the past? or was it rather instinct with a present meaning? he took it up again and looked at it curiously. immediately that he did so, the sense of agitation and unrest returned to him with tremendous force. megbie was not a superstitious man. but now-a-days we all know so much more about the non-material things of life that only the most ignorant people call a man with a belief in the supernatural, superstitious. like many another highly educated man of our time, megbie knew that there are strange and little-understood forces all round us. when an ex-prime minister is a keen investigator into the psychic, when the principal of birmingham university, a leading scientist, writes constantly in dispute of the mere material aspect of life--the cultured world follows suit. megbie held the cigarette-case in his hand. all the electric lights burned steadily. the door was closed and there was not a sound in the flat. then, with absolute suddenness, megbie saw that a man was standing in front of him, at the other side of the fireplace, not three yards away. he was a tall man, clean-shaven, with light close-cropped hair and a rather large face. the eyes were light blue in colour and surrounded by minute puckers and wrinkles. the nose was aquiline, the mouth clean-cut and rather full. the man was dressed in a dark blue overcoat, and the collar and cuffs of the coat were heavily trimmed with astrachan fur. the room was absolutely still. something like a grey mist or curtain descended over megbie's eyes. it rolled up, like a curtain, and megbie saw the man with absolute clearness and certainty. he could almost have put out his hand and touched him. measured by the mere material standard of time, these events did not take more than a second, perhaps only a part of a second. then the writer became aware that the room was filled with sound--sudden, loud and menacing. it was a sound as of sudden drums at midnight, such a sound as the gay dances in brussels heard on the eve of waterloo, when the assembly sounded in the great square, and the whole city awoke. in another moment, megbie knew what the sound in his ears really was. his own heart and pulses were racing and beating like the sudden _traillerie_ of drums. in a flash he recognized the face and form of his visitor--this outward form and semblance of a man which had sprung up and grown concrete in the night! the phantom--if indeed it was a phantom--wore the dress and aspect of eustace charliewood, the well-known man about town who had killed himself at brighton a few years ago! megbie had never spoken to charliewood--so far as he could remember--but he knew him perfectly well by sight, as every one in the west end of london had known him, and he was a member of one of the clubs to which the dead man had belonged. the thing that stood there, the thing or person which had sprung out of the air, wore the earthly semblance of eustace charliewood. megbie shouted out loud. a great cry burst from his lips, a cry of surprise and fear, a challenge of that almost dreadful _curiosity_ that men experience now and then when they are in the presence of the inexplicable, the terrible and the unknown. then megbie saw that the face of the apparition was horribly contorted. the mouth was opening and shutting rapidly in an agony of appeal. it seemed as though a torrent of words must be pouring from it, though there was not a sound of human speech in the large warm room. great tears rolled down the large pale cheeks, the brow was wrinkled with pain. the hands gesticulated and pointed, flickering rapidly hither and thither without sound. and continually, over and over again, the hands pointed to the gleaming silver case for cigarettes which donald megbie clasped tightly in his right hand. the silent agitated thing, so close--ah, so close! was trying to tell donald something. it was trying to say something about the cigarette-case, it was trying to tell megbie something about guy rathbone. and what? what was this fearful message that the agonized thing was so eager and so horribly impotent to deliver? megbie's voice came to him. it sounded thin and muffled, just like the voice of a mechanical toy. what is it? what is it? what are you trying to say to me about poor guy rathbone? and then, as if it had seen that megbie was trying to speak to it, but it could not hear his words, the figure of eustace charliewood wrung its hands, with a gesture which was inexpressibly dreadful, unutterably painful to see. megbie started up. he stepped forward. "oh, don't, don't!" he said. as he spoke he dropped the cigarette-case, which, up to the present he had clutched in a hot wet hand. it fell with a clatter against the fender--that at any rate was a real noise! in a moment the mopping, mourning, weeping phantom was gone. the room was exactly as it had been before, still, warm, brilliantly-lit. and donald megbie stood upon the hearth-rug dazed and motionless, while a huge and icy hand seemed to creep round his heart and clutch it with lean, cold fingers. donald megbie stood perfectly motionless for nearly a minute. then he knelt down and prayed fervently for help and guidance. at moments such as this men pray. much comforted and refreshed he rose from his knees, and went to one of the windows that looked out over the thames. he pulled aside the heavy green curtain, and saw that a clear colourless light immediately began to flow and flood into the room. it was not yet dawn, but that mysterious hour which immediately presages the dawn had come. the river was like a livid streak of pewter, the leafless plane-trees of the embankment seemed like delicate tracery of iron in the faint half-light. london was sleeping still. the writer felt very calm and quiet as he turned away from the window and moved towards his bedroom. the fire was nearly dead, but he saw the silver cigarette-case upon the rug and picked it up. he went to bed with the case under his pillow, and this is what he dreamed-- he saw guy rathbone in a position of extreme peril and danger. the circumstances were not defined, what the actual peril might be was not revealed. but megbie knew that rathbone was communicating with his brain while he slept. rathbone was living somewhere. he was captive in the hands of enemies, he was trying to "get through" to the brain of some one who could help him. the journalist only slept for a few short hours. he rose refreshed in body and with an unalterable conviction in his mind. the events of the last night were real. no chance or illusion had sent the vision and the dream, and the innocent-looking cigarette-case that lay upon the table, and which had come into his hands so strangely, was the pivot upon which strange events had turned. the little silver thing was surrounded by as black and impenetrable a mystery as ever a man had trodden into unawares. and in the broad daylight, when all that was fantastic and unreal was banished from thought, megbie knew quite well towards whom his thoughts tended, on what remarkable and inscrutable personality his dreadful suspicions had begun to focus themselves. he sat down and wrote his article till lunch-time. it was the best thing he had ever done, he felt, as he gathered the loose sheets together, and thrust a paper-clip through the corners. he rose and was about to ring for his man--who had returned at breakfast-time--when the door opened and the man himself came in. "miss marjorie poole would like to see you, sir, if you are disengaged," he said. donald megbie's face grew quite white with surprise. once more he felt the mysterious quickenings of the night before. "ask miss poole to come in," he said. chapter xvii marjorie and donald megbie the valet showed marjorie poole into donald megbie's study. she wore a coat and skirt of dark green harris tweed with leather collar and cuffs, and a simple sailor hat. megbie, who had never met miss poole in the country, but only knew her in london and during the season, had never seen her dressed like this before. he had always admired her beauty, the admirable poise of her manner, the evidences of intellectuality she gave. at the moment of her entry the journalist thought her more beautiful than ever, dressed as if for covert-side or purple-painted moor. and his quick brain realized in a moment that she was dressed thus in an unconscious attempt to escape observation, to be incognito, as it were. but why had she come to see him? she was in trouble, her face showed that--it was extraordinary, altogether unprecedented. megbie showed nothing of the thoughts which were animating him, either in his face or manner. he shook hands as if he had just met miss poole in bond street. "do sit down," he said, "i think you'll find that chair a comfortable one." marjorie sat down. "of course, mr. megbie," she said, "you will think it very strange that i should come here alone; when i tell you why, you will think it stranger still. and i don't want any one to know that i have been here. i shall tell mother, of course, when i get back." megbie bowed and said nothing. it was the most tactful thing to do. "i feel you will not misunderstand my motives," the girl went on, "when i explain myself. in certain cases, and among certain persons, conventions are bourgeois. we don't know each other very well, mr. megbie, though we have sometimes had some interesting talks together. but in a sense i know you better than you know me. you see, i have read your books and other writings. in common with the rest of the world i can gather something of your temper of mind, and of your outlook upon life." megbie once more inclined his head. he wondered furiously what all this might mean. at the moment he was absolutely in the dark. he stretched out his hand towards a tin of cigarettes that stood on a bracket by the side of the fireplace, and then withdrew it suddenly, remembering who was present. "oh, do smoke," she said, instantly interpreting the movement. "now let me just tell you exactly why i am here, why i _had_ to come here. of all the men i know, you are the most likely to understand. you have made a study of psychical affairs, of what the man in the street calls 'spooks'--you know about dreams." at that megbie started forward, every muscle in his body becoming rigid and tense, his hands gripping the knobs of his chair arms. "of course!" he said, in a voice that rippled with excitement. "go on, please. i might have known your coming here this morning is all part of the wonderful and uncanny experiences i had last night. you've come about guy rathbone!" it was the girl's turn to start. fear came creeping into eyes which were not wont to show fear, the proud mouth grew tremulous. marjorie stretched out her hands--little hands in tan-coloured gloves. "ah!" she cried, in a voice that had become shrill and full of pain, "then it is true! things have happened to you too! mr. megbie, you and i have become entangled in some dark and dreadful thing. i dare not think what it may be. _but guy is not dead._" megbie answered her in the same words. "no," he said, "guy rathbone is not dead." his voice had sunk several tones. it tolled like a bell. "miss poole," he went on, "tell me, tell me at once what happened to you last night." with a great effort of control, marjorie began her story. "it was very late when we got home last night after the party," she said. "i was in a curious state of nerves and excitement. i must touch upon a personal matter--this is no time for reticence or false shame. i had been with william gouldesbrough. you know that we were at one time engaged--oh, this is horribly difficult for me to say, mr. megbie." "go on, miss poole. i know, i know. but what does it matter in such a time as this?" "nothing at all," she answered in a resolute voice. "i was engaged to sir william when i found out that my affection was going elsewhere--guy, mr. rathbone----" "you needn't go into the past, miss poole," donald broke in, "tell me about last night." "i was with sir william at supper-time. there was a remarkable scene. it was a sort of triumph for him, and i was with him, every one included me in it. it was, obviously, generally assumed that we had become engaged once more. on the way home, sir william again asked me to be his wife. i told him that i could not give him an answer then. i said that i would tell him to-night. he is coming to curzon street to-night." "i beg you, i implore you to wait." megbie's words were so grave, he seemed so terribly in earnest, that the girl shrank from them, as one would shrink from blows. the same thought began to lurk in the eyes of the woman and the man, the same incredible and yet frightful thought. marjorie's cheeks were almost grey in colour. to megbie, as he watched her, she seemed to have grown older suddenly. the lustre seemed to him to have gone out of her hair. "i reached home," she said. "mother made me take a cup of beef-tea, and i went to my room. i was preparing for bed, indeed i was brushing my hair before the mirror, when a curious sense of disturbance and almost of fear came over me. i felt as if there was another presence in the room. now my looking-glass is a very large one indeed. it commands the whole of the room. the whole of the room is reflected in it without any part left out, except of course which i could see where i sat. when this strange feeling of another presence came over me, i thought it was merely reaction after a terribly exciting night. i looked into the glass and saw that the room was absolutely empty. still the sensation grew. it became so strong at last that i turned round. and there, mr. megbie, i tell you in the utmost bewilderment, but with extreme certainty, there, though the mirror showed nothing at all, a figure was standing, the figure of a man. it was not three feet away." megbie broke in upon her narrative. "the figure," he said in a hushed voice, "was the figure of mr. eustace charliewood, who shot himself at brighton some little time ago." she cried out aloud, "yes! but how did you know?" "he came to me also, last night. he came to me out of the other world, which is all round us, but which we cannot see. he was trying to tell me something about guy rathbone." marjorie poole began to sob quietly. "i knew it," she answered. "mr. charliewood in another state sees more than we see, he knows where guy is. oh, my love, my love!" megbie went up to her. he had some sal-volatile in his dressing-case, and he made her take it. "be brave," he said; "you have more to tell me yet, as i have more to tell you. guy is alive, we are certain of that. but he is in some one's power. the spirit of this man, eustace charliewood, knows where he is. he is trying to tell us. he is trying to make amends for something. he must have had something to do with guy's disappearance." "mr. charliewood," marjorie said in a whisper, "was william gouldesbrough's intimate friend. he was always about the house. when guy rathbone disappeared, eustace charliewood killed himself. william was at brighton at the time. he was trying to help me and my mother to find guy." "go on with your story, if you can," megbie said. "one more effort!" "i knew that the figure was trying to tell me about guy. something told me that with absolute certainty. but it couldn't tell me. it began to weep and wring its hands. oh, it was pitiful! then suddenly, it seemed to realize that it was no use. it stood upright and rigid, and fixed its eyes upon me. mr. megbie, such mournful eyes, eyes so full of sorrow and terrible remorse, were never in a human face. as those eyes stared down at me, a deep drowsiness began to creep over me. sleep came flooding over me with a force and power such as i had never known before. it was impossible to withstand it. people who have taken some drug must feel like that. just as i was, in the chair in front of the dressing-table, i sank into sleep." "and your dream?" megbie said quietly. she started. "ah, you know," she said. "the spirit of eustace charliewood could not tell me while i was conscious. but in sleep he could influence my brain in some other mysterious way. i dreamed that guy was in a sort of cell. by some means or other i knew that it was underground. a man was there, a man whom i have met, a man--a horrible creature--who is a fellow-worker of sir william gouldesbrough. the man was doing something to guy. i couldn't see what it was. then the picture faded away. i seemed to be moving rapidly in a cold empty place where there was no wind or air, sound, or, or--i can't describe it. it was a sort of 'between place.'" "and then?" "then i saw you standing by the side of william gouldesbrough. it was at the party--lord malvin's party, which we had just left. i saw this as if from a vast distance. it was a tiny, tiny picture, just as one could see something going on under a microscope. william was talking to some one whom i couldn't see. but i knew it was myself, that i was looking at the exact scene which had happened at the party, when you were going away with william, and he had stopped on the way to ask me to go into supper with him. and, strangely enough, in another part of my mind, the sub-conscious part i suppose, i knew that i was looking at an event of the past, and that this was the reason why it seemed so tiny and far-off. the picture went away in a flash--just like an eye winking. you've been to one of those biograph shows and seen how suddenly the picture upon the screen goes?--well, it was just like that. then a voice was speaking--a very thin and very distant voice. if one could telephone to the moon, one would hear the voice at the other end just like that, i should think. and though the voice was so tiny, it was quite distinct, and it had a note of terrible entreaty. 'go to donald megbie,' it said. 'go at once to donald megbie, the writer. he will help. there is still time. go to donald megbie. i have been able to communicate with him. he has the silver--guy----' and then, mr. megbie, the voice stopped suddenly. those were the exact words. what they meant, i did not know. but when i awoke they remained ringing in my ears like the echo of a bell heard over a wide expanse of country. in the morning i resolved to come to you. i didn't know where you lived, but i looked you up in 'who's who.' and as soon as i could get away without any one knowing, i came here." donald megbie rose from his chair. he realized at once that it was necessary to keep the same high tension of this interview. if that were lost everything would go. "i know what the poor troubled spirit--if it is a spirit--of the man, charliewood, meant by his last words. there is a thing called psychometry, miss poole. in brief, it means that any article which belongs, or has belonged, to any one, somehow retains a part of their personality. it may well be that the mysterious thought-vibrations which sir william gouldesbrough has discovered can linger about an actual and material object. last night, when sir william left me to take you in to supper at lord malvin's, he left his cigarette-case behind him in the conservatory where we had been sitting. i didn't want to bother him then, so i put it in my pocket, intending to send it to him to-day; here it is. it belonged to guy rathbone. i found it in sir william's possession, and i believe that it has been the means--owing, to some law or force which we do not yet understand--of bringing us together this morning." he handed her the cigarette-case. neither of them could know that this was the case which eustace charliewood had found in the pocket of rathbone's fur coat, when he had taken it from the bond street coiffeur in mistake. neither of them could see how it had been restored by charliewood to rathbone, and had been appropriated by mr. guest, when the captive had been taken to his silent place below the old house in regent's park. and even sir william gouldesbrough did not know that he had seen the thing in his study, just as he was starting for lord malvin's house, and had absently slipped it into his pocket, thinking it was his own. chapter xviii plans sir william gouldesbrough stood in the large laboratory. the great room was perfectly dark, save only for a huge circle of bright light upon one of the walls, like the circle thrown upon a screen by a magic-lantern. a succession of dim and formless figures moved and slid over the illuminated space in fantastic silence. now and then the face of part of the dress of one of the figures would suddenly glow out into colour and absolute distinctness. then it would fade away into mist. there was a "click," and the circle of light vanished, another, and the vast laboratory glowed out into being as sir william turned on a hundred electric bulbs. mr. guest was sitting upon a long, low table swinging his legs. his great pink face was blotched and stained by excess, and his hand shook like an aspen leaf. he jerked his head towards the opposite wall upon which the huge screen was stretched--an enormous expanse of white material stretched upon rollers of hollow steel. "rathbone's getting about done," he said. "i give him another month before his brain goes or he pegs out altogether. look at those results just now! all foggy and uncertain. he's losing the power of concentrating his thoughts. continuous thinking is getting beyond him." sir william was sitting in an arm-chair. by the side of it was a circular table with a vulcanite top, covered with switch-handles and controlling mechanism. his long thin finger played with a little brass button, and his face was set in lines of deep and gloomy thought. his eyes were fixed and brooding, and sombreness seemed to surround him like an atmosphere. he showed no signs of having heard his assistant for a moment or two. then he turned his face suddenly towards him. "my friend," he said, "you yourself will not last another month if you go on as you are going. that is quite certain. you ought to know it as well as i do. another attack of delirium and nothing can save you." mr. guest smiled horribly. "very possibly, william," he said, "i have thought that it may be so myself. but why should i care? i'm not like you. i have no human interests. nothing matters to me except my work." "and if you die in delirium tremens you won't be able to go on with your work." "my dear william, there is nothing left for me to do. in this new discovery of ours, yours has been the master-mind. i quite admit that. but you could not have done without me. i know, as you know, that there is no one else in europe except myself who could have helped you to bring the toil of years to such a glorious conclusion. well, there is the end of it. i am nearly fifty years old. there is no time to start again, to begin on something new. life will not be long enough. i have used up all my powers in the long-continued thought-spectrum experiments. i have no more energy for new things. i rest upon my laurels, content that i have done what i have, and content from the purely scientific point of view. i've fulfilled my destiny. my mind is not like the minds of other men i meet. it is not quite human. it's a purely scientific mind, a piece of experimental apparatus which has now done its work." he laughed, a laugh which was so mirthless and cold that even gouldesbrough shuddered at the soulless, melancholy sound. then he got down from the table and shambled over the floor of the laboratory towards a cupboard. he took a bottle of whisky from a shelf, half filled a tumbler with the spirit, and lifted it towards his chief in bitter mockery. "here's luck, william," he said, "luck to the great man, the pet of europe, the saviour of the race! you see i have been reading mr. donald megbie's articles in the papers." he drank the whisky and poured some more into the glass. "yet, william, most fortunate of living men! you seem unhappy. 'the tetrarch has a sombre air,' as the play says. what a pity it is that you are not like me, without any human affections to trouble me! i don't want to pry into your private affairs--i never did, did i?--but i presume something has gone wrong with your matrimonial affairs again? i'm right, am i not? can't miss marjorie make up her mind? tell me if you like. i can't give you any sympathy, but i can give you advice." gouldesbrough flushed and moved impatiently in his chair. then he began to speak. "if what you say is true, guest, then you must be a happy man. your life is complete, you have got what you wanted, you have done what you wanted to do. and if you choose to kill yourself with amyl alcohol, i suppose that's your affair. what you say is quite right. i am terribly worried and alarmed about the success of _my_ great desire, the one wish remaining to me. i don't expect or want sympathy from you, but your advice is worth having, and you shall give it to me if you will." wilson guest nodded. "tell me what is worrying you," he said. "you know that i have had great hopes of obtaining miss poole's consent to our re-engagement. everything has been going on well. miss poole believes--or did believe--that the man rathbone is dead. i used your suggestion and hinted at a vulgar intrigue. at brighton, when charliewood shot himself, i was constantly with miss poole and her mother. my pretended efforts to solve the mystery of rathbone's disappearance told. i saw that i was winning back all the ground i had lost. i had great hopes. these seemed to culminate the other night at lord malvin's reception. miss poole promised to receive me the next day and give me a definite answer. i knew what that meant; it meant yes. i was prepared to stake everything upon it. when i called at curzon street in the evening i was told that she was unwell, and could not see me. the next day i succeeded in seeing her. i was taken aback. there was a distinct change in her manner. the old intimacy and freedom which i had been able to re-establish had gone. there was almost a shrinking in her attitude--she seemed afraid of me." "well, that is easily accounted for. you have done something hitherto beyond human power. naturally she regards you as a person apart--some one who can work miracles. but what did she say?" "it wasn't that sort of shrinking, guest. i know miss poole well. i understand the real strength and brilliancy of her mind. she is not a foolish, ordinary girl to be frightened as you suggest. i told her that i had come for my answer. i think i spoke well. my heart was in what i said, and i urged my cause as powerfully as i could. miss poole absolutely refused to give me any answer at all." "well, that is no very terrible thing, william. i know little of women, but one is told that is their way. she will not yield at once, that is all." "i wish i could think so, guest. it did not strike me in that way at all. and she said a curious thing also. she said that i might re-open the question after the public demonstration. she wouldn't pledge herself to give an answer even then. but she said that i must say nothing more to her on the subject until after the demonstration." wilson guest laughed. "what a powerful drug this love is!" he said. "it's as unexpected in its action as ether! my dear william, you are worrying yourself about nothing. i'm sure of it. remember that you can't look at the thing with an unprejudiced eye. it's all quite clear to me. miss poole simply wants to wait until she has seen your triumph with her own eyes. that is all, believe me. you are in too much of a hurry. how curious that is! it is the strangest thing in the world to find _you_--you of all men--in a hurry. it is only by monumental and marvellous patience that you have succeeded in discovering a law, and applying that law with my help, which makes you the greatest man of science the world has ever known. and yet you leap at the fence of a girl's hesitation and reserve as if everything depended on breaking a record for the jump!" gouldesbrough smiled faintly and shook his head. he was not convinced, but it was plain that he was comforted by what guest had said. his smile was melancholy and gently sad; and in the electric radiance of the huge mysterious room he seemed like some eager and kindly priest or minister who bewailed the sins of his flock, but with a humorous and human understanding of mortal frailty. and there he stood, the greatest genius of modern times, and also one of the most cruel and criminal of living men. yet so strange and tortuous is the human soul, so enslaved can conscience be by the abnormal mind, that he thought of himself as nothing but a devoted lover. his passion and desire for this girl were horrible in their egotism and their intensity alike. but the man with the marvellous brain thought that the one thing which set him apart from the herd and redeemed him for his crime was his love for marjorie poole. he really, honestly and truly, believed that! it was not without reason that donald megbie had seen the blaze of insanity in sir william's eyes. a supreme genius is very seldom sane. professor lombroso has said so, max nordau agitated scientific europe by saying it a few years ago. yet some one more important said it many years before-- "great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide." "so the matter rests there?" guest asked. "yes," sir william answered; "but i have altered the day of the demonstration. there is no need to wait after all! everything is prepared. i have sent out cards for friday next, three days from now." guest poured out some more of the spirit. he laughed rather contemptuously. "can't wait, then!" he said. "i'm glad i'm free from these entanglements, william. of course it doesn't matter when the people come to see the thing at work. as you say, everything is quite ready. but there is another thing to be considered. what about rathbone? he's no more use to us now, and he must be got rid of. shall i go down-stairs and kill him?" he said it with the indifference with which he might have proposed to wash his hands. chapter xix a death-warrant is presented to a prisoner when wilson guest spoke of the final extinction of the wretched subject of their experiments, sir william gouldesbrough did not answer. he began to pace the long room, his head was sunk upon his breast, and his face was like the face of minos, inscrutable and deadly calm. suddenly the whistle of a speaking tube sounded in the wall. all the laboratories and experimental rooms were thus connected with the house proper. none of the servants were allowed to pass the connecting door, unless by special leave. guest went to the speaking-tube and placed it against his ear--an ear that was pointed like a goat's ear. then he looked at the tall figure which was pacing the laboratory. "william," he called out with an impish giggle, "a lady has called to see you. a lady from curzon street!" gouldesbrough stopped short in his walk and raised his head. his face suddenly became a mask of eager attention and alertness. guest tittered with amusement at the effect which his words had produced. "don't be agitated," he said, "and don't look like henry irving when he played romeo. it isn't the young lady. it's the old one. it's lady poole. the butler has shown her into the study, and she's waiting to know if you can see her." gouldesbrough did not reply, but left the laboratory at once. guest could hear his hurried footsteps echoing along the corridor. then the pink-faced man turned to the whisky bottle again. he poured out a four-finger peg and sat down in the arm-chair which stood by the vulcanite table which controlled the vast and complicated apparatus of the thought spectrum. he sipped the whisky and looked at his watch. "rathbone's had the cap on for an hour," he said. "well, he can go on wearing it for a bit. if william agrees when he comes back it will be the last time rathbone will have the pleasure of helping in our experiments. i may as well take a peep at his thoughts now. lord! what a fascinating game it is!" he turned a switch, and all the lights in the place went out suddenly. then his fingers found the starting lever of the machines. he moved it, and immediately a low humming sound, as of a drum or fan revolving at immense speed was heard, far away at the other end of the laboratory. then, immediately in front of where the scientist sat, the great white disc of light, full twelve feet in diameter, suddenly flashed into view. images and pictures began to form themselves upon the screen. * * * * * sir william found old lady poole in his study, not sitting placidly in the most comfortable chair she could find, her usual plan wherever she might be, but standing upon the hearth-rug and nervously swinging a thin umbrella, the jewelled handle of which sparkled in the firelight. "ah, william," she said at once in an agitated voice, letting him lead her to a chair while she was speaking. "ah, william, i am upset about marjorie. i am very upset about the girl. i thought over what was best to be done, and i determined that i would take the bull by the horns and come and talk things over with you. that is right, isn't it?" there was a little anxiety in the good lady's voice, for, however much she desired sir william for a son-in-law and liked him personally, she was considerably afraid of him in certain of his moods. "my dear lady poole," he replied with one of his rare and charming smiles, "there is no one whom i would rather see than you. and i'm sure that you know that. tell me all about it." his tone was gentle and confidential, and lady poole's face brightened at once. "dear william!" she said. "well, i've come to you to talk about marjorie. our interests are absolutely identical in regard to her. you can't want to marry my daughter more than i want to see my daughter married to you. lately things have been going well between you both. i saw that at once; nothing escapes me where marjorie is concerned. she was quite forgetting her foolish fancy for that wretched young rathbone, owing to his perfectly providential disappearance or death or whatever it was. then i made sure that everything had come right at lord malvin's party, and especially when i heard that you were going to call next day. i went out. i thought it better. and when i came home my maid told me that marjorie had not seen you after all. and since then i've kept an eye on all that was going on, and i'm very seriously disturbed. anything i say seems to have no effect. marjorie will hardly let me mention your name to her; i cannot understand it at all. her manner is changed too. she seems expecting something or some one. my firm conviction is that she has another fit of pining for young rathbone. i told her as much one evening. in fact, i'm afraid i rather lost my temper. 'guy rathbone is most certainly dead,' i told her. 'i was as kind and sympathetic as i could be,' i said, 'when mr. rathbone first disappeared. i very much disapproved of him, but i recognized you had a certain right to choose your own future companion, within limits. but now you're simply making yourself and me miserable and ridiculous, and you're treating one of the best-hearted and distinguished men in england in a way which is simply abominable. it's heartless, it's cruel, and you will end by disgusting society altogether, and we shall have to go and live among the retired officers at bruges or some place like that.'" lady poole paused for breath. she had spoken with extreme volubility and earnestness, and there were tears in her voice. it is a mistake to assume that because people are worldly they are necessarily heartless too. lady poole really loved her daughter, but she did earnestly desire to see her married to this wealthy and famous man who seemed to have no other desire. sir william broke in upon the pause. "all you tell me, dear lady poole," he said, "is very chilling and depressing to my dearest hope. but difficulties were made to be overcome, weren't they? and to the strong man there are no fears--only shadows. but what answer did marjorie make when you said all this to her?" "a very strange one, william. she said, 'guy is not dead, mother. i know it. i feel it. i feel certain of it. and when i feel this how can i say anything to sir william!' then i asked her if she proposed to keep you waiting for the rest of both your lives before she said anything definite. she burst into tears and said that she was very miserable, but that she intended to say something definite to you after the coming reception here when you are going to show every one your new invention." "yes," sir william answered. "she has promised that, but i fear what her answer will be. well, we must hope for the best, lady poole. if i were you i shouldn't worry. leave everything to me. i have everything at stake." "well, i felt i must come and tell you, william," lady poole said. "i felt that it would help you to know exactly how things stand. perhaps all will come well. girls are very difficult to manage. i wanted marjorie to go out a great deal in order to occupy her mind and to keep her from brooding over this absurd fancy that guy rathbone is alive. but she seems to shun all engagements. however, she's fortunately thought that she would like to try her hand at writing something, she was always interested in books, you know. so she's spending a good deal of time over it--a story i think--and mr. donald megbie is helping her. he calls now and then and makes suggestions on what she has done. a nice, quiet little man he seems, and a fervent admirer of yours. i sounded him on that point the other day. so even this little fancy of marjorie's for writing may turn out to be a help. mr. megbie is sure to become enthusiastic if your name is mentioned in any way, and it will keep the fact of how the world regards you well before marjorie. now, good-bye. it's a relief to have come and told you everything. i must fly, and i know you will want to get back to your electricity and things." sir william went with her to the garden-gate in the wall, where her carriage was waiting. then he went back to the study and took down the speaking-tube that communicated with the large laboratory. he asked wilson guest to come to him at once. in a few minutes the assistant shambled in. his eyes were bright with the liquid brightness of alcoholic poisoning; his speech was much clearer and more decided than it had been earlier in the day. it had tone and _timbre_. the crimson blotches on the face were less in evidence. guest had drunk a bottle of whisky since breakfast-time, a quantity which would hopelessly intoxicate three ordinary men and probably kill one. but this enormous quantity of spirit was just sufficient, in the case of this man, to make him as near the normal as he could ever get. a bottle of whisky in the morning acted upon the drink-sodden tissues as a single peg might act upon an ordinary person who was jaded and faint. gouldesbrough knew all the symptoms of his assistant's disease very well. he recognized that the moment in the day when guest was most himself and was most useful had now arrived. the effects of yesterday's drinking were now temporarily destroyed. "i want your help, wilson," he said, with a strange look in his eyes. "i want to resume the discussion we were beginning when lady poole called. you are all right now?" "oh yes, william," the man answered without a trace of his usual giggle, with the former sly malice of his manner quite obliterated. "this is my good hour. i feel quite fit--for me--and i'm ready. about rathbone you mean?" "exactly. lady poole has given me to understand that her daughter is still pining after this person." "call him a _thing_, william. he isn't a person any more. he is just a part of our machinery, nothing more. and moreover a part of our machinery that is getting worn out, that we don't want any more, and that we ought to get rid of." "you think so?" "i'm certain of it. we must not lose sight of the fact that while there is life in that body there is always danger for us. not much danger, i admit--everything was managed too well in the first instance. but still there is danger, and a danger that grows." "how grows?" "because at the present moment the newspapers of the civilized world are full of your name. because the eyes of the whole world are directed towards this house in regent's park." "there is something in that, wilson. now my thought is that if the body could actually be found, then miss poole would know, with the rest of the world, that the fellow was actually dead. could that be managed?" guest lit a cigarette. "i suppose so," he said, thoughtfully. "but that would be giving up an experiment i had hoped to have had the opportunity of performing. human vivisection would give us such an enormous increase of scientific knowledge. it is only silly sentiment that does not give the criminal to the surgeon. but have it your own way, william. i will forego the experiment. it is obvious that if the body is to be found, there must be no traces of anything of that sort. there would be a post-mortem of course." "then what do you propose, guest?" "let me smoke for a moment and think." he sat silent for two or three minutes with the heavy eyelids almost veiling the large bistre-coloured eyes. then he looked up. his smile was so horrible in its cunning that gouldesbrough made an involuntary shrinking movement. but it was a movement dictated by the nerves and not by the conscious brain, for, dreadful as was the thing guest was about to say, there was something in sir william gouldesbrough's mind which was more dreadful still. "the body shall be found," guest said, "in the river, somewhere down wapping way, anywhere in the densely-populated districts of the docks. it shall be dressed in common clothes. when it is discovered and identified--i know how to arrange a certain identification--it will be assumed that rathbone simply went down to the slums and lost himself. there have been cases known where reputable citizens have suddenly disappeared from their surroundings of their own free will and dropped into the lowest kind of life for no explainable reason. de quincey mentions such a case in one of his essays." "good. but how can it be done? we can't carry a body to wapping in a brown paper parcel." "of course not. but has it not occurred to you that we are close to the regent's canal? i haven't worked out details. they will shape themselves later on. but there are plenty of barges always going up and down the canal. certainly we can do the thing. it is only a question of money. we have an unlimited command of money. but, listen. our body is alive still. it will be quite easy for us--with our knowledge--to treat this living body with certain preparations, and in such a way that when it is dead it will present all the appearance of having been killed by excess in some drug. the post-mortem will disclose it. if we keep it alive during a month from now, we can make it a morphia maniac to all appearance. we can inject anything we like into this rathbone and make him a slave to some drug, whether he likes it or not!" "no, guest. the really expert pathologist would discover it. it couldn't be done in a month. it might in six." "the really expert pathologist won't perform the post-mortem, william. there are only ten in london! some local doctor of the police will apply the usual tests and discover exactly what we wish him to discover. he will analyze a corpse. he won't synthesize a history of the corpse. only ten men in england could do that with certainty, and you and i are two of those ten, though it is many years ago since we gave up that sort of work for physics. so you see your object will be doubly served. the actual death will be proved, and the fellow's life be discredited while the apparently true reason of his disappearance will be revealed." sir william looked steadily at his assistant. "your brain is wonderfully sufficient," he said. "it is extraordinary how it withstands the ravages of alcohol. really, my dear wilson, you are a remarkable man. all you say is quite excellent. and, meanwhile, i have a proposal to make." he suddenly rose from his chair, and his eyes began to blaze with insane passion. he shook with it, his whole face was transformed. in his turn he became abnormal. and just as the famous man had thought of the lesser, a moment or two ago--had regarded him coldly and spoken of him, to him, as a mind diseased--so now the lesser, stimulated to spurious sanity for the moment, saw the light of mania in his chief's eyes. two great forces, two great criminals, two horrid egotists, and both lost men! lost far more certainly and irrevocably than the prisoned and dying gentleman far below in the strong room, where the electric fans whispered all day and night, where the fetters jingled and the heart was turning to salt stone! the man was changed utterly. the grave courtly ascetic vanished as a breath on glass vanishes. and in his stead stood a creature racked with evil jealousy and malice, a gaunt inhuman figure in whose eyes was the glitter of a bird of prey. guest saw the swift and terrible drop into the horrible and the grotesque. he realized that for a brief moment he was master of the situation. "tell me, william," he said. "and what is your idea?" gouldesbrough stopped. he turned towards his questioner and shook a long, threatening arm at him. "why," he said, "all this time the man rathbone has never known why we are keeping him in prison. he has never seen me, but day by day you have descended to his cell, caught him up in the toils of the chains which he wears, and hoisted him on to the couch. and all this time, when you have fitted the cap upon his head, the man has known nothing of the reasons. he is in the dark, mentally, as he is so often in the dark from a physical point of view, when you, his jailer, see fit to turn off the light. but now he shall know what we are doing with him. i am going down to tell him that every thought which has been born in his brain has been noted and recorded by you and by me. i am going to tell him what we are going to do with his wretched body. he shall know of your proposals, how that we, his lords and masters, will simulate in his tissues the physical appearances of protracted vice. he shall know to-day how his body will be discovered, and how his memory will be for ever discredited in the eyes of the world. and i shall tell him to-day, that as he lies bound and in my power, wearing the helmet of brass which robs him of his own power of secret thought, that i am going up-stairs to watch his agony in pictures, and that marjorie will be with me--that she is utterly under my influence--and that we shall laugh together as we see each thought, each agony, chasing one another over the screen. we shall be together, i shall tell him, my arms will be round her, her lips will seek mine, and for the first time in the history of the world...." he stopped for a moment. his hand went up to his throat as if the torrent of words were choking him. then guest cut in to his insane ecstasy. "you are a fool, william," came from the pink-faced man, in an icy titter. "of course when you tell him why and how we have used him, he will believe it. but i don't think that he will believe in your pleasant fiction of you and the girl as a sort of latter-day lacoön in one arm-chair, laughing together as you take your supreme revenge." gouldesbrough strode up to guest. he clutched him by the shoulder. "give me the keys," he said, "the keys, the keys." guest was not at all dismayed. laughing still, he put his hand into his pocket and took out the pass-key of the strong-room. "there you are, william," he said; "now go down and enjoy yourself. our friend is still tied down on the couch--he's been like that for several hours, because i've forgotten to go and loose him. i'm going to have some more whisky, and then i shall go to the big laboratory and switch on the current. if i'm not very much mistaken, our friend's brain will provide a series of pictures more intense and vivid, more sharply defined in both outline and colour, than i have ever seen before, during the whole course of our experiments." gouldesbrough took the key and was out of the room in a flash. guest groped for the decanter. * * * * * his hair was quite grey now. all the gold had gone from it, just as the youth had passed from his face--his face which was now the colour of ashes, and gashed with agony. and he lay there, trussed and tied in his material fetters of india-rubber and aluminium. on his head the gleaming metal cap was clamped. he was supine and an old man. all the sap had gone from the fine athlete of a few weeks ago, and the splendid body that had been, was just a shell, a husk. but the soul looked through the eyes still, tortured but undaunted, in agony but not afraid. in the lower silence of that deep cellar where guy suffered there were but two sounds. one was the insistent whisper of the electric fan, the other was the voice which came from sir william gouldesbrough as he bent over the recumbent figure--the broken, motionless figure in which, still, brave eyes were set like jewels. "so now you know! you know it all, you realize, dead man, all that i have done to you, and all that i am going to do. down here, in this little room, you have thought that you were alone. you have imagined that whatever had happened to you, you were yet alone with the agony of your thoughts, and with god! but you were not! though you never knew it until now, you never were! each prayer that you thought you were sending up to the unknown force that rules the world, was caught by me. for weeks i have daily seen into your soul, and laughed at its irremediable pain. i have got your body, and for the first time in the history of the world, your mind, your soul, are mine also." the voice stopped for a moment. it had become very harsh and dry. it clicked and rang with a metallic sound in this torture-chamber far underground. and still the bright eyes watched the body of the man who was possessed, very calmly, very bravely. the horrid voice rose into an insane shriek. "she is up-stairs now, the girl you presumed to love, the rose of all the roses that you dared to come near, is sitting, laughing as she sees all that you are thinking now, vividly before her in pictures and in words. in a moment i shall be with her, and together we shall mock your agonies, twined in each other's arms." perhaps a vault in the dungeons of the inquisition or in some other place of horror where merciless men have watched the agonies of their brethren, has echoed with pure merriment. who can say, who can tell? such a thing may have happened, but we do not know. but to-night, at this very moment, from the prone figure stretched on its bed of pain, from the heart of a man who had just heard that he was doomed to a cruel death, and robbed of his very individuality, there came a bright and merry laugh which rang out in that awful place as the angelus rings over the evening fields of france, and all the peasants bow in homage to their maker. and then the voice. "i know now why i am here, and what has been done to me during these long, leaden hours. i am now at the point of death. but, with all your devilish cleverness, with all your brilliancy, you are but as a child. i suppose i shall not see you again, but i forgive you, gouldesbrough, forgive you utterly. and it is easier for me to do this, because i know that you are lying. in this world she still loves me, in the next she is mine, as i am hers. and it is because you know this that you come and rant and laugh, and show yourself as the fearful madman that you are. good-bye, good-night; i am happier than you as i lie here, because i know that, for ever and a day, marjorie loves me and i love marjorie. and it won't be any time at all before we meet." and once again the laugh that echoed from stone wall to ceiling of stone, was blithe and confident. chapter xx thoughts of one in durance once more the cell was only tenanted by the victim. sir william had gone, the great door had clanked and clicked, and guy rathbone still lay upon his couch of torture. the electric light still shone, as gouldesbrough had forgotten to turn it off, or perhaps did not know that this was the invariable custom of his assistant when rathbone was clanked and bolted down to his bed of vulcanite. it was the first visit that sir william had paid to the living tomb to which he had consigned his rival. rathbone had laughed indeed, and his laugh was still echoing in the frenzied brain of the scientist as he mounted upwards to the light of day. but the laugh, though it had indeed been blithe and confident, had been a supreme effort of will, of faith and trust, was merely the echo and symbol of a momentary state which the tortured body and despairing mind could not sustain. rathbone could not move his head, fixed tight as it was in its collar. but two great tears rolled from the weakened and trembling eyelids down the gaunt, grey cheeks. the supreme ecstasy of belief and trust in the girl he loved, the hope of meeting her again in another world where time was not and where the period of waiting would be unfelt, passed away like a thing that falls through water. once more a frightful emptiness and fear came down over him like a cloud falls. from where his couch was placed, though he could not turn his head, he could see nearly the whole interior of his cell. there were the concrete walls, each cranny and depression of which he knew so well. there was the other, and scarcely less painful, bed upon which he slept, or tried to sleep at such times when exhausted nature mercifully banished the pain of his soul. it was not day when he slept, it was not night, for day and night are things of the world, the world with which he was never to have any more to do, and which he should never see again with material eyes. there was the little table upon which was the last book they had let him have, a book brought to him in bitter mockery by wilson guest a child's picture book called "reading without tears." and he could see the network of ropes and india-rubber attachments which went up to the pulley in the roof, and which rendered him absolutely helpless by means of the mechanism outside the cell which was set in motion before his jailor entered. there was hardly any need for these ingenious instruments any longer. the athlete was gaunt and wasted, his skin hung upon him in grey folds. the gold had faded out of his hair and it was nearly white. the firm and manly curve of the lips was broken and twisted. the whole mouth was puckered with pain and torture. it was almost a senile mouth now. very little physical strength remained in the body--no, there was hardly any need for the pulley and ropes now, and soon there would be no need for them at all, until, perhaps, some other unhappy captive languished in the grip of these monsters. his tired eyes gazed round the cell, and his thoughts were for a moment numbed into nothingness. there was just a piece of lead at the back of his brain, that was all. he was conscious of it being there, drowsily conscious, but no more than that. quite suddenly something seemed to start his mental lethargy, his brain resumed its functions instantaneously. there was a roaring in his ears like the sound of a wind, and he awoke to full consciousness and realization of what sir william had told him, of the unutterable terror and frightfulness of his coming doom. all over his face, hands, and body, beads of perspiration started out in little jets. then he felt as if a piece of ice were being slid smoothly down his spine--from the neck downwards. his hands opened and shut convulsively, gripping at nothing, and the soles of his feet, in their list slippers, became suddenly and strangely hot. the collar round his neck seemed to be throttling him, and his mouth opened, gasping for air. then that deep and hidden chamber was filled with a wail so mournful, melancholy and hopeless, so dismal and inhuman that the very concrete walls themselves might also have melted and dissolved away before the fire of such agony and the sound of such despair. he knew the dark and more sinister reason of his captivity, he knew what they had made him and for what dreadful purpose. ah! it was a supreme revenge. they had stolen him from his love and they had stolen his very inmost soul from him. all the agonized prayers which had gone up to god like thin flames had been caught upon their way like tangible and material things, caught by the devilish power of one man, and thrown upon the wall for him to see and laugh over. all his passionate longing for marjorie, all the messages he tried to frame and send her through the darkness and the walls of stone, all these had been but an amusement and a derision for the fiend whose slave he had become. and all his hatred, his deep cursings of his captor, all his futile half-formed plans for an escape were all known to the two men. and still worse, his very memories, his most sacred memories, had been taken from him and used as a theatre by william gouldesbrough and wilson guest. he understood now the remarks that the assistant had sometimes made, the cruel and extraordinary knowledge he seemed to display of things that had happened in rathbone's past. it was all quite plain, all terribly distinct. and worst of all, the sacred moments when he had avowed his love for marjorie, and she, that peerless maiden, had come to him in answer, these dear memories, which alone had kept his cooling mind from madness, were known and exulted over by these men. they had seen him kiss marjorie; all the endearments of the lovers had passed before them like tableaux in a pantomime. yes; this indeed was more than any brain could bear. rathbone knew now that he was going mad. of course, god never heard his prayers, they could not get up to god. those beasts had caught them in a net and god never heard them. there had always been that one thought, even in the darkest hour--that thought that god knew and would come to his aid. the face, the rigid face, worked and wrinkled horribly. ripples of agony passed up and down it like the ripples upon the wind-blown surface of a pool. it was not human now any longer, and the curious and lovers of what is terrible may see such faces in the museum of the mad painter of pictures at brussels. then, as a stone falls, consciousness flashed away, though the face still moved and wrinkled automatically. presently the door of the cell was unlocked, and wilson guest came in. he was rather drunk and rather angry also. sir william had come back from telling rathbone the truth about what had been done to him and what they proposed to do. guest had been waiting in the study with great expectation. he congratulated himself on having worked up his patron sufficiently to make him visit rathbone himself and inform him of his fate. he had not thought that gouldesbrough could have been brought to do any such thing, and he had awaited his chief's arrival with intense and cynical expectation. when at last sir william did enter the room, his face was very pale, but the passion of hideous anger had quite gone from it, and it was calm and quiet. the eyes no longer blazed, the lips were set in their usual curve. "have you told him, william?" guest asked in his malicious voice. "have you told him everything? come along, then, let's go into the laboratory at once and see what he thinks about it." there was no response. sir william seemed as a man in a dream. when at length he did answer his voice appeared to come from a long distance, and it was sad and almost kindly. "yes," he said, in that gentle mournful voice; "yes, my friend, i have told him. poor, poor fellow! how terrible his thoughts must be now. i wish i could do something for him. the spectacle of such agony is indeed terrible. poor, poor fellow!" he sank into a chair, his head fell upon his breast, his fingers interlocked, and he seemed to be sleeping. guest looked at him for a moment stupidly. the assistant was fuddled with drink, and could not understand these strange symptoms and phenomena of a great brain which was swiftly being undermined. all he noticed was that sir william certainly seemed sunk in upon himself like an old man. with a gesture of impatience he left the room and traversed the corridor until he came to the largest laboratory, where the thought spectroscope instruments were. he turned up the electric light, found the switch which controlled part of the machinery, moved the switch and turned down the electric light once more, looking expectantly at the opposite wall. there was no great circle of light such as he waited for. with an oath he stumbled out of the laboratory, not forgetting to lock it carefully. and then, unlocking another door, a door which formed the back of a great cupboard in no. c room, a door which nobody ever saw, he went down a flight of stone steps to those old disused cellars, in one of which rathbone was kept. he opened the door and found the captive still lying upon the vulcanite couch, his face still working like the face of a mechanical toy, and in a deep swoon. guest hastily unbuckled the straps and released the neck from the collar. he carried rathbone to the bed, locked the thin steel chains, which hung from the roof, upon the anklets and the handcuffs, and then dashed water repeatedly in his face. in his pocket, mr. guest invariably carried a supply of liquor. it sometimes happened that in going from a room where he had exhausted all the liquor, into another room where he knew he would find more, the two rooms would be separated by a corridor of some little length, and it sometimes happened that mr. guest needed a drink when he arrived in the middle of the corridor. so he always carried a large, silver-mounted flask in the pocket of his coat. he unscrewed this now and poured some whisky down the captive's throat. in a minute or two a faint tinge of colour appeared upon the cheekbones, and with a shudder and sob the tortured soul came back to the tortured body, which even yet it was not to be suffered to leave. "that's better," mr. guest remarked. "i thought you had gone off, i really did. not yet, my dear boy, not yet. would not do at all. would not suit our purpose. i'm sure you won't be so disobliging as to treat us in such a shabby way after all we have done for you. i understand william has told you of the delicate attentions by which we propose to make your exit as interesting and as valuable to science as possible." rathbone looked at him steadily. he spoke to him in a weak, thin voice. "yes," he said, "i know now, i know everything. but have you no single spark of pity or compassion within you, that you can come here to mock and gloat over a man who is surely suffering more than any one else has ever suffered in the history of the world? is it impossible to touch you or move you in any way?" mr. guest rubbed his hands with huge enjoyment. "ah!" he said chuckling, while the pink, hairless face was one mask of pleasure. "ah, that is how i have been wanting to hear you talk for a long, long time. i thought we should break you down at last, though. for my part i should have told you long before, only william thought that you would not give yourself away about miss marjorie poole if you knew that we saw it all. however, we know now, so it don't matter. dear little girl she is, mr. rathbone. sir william sees her every day. she thinks you have gone off with a barmaid and are living quite happily, helping her to manage a pub. in the east. sir william sees her every day, and she sits on his knee, and they kiss each other and laugh about being in love. charming, isn't it? fancy you talking to me like that. pity? pity? aren't i your best friend? don't i bring you your food every day? and didn't i give you a drink just now? that's more than william did. and besides to-morrow aren't i going to begin the injections that in a month's time or so will make you appear a confirmed dipsomaniac, just before i come down here and hold your head in a bucket of water until you are drowned? then, dress your body in nice, dirty clothes and have you dropped in the thames just above wapping. oh, mr. rathbone, how could you say such cruel things to your good friend, mr. wilson guest? well, i must be going. i don't think you will want anything more to-night, will you? good night. sleep pleasantly. i am going to go to bed myself, and i shall lie awake thinking of the fun there will be at the inquest when the doctor reports after the post-mortem that you were a confirmed drunkard, and all the world, including miss marjorie poole, will know the real truth about guy rathbone's disappearance." chapter xxi how they all went to the house in regent's park the little door in the wall of sir william gouldesbrough's old georgian house stood wide open. carriages were driving up, and the butler was constantly ushering visitors into the vast sombre hall, while a footman kept escorting this or that arrival up the gravel path among the laurel bushes. it was afternoon, a dull and livid afternoon. clouds had come down too near to london, and thunder lurked behind them. never at any time a cheerful place, the old walled house of the scientist to-day wore its most depressing aspect. the well-known people, who were invited to the demonstration of a stupendous and revolutionary discovery, looked with ill-concealed curiosity at the house, the garden, and the gloomy dignity of the hall. there has always been a great deal of surmise and curiosity about sir william's home and private life. that so distinguished a man was a bachelor was in itself an anomaly; and, though gouldesbrough went continually into society, when he himself entertained it was generally at restaurants, except in very rare instances. so the world of london had come to regard the house in regent's park as a sort of wizard's cave, a secret and mysterious place where the modern magician evolved wonders which were to change the whole course of modern life. about forty people had been invited to the demonstration. lord malvin was there, of course. he came in company with donald megbie and sir harold oliver. all three men seemed singularly grave and preoccupied, and, as the other guests noted the strange, and even stern, expression upon lord malvin's face, they whispered that the leader of the scientific world felt that on this day he was to be deposed and must resign his captaincy for ever. but in this case, as it generally is, gossip was at fault. nobody knew of the strange conference which had been held by donald megbie with lord malvin and sir harold oliver. nobody knew how miss marjorie poole had driven up to lord malvin's house in portland place one afternoon with donald megbie. nobody would have believed, even if they had been told, how the two grave scientists (who realized that, however many truths are discovered, there still lie hidden forces which we shall never understand this side of the veil) had listened to the extraordinary story the journalist and the society girl had to tell. therefore, on this important afternoon, though lord malvin's seriousness was commented upon, it was entirely misunderstood. various other scientists from france, germany and america were present. donald megbie, the editor of the _eastminster gazette_, and a famous novelist represented the press and the literary world. the bishop of west london, frail, alert, his grey eyes filled with eagerness, was one of the guests. dean weare came with him, and the political world had sent three ambassadors in the persons of mr. decies, the home secretary, sir james clouston and sir william ellrington. there was an academician who looked like a jockey, and a judge who looked like a trainer. the rest of the guests were all well-known people, who, if they were not particularly interested in science, were yet just the people who could not be ignored on an important occasion. that is to say, they belonged to that little coterie of men and women in london who have no other _metier_ than to be present at functions of extreme importance! for no particular reason they have become fixtures, and their personalities are entirely merged in the unearned celebrity of their name and the apparent necessity for their presence. the men in their black frock coats passed over the great galleried hall like ghosts, and the white furs of the ladies, and the grey plumes and feathers of their hats, did little to relieve the general note of sadness, or to bring any colour into sir william gouldesbrough's house. among the last arrivals of all were lady poole and her daughter. the guests had congregated in the hall where servants were handing about tea, and where two great fires warmed the air indeed, but could not destroy the sense of mental chill. sir william had not yet made his appearance, and it was understood that when the party was complete the butler was to lead them straight to the laboratories. the fact marked the seriousness of the occasion. this was no social party, no scientific picnic, at which one went to see things which would interest and amuse, and to chatter, just as one chatters at an exhibition of water-colours in pall mall. everybody felt this, everybody knew it, and everybody experienced a sense of awe and gravity as befitted people who were about to witness something which would mark an epoch in the history of the world and change the whole course of human life. as marjorie poole came into the hall with her mother, every one saw that she looked ill. her face was pale, there were dark rings under her eyes; and, as she stepped over the threshold of the door, one or two people noticed that she shivered. it was remarked also, that directly the two ladies entered, lord malvin, sir harold oliver, and mr. megbie went up to them in a marked manner, and seemed to constitute themselves as a sort of bodyguard for the rest of the stay in the hall. "she does not look much like a girl who is engaged to the most successful man of the day, does she?" mrs. hoskin-heath said to lord landsend. "no, you are right," lord landsend whispered. "she is afraid sir william's machine won't work, and that the whole thing won't come off, don't you know. and, for my part, though i don't profess to understand exactly what sir william is going to show us, i bet a fiver that it is not more wonderful than things i have seen scores of times at maskelyne and cook's. wonderful place that, mrs. hoskin-heath. i often go there on a dull afternoon; it makes one's flesh creep, 'pon my word it does. i have been there about fifty times, and i have never yet felt safe from the disappearing egg." the butler was seen to come up to lord malvin and ask him a question. the peer looked round, and seemed to see that every one was prepared to move. he nodded to the man, who crossed the hall, bowed, and opened a door to the right of the great central staircase. "my master tells me to say, my lord," he said, addressing lord malvin, but including the whole of the company in his gaze--"my master tells me to say that he will be very much obliged if you will come into the laboratory." a footman went up to the door and held it open, while the butler, with a backward look, disappeared into the passage, and led the way towards the real scene of the afternoon's events. as that throng of famous people walked down the long corridor, which led past the study door, not a single one of them knew or could surmise that all and severally they were about to experience the emotion of their lives. chapter xxii the doom begins the visitors found themselves in the laboratory, a large building lit by means of its glass roof. sir william gouldesbrough, dressed in a grey morning suit, received them. he shook hands with one or two, and bowed to the rest; but there was no regular greeting of each person who came in. at one side of the laboratory were three long rows of arm-chairs, built up in three tiers on platforms, much in the same way as the seats are arranged for hospital students in an operating theatre. the guests were invited to take their places, and in a minute or two had settled themselves, the more frivolous and non-scientific part of them whispering and laughing together, as people do before the curtain rises at a play. this is what they saw. about two yards away from the lowest row of seats, which was practically on the floor level, the actual apparatus of the discovery began. upon specially constructed tables, on steel supports, which rose through the boarding of the floor, were a series of machines standing almost the whole length of the room. upon the opposite wall to the spectators was a large screen, upon which the thought pictures were to be thrown. save for the strange apparatus in all its intricacy of brass and vulcanite, coiled wire and glass, there was more than a suggestion of the school-room in which the pupils are entertained by a magic-lantern exhibition. marjorie poole and her mother sat next to lord malvin, on either side of him, while donald megbie, sir harold oliver, and the bishop of west london were immediately to their right and left. gouldesbrough had not formally greeted marjorie, but as he stood behind his apparatus ready to begin the demonstration, he flashed one bright look at her full of triumph and exultation. megbie, who was watching very closely, saw that the girl's face did not change or soften, even at this supreme moment, when the unutterable triumph of the man who loved her was about to be demonstrated to the world. amid a scene of considerable excitement on the part of the non-scientific of the audience, and the strained tense attention of the famous scientists, sir william gouldesbrough began. "my lord, my illustrious _confrères_, ladies and gentlemen, i have to thank you very much for all coming here this afternoon to see the law which i have discovered actually applied by means of mechanical processes, which have been adapted, invented and made by myself and my brilliant partner and helper, mr. wilson guest." as he said this, sir william turned towards the end of the room where his assistant was busy bending over one of the machines. the man, with the large hairless face, was pale, and his fingers were shaking, as they moved about among the screws and wires. he did not look up as gouldesbrough paid him this just tribute, though every one of the spectators turned towards him at the mention of his name. truth to tell, mr. wilson guest was, for the first time for many years, absolutely bereft of all alcoholic liquor since the night before. for the first time in their partnership gouldesbrough had insisted upon guest's absolute abstention. he had never done such a thing before, as he pointed out to his friend, but on this day he said his decision was final and he meant to be obeyed. the frenzied entreaties of the poor wretch about mid-day, his miserable abasement and self-surrender, as he wept for his poison, were useless alike. he had been forced to yield, and at this moment he was suffering something like torture. it was indeed only by the greatest effort of his weakened will that he could attend to the mechanical duties of adjusting the sensitive machines for the demonstration which was to follow. "i cannot suppose that any of you here are now unaware of the nature of my experiments and discovery. it has been ventilated in the press so largely during the last few days, and mr. donald megbie has written such a lucid account of the influence which he believes the discovery will have upon modern life, that i am sure you all realize something of the nature of what i am about to show you. "to put it very plainly, i am going to show you how thought can be collected in the form of vibrations, in the form of fluid electric current, and collected directly from the brain of the thinker as he thinks. "i am further going to demonstrate to you how this current can be transformed into a visible, living and actual representation of the thoughts of the thinker." he stopped for a moment, and there was a little murmur from his guests. then he went on. "before proceeding to actual experiment, it is necessary that i should give you some account of the means by which i have achieved such marvellous results. i do not propose to do this in extremely technical language, for were i to do so, a large portion of those here this afternoon would not be able to follow me. i shall proceed to explain in words, which i think most of you will understand. "my illustrious _confrères_ in science will follow me and understand the technical aspect of what i am going to put into very plain language, and to them especially i would say that, after the actual experiment has been conducted, i shall beg them to examine my apparatus and to go into the matter with me from a purely scientific aspect. "and now, ladies and gentlemen, let me begin. "that light is transmitted by waves in the ether is abundantly proved, but the nature of the waves and the nature of the ether have, until the present, always been uncertain. it is known that the ultimate particles of bodies exist in a state of vibration, but it cannot be assumed that the vibration is purely mechanical. experiment has proved the existence of magnetic and electric strains in the ether, and i have found that electro-magnetic strains are propagated with the same speed as that of which light travels. "you will now realize, to put it in very simple language, that the connection between light and what the man in the street would call currents, or waves of electricity, is very intimate. when i had fully established this in my own mind, i studied the physiology of the human body for a long period. i found that the exciting agents in the nerve system of the animal frame are frequently electric, and by experimenting upon the nerve system in the human eye, i found that it could be excited by the reception of electro-magnetic waves. "in the course of my experiments i began more and more frequently to ask myself, 'what is the exact nature of thought?' "you all know how signor marconi can send out waves from one of his transmitters. i am now about to tell you that the human brain is nothing more nor less than an organism, which, in the process of thought, sends out into the surrounding ether a number of subtle vibrations. but, as these vibrations are so akin in their very essence to the nature of light, it occurred to me that it might be possible to gather them together as they were given off, to direct them to a certain point, and then, by means of transforming them into actual light, pass that light through a new form of spectroscope; and, instead of coloured rays being projected upon a screen through the prism of the instrument, the actual living thought of the brain would appear for every one to see. "this is, in brief, precisely what i have done, and it is precisely what i am going to show you in a few minutes. having given you this briefest and slightest outline of the law i have discovered and proved, i will explain to you something of the mechanical means by which i have proved it, and by which i am going to show it to you in operation." he stopped once more, and moved a little away from where he had been standing. every one was now thoroughly interested. there was a tremulous silence as the tall, lean figure moved towards a small table on which the shining conical cap, or helmet of brass, lay. sir william took up the object and held it in his right hand, so that every one could see it distinctly. from the top, where the button of an ordinary cap would be, a thin silk-covered wire drooped down to the floor and finally rose again and disappeared within a complicated piece of mechanism a few feet away. "this cap," sir william said, "is placed upon the head of a human being. you will observe later that it covers the whole of the upper part of the head down to the eyes, and also descends behind to the nape of the neck and along each side of the neck to the ears. "a person wearing this cap is quite unconscious of anything more than the mere fact of its weight upon his head. but what is actually going on is, that every single thought he secretes is giving off this vibration, not into the ether, but within the space enclosed by the cap. these vibrations cannot penetrate through the substance with which the cap is lined, and in order to obtain an outlet, they can only use the outlet which i have prepared for them. this is placed in the top of the cap, and is something like those extremely delicate membranes which receive the vibrations of the human voice in a telephone and transmit them along a wire to the receiver at the other end of it." he put down the cap, and looked towards his audience. not a single person moved in the very least. the distinguished party, tier upon tier, might have been a group of wooden statues painted and coloured to resemble the human form. sir william moved on. "here," he said, "is a piece of apparatus enclosed in this box, which presented the first great difficulty in the course of the twenty years during which i have been engaged upon this work. within this wooden shell," he tapped it with his fingers, "the thought vibrations, if i may call them so, are collected and transformed into definite and separate _electric_ currents. every single variation in their strength or quality is changed into a corresponding electric current, which, in its turn, varies from its fellow currents. so far, i have found that from between , to , different currents, differing in their tensity and their power, are generated by the ordinary thoughts of the ordinary human being. "you may take it from me, as i shall presently show my scientific brethren, that within this box thought vibrations are transformed into _electric_ currents." he passed on to a much larger machine, which was connected by a network of wires covered with crimson and yellow silk, to the mahogany box which he had just left. the outside of the new piece of apparatus resembled nothing so much as one of those enormous wine-coolers which one sees in big restaurants or hotels. it was a large square case standing upon four legs. but from the lid of this case rose something which suggested a very large photographic camera, but made of dull steel. the tube, in which the lens of an ordinary camera is set, was in this case prolonged for six or seven feet, and was lost in the interior of the next machine. and now, for the first time, the strained ears of the spectators caught a note of keen vibration and excitement in sir william gouldesbrough's voice. he had been speaking very quietly and confidently hitherto; but now the measured utterance rose half a tone; and, as when some great actor draws near in speech to the climax of the event he mimics, so sir william also began to be agitated, and so also the change in tone sent a thrill and quiver through the ranks of those who sat before him. "here," he said, "i have succeeded in transforming my electric currents into light. that is nothing, you may think for a moment, the electric current produces light in your own houses at any moment; but you must remember that in your incandescent bulbs the light is always the same in its quality. light of this sort, passed through the prism of a spectroscope will always tell the same story when the screen presents itself for analysis. my problem has been to produce an infinite variety of light, so that every single thought vibration will produce, when transformed, its own _special_ and _individual_ quality of light, and that," he concluded, "i have done." sir harold oliver, who had been leaning forward with grey eyes so strained and intent that all the life seemed to have gone out of them and they resembled sick pearls, gave a gasp as sir william paused. then gouldesbrough continued. he placed his hand upon the thing like a camera which rose from the lid of the larger structure below it. "within this chamber," he said, "all the light generated below is collected and focussed. it passes in one volume through this object." he moved onwards, as he spoke, running his fingers along the pipe which led him to the next marvel in this stupendous series. "i have now come," he began again, "to what mr. guest and myself might perhaps be allowed to think as our supreme triumph. here is our veritable thought spectroscope within this erection, which, as you will observe, is much larger than anything else i have shown you. the light which pours along that tube is passed through, what i will only now designate as a prism, to keep the analogy of the light spectroscope, and is split up into its component parts. "you will see that, rising out of this iron box," he ran his hand over the sides of it as if he loved it, "the lens projects just like the lens of a bioscope. this lens is directed full upon that great white screen which is exactly opposite to you all; and this is my final demonstration of the mechanism which i am now about to set in motion to prove to you that i have now triumphed over the hitherto hidden realm of thought. from this lens i shall pour upon the screen in a minute or two for you all to see, without doubt and in simple view, the thoughts of the man or woman on whom i shall place the cap." he ceased. the first part of the demonstration was over. lord malvin rose in his seat. his voice was broken by emotion. "sir," he said, "i know, none better perhaps in this room, of the marvellous series of triumphs which have led you to this supreme moment. i know how absolutely and utterly true all you have told us is, and i know that we are going to witness your triumph." he turned round to the people behind him. "we are going to see," he said, "the human soul laid bare for the first time in the history of the world." then he turned once more to sir william, and his voice, though still full of almost uncontrollable emotion, became deep and stern. "sir william gouldesbrough," he said, "i have to salute you as the foremost scientist of all time, greater than newton, greater than darwin, greater than us all. and i pray to god that you have used the great talent he has given you in a worthy way, and i pray that, if you have done this, you will always continue to do so; for surely it is only for some special reason that god has allowed you this mastery." he ceased, and there was rustle and hum of movement among all the people, as this patriarch lifted his voice with almost a note of warning and menace in it. it was all so unusual, so unexpected--why did this strange prophetic note come into the proceedings? what was hidden in the old man's brain? every one felt the presence, the unseen presence of deep waters and hidden things. marjorie poole had bowed her head, she was absolutely motionless. there was a tension in the air. sir william gouldesbrough's head was bowed also, as he listened with courteous deference to the words of one whose name had been chief and most honoured in the scientific world for so many years. those who watched him remarked afterwards that he seemed to be stricken into stone for a moment, as words which were almost a veiled accusation pealed out into the great room. then they saw sir william once more himself in a swift moment. his eyes were bright and there was a look of triumph on his face. "i thank you, lord malvin," he said, in a voice which was arrogant and keen, "i thank you for your congratulations, your belief, and for your hopes for me; and now my lord, ladies, and gentlemen, shall we not proceed to the actual demonstration? "i am going to ask that one of you come down from your seat and allow me to place the cap upon your head. i shall then darken the laboratory, and the actual thoughts of the lady or gentleman who submits herself or himself to the experiment will be thrown upon the screen." there was a dead silence now, but most of the people there looked at each other in doubt and fear. it might well be that, confronted for the first time in their lives with the possibility of the inmost secrets of their souls being laid bare, the men and women of the world would shrink in terror. who of us, indeed, is able to look clearly and fairly into his own heart, and realize in very actual truth what he is! do we not, day by day, and hour by hour, apply the flattering unction to our souls that we aren't so very bad after all; that what we did last week, and what, sub-consciously we know we shall do again in the week that is coming, is only the result of a temperament which cannot be controlled in this or that particular, and that we have many genial virtues--not exactly specified or defined--which make it all up to a high level of conduct after all? yes! there was a silence there, as indeed there would have been in any other assembly when such a proposal was made. they were all ashamed, they were all frightened. they none of them dared submit themselves to this ordeal. and as they looked at their host they saw that a faint and mocking smile was playing about his mouth, and that the eyes above it flamed and shone. then they heard his voice once more, and the new and subtle quality of mockery had crept into that also. "ladies and gentlemen, i am waiting for one of you to give me an opportunity of proving all that i have told you." "my lord, will not you afford me the great privilege of being the first subject of the new experiment?" lord malvin looked very straightly and rather strangely at sir william gouldesbrough. "sir," he said, "i am not afraid to display my thoughts to this company, but shall i be the first person who has ever done so? of course not. you have had other subjects for experiment, whether willing or unwilling--i do not know." once again the guests saw sir william's face change. what strange and secret duel, they asked themselves, was going on before them? how was it that lord malvin and sir william gouldesbrough seemed to be in the twin positions of accuser and accused? what was all this? lord malvin continued-- "i am ready to submit myself, sir william, in the cause of science. but i would ask you, very, very earnestly, if you desire that the thoughts that animate me at this moment should be given to every one here?" gouldesbrough stepped back a pace as though some one had struck him. there was a momentary and painful silence. and then it was that the bishop of west london rose in his place. "sir william," he said, "i shall be highly honoured if you will allow me to be the first subject. i shall fix my thoughts upon some definite object, and then we shall see if my memory is good. i have only just come back from a holiday in the holy land, and it will give me great pleasure to sit in your chair and to try and construct some memories of jerusalem for you all." with that the bishop stepped down on to the floor of the laboratory, and sat in the chair which sir william indicated. the spectators saw the brass cap carefully fitted on the prelate's head. then sir william stepped to the little vulcanite table upon which the controlling switches were--there was a click, shutters rolled over the sky-lights in the roof, already obscured by the approach of evening, and the electric lights of the laboratory all went out simultaneously. the darkness was profound. the great experiment had begun. chapter xxiii the doom continues they were all watching, and watching very intently. all they could see was a bright circle of light which flashed out upon the opposite wall. it was just as though they were watching an ordinary exhibition of the magic-lantern or the cinematograph. and suddenly, swiftly, these world-worn and weary people of society, these scientists who lived by measure and by rule, saw that all sir william gouldesbrough had said was true--and truer than he himself knew. for upon this white screen, where all their eyes were fixed, there came a picture of the holy city, and it was a picture such as no single person there had ever seen before. for it was not that definite and coloured presentment of a scene caught by the camera and reproduced through the mechanical means of a lens, which is a thing which has no soul. it was the picture of that holy city to which all men's thoughts turn in trouble or in great crises of their lives. and it was a picture coloured by the imagination of the man who had just come back from jerusalem, and who remembered it in the light of the christian faith and informed it with all the power of his own personality. they saw the sharp outlines of the olive trees, immemorially old, as a fringe to the picture. the sun was shining, the white domes and roofs were glistening, the church of the holy sepulchre loomed up large in this vista, seen through a temperament, and through a memory, and seen from a hill. for a brief space, they all caught their breath and shuddered at the marvellous revelation of the power and magnificence of thought which was revealed to them at that moment. and then they watched the changing, shifting phantom, which was born from the thought of this good man, with a chill and shudder at the incredible wonder of it all. the afternoon, as it has been said, was thunderous and grim. while the representatives of the world that matters had been listening to sir william, the forces of nature had been massing themselves upon the frontier-line of experience and thought. and now, at this great moment, the clouds broke, the thunder stammered, and in that darkened place the white and amethyst lightning came and flickered like a spear thrown from immensity. the gong of the thunder, the crack and flame of the lightning, passed. there was a dead silence. still the spectators saw the mapped landscape of the holy city shining before them, glad, radiant and serene. and then, old lady poole dropped her fan--a heavy fan made of ebony and black silk. it clattered down the tier of seats and brought an alien note into the tension and the darkness of the laboratory. everybody started in the gloom. there was a little momentary flutter of excitement. and, as they all watched the gleaming circle of light upon which the brain of the bishop had painted his memories so truthfully and well, they saw a sudden change. the whole, beautiful picture became troubled, misty. it shook like a thing seen through water at a great depth. then the vision of the city where god suffered went straight away. there was no more of it. it vanished as a breath breathed upon a window clouds and vanishes. the concentration of mind of the bishop must then--as it was said afterwards--have been interrupted by the sudden sound of the falling fan, for all those celebrated men and women who sat and watched saw dim grey words, like clouds of smoke which had formed themselves into the written symbols of speech, appear in the light. and these were the words-- "god will not allow----" at that moment the silence was broken by a tiny sound. it is always the small sound that defines blackness and silence. sir william, who perhaps had realized where the thoughts of the bishop were leading him, who had doubtless understood the terror of the naked soul, the terror which he himself had made possible, switched on the light. the whole laboratory was illuminated, and it was seen that the people were looking at each other with white faces; and that the folk, who were almost strangers, were grasping each other by the wrist. and the bishop himself was sitting quietly in the chair, with a very pale face and a slight smile. at that moment the people who had come to catch the visual truth of this supreme wonder, rose as one man. voices were heard laughing and sobbing; little choked voices mingled and merged in a cacophany of fear. it was all light now, light and bright, and these men and women of the world were weeping on each other's shoulders. the bishop rose. "oh, please," he said, "please, my dears, be quiet. this is wonderful, this is inexplicable, but we have only begun. let us see this thing through to the very, very end. hush! be quiet! there is no reason, nor is there any need, for hysteria or for fear." the words of the churchman calmed them all. they looked at him, they looked at each other with startled eyes, and once more there was a great and enduring silence. then sir william spoke. his face was as pale as linen; he was not at all the person whom they had seen half-an-hour ago--but he spoke swiftly to them. "his lordship," he said, "has given us one instance of how the brain works, and he has enabled us to watch his marvellous memory of what he has so lately seen. and now, i will ask some one or other of you to come down here and help me." young lord landsend looked at mrs. hoskin-heath and winked. "i shall be very pleased, sir william," he said in the foolish, staccato voice of his class and kind, "i shall be very pleased, sir william, to think for you and all the rest of us here." lord landsend stumbled down from where he sat and went towards the chair. as he did so, there were not wanting people who whispered to each other that a penny for his thoughts was an enormous price to pay. the cap was fitted on his head; they all saw it gleaming there above the small and vacuous face; and then once more the lights went out. the great circle of white light upon the screen remained fixed and immovable. no picture formed itself or occurred within the frame of light and shadow. for nearly a minute the circle remained unsullied. then mrs. hoskin-heath began to titter. every one, relieved from the tension of the first experiment, joined her in her laugh. they all realized that young lord landsend could not think, and had not any thoughts at all. in the middle of their laughter, which grew and rose until the whole place was filled with it, the young man, doubtless spurred on by this unaccustomed derision, began to think. and what they all saw was just this--some one they had all seen before, many times, after dinner. they simply saw, in rather cloudy colour, miss popsy wopsy, the celebrated gaiety girl, alertly doing things of no importance, while the baton of the conductor made a moving shadow upon the chiffon of her frock. and so here was another brain, caught up, classified and seen. chapter xxiv mr. wilson guest makes a mistake mr. wilson guest had seen all this many times before. the actual demonstration would have given him amusement and filled him with that odd secret pride which was the only reward he asked from that science which he had followed so long under different conditions than the present. if sir william gouldesbrough had not absolutely prohibited the use of any alcohol upon that day, guest might have been normal and himself. it was in this matter that sir william made a great mistake. in his extreme nervousness and natural anxiety, he forgot the pathology of his subject, and did not realize how dangerous it is to rob a man of his drug, and then expect him to do his work. guest's assistance had been absolutely necessary in the first instance, in order to prepare the various parts of the thought spectrum, and to ensure the proper working of the machinery. but now, when all that was done, when the demonstration was actually going on and everything was working smoothly and well, there was no immediate need at the moment for guest's presence in the laboratory. accordingly, while lord landsend was vainly trying to secrete thought, wilson guest slipped out by the side-door in the dark. he was in a long passage leading to the other experimental rooms, and he heaved a great sigh of relief. high above in the air, the thunder could still be heard growling, but the corridor itself, lit by its rows of electric lights and softly carpeted, seemed to the wretched man nothing but an avenue to immediate happiness. he shambled and almost trotted towards the dining-room in the other part of the house, where he knew that he would find something to drink quicker than anywhere else. he crossed the big hall and went into the dining-room. no one was there. it was a panelled room with a softly glowing wood fire upon the hearth, and heavy crimson curtains shutting out the dying lights of the day. on a gleaming mahogany sideboard were bottles of cut-glass, ruby, diamond, and amber; bottles in which the soft firelight gleamed and was repeated in a thousand twinkling points. a loud sob of relief burst from the drunkard, and he went up to the sideboard with the impish greed and longing that one sees in some great ape. and now, as his shadow, cast upon the wall in the firelight, parodied and distorted all his movements, there seemed _two_ obscene and evil creatures in the rich and quiet room. it was as though the man with his huge hairless face were being watched and waited for by an ape-like ambassador from hell. guest clutched the mahogany sideboard and, his fingers were so hot that a greyness like that of damp breath on frosted glass glowed out upon the wood--it seemed as if the man's very touch brought mildew and blight. guest ran his eye rapidly along the decanters. his throat felt as though it was packed with hot flour. his mouth tasted as if he had been sucking a brass tap. his tongue was swollen and his lips were hard, cracked, and feverish. he snatched the brandy bottle from a spirit-case, and poured all that was in it into a heavy cut-glass tumbler. then, looking round for more, for the tantalus had not been more than one-fourth part full, he saw a long wicker-covered bottle of curaçao, and he began to pour from it into the brandy. then, without water, or mineral water, he began to gulp down this astonishing and powerful mixture, which, in a fourth of its quantity, would probably have struck down the ordinary man, as a tree snaps and falls in a sudden wind. it had been guest's intention to take enough alcohol to put him into something like a normal condition, and then to return to the laboratory to assist at the concluding scenes of the demonstration, and to enjoy it in his own malicious and sinister fashion. but as the liquor seemed to course through his veins and to relieve them of the intolerable strain, as he felt his whole body respond to the dose of poison to which he had accustomed it, thoughts of returning to the laboratory became very dim and misty. here was this large comfortable room with its panelled walls, its old family portraits in their massive gilt frames, this fire of wood logs in a great open hearth, sending out so pleasant and hospitable an invitation to remain. every fibre of the wretch's body urged him to take the twilight hour and enjoy it. guest sat down in a great arm-chair, padded with crimson leather, and gazed dreamily into the white heart of the fire. he felt at peace, and for five minutes sat there without movement, looking in the flickering firelight like some grotesque chinese sculpture, some god of darkness made by a silent moon-faced man on the far shores of the yang-tze-kiang. then mr. guest began to move again; the fuel that he had taken was burning out. the man's organism had become like one of those toy engines for children, which have for furnace a little methyl lamp, and which must be constantly renewed if the wheels of the mechanism are to continue to revolve. mr. guest rose from the arm-chair and shambled over to the sideboard again. the bottle of curaçao was still almost full, though there did not appear to be any more brandy. that would do, he thought, and he poured from the bottle into his glass as if he had been pouring beer. the wretched man had forgotten that, in his present state--a state upon the very verge of swift and hidden paroxysm and of death--the long abstention of the morning and afternoon had modified his physiological condition. moreover, the suddenness of these stealthy potations in the dining-room began to have their way with him. he was a man whom it was almost impossible to make intoxicated, as the ordinary person understands intoxication. when guest was drunk, his mind became several shades more evil, that was all. but at this moment the man succumbed, and in half-an-hour his brain was absolutely clouded and confused. he had forgotten both time and occasion, and could not think coherently. at last he seemed to realize this himself. he rose to his feet and, clutching hold of the dining-room table, swayed and lurched towards the dining-room door. there was a dim consciousness within him of something which was imminently necessary to be done, but which he had forgotten or was unable to recall. "what was it?" he kept asking himself with a thick indistinctness. "i knew i had somethin' to do, somethin' important, can't think what it was." at that moment his hand, which he had thrust into his pocket, touched a key. "i've got it," he said, "'course, i know now. i must go down and put the cap on rathbone, after i have injected the alcohol preparation. william and i want to sit in front of the screen and follow his thoughts; they are funnier than they ever used to be before we told him what we were doing to him. i'll just take one more drink, then i'll go down-stairs to the cellars at once." chapter xxv at last! when the sounds of amused laughter at lord landsend's unconscious revelation had passed away, and that young nobleman, slightly flushed indeed, but still with the imperturbability that a man of his class and kind learns how to wear on all occasions, had regained his seat, a fire of questions poured in upon sir william gouldesbrough. the famous scientists of the party had all risen and were conferring together in a ripple of rapid and exciting talk, which for the convenience of the foreign members of their number, was conducted in french. marjorie poole, who had not looked at sir william at all during the whole of the afternoon, was very pale and quiet. gouldesbrough had noticed this, and even in the moment of supreme triumph his heart was heavy within him. he feared that something irrevocable had come between him and the girl he loved, and her pallor only intensified his longing to be done with the whole thing, to be alone with her and to have the explanation which he desired so keenly and yet dreaded so acutely. for what lord malvin had said to him had stabbed him with a deadly fear, as each solemn, significant word rang through the room. "could it be," he asked himself, "could it possibly be that these people suspected or knew anything?" his quick brain answered the question in its own swift and logical fashion. it was utterly impossible that lord malvin _could_ know anything. his words were a coincidence and that was all. no, he need not fear, and possibly, he thought, the long strain of work and worry had had its influence upon his nerves and he had become morbid and unstrung. that fear passed, but there was still in his heart the fear, and strangely enough an even greater fear, that he would never now make marjorie his own. his outward face and demeanour showed nothing of the storm and riot within. he was calm, self-possessed, and smiling, quick to answer and to reply, to explain this or that point in his discoveries, to be adequate, confident and serene. in reply to a question from dean weare, sir william leant upon one of the cases which covered the thought-transforming mechanism and gave a little lecture. "quite so, mr. dean," he said; "it is exactly as you suppose, the form, power, and vividness of the pictures upon the screen correspond exactly with the strength of the intellect of the person whose thoughts are making these pictures. you will find your strongly imaginative man, or your man whose brain is much turned inward upon himself, and who, for this very reason takes little part in the action or movement of life, will give a far more complete and vivid picture than any other. for example, assuming that the bishop's valet is an ordinary servant and accompanied his lordship to palestine a few months ago, and saw exactly what his lordship saw, that man's memories would not be thrown upon the screen with such wonderful vividness as his lordship's were. he would not be able, in all probability, to produce a picture, a general impression, which is a real picture and not a photograph, and which so conveys the exact likeness of a place far more than any photograph could ever do. his thoughts would probably be represented by some special incident which had struck his fancy at the time and assumed a proportion in his mind which a cultured and logical faculty of thought would at once reject as being out of due proportion. and finally, in a precise ratio to the power of the brain--i do not mean to its health, or ill-health, its weight or size, i mean its pure _thinking_ power--so are the thoughts, when transformed into light, vivid or not vivid, as the case may be." mrs. hoskin-heath turned to lord landsend, who was sitting beside her. her pretty face wore a roguish smile as she whispered to him. "billy, what an awful donkey _you_ must be." lord landsend looked at her for a moment. then he answered-- "well, you know, i am not at all sure that it is not a jolly good thing to be sometimes. i would not be that fellow gouldesbrough for anything." she looked at him in amusement. there was something quite serious in the young man's face. "why," she said, in a whisper, "what do you mean, billy?" "i may not be clever," said lord landsend, "but i prefer to spend my life doing what amuses me, not what other people think i ought to do. at the same time i know men, and i know that scientific johnny over there has got something on his mind which i should not care to have. poor tommy decies had that look in his eyes the night before ascot last year, poor eustace charliewood had it just before he went down to brighton and shot himself; and you may take it from me, mrs. hoskin-heath, that i know what i am talking about." "and now," said sir william, looking up and down the rows of faces opposite him. "and now, which of you will submit himself to the next experiment?" then lord landsend spoke. he was determined to "get his own back," as he would have put it, if possible. "why don't you have a try yourself, sir william," he said, with a not very friendly grin; "or won't what d'you call 'em work for its master? you had my thoughts for nothing, i'll give you twopence for yours." there was an ill-suppressed titter from the more frivolous portion of the spectators; but lord malvin turned round and looked at the young man with a frown of disapproval. there was something in that leonine head and those calm wise eyes which compelled him to silence. then herr schmoulder, a famous savant from berlin, spoke. "it would an interesting demonstration make," he said, "of der statement of der relative power that the strong and weak brain possesses if we could see der apparatus in operation upon der thought vibrations transformed of an intelligence which not equal to our own is." mrs. hoskin-heath chimed in, her beautiful, silvery notes coming, after the deep, grave, guttural, like a peal of bells heard in the lull of a thunderstorm. "what a _good_ idea, sir william!" she said. "i wish you would let me send for my footman. he is sure to be in the servants' hall. it would be so interesting to know his real opinion of me and my husband; and he certainly is a most consummate fool, and would be a thoroughly good subject for such an experiment. i brought him out of gloucestershire. you know, he was one of the under-footmen at my brother's place, and i have been trying to train him, though with little success. i mean that he is too stolid to be shy, and, therefore, won't object at all, as some men would, to put the cap on and sit down here in the dark. he won't be frightened, i am sure." "by all means, mrs. hoskin-heath," gouldesbrough said with a smile. "no doubt one could not have a better subject, and i really shall be able to illustrate the difference between the relative values of brain-power by this means. you will all be able to notice the difference in the vividness and outline of the pictures or words that will appear." sir william turned round for wilson guest, whom he proposed to send upon the mission, but could not find him. "i will ring for the butler," he said, "and tell him to fetch your man, mrs. hoskin-heath." "oh! don't do that," a voice said upon the second tier. "i--i--am--er--not feeling very well, sir william, and i was going to ask your permission to go and sit down in the hall for a few minutes; i will tell one of your servants, they are sure to be about." the voice was the voice of donald megbie. he did not look at all ill, but he stepped down with a smile and went out of the laboratory, while everybody waited for the advent of mrs. hoskin-heath's footman. once more sir william looked round to see if wilson guest had returned. the actual projecting apparatus by which the transformed light rays were thrown upon the screen required some attention. the delicate apparatus which focussed the lens of the projector, in order to bring it into the nearest possible co-ordination with the light which it had to magnify and transmit, needed some little care. "will you excuse me for a moment," he said to everybody there, "if i leave you in darkness again, until the man comes? i wish to attend to a portion of the mechanism here, and i can only do so by turning off the lights." there was a chorus of "oh, please do so, sir william," and suddenly the laboratory was once more plunged into utter blackness. nobody talked much now, curiously enough. for a moment there was nothing heard but the regular beating of lady poole's fan, and one whispering conversation which might, or might not, have been carried on between lord landsend and mrs. hoskin-heath. then the thunder, which had been quiet for a little time, began to mutter once more. the dark air became hot and full of oppression. and in the dark lord malvin took the hand of marjorie poole in his own. "be brave," he said into her ear. "i know what you must suffer, believing what you believe." she whispered back to him. "i have known it ever since i have been in this place," she said. "oh! lord malvin, i have known it quite certainly, _guy is in this house_!" "donald megbie has gone out, as you saw just now," he answered. "be brave! be strong! i believe that god is guiding you. i too have felt the psychic influence of something strange and very, very terrible in the air of this house." in a moment more the beginning of the end came. the great twelve-foot circle of light flashed out upon the screen, but now with an extraordinary brightness and vividness, such as the spectators had not seen before during the course of the experiments. for a space of, perhaps, ten seconds, there was no sound at all. nobody quite realized that anything out of the ordinary was happening, except possibly the scientists, who had a complete grasp of the mechanical methods of the experiments and realized that in this room, at any rate, no one was wearing the cap. there was a loud cry of astonishment, and, so it seemed, of alarm. sharply outlined against the brilliant circle, sharply outlined in a gigantic shape, and standing full in the screen of the light that streamed from the lens of the projector, the spectators saw that sir william gouldesbrough was standing. they caught a glimpse of his face. it was a face like the face of a dead man. his arms were whirling in the air like mills, and then as a cry died away in mournful echoes in the high roof of the laboratory, there was a dead sound as the figure of the scientist disappeared and fell out of the circle of light upon the floor. upon the screen itself there came a picture. it was the picture of a girl, but of a girl with a face so sweetly tender and compassionate, so irradiated with utter confidence and trust, so pained and yet so tender, that no painter had ever put so wonderful a thing on canvas, and no madonna in the galleries of the world was more beautiful or more kind. and the face was one that they all knew well and recognized in a moment. it was the face of one of them, the face of marjorie poole, and it was so beautiful because it was painted by an artist whose pictures have never before appealed so poignantly to human eyes--it was painted by despairing love itself. at that marvellous sight, a sight which none of those present ever forgot in after life, a strange cry went up into the high-domed roof. it was a cry uttered by many voices and in many keys. there was a gasp of excitement and of fear, shrill women's tones, the guttural of the teuton, the bass of the startled englishmen, the high, staccato cry of the latin, as the french savants joined in it. but in whatever key the exclamations were pitched, they all blended into something like a wail, a composite, multiple thing, the wail of a company of people who had seen something behind the veil for the first time in their lives. the picture glowed and looked out at them in all its ineffable tenderness and glory, and then grew dim, trembled, dissolved, and melted away. then upon the screen came words, terrible, poignant words-- "marjorie, marjorie dear, i know that you are near me, now in body as you are always near me in thoughts. i feel it, i know it, and even in this cruel prison, this hopeless prison, where i am dying, and shall shortly die, i know that you are near me in body, and in that spirit you are always mine and i am always yours. love, if the thoughts that they are robbing me of, if the thoughts that fill my mind, and which those two fiends are probably looking at and laughing over, have any power at all, then i send them to you with my last effort, in one last attempt to reach you and to say that i love you and to say good-bye." the circle of white light grew dimmer. faint, eddying spirals of something that seemed like smoke rose up and obscured the words. they saw an ashen vapour of grey creep over the circle, as the shadow of the moon creeps over the sun at an eclipse. then the circle disappeared finally, and they were left once more in the dark. in the dark, indeed, but not in silence. a tumult of agonized voices filled the laboratory. and over them all a brave voice beat in upon the sound with the strong and regular assurance of a great bell, a bell like the mighty mass of metal which hangs in the ancient belfry of bruges. lord malvin was calling to them to be calm and silent, was telling them that he knew what all this meant and that they must be of courage and good cheer. then some one struck a match. it was lord landsend, his face very white and serious. he held it up above his head and called to lord malvin. "here you are, sir," he said. "i will get down to you in a second. then we can find the switch to turn on the electric light." he stumbled down to where lord malvin sat,--showing the value of the practical man and polo player in a crisis--and together the two peers, the famous and honoured scientist and the wealthy young man whom the world flattered and called _dilettante_ and a fool, went their way to the switch-table in the guiding light of this small torch. suddenly a blaze of light dispelled the darkness and showed a company of ghosts looking at each other with weeping faces. it showed also the figure of a girl sunk upon its chair in a deadly swoon. and it showed also the body of sir william gouldesbrough lying upon the floor between the series of machines and the screen upon the opposite wall. the dead face was so horrible that some one ran up immediately and covered it with a handkerchief. this was lord landsend. the tumult was indescribable, but by sheer power of authority and wisdom lord malvin calmed them all. his hand was raised as the hand of a conductor holds the vehemence of a band in check. in a few short trenchant sentences he told them the history of the strange occurrence which donald megbie and mrs. poole had brought to his notice; and even as he told them, sir harold oliver and lady poole were bringing back the unconscious girl to life and realization. "the man is here," lord malvin said, "the man is here. guy rathbone lies dying and prisoned in this accursed house. sir harold oliver, i will ask you to remain with these ladies while i will go forth and solve this horrid mystery." he looked round with a weary, questioning eye, seeking who should be his companion, and as he did so young lord landsend touched him on the arm and smiled. "come, my dear boy," the old man said with a melancholy smile of kindness, "you are just the man i want; come with me." then, before he left the laboratory, he spoke a few rapid words in french to one or two of the foreign scientists. upon that, these gentlemen went down among the strange and fantastic apparatus upon the tables and lifted up that which but a few minutes ago had held the soul and the personality of sir william gouldesbrough. they carried the long, limp, terrible dead thing to the other end of the room, where there was a screen. chapter xxvi two final pictures there are two things to record-- ( ) his hair was quite grey, his face was old and lined. his body was beginning to be ravaged by the devilish drugs with which it had been inoculated. but he lay upon a couch in the study, and marjorie bent over him kissing him, calling to him and cooing inarticulate words of belief and of love. lady poole was there also, motionless and silent, while lord malvin and the doctor, who had been hastily summoned from baker street, watched by the head of the couch. the doctor looked at lord malvin and nodded his head. "he will be all right," he whispered. "those devils have not killed him yet. he will live and be as strong as ever." the tears were rolling down lord malvin's face and he could not speak, but he nodded back to the doctor. and then they saw the face of guy rathbone, who lay there so broken and destroyed, begin to change. the gashes, which supreme and long-continued agony had cut into it, had not indeed passed away. the ashen visage remained ashen still, but a new light came flickering into the tired eyes, and in an indescribable way youth was returning. youth was returning, youth! it came back, summoned out of the past by a supreme magic--the supreme magic of love. the girl who loved him was kissing him, he was with her at last, and all was well. * * * * * ( ) "it is a grave thing and much considered to be," said herr schmoulder. it was late at night. they had taken wilson guest to the hospital, where the doctors were holding him down, as he shrieked and laughed, and died in delirium tremens. lord malvin, sir harold oliver, and the other scientists were gathered together in the laboratory, that recent theatre of such terrible events. "it is a very grave thing indeed, herr schmoulder," lord malvin answered; "but i have not ventured to propose it without a consultation in the highest quarters. decies will be here at any moment, and then upon his decision we shall act. he has been to see the king." the distinguished men waited there silent and uneasy. all round them stood the marvellous instruments by which the late sir william gouldesbrough had obtained a triumph unknown before in the history of the world. the yellow radiance of the electric light poured down upon the gleaming mahogany, brass, vulcanite and steel. on the opposite wall was the great white screen--just an ordinary stretch of prepared canvas upon steel rollers, a dead, senseless thing, and no more than that. yet as the least imaginative of them there chanced to turn his head and see that great white sheet, he shuddered to think of the long agony it had pictured while the two monsters had sat and taken their amusement from it, as a man takes a glass of wine. there was a rap upon the principal door of the laboratory. lord malvin strode to it and opened it. the butler, a portly man on the morning of this day, but now seeming to have shrunk into his clothes, and to have lost much of his vitality, stood there. beside him was a gentleman in evening dress, with a keen clean-shaven face and grey hair which curled. the gentleman stepped quickly into the laboratory. it was the home secretary. he shook lord malvin by the hand, and his face was very troubled. "you are quite right, my lord," he said. "i may say that his majesty is at one with you and with me in this matter. his majesty is much disturbed." then lord malvin turned round to the other gentlemen. "come, my brethren," he said in a sad voice, "come and let us do what we have to do. the bishop of west london was wiser than any of us when he said that god would never allow this thing to continue, and he was right." lord malvin turned to the frightened servant. "go into the kitchens," he said, "or send one of the other men, and fetch a large hammer, such a hammer as you use for breaking up coal." in a minute or two the butler returned, and handed a formidable implement with a wedge-shaped iron head on a long ash shank to lord malvin. the home secretary stood by, and the great men of science clustered round him, watching lord malvin's actions. the peer went to the silent, soulless machines, which had been the medium through which such wonder and terror had passed, and raising the hammer about his head, he destroyed each one severally, with a sort of ritual, as some priest carries out the ritual of his faith. this old man, whose name and personality stood so high, so supreme indeed, in the modern world, was like some ancient prophet of the lord, who, fired with holy zeal, strode down the pagan avenues of the ancient world and tore and beat the false idols from their pedestals in the frenzy of one who kills and destroys that truth may enter and the world be calm. it was done, over. the politician shook hands with lord malvin, and resumed his dry, official manner, perhaps a little ashamed or frightened at the emotion which he had exhibited. "good-bye, lord malvin," he said. "this terrible business is now over. i have to return to the palace to tell his majesty that this--this _devilish_ invention is destroyed. good-night, good-night." then a tall man with a pointed beard came into the laboratory, saluting the home secretary as he was leaving, with several of the other scientists who had witnessed the whole thing from first to last and now felt that they must go home. the man with the beard was the man who had been sent from scotland yard. he walked up to lord malvin and saluted. "i think, my lord," he said, "that everything requisite has now been done. i have all the servants in my charge, and we have fifteen or twenty men in the house, seeing that nothing is disturbed until official inquiry is due." by this time nobody was left in the laboratory but the detective inspector, lord malvin, and herr schmoulder. "oh! and there is one other thing, my lord, i have to ask you. mr. donald megbie, the writing gentleman is here, and begs that he may be allowed to see you. should i be right in admitting the gentleman?" "certainly, certainly," lord malvin replied. "bring him in at once, please inspector." in less than a minute a plain-clothes policeman ushered donald megbie into the laboratory. he went up to lord malvin, and his face was bright and happy. "it is all right, my lord," he said, "rathbone is recovering swiftly. miss poole is with him, and the doctors say, that though they feared for a short time that his reason would go, they are now quite satisfied that he will recover. he is sleeping quietly in a private room at marylebone hospital, and marjorie poole is sitting by his side holding his hand." then megbie looked at the wreck upon the floor. "ah!" he said, "so you have destroyed this horrid thing?" "yes," lord malvin answered; "i discussed it with decies, and decies went to see the king. it was thought to be better and wiser for the safety of the commonwealth--for the safety of the world indeed--that sir william gouldesbrough's discovery should perish with sir william gouldesbrough." "ah!" donald megbie answered; "i felt sure that that was the best course. it would have been too terrible, too subversive. the world must go on as it has always gone on. i have thought, during the last few hours, that sir william gouldesbrough was not himself at all. is it not possible that he himself might have died long ago, and that _something_ was inhabiting his body, something which came out of the darkness behind the veil?" "that, mr. megbie," said lord malvin, "is the picturesque thought of the literary man. science does not allow the possibility of such sinister interferences. and now, i am going home. you will realize, of course, that your supreme services in this matter will be recognized, though i fear that the recognition can never be acknowledged publicly." donald megbie bowed. "my lord," he said, "they have been recognized already, because i have seen how love has called back a soul into life. i have seen marjorie poole sitting by the bedside of guy rathbone. and, do you know, lord malvin," he continued in a less exalted tone, "i never wish to see anything in my life here more utterly beautiful than that." "come," said lord malvin, "it is very late; we are all tired and unstrung." the two men, arm in arm, the young writer and the great man, moved towards the door of the laboratory. the detective inspector stood watching the scene with quiet and observant eyes. but herr schmoulder surveyed the wreckage of the thought-spectroscope, and as he turned at length to follow lord malvin and donald megbie, he heaved a deep teutonic sigh. "it was der most wonderful triumph that ever der unknown forces occurred has been," he muttered. then the three men crossed the vast, sombre hall, now filled with frightened servants and the stiff official guardians of the law, and went out through the path among the laurel bushes to the gate in the wall, where their carriages were waiting. and donald megbie, as he drove home through the silent streets of the west end, heard a tune in his heart, which responded and lilted to the regular beat of the horse's feet upon the macadam. and the burden of the tune was "_love_." _richard clay & sons, limited, london and bungay._ phaedrus by plato translated by benjamin jowett introduction. the phaedrus is closely connected with the symposium, and may be regarded either as introducing or following it. the two dialogues together contain the whole philosophy of plato on the nature of love, which in the republic and in the later writings of plato is only introduced playfully or as a figure of speech. but in the phaedrus and symposium love and philosophy join hands, and one is an aspect of the other. the spiritual and emotional part is elevated into the ideal, to which in the symposium mankind are described as looking forward, and which in the phaedrus, as well as in the phaedo, they are seeking to recover from a former state of existence. whether the subject of the dialogue is love or rhetoric, or the union of the two, or the relation of philosophy to love and to art in general, and to the human soul, will be hereafter considered. and perhaps we may arrive at some conclusion such as the following--that the dialogue is not strictly confined to a single subject, but passes from one to another with the natural freedom of conversation. phaedrus has been spending the morning with lysias, the celebrated rhetorician, and is going to refresh himself by taking a walk outside the wall, when he is met by socrates, who professes that he will not leave him until he has delivered up the speech with which lysias has regaled him, and which he is carrying about in his mind, or more probably in a book hidden under his cloak, and is intending to study as he walks. the imputation is not denied, and the two agree to direct their steps out of the public way along the stream of the ilissus towards a plane-tree which is seen in the distance. there, lying down amidst pleasant sounds and scents, they will read the speech of lysias. the country is a novelty to socrates, who never goes out of the town; and hence he is full of admiration for the beauties of nature, which he seems to be drinking in for the first time. as they are on their way, phaedrus asks the opinion of socrates respecting the local tradition of boreas and oreithyia. socrates, after a satirical allusion to the 'rationalizers' of his day, replies that he has no time for these 'nice' interpretations of mythology, and he pities anyone who has. when you once begin there is no end of them, and they spring from an uncritical philosophy after all. 'the proper study of mankind is man;' and he is a far more complex and wonderful being than the serpent typho. socrates as yet does not know himself; and why should he care to know about unearthly monsters? engaged in such conversation, they arrive at the plane-tree; when they have found a convenient resting-place, phaedrus pulls out the speech and reads:-- the speech consists of a foolish paradox which is to the effect that the non-lover ought to be accepted rather than the lover--because he is more rational, more agreeable, more enduring, less suspicious, less hurtful, less boastful, less engrossing, and because there are more of them, and for a great many other reasons which are equally unmeaning. phaedrus is captivated with the beauty of the periods, and wants to make socrates say that nothing was or ever could be written better. socrates does not think much of the matter, but then he has only attended to the form, and in that he has detected several repetitions and other marks of haste. he cannot agree with phaedrus in the extreme value which he sets upon this performance, because he is afraid of doing injustice to anacreon and sappho and other great writers, and is almost inclined to think that he himself, or rather some power residing within him, could make a speech better than that of lysias on the same theme, and also different from his, if he may be allowed the use of a few commonplaces which all speakers must equally employ. phaedrus is delighted at the prospect of having another speech, and promises that he will set up a golden statue of socrates at delphi, if he keeps his word. some raillery ensues, and at length socrates, conquered by the threat that he shall never again hear a speech of lysias unless he fulfils his promise, veils his face and begins. first, invoking the muses and assuming ironically the person of the non-lover (who is a lover all the same), he will enquire into the nature and power of love. for this is a necessary preliminary to the other question--how is the non-lover to be distinguished from the lover? in all of us there are two principles--a better and a worse--reason and desire, which are generally at war with one another; and the victory of the rational is called temperance, and the victory of the irrational intemperance or excess. the latter takes many forms and has many bad names--gluttony, drunkenness, and the like. but of all the irrational desires or excesses the greatest is that which is led away by desires of a kindred nature to the enjoyment of personal beauty. and this is the master power of love. here socrates fancies that he detects in himself an unusual flow of eloquence--this newly-found gift he can only attribute to the inspiration of the place, which appears to be dedicated to the nymphs. starting again from the philosophical basis which has been laid down, he proceeds to show how many advantages the non-lover has over the lover. the one encourages softness and effeminacy and exclusiveness; he cannot endure any superiority in his beloved; he will train him in luxury, he will keep him out of society, he will deprive him of parents, friends, money, knowledge, and of every other good, that he may have him all to himself. then again his ways are not ways of pleasantness; he is mighty disagreeable; 'crabbed age and youth cannot live together.' at every hour of the night and day he is intruding upon him; there is the same old withered face and the remainder to match--and he is always repeating, in season or out of season, the praises or dispraises of his beloved, which are bad enough when he is sober, and published all over the world when he is drunk. at length his love ceases; he is converted into an enemy, and the spectacle may be seen of the lover running away from the beloved, who pursues him with vain reproaches, and demands his reward which the other refuses to pay. too late the beloved learns, after all his pains and disagreeables, that 'as wolves love lambs so lovers love their loves.' (compare char.) here is the end; the 'other' or 'non-lover' part of the speech had better be understood, for if in the censure of the lover socrates has broken out in verse, what will he not do in his praise of the non-lover? he has said his say and is preparing to go away. phaedrus begs him to remain, at any rate until the heat of noon has passed; he would like to have a little more conversation before they go. socrates, who has risen, recognizes the oracular sign which forbids him to depart until he has done penance. his conscious has been awakened, and like stesichorus when he had reviled the lovely helen he will sing a palinode for having blasphemed the majesty of love. his palinode takes the form of a myth. socrates begins his tale with a glorification of madness, which he divides into four kinds: first, there is the art of divination or prophecy--this, in a vein similar to that pervading the cratylus and io, he connects with madness by an etymological explanation (mantike, manike--compare oionoistike, oionistike, ''tis all one reckoning, save the phrase is a little variations'); secondly, there is the art of purification by mysteries; thirdly, poetry or the inspiration of the muses (compare ion), without which no man can enter their temple. all this shows that madness is one of heaven's blessings, and may sometimes be a great deal better than sense. there is also a fourth kind of madness--that of love--which cannot be explained without enquiring into the nature of the soul. all soul is immortal, for she is the source of all motion both in herself and in others. her form may be described in a figure as a composite nature made up of a charioteer and a pair of winged steeds. the steeds of the gods are immortal, but ours are one mortal and the other immortal. the immortal soul soars upwards into the heavens, but the mortal drops her plumes and settles upon the earth. now the use of the wing is to rise and carry the downward element into the upper world--there to behold beauty, wisdom, goodness, and the other things of god by which the soul is nourished. on a certain day zeus the lord of heaven goes forth in a winged chariot; and an array of gods and demi-gods and of human souls in their train, follows him. there are glorious and blessed sights in the interior of heaven, and he who will may freely behold them. the great vision of all is seen at the feast of the gods, when they ascend the heights of the empyrean--all but hestia, who is left at home to keep house. the chariots of the gods glide readily upwards and stand upon the outside; the revolution of the spheres carries them round, and they have a vision of the world beyond. but the others labour in vain; for the mortal steed, if he has not been properly trained, keeps them down and sinks them towards the earth. of the world which is beyond the heavens, who can tell? there is an essence formless, colourless, intangible, perceived by the mind only, dwelling in the region of true knowledge. the divine mind in her revolution enjoys this fair prospect, and beholds justice, temperance, and knowledge in their everlasting essence. when fulfilled with the sight of them she returns home, and the charioteer puts up the horses in their stable, and gives them ambrosia to eat and nectar to drink. this is the life of the gods; the human soul tries to reach the same heights, but hardly succeeds; and sometimes the head of the charioteer rises above, and sometimes sinks below, the fair vision, and he is at last obliged, after much contention, to turn away and leave the plain of truth. but if the soul has followed in the train of her god and once beheld truth she is preserved from harm, and is carried round in the next revolution of the spheres; and if always following, and always seeing the truth, is then for ever unharmed. if, however, she drops her wings and falls to the earth, then she takes the form of man, and the soul which has seen most of the truth passes into a philosopher or lover; that which has seen truth in the second degree, into a king or warrior; the third, into a householder or money-maker; the fourth, into a gymnast; the fifth, into a prophet or mystic; the sixth, into a poet or imitator; the seventh, into a husbandman or craftsman; the eighth, into a sophist or demagogue; the ninth, into a tyrant. all these are states of probation, wherein he who lives righteously is improved, and he who lives unrighteously deteriorates. after death comes the judgment; the bad depart to houses of correction under the earth, the good to places of joy in heaven. when a thousand years have elapsed the souls meet together and choose the lives which they will lead for another period of existence. the soul which three times in succession has chosen the life of a philosopher or of a lover who is not without philosophy receives her wings at the close of the third millennium; the remainder have to complete a cycle of ten thousand years before their wings are restored to them. each time there is full liberty of choice. the soul of a man may descend into a beast, and return again into the form of man. but the form of man will only be taken by the soul which has once seen truth and acquired some conception of the universal:--this is the recollection of the knowledge which she attained when in the company of the gods. and men in general recall only with difficulty the things of another world, but the mind of the philosopher has a better remembrance of them. for when he beholds the visible beauty of earth his enraptured soul passes in thought to those glorious sights of justice and wisdom and temperance and truth which she once gazed upon in heaven. then she celebrated holy mysteries and beheld blessed apparitions shining in pure light, herself pure, and not as yet entombed in the body. and still, like a bird eager to quit its cage, she flutters and looks upwards, and is therefore deemed mad. such a recollection of past days she receives through sight, the keenest of our senses, because beauty, alone of the ideas, has any representation on earth: wisdom is invisible to mortal eyes. but the corrupted nature, blindly excited by this vision of beauty, rushes on to enjoy, and would fain wallow like a brute beast in sensual pleasures. whereas the true mystic, who has seen the many sights of bliss, when he beholds a god-like form or face is amazed with delight, and if he were not afraid of being thought mad he would fall down and worship. then the stiffened wing begins to relax and grow again; desire which has been imprisoned pours over the soul of the lover; the germ of the wing unfolds, and stings, and pangs of birth, like the cutting of teeth, are everywhere felt. (compare symp.) father and mother, and goods and laws and proprieties are nothing to him; his beloved is his physician, who can alone cure his pain. an apocryphal sacred writer says that the power which thus works in him is by mortals called love, but the immortals call him dove, or the winged one, in order to represent the force of his wings--such at any rate is his nature. now the characters of lovers depend upon the god whom they followed in the other world; and they choose their loves in this world accordingly. the followers of ares are fierce and violent; those of zeus seek out some philosophical and imperial nature; the attendants of here find a royal love; and in like manner the followers of every god seek a love who is like their god; and to him they communicate the nature which they have received from their god. the manner in which they take their love is as follows:-- i told you about the charioteer and his two steeds, the one a noble animal who is guided by word and admonition only, the other an ill-looking villain who will hardly yield to blow or spur. together all three, who are a figure of the soul, approach the vision of love. and now a fierce conflict begins. the ill-conditioned steed rushes on to enjoy, but the charioteer, who beholds the beloved with awe, falls back in adoration, and forces both the steeds on their haunches; again the evil steed rushes forwards and pulls shamelessly. the conflict grows more and more severe; and at last the charioteer, throwing himself backwards, forces the bit out of the clenched teeth of the brute, and pulling harder than ever at the reins, covers his tongue and jaws with blood, and forces him to rest his legs and haunches with pain upon the ground. when this has happened several times, the villain is tamed and humbled, and from that time forward the soul of the lover follows the beloved in modesty and holy fear. and now their bliss is consummated; the same image of love dwells in the breast of either, and if they have self-control, they pass their lives in the greatest happiness which is attainable by man--they continue masters of themselves, and conquer in one of the three heavenly victories. but if they choose the lower life of ambition they may still have a happy destiny, though inferior, because they have not the approval of the whole soul. at last they leave the body and proceed on their pilgrim's progress, and those who have once begun can never go back. when the time comes they receive their wings and fly away, and the lovers have the same wings. socrates concludes:-- these are the blessings of love, and thus have i made my recantation in finer language than before: i did so in order to please phaedrus. if i said what was wrong at first, please to attribute my error to lysias, who ought to study philosophy instead of rhetoric, and then he will not mislead his disciple phaedrus. phaedrus is afraid that he will lose conceit of lysias, and that lysias will be out of conceit with himself, and leave off making speeches, for the politicians have been deriding him. socrates is of opinion that there is small danger of this; the politicians are themselves the great rhetoricians of the age, who desire to attain immortality by the authorship of laws. and therefore there is nothing with which they can reproach lysias in being a writer; but there may be disgrace in being a bad one. and what is good or bad writing or speaking? while the sun is hot in the sky above us, let us ask that question: since by rational conversation man lives, and not by the indulgence of bodily pleasures. and the grasshoppers who are chirruping around may carry our words to the muses, who are their patronesses; for the grasshoppers were human beings themselves in a world before the muses, and when the muses came they died of hunger for the love of song. and they carry to them in heaven the report of those who honour them on earth. the first rule of good speaking is to know and speak the truth; as a spartan proverb says, 'true art is truth'; whereas rhetoric is an art of enchantment, which makes things appear good and evil, like and unlike, as the speaker pleases. its use is not confined, as people commonly suppose, to arguments in the law courts and speeches in the assembly; it is rather a part of the art of disputation, under which are included both the rules of gorgias and the eristic of zeno. but it is not wholly devoid of truth. superior knowledge enables us to deceive another by the help of resemblances, and to escape from such a deception when employed against ourselves. we see therefore that even in rhetoric an element of truth is required. for if we do not know the truth, we can neither make the gradual departures from truth by which men are most easily deceived, nor guard ourselves against deception. socrates then proposes that they shall use the two speeches as illustrations of the art of rhetoric; first distinguishing between the debatable and undisputed class of subjects. in the debatable class there ought to be a definition of all disputed matters. but there was no such definition in the speech of lysias; nor is there any order or connection in his words any more than in a nursery rhyme. with this he compares the regular divisions of the other speech, which was his own (and yet not his own, for the local deities must have inspired him). although only a playful composition, it will be found to embody two principles: first, that of synthesis or the comprehension of parts in a whole; secondly, analysis, or the resolution of the whole into parts. these are the processes of division and generalization which are so dear to the dialectician, that king of men. they are effected by dialectic, and not by rhetoric, of which the remains are but scanty after order and arrangement have been subtracted. there is nothing left but a heap of 'ologies' and other technical terms invented by polus, theodorus, evenus, tisias, gorgias, and others, who have rules for everything, and who teach how to be short or long at pleasure. prodicus showed his good sense when he said that there was a better thing than either to be short or long, which was to be of convenient length. still, notwithstanding the absurdities of polus and others, rhetoric has great power in public assemblies. this power, however, is not given by any technical rules, but is the gift of genius. the real art is always being confused by rhetoricians with the preliminaries of the art. the perfection of oratory is like the perfection of anything else; natural power must be aided by art. but the art is not that which is taught in the schools of rhetoric; it is nearer akin to philosophy. pericles, for instance, who was the most accomplished of all speakers, derived his eloquence not from rhetoric but from the philosophy of nature which he learnt of anaxagoras. true rhetoric is like medicine, and the rhetorician has to consider the natures of men's souls as the physician considers the natures of their bodies. such and such persons are to be affected in this way, such and such others in that; and he must know the times and the seasons for saying this or that. this is not an easy task, and this, if there be such an art, is the art of rhetoric. i know that there are some professors of the art who maintain probability to be stronger than truth. but we maintain that probability is engendered by likeness of the truth which can only be attained by the knowledge of it, and that the aim of the good man should not be to please or persuade his fellow-servants, but to please his good masters who are the gods. rhetoric has a fair beginning in this. enough of the art of speaking; let us now proceed to consider the true use of writing. there is an old egyptian tale of theuth, the inventor of writing, showing his invention to the god thamus, who told him that he would only spoil men's memories and take away their understandings. from this tale, of which young athens will probably make fun, may be gathered the lesson that writing is inferior to speech. for it is like a picture, which can give no answer to a question, and has only a deceitful likeness of a living creature. it has no power of adaptation, but uses the same words for all. it is not a legitimate son of knowledge, but a bastard, and when an attack is made upon this bastard neither parent nor anyone else is there to defend it. the husbandman will not seriously incline to sow his seed in such a hot-bed or garden of adonis; he will rather sow in the natural soil of the human soul which has depth of earth; and he will anticipate the inner growth of the mind, by writing only, if at all, as a remedy against old age. the natural process will be far nobler, and will bring forth fruit in the minds of others as well as in his own. the conclusion of the whole matter is just this,--that until a man knows the truth, and the manner of adapting the truth to the natures of other men, he cannot be a good orator; also, that the living is better than the written word, and that the principles of justice and truth when delivered by word of mouth are the legitimate offspring of a man's own bosom, and their lawful descendants take up their abode in others. such an orator as he is who is possessed of them, you and i would fain become. and to all composers in the world, poets, orators, legislators, we hereby announce that if their compositions are based upon these principles, then they are not only poets, orators, legislators, but philosophers. all others are mere flatterers and putters together of words. this is the message which phaedrus undertakes to carry to lysias from the local deities, and socrates himself will carry a similar message to his favourite isocrates, whose future distinction as a great rhetorician he prophesies. the heat of the day has passed, and after offering up a prayer to pan and the nymphs, socrates and phaedrus depart. there are two principal controversies which have been raised about the phaedrus; the first relates to the subject, the second to the date of the dialogue. there seems to be a notion that the work of a great artist like plato cannot fail in unity, and that the unity of a dialogue requires a single subject. but the conception of unity really applies in very different degrees and ways to different kinds of art; to a statue, for example, far more than to any kind of literary composition, and to some species of literature far more than to others. nor does the dialogue appear to be a style of composition in which the requirement of unity is most stringent; nor should the idea of unity derived from one sort of art be hastily transferred to another. the double titles of several of the platonic dialogues are a further proof that the severer rule was not observed by plato. the republic is divided between the search after justice and the construction of the ideal state; the parmenides between the criticism of the platonic ideas and of the eleatic one or being; the gorgias between the art of speaking and the nature of the good; the sophist between the detection of the sophist and the correlation of ideas. the theaetetus, the politicus, and the philebus have also digressions which are but remotely connected with the main subject. thus the comparison of plato's other writings, as well as the reason of the thing, lead us to the conclusion that we must not expect to find one idea pervading a whole work, but one, two, or more, as the invention of the writer may suggest, or his fancy wander. if each dialogue were confined to the development of a single idea, this would appear on the face of the dialogue, nor could any controversy be raised as to whether the phaedrus treated of love or rhetoric. but the truth is that plato subjects himself to no rule of this sort. like every great artist he gives unity of form to the different and apparently distracting topics which he brings together. he works freely and is not to be supposed to have arranged every part of the dialogue before he begins to write. he fastens or weaves together the frame of his discourse loosely and imperfectly, and which is the warp and which is the woof cannot always be determined. the subjects of the phaedrus (exclusive of the short introductory passage about mythology which is suggested by the local tradition) are first the false or conventional art of rhetoric; secondly, love or the inspiration of beauty and knowledge, which is described as madness; thirdly, dialectic or the art of composition and division; fourthly, the true rhetoric, which is based upon dialectic, and is neither the art of persuasion nor knowledge of the truth alone, but the art of persuasion founded on knowledge of truth and knowledge of character; fifthly, the superiority of the spoken over the written word. the continuous thread which appears and reappears throughout is rhetoric; this is the ground into which the rest of the dialogue is worked, in parts embroidered with fine words which are not in socrates' manner, as he says, 'in order to please phaedrus.' the speech of lysias which has thrown phaedrus into an ecstacy is adduced as an example of the false rhetoric; the first speech of socrates, though an improvement, partakes of the same character; his second speech, which is full of that higher element said to have been learned of anaxagoras by pericles, and which in the midst of poetry does not forget order, is an illustration of the higher or true rhetoric. this higher rhetoric is based upon dialectic, and dialectic is a sort of inspiration akin to love (compare symp.); in these two aspects of philosophy the technicalities of rhetoric are absorbed. and so the example becomes also the deeper theme of discourse. the true knowledge of things in heaven and earth is based upon enthusiasm or love of the ideas going before us and ever present to us in this world and in another; and the true order of speech or writing proceeds accordingly. love, again, has three degrees: first, of interested love corresponding to the conventionalities of rhetoric; secondly, of disinterested or mad love, fixed on objects of sense, and answering, perhaps, to poetry; thirdly, of disinterested love directed towards the unseen, answering to dialectic or the science of the ideas. lastly, the art of rhetoric in the lower sense is found to rest on a knowledge of the natures and characters of men, which socrates at the commencement of the dialogue has described as his own peculiar study. thus amid discord a harmony begins to appear; there are many links of connection which are not visible at first sight. at the same time the phaedrus, although one of the most beautiful of the platonic dialogues, is also more irregular than any other. for insight into the world, for sustained irony, for depth of thought, there is no dialogue superior, or perhaps equal to it. nevertheless the form of the work has tended to obscure some of plato's higher aims. the first speech is composed 'in that balanced style in which the wise love to talk' (symp.). the characteristics of rhetoric are insipidity, mannerism, and monotonous parallelism of clauses. there is more rhythm than reason; the creative power of imagination is wanting. ''tis greece, but living greece no more.' plato has seized by anticipation the spirit which hung over greek literature for a thousand years afterwards. yet doubtless there were some who, like phaedrus, felt a delight in the harmonious cadence and the pedantic reasoning of the rhetoricians newly imported from sicily, which had ceased to be awakened in them by really great works, such as the odes of anacreon or sappho or the orations of pericles. that the first speech was really written by lysias is improbable. like the poem of solon, or the story of thamus and theuth, or the funeral oration of aspasia (if genuine), or the pretence of socrates in the cratylus that his knowledge of philology is derived from euthyphro, the invention is really due to the imagination of plato, and may be compared to the parodies of the sophists in the protagoras. numerous fictions of this sort occur in the dialogues, and the gravity of plato has sometimes imposed upon his commentators. the introduction of a considerable writing of another would seem not to be in keeping with a great work of art, and has no parallel elsewhere. in the second speech socrates is exhibited as beating the rhetoricians at their own weapons; he 'an unpractised man and they masters of the art.' true to his character, he must, however, profess that the speech which he makes is not his own, for he knows nothing of himself. (compare symp.) regarded as a rhetorical exercise, the superiority of his speech seems to consist chiefly in a better arrangement of the topics; he begins with a definition of love, and he gives weight to his words by going back to general maxims; a lesser merit is the greater liveliness of socrates, which hurries him into verse and relieves the monotony of the style. but plato had doubtless a higher purpose than to exhibit socrates as the rival or superior of the athenian rhetoricians. even in the speech of lysias there is a germ of truth, and this is further developed in the parallel oration of socrates. first, passionate love is overthrown by the sophistical or interested, and then both yield to that higher view of love which is afterwards revealed to us. the extreme of commonplace is contrasted with the most ideal and imaginative of speculations. socrates, half in jest and to satisfy his own wild humour, takes the disguise of lysias, but he is also in profound earnest and in a deeper vein of irony than usual. having improvised his own speech, which is based upon the model of the preceding, he condemns them both. yet the condemnation is not to be taken seriously, for he is evidently trying to express an aspect of the truth. to understand him, we must make abstraction of morality and of the greek manner of regarding the relation of the sexes. in this, as in his other discussions about love, what plato says of the loves of men must be transferred to the loves of women before we can attach any serious meaning to his words. had he lived in our times he would have made the transposition himself. but seeing in his own age the impossibility of woman being the intellectual helpmate or friend of man (except in the rare instances of a diotima or an aspasia), seeing that, even as to personal beauty, her place was taken by young mankind instead of womankind, he tries to work out the problem of love without regard to the distinctions of nature. and full of the evils which he recognized as flowing from the spurious form of love, he proceeds with a deep meaning, though partly in joke, to show that the 'non-lover's' love is better than the 'lover's.' we may raise the same question in another form: is marriage preferable with or without love? 'among ourselves,' as we may say, a little parodying the words of pausanias in the symposium, 'there would be one answer to this question: the practice and feeling of some foreign countries appears to be more doubtful.' suppose a modern socrates, in defiance of the received notions of society and the sentimental literature of the day, alone against all the writers and readers of novels, to suggest this enquiry, would not the younger 'part of the world be ready to take off its coat and run at him might and main?' (republic.) yet, if like peisthetaerus in aristophanes, he could persuade the 'birds' to hear him, retiring a little behind a rampart, not of pots and dishes, but of unreadable books, he might have something to say for himself. might he not argue, 'that a rational being should not follow the dictates of passion in the most important act of his or her life'? who would willingly enter into a contract at first sight, almost without thought, against the advice and opinion of his friends, at a time when he acknowledges that he is not in his right mind? and yet they are praised by the authors of romances, who reject the warnings of their friends or parents, rather than those who listen to them in such matters. two inexperienced persons, ignorant of the world and of one another, how can they be said to choose?--they draw lots, whence also the saying, 'marriage is a lottery.' then he would describe their way of life after marriage; how they monopolize one another's affections to the exclusion of friends and relations: how they pass their days in unmeaning fondness or trivial conversation; how the inferior of the two drags the other down to his or her level; how the cares of a family 'breed meanness in their souls.' in the fulfilment of military or public duties, they are not helpers but hinderers of one another: they cannot undertake any noble enterprise, such as makes the names of men and women famous, from domestic considerations. too late their eyes are opened; they were taken unawares and desire to part company. better, he would say, a 'little love at the beginning,' for heaven might have increased it; but now their foolish fondness has changed into mutual dislike. in the days of their honeymoon they never understood that they must provide against offences, that they must have interests, that they must learn the art of living as well as loving. our misogamist will not appeal to anacreon or sappho for a confirmation of his view, but to the universal experience of mankind. how much nobler, in conclusion, he will say, is friendship, which does not receive unmeaning praises from novelists and poets, is not exacting or exclusive, is not impaired by familiarity, is much less expensive, is not so likely to take offence, seldom changes, and may be dissolved from time to time without the assistance of the courts. besides, he will remark that there is a much greater choice of friends than of wives--you may have more of them and they will be far more improving to your mind. they will not keep you dawdling at home, or dancing attendance upon them; or withdraw you from the great world and stirring scenes of life and action which would make a man of you. in such a manner, turning the seamy side outwards, a modern socrates might describe the evils of married and domestic life. they are evils which mankind in general have agreed to conceal, partly because they are compensated by greater goods. socrates or archilochus would soon have to sing a palinode for the injustice done to lovely helen, or some misfortune worse than blindness might be fall them. then they would take up their parable again and say:--that there were two loves, a higher and a lower, holy and unholy, a love of the mind and a love of the body. 'let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. love is not love which alters when it alteration finds. ..... love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come; love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom.' but this true love of the mind cannot exist between two souls, until they are purified from the grossness of earthly passion: they must pass through a time of trial and conflict first; in the language of religion they must be converted or born again. then they would see the world transformed into a scene of heavenly beauty; a divine idea would accompany them in all their thoughts and actions. something too of the recollections of childhood might float about them still; they might regain that old simplicity which had been theirs in other days at their first entrance on life. and although their love of one another was ever present to them, they would acknowledge also a higher love of duty and of god, which united them. and their happiness would depend upon their preserving in them this principle--not losing the ideals of justice and holiness and truth, but renewing them at the fountain of light. when they have attained to this exalted state, let them marry (something too may be conceded to the animal nature of man): or live together in holy and innocent friendship. the poet might describe in eloquent words the nature of such a union; how after many struggles the true love was found: how the two passed their lives together in the service of god and man; how their characters were reflected upon one another, and seemed to grow more like year by year; how they read in one another's eyes the thoughts, wishes, actions of the other; how they saw each other in god; how in a figure they grew wings like doves, and were 'ready to fly away together and be at rest.' and lastly, he might tell how, after a time at no long intervals, first one and then the other fell asleep, and 'appeared to the unwise' to die, but were reunited in another state of being, in which they saw justice and holiness and truth, not according to the imperfect copies of them which are found in this world, but justice absolute in existence absolute, and so of the rest. and they would hold converse not only with each other, but with blessed souls everywhere; and would be employed in the service of god, every soul fulfilling his own nature and character, and would see into the wonders of earth and heaven, and trace the works of creation to their author. so, partly in jest but also 'with a certain degree of seriousness,' we may appropriate to ourselves the words of plato. the use of such a parody, though very imperfect, is to transfer his thoughts to our sphere of religion and feeling, to bring him nearer to us and us to him. like the scriptures, plato admits of endless applications, if we allow for the difference of times and manners; and we lose the better half of him when we regard his dialogues merely as literary compositions. any ancient work which is worth reading has a practical and speculative as well as a literary interest. and in plato, more than in any other greek writer, the local and transitory is inextricably blended with what is spiritual and eternal. socrates is necessarily ironical; for he has to withdraw from the received opinions and beliefs of mankind. we cannot separate the transitory from the permanent; nor can we translate the language of irony into that of plain reflection and common sense. but we can imagine the mind of socrates in another age and country; and we can interpret him by analogy with reference to the errors and prejudices which prevail among ourselves. to return to the phaedrus:-- both speeches are strongly condemned by socrates as sinful and blasphemous towards the god love, and as worthy only of some haunt of sailors to which good manners were unknown. the meaning of this and other wild language to the same effect, which is introduced by way of contrast to the formality of the two speeches (socrates has a sense of relief when he has escaped from the trammels of rhetoric), seems to be that the two speeches proceed upon the supposition that love is and ought to be interested, and that no such thing as a real or disinterested passion, which would be at the same time lasting, could be conceived. 'but did i call this "love"? o god, forgive my blasphemy. this is not love. rather it is the love of the world. but there is another kingdom of love, a kingdom not of this world, divine, eternal. and this other love i will now show you in a mystery.' then follows the famous myth, which is a sort of parable, and like other parables ought not to receive too minute an interpretation. in all such allegories there is a great deal which is merely ornamental, and the interpreter has to separate the important from the unimportant. socrates himself has given the right clue when, in using his own discourse afterwards as the text for his examination of rhetoric, he characterizes it as a 'partly true and tolerably credible mythus,' in which amid poetical figures, order and arrangement were not forgotten. the soul is described in magnificent language as the self-moved and the source of motion in all other things. this is the philosophical theme or proem of the whole. but ideas must be given through something, and under the pretext that to realize the true nature of the soul would be not only tedious but impossible, we at once pass on to describe the souls of gods as well as men under the figure of two winged steeds and a charioteer. no connection is traced between the soul as the great motive power and the triple soul which is thus imaged. there is no difficulty in seeing that the charioteer represents the reason, or that the black horse is the symbol of the sensual or concupiscent element of human nature. the white horse also represents rational impulse, but the description, 'a lover of honour and modesty and temperance, and a follower of true glory,' though similar, does not at once recall the 'spirit' (thumos) of the republic. the two steeds really correspond in a figure more nearly to the appetitive and moral or semi-rational soul of aristotle. and thus, for the first time perhaps in the history of philosophy, we have represented to us the threefold division of psychology. the image of the charioteer and the steeds has been compared with a similar image which occurs in the verses of parmenides; but it is important to remark that the horses of parmenides have no allegorical meaning, and that the poet is only describing his own approach in a chariot to the regions of light and the house of the goddess of truth. the triple soul has had a previous existence, in which following in the train of some god, from whom she derived her character, she beheld partially and imperfectly the vision of absolute truth. all her after existence, passed in many forms of men and animals, is spent in regaining this. the stages of the conflict are many and various; and she is sorely let and hindered by the animal desires of the inferior or concupiscent steed. again and again she beholds the flashing beauty of the beloved. but before that vision can be finally enjoyed the animal desires must be subjected. the moral or spiritual element in man is represented by the immortal steed which, like thumos in the republic, always sides with the reason. both are dragged out of their course by the furious impulses of desire. in the end something is conceded to the desires, after they have been finally humbled and overpowered. and yet the way of philosophy, or perfect love of the unseen, is total abstinence from bodily delights. 'but all men cannot receive this saying': in the lower life of ambition they may be taken off their guard and stoop to folly unawares, and then, although they do not attain to the highest bliss, yet if they have once conquered they may be happy enough. the language of the meno and the phaedo as well as of the phaedrus seems to show that at one time of his life plato was quite serious in maintaining a former state of existence. his mission was to realize the abstract; in that, all good and truth, all the hopes of this and another life seemed to centre. to him abstractions, as we call them, were another kind of knowledge--an inner and unseen world, which seemed to exist far more truly than the fleeting objects of sense which were without him. when we are once able to imagine the intense power which abstract ideas exercised over the mind of plato, we see that there was no more difficulty to him in realizing the eternal existence of them and of the human minds which were associated with them, in the past and future than in the present. the difficulty was not how they could exist, but how they could fail to exist. in the attempt to regain this 'saving' knowledge of the ideas, the sense was found to be as great an enemy as the desires; and hence two things which to us seem quite distinct are inextricably blended in the representation of plato. thus far we may believe that plato was serious in his conception of the soul as a motive power, in his reminiscence of a former state of being, in his elevation of the reason over sense and passion, and perhaps in his doctrine of transmigration. was he equally serious in the rest? for example, are we to attribute his tripartite division of the soul to the gods? or is this merely assigned to them by way of parallelism with men? the latter is the more probable; for the horses of the gods are both white, i.e. their every impulse is in harmony with reason; their dualism, on the other hand, only carries out the figure of the chariot. is he serious, again, in regarding love as 'a madness'? that seems to arise out of the antithesis to the former conception of love. at the same time he appears to intimate here, as in the ion, apology, meno, and elsewhere, that there is a faculty in man, whether to be termed in modern language genius, or inspiration, or imagination, or idealism, or communion with god, which cannot be reduced to rule and measure. perhaps, too, he is ironically repeating the common language of mankind about philosophy, and is turning their jest into a sort of earnest. (compare phaedo, symp.) or is he serious in holding that each soul bears the character of a god? he may have had no other account to give of the differences of human characters to which he afterwards refers. or, again, in his absurd derivation of mantike and oionistike and imeros (compare cratylus)? it is characteristic of the irony of socrates to mix up sense and nonsense in such a way that no exact line can be drawn between them. and allegory helps to increase this sort of confusion. as is often the case in the parables and prophecies of scripture, the meaning is allowed to break through the figure, and the details are not always consistent. when the charioteers and their steeds stand upon the dome of heaven they behold the intangible invisible essences which are not objects of sight. this is because the force of language can no further go. nor can we dwell much on the circumstance, that at the completion of ten thousand years all are to return to the place from whence they came; because he represents their return as dependent on their own good conduct in the successive stages of existence. nor again can we attribute anything to the accidental inference which would also follow, that even a tyrant may live righteously in the condition of life to which fate has called him ('he aiblins might, i dinna ken'). but to suppose this would be at variance with plato himself and with greek notions generally. he is much more serious in distinguishing men from animals by their recognition of the universal which they have known in a former state, and in denying that this gift of reason can ever be obliterated or lost. in the language of some modern theologians he might be said to maintain the 'final perseverance' of those who have entered on their pilgrim's progress. other intimations of a 'metaphysic' or 'theology' of the future may also be discerned in him: ( ) the moderate predestinarianism which here, as in the republic, acknowledges the element of chance in human life, and yet asserts the freedom and responsibility of man; ( ) the recognition of a moral as well as an intellectual principle in man under the image of an immortal steed; ( ) the notion that the divine nature exists by the contemplation of ideas of virtue and justice--or, in other words, the assertion of the essentially moral nature of god; ( ) again, there is the hint that human life is a life of aspiration only, and that the true ideal is not to be found in art; ( ) there occurs the first trace of the distinction between necessary and contingent matter; ( ) the conception of the soul itself as the motive power and reason of the universe. the conception of the philosopher, or the philosopher and lover in one, as a sort of madman, may be compared with the republic and theaetetus, in both of which the philosopher is regarded as a stranger and monster upon the earth. the whole myth, like the other myths of plato, describes in a figure things which are beyond the range of human faculties, or inaccessible to the knowledge of the age. that philosophy should be represented as the inspiration of love is a conception that has already become familiar to us in the symposium, and is the expression partly of plato's enthusiasm for the idea, and is also an indication of the real power exercised by the passion of friendship over the mind of the greek. the master in the art of love knew that there was a mystery in these feelings and their associations, and especially in the contrast of the sensible and permanent which is afforded by them; and he sought to explain this, as he explained universal ideas, by a reference to a former state of existence. the capriciousness of love is also derived by him from an attachment to some god in a former world. the singular remark that the beloved is more affected than the lover at the final consummation of their love, seems likewise to hint at a psychological truth. it is difficult to exhaust the meanings of a work like the phaedrus, which indicates so much more than it expresses; and is full of inconsistencies and ambiguities which were not perceived by plato himself. for example, when he is speaking of the soul does he mean the human or the divine soul? and are they both equally self-moving and constructed on the same threefold principle? we should certainly be disposed to reply that the self-motive is to be attributed to god only; and on the other hand that the appetitive and passionate elements have no place in his nature. so we should infer from the reason of the thing, but there is no indication in plato's own writings that this was his meaning. or, again, when he explains the different characters of men by referring them back to the nature of the god whom they served in a former state of existence, we are inclined to ask whether he is serious: is he not rather using a mythological figure, here as elsewhere, to draw a veil over things which are beyond the limits of mortal knowledge? once more, in speaking of beauty is he really thinking of some external form such as might have been expressed in the works of phidias or praxiteles; and not rather of an imaginary beauty, of a sort which extinguishes rather than stimulates vulgar love,--a heavenly beauty like that which flashed from time to time before the eyes of dante or bunyan? surely the latter. but it would be idle to reconcile all the details of the passage: it is a picture, not a system, and a picture which is for the greater part an allegory, and an allegory which allows the meaning to come through. the image of the charioteer and his steeds is placed side by side with the absolute forms of justice, temperance, and the like, which are abstract ideas only, and which are seen with the eye of the soul in her heavenly journey. the first impression of such a passage, in which no attempt is made to separate the substance from the form, is far truer than an elaborate philosophical analysis. it is too often forgotten that the whole of the second discourse of socrates is only an allegory, or figure of speech. for this reason, it is unnecessary to enquire whether the love of which plato speaks is the love of men or of women. it is really a general idea which includes both, and in which the sensual element, though not wholly eradicated, is reduced to order and measure. we must not attribute a meaning to every fanciful detail. nor is there any need to call up revolting associations, which as a matter of good taste should be banished, and which were far enough away from the mind of plato. these and similar passages should be interpreted by the laws. nor is there anything in the symposium, or in the charmides, in reality inconsistent with the sterner rule which plato lays down in the laws. at the same time it is not to be denied that love and philosophy are described by socrates in figures of speech which would not be used in christian times; or that nameless vices were prevalent at athens and in other greek cities; or that friendships between men were a more sacred tie, and had a more important social and educational influence than among ourselves. (see note on symposium.) in the phaedrus, as well as in the symposium, there are two kinds of love, a lower and a higher, the one answering to the natural wants of the animal, the other rising above them and contemplating with religious awe the forms of justice, temperance, holiness, yet finding them also 'too dazzling bright for mortal eye,' and shrinking from them in amazement. the opposition between these two kinds of love may be compared to the opposition between the flesh and the spirit in the epistles of st. paul. it would be unmeaning to suppose that plato, in describing the spiritual combat, in which the rational soul is finally victor and master of both the steeds, condescends to allow any indulgence of unnatural lusts. two other thoughts about love are suggested by this passage. first of all, love is represented here, as in the symposium, as one of the great powers of nature, which takes many forms and two principal ones, having a predominant influence over the lives of men. and these two, though opposed, are not absolutely separated the one from the other. plato, with his great knowledge of human nature, was well aware how easily one is transformed into the other, or how soon the noble but fleeting aspiration may return into the nature of the animal, while the lower instinct which is latent always remains. the intermediate sentimentalism, which has exercised so great an influence on the literature of modern europe, had no place in the classical times of hellas; the higher love, of which plato speaks, is the subject, not of poetry or fiction, but of philosophy. secondly, there seems to be indicated a natural yearning of the human mind that the great ideas of justice, temperance, wisdom, should be expressed in some form of visible beauty, like the absolute purity and goodness which christian art has sought to realize in the person of the madonna. but although human nature has often attempted to represent outwardly what can be only 'spiritually discerned,' men feel that in pictures and images, whether painted or carved, or described in words only, we have not the substance but the shadow of the truth which is in heaven. there is no reason to suppose that in the fairest works of greek art, plato ever conceived himself to behold an image, however faint, of ideal truths. 'not in that way was wisdom seen.' we may now pass on to the second part of the dialogue, which is a criticism on the first. rhetoric is assailed on various grounds: first, as desiring to persuade, without a knowledge of the truth; and secondly, as ignoring the distinction between certain and probable matter. the three speeches are then passed in review: the first of them has no definition of the nature of love, and no order in the topics (being in these respects far inferior to the second); while the third of them is found (though a fancy of the hour) to be framed upon real dialectical principles. but dialectic is not rhetoric; nothing on that subject is to be found in the endless treatises of rhetoric, however prolific in hard names. when plato has sufficiently put them to the test of ridicule he touches, as with the point of a needle, the real error, which is the confusion of preliminary knowledge with creative power. no attainments will provide the speaker with genius; and the sort of attainments which can alone be of any value are the higher philosophy and the power of psychological analysis, which is given by dialectic, but not by the rules of the rhetoricians. in this latter portion of the dialogue there are many texts which may help us to speak and to think. the names dialectic and rhetoric are passing out of use; we hardly examine seriously into their nature and limits, and probably the arts both of speaking and of conversation have been unduly neglected by us. but the mind of socrates pierces through the differences of times and countries into the essential nature of man; and his words apply equally to the modern world and to the athenians of old. would he not have asked of us, or rather is he not asking of us, whether we have ceased to prefer appearances to reality? let us take a survey of the professions to which he refers and try them by his standard. is not all literature passing into criticism, just as athenian literature in the age of plato was degenerating into sophistry and rhetoric? we can discourse and write about poems and paintings, but we seem to have lost the gift of creating them. can we wonder that few of them 'come sweetly from nature,' while ten thousand reviewers (mala murioi) are engaged in dissecting them? young men, like phaedrus, are enamoured of their own literary clique and have but a feeble sympathy with the master-minds of former ages. they recognize 'a poetical necessity in the writings of their favourite author, even when he boldly wrote off just what came in his head.' they are beginning to think that art is enough, just at the time when art is about to disappear from the world. and would not a great painter, such as michael angelo, or a great poet, such as shakespeare, returning to earth, 'courteously rebuke' us--would he not say that we are putting 'in the place of art the preliminaries of art,' confusing art the expression of mind and truth with art the composition of colours and forms; and perhaps he might more severely chastise some of us for trying to invent 'a new shudder' instead of bringing to the birth living and healthy creations? these he would regard as the signs of an age wanting in original power. turning from literature and the arts to law and politics, again we fall under the lash of socrates. for do we not often make 'the worse appear the better cause;' and do not 'both parties sometimes agree to tell lies'? is not pleading 'an art of speaking unconnected with the truth'? there is another text of socrates which must not be forgotten in relation to this subject. in the endless maze of english law is there any 'dividing the whole into parts or reuniting the parts into a whole'--any semblance of an organized being 'having hands and feet and other members'? instead of a system there is the chaos of anaxagoras (omou panta chremata) and no mind or order. then again in the noble art of politics, who thinks of first principles and of true ideas? we avowedly follow not the truth but the will of the many (compare republic). is not legislation too a sort of literary effort, and might not statesmanship be described as the 'art of enchanting' the house? while there are some politicians who have no knowledge of the truth, but only of what is likely to be approved by 'the many who sit in judgment,' there are others who can give no form to their ideal, neither having learned 'the art of persuasion,' nor having any insight into the 'characters of men.' once more, has not medical science become a professional routine, which many 'practise without being able to say who were their instructors'--the application of a few drugs taken from a book instead of a life-long study of the natures and constitutions of human beings? do we see as clearly as hippocrates 'that the nature of the body can only be understood as a whole'? (compare charm.) and are not they held to be the wisest physicians who have the greatest distrust of their art? what would socrates think of our newspapers, of our theology? perhaps he would be afraid to speak of them;--the one vox populi, the other vox dei, he might hesitate to attack them; or he might trace a fanciful connexion between them, and ask doubtfully, whether they are not equally inspired? he would remark that we are always searching for a belief and deploring our unbelief, seeming to prefer popular opinions unverified and contradictory to unpopular truths which are assured to us by the most certain proofs: that our preachers are in the habit of praising god 'without regard to truth and falsehood, attributing to him every species of greatness and glory, saying that he is all this and the cause of all that, in order that we may exhibit him as the fairest and best of all' (symp.) without any consideration of his real nature and character or of the laws by which he governs the world--seeking for a 'private judgment' and not for the truth or 'god's judgment.' what would he say of the church, which we praise in like manner, 'meaning ourselves,' without regard to history or experience? might he not ask, whether we 'care more for the truth of religion, or for the speaker and the country from which the truth comes'? or, whether the 'select wise' are not 'the many' after all? (symp.) so we may fill up the sketch of socrates, lest, as phaedrus says, the argument should be too 'abstract and barren of illustrations.' (compare symp., apol., euthyphro.) he next proceeds with enthusiasm to define the royal art of dialectic as the power of dividing a whole into parts, and of uniting the parts in a whole, and which may also be regarded (compare soph.) as the process of the mind talking with herself. the latter view has probably led plato to the paradox that speech is superior to writing, in which he may seem also to be doing an injustice to himself. for the two cannot be fairly compared in the manner which plato suggests. the contrast of the living and dead word, and the example of socrates, which he has represented in the form of the dialogue, seem to have misled him. for speech and writing have really different functions; the one is more transitory, more diffuse, more elastic and capable of adaptation to moods and times; the other is more permanent, more concentrated, and is uttered not to this or that person or audience, but to all the world. in the politicus the paradox is carried further; the mind or will of the king is preferred to the written law; he is supposed to be the law personified, the ideal made life. yet in both these statements there is also contained a truth; they may be compared with one another, and also with the other famous paradox, that 'knowledge cannot be taught.' socrates means to say, that what is truly written is written in the soul, just as what is truly taught grows up in the soul from within and is not forced upon it from without. when planted in a congenial soil the little seed becomes a tree, and 'the birds of the air build their nests in the branches.' there is an echo of this in the prayer at the end of the dialogue, 'give me beauty in the inward soul, and may the inward and outward man be at one.' we may further compare the words of st. paul, 'written not on tables of stone, but on fleshly tables of the heart;' and again, 'ye are my epistles known and read of all men.' there may be a use in writing as a preservative against the forgetfulness of old age, but to live is higher far, to be ourselves the book, or the epistle, the truth embodied in a person, the word made flesh. something like this we may believe to have passed before plato's mind when he affirmed that speech was superior to writing. so in other ages, weary of literature and criticism, of making many books, of writing articles in reviews, some have desired to live more closely in communion with their fellow-men, to speak heart to heart, to speak and act only, and not to write, following the example of socrates and of christ... some other touches of inimitable grace and art and of the deepest wisdom may be also noted; such as the prayer or 'collect' which has just been cited, 'give me beauty,' etc.; or 'the great name which belongs to god alone;' or 'the saying of wiser men than ourselves that a man of sense should try to please not his fellow-servants, but his good and noble masters,' like st. paul again; or the description of the 'heavenly originals'... the chief criteria for determining the date of the dialogue are ( ) the ages of lysias and isocrates; ( ) the character of the work. lysias was born in the year ; isocrates in the year , about seven years before the birth of plato. the first of the two great rhetoricians is described as in the zenith of his fame; the second is still young and full of promise. now it is argued that this must have been written in the youth of isocrates, when the promise was not yet fulfilled. and thus we should have to assign the dialogue to a year not later than , when isocrates was thirty and plato twenty-three years of age, and while socrates himself was still alive. those who argue in this way seem not to reflect how easily plato can 'invent egyptians or anything else,' and how careless he is of historical truth or probability. who would suspect that the wise critias, the virtuous charmides, had ended their lives among the thirty tyrants? who would imagine that lysias, who is here assailed by socrates, is the son of his old friend cephalus? or that isocrates himself is the enemy of plato and his school? no arguments can be drawn from the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the characters of plato. (else, perhaps, it might be further argued that, judging from their extant remains, insipid rhetoric is far more characteristic of isocrates than of lysias.) but plato makes use of names which have often hardly any connection with the historical characters to whom they belong. in this instance the comparative favour shown to isocrates may possibly be accounted for by the circumstance of his belonging to the aristocratical, as lysias to the democratical party. few persons will be inclined to suppose, in the superficial manner of some ancient critics, that a dialogue which treats of love must necessarily have been written in youth. as little weight can be attached to the argument that plato must have visited egypt before he wrote the story of theuth and thamus. for there is no real proof that he ever went to egypt; and even if he did, he might have known or invented egyptian traditions before he went there. the late date of the phaedrus will have to be established by other arguments than these: the maturity of the thought, the perfection of the style, the insight, the relation to the other platonic dialogues, seem to contradict the notion that it could have been the work of a youth of twenty or twenty-three years of age. the cosmological notion of the mind as the primum mobile, and the admission of impulse into the immortal nature, also afford grounds for assigning a later date. (compare tim., soph., laws.) add to this that the picture of socrates, though in some lesser particulars,--e.g. his going without sandals, his habit of remaining within the walls, his emphatic declaration that his study is human nature,--an exact resemblance, is in the main the platonic and not the real socrates. can we suppose 'the young man to have told such lies' about his master while he was still alive? moreover, when two dialogues are so closely connected as the phaedrus and symposium, there is great improbability in supposing that one of them was written at least twenty years after the other. the conclusion seems to be, that the dialogue was written at some comparatively late but unknown period of plato's life, after he had deserted the purely socratic point of view, but before he had entered on the more abstract speculations of the sophist or the philebus. taking into account the divisions of the soul, the doctrine of transmigration, the contemplative nature of the philosophic life, and the character of the style, we shall not be far wrong in placing the phaedrus in the neighbourhood of the republic; remarking only that allowance must be made for the poetical element in the phaedrus, which, while falling short of the republic in definite philosophic results, seems to have glimpses of a truth beyond. two short passages, which are unconnected with the main subject of the dialogue, may seem to merit a more particular notice: ( ) the locus classicus about mythology; ( ) the tale of the grasshoppers. the first passage is remarkable as showing that plato was entirely free from what may be termed the euhemerism of his age. for there were euhemerists in hellas long before euhemerus. early philosophers, like anaxagoras and metrodorus, had found in homer and mythology hidden meanings. plato, with a truer instinct, rejects these attractive interpretations; he regards the inventor of them as 'unfortunate;' and they draw a man off from the knowledge of himself. there is a latent criticism, and also a poetical sense in plato, which enable him to discard them, and yet in another way to make use of poetry and mythology as a vehicle of thought and feeling. what would he have said of the discovery of christian doctrines in these old greek legends? while acknowledging that such interpretations are 'very nice,' would he not have remarked that they are found in all sacred literatures? they cannot be tested by any criterion of truth, or used to establish any truth; they add nothing to the sum of human knowledge; they are--what we please, and if employed as 'peacemakers' between the new and old are liable to serious misconstruction, as he elsewhere remarks (republic). and therefore he would have 'bid farewell to them; the study of them would take up too much of his time; and he has not as yet learned the true nature of religion.' the 'sophistical' interest of phaedrus, the little touch about the two versions of the story, the ironical manner in which these explanations are set aside--'the common opinion about them is enough for me'--the allusion to the serpent typho may be noted in passing; also the general agreement between the tone of this speech and the remark of socrates which follows afterwards, 'i am a diviner, but a poor one.' the tale of the grasshoppers is naturally suggested by the surrounding scene. they are also the representatives of the athenians as children of the soil. under the image of the lively chirruping grasshoppers who inform the muses in heaven about those who honour them on earth, plato intends to represent an athenian audience (tettigessin eoikotes). the story is introduced, apparently, to mark a change of subject, and also, like several other allusions which occur in the course of the dialogue, in order to preserve the scene in the recollection of the reader. ***** no one can duly appreciate the dialogues of plato, especially the phaedrus, symposium, and portions of the republic, who has not a sympathy with mysticism. to the uninitiated, as he would himself have acknowledged, they will appear to be the dreams of a poet who is disguised as a philosopher. there is a twofold difficulty in apprehending this aspect of the platonic writings. first, we do not immediately realize that under the marble exterior of greek literature was concealed a soul thrilling with spiritual emotion. secondly, the forms or figures which the platonic philosophy assumes, are not like the images of the prophet isaiah, or of the apocalypse, familiar to us in the days of our youth. by mysticism we mean, not the extravagance of an erring fancy, but the concentration of reason in feeling, the enthusiastic love of the good, the true, the one, the sense of the infinity of knowledge and of the marvel of the human faculties. when feeding upon such thoughts the 'wing of the soul' is renewed and gains strength; she is raised above 'the manikins of earth' and their opinions, waiting in wonder to know, and working with reverence to find out what god in this or in another life may reveal to her. on the decline of greek literature. one of the main purposes of plato in the phaedrus is to satirize rhetoric, or rather the professors of rhetoric who swarmed at athens in the fourth century before christ. as in the opening of the dialogue he ridicules the interpreters of mythology; as in the protagoras he mocks at the sophists; as in the euthydemus he makes fun of the word-splitting eristics; as in the cratylus he ridicules the fancies of etymologers; as in the meno and gorgias and some other dialogues he makes reflections and casts sly imputation upon the higher classes at athens; so in the phaedrus, chiefly in the latter part, he aims his shafts at the rhetoricians. the profession of rhetoric was the greatest and most popular in athens, necessary 'to a man's salvation,' or at any rate to his attainment of wealth or power; but plato finds nothing wholesome or genuine in the purpose of it. it is a veritable 'sham,' having no relation to fact, or to truth of any kind. it is antipathetic to him not only as a philosopher, but also as a great writer. he cannot abide the tricks of the rhetoricians, or the pedantries and mannerisms which they introduce into speech and writing. he sees clearly how far removed they are from the ways of simplicity and truth, and how ignorant of the very elements of the art which they are professing to teach. the thing which is most necessary of all, the knowledge of human nature, is hardly if at all considered by them. the true rules of composition, which are very few, are not to be found in their voluminous systems. their pretentiousness, their omniscience, their large fortunes, their impatience of argument, their indifference to first principles, their stupidity, their progresses through hellas accompanied by a troop of their disciples--these things were very distasteful to plato, who esteemed genius far above art, and was quite sensible of the interval which separated them (phaedrus). it is the interval which separates sophists and rhetoricians from ancient famous men and women such as homer and hesiod, anacreon and sappho, aeschylus and sophocles; and the platonic socrates is afraid that, if he approves the former, he will be disowned by the latter. the spirit of rhetoric was soon to overspread all hellas; and plato with prophetic insight may have seen, from afar, the great literary waste or dead level, or interminable marsh, in which greek literature was soon to disappear. a similar vision of the decline of the greek drama and of the contrast of the old literature and the new was present to the mind of aristophanes after the death of the three great tragedians (frogs). after about a hundred, or at most two hundred years if we exclude homer, the genius of hellas had ceased to flower or blossom. the dreary waste which follows, beginning with the alexandrian writers and even before them in the platitudes of isocrates and his school, spreads over much more than a thousand years. and from this decline the greek language and literature, unlike the latin, which has come to life in new forms and been developed into the great european languages, never recovered. this monotony of literature, without merit, without genius and without character, is a phenomenon which deserves more attention than it has hitherto received; it is a phenomenon unique in the literary history of the world. how could there have been so much cultivation, so much diligence in writing, and so little mind or real creative power? why did a thousand years invent nothing better than sibylline books, orphic poems, byzantine imitations of classical histories, christian reproductions of greek plays, novels like the silly and obscene romances of longus and heliodorus, innumerable forged epistles, a great many epigrams, biographies of the meanest and most meagre description, a sham philosophy which was the bastard progeny of the union between hellas and the east? only in plutarch, in lucian, in longinus, in the roman emperors marcus aurelius and julian, in some of the christian fathers are there any traces of good sense or originality, or any power of arousing the interest of later ages. and when new books ceased to be written, why did hosts of grammarians and interpreters flock in, who never attain to any sound notion either of grammar or interpretation? why did the physical sciences never arrive at any true knowledge or make any real progress? why did poetry droop and languish? why did history degenerate into fable? why did words lose their power of expression? why were ages of external greatness and magnificence attended by all the signs of decay in the human mind which are possible? to these questions many answers may be given, which if not the true causes, are at least to be reckoned among the symptoms of the decline. there is the want of method in physical science, the want of criticism in history, the want of simplicity or delicacy in poetry, the want of political freedom, which is the true atmosphere of public speaking, in oratory. the ways of life were luxurious and commonplace. philosophy had become extravagant, eclectic, abstract, devoid of any real content. at length it ceased to exist. it had spread words like plaster over the whole field of knowledge. it had grown ascetic on one side, mystical on the other. neither of these tendencies was favourable to literature. there was no sense of beauty either in language or in art. the greek world became vacant, barbaric, oriental. no one had anything new to say, or any conviction of truth. the age had no remembrance of the past, no power of understanding what other ages thought and felt. the catholic faith had degenerated into dogma and controversy. for more than a thousand years not a single writer of first-rate, or even of second-rate, reputation has a place in the innumerable rolls of greek literature. if we seek to go deeper, we can still only describe the outward nature of the clouds or darkness which were spread over the heavens during so many ages without relief or light. we may say that this, like several other long periods in the history of the human race, was destitute, or deprived of the moral qualities which are the root of literary excellence. it had no life or aspiration, no national or political force, no desire for consistency, no love of knowledge for its own sake. it did not attempt to pierce the mists which surrounded it. it did not propose to itself to go forward and scale the heights of knowledge, but to go backwards and seek at the beginning what can only be found towards the end. it was lost in doubt and ignorance. it rested upon tradition and authority. it had none of the higher play of fancy which creates poetry; and where there is no true poetry, neither can there be any good prose. it had no great characters, and therefore it had no great writers. it was incapable of distinguishing between words and things. it was so hopelessly below the ancient standard of classical greek art and literature that it had no power of understanding or of valuing them. it is doubtful whether any greek author was justly appreciated in antiquity except by his own contemporaries; and this neglect of the great authors of the past led to the disappearance of the larger part of them, while the greek fathers were mostly preserved. there is no reason to suppose that, in the century before the taking of constantinople, much more was in existence than the scholars of the renaissance carried away with them to italy. the character of greek literature sank lower as time went on. it consisted more and more of compilations, of scholia, of extracts, of commentaries, forgeries, imitations. the commentator or interpreter had no conception of his author as a whole, and very little of the context of any passage which he was explaining. the least things were preferred by him to the greatest. the question of a reading, or a grammatical form, or an accent, or the uses of a word, took the place of the aim or subject of the book. he had no sense of the beauties of an author, and very little light is thrown by him on real difficulties. he interprets past ages by his own. the greatest classical writers are the least appreciated by him. this seems to be the reason why so many of them have perished, why the lyric poets have almost wholly disappeared; why, out of the eighty or ninety tragedies of aeschylus and sophocles, only seven of each had been preserved. such an age of sciolism and scholasticism may possibly once more get the better of the literary world. there are those who prophesy that the signs of such a day are again appearing among us, and that at the end of the present century no writer of the first class will be still alive. they think that the muse of literature may transfer herself to other countries less dried up or worn out than our own. they seem to see the withering effect of criticism on original genius. no one can doubt that such a decay or decline of literature and of art seriously affects the manners and character of a nation. it takes away half the joys and refinements of life; it increases its dulness and grossness. hence it becomes a matter of great interest to consider how, if at all, such a degeneracy may be averted. is there any elixir which can restore life and youth to the literature of a nation, or at any rate which can prevent it becoming unmanned and enfeebled? first there is the progress of education. it is possible, and even probable, that the extension of the means of knowledge over a wider area and to persons living under new conditions may lead to many new combinations of thought and language. but, as yet, experience does not favour the realization of such a hope or promise. it may be truly answered that at present the training of teachers and the methods of education are very imperfect, and therefore that we cannot judge of the future by the present. when more of our youth are trained in the best literatures, and in the best parts of them, their minds may be expected to have a larger growth. they will have more interests, more thoughts, more material for conversation; they will have a higher standard and begin to think for themselves. the number of persons who will have the opportunity of receiving the highest education through the cheap press, and by the help of high schools and colleges, may increase tenfold. it is likely that in every thousand persons there is at least one who is far above the average in natural capacity, but the seed which is in him dies for want of cultivation. it has never had any stimulus to grow, or any field in which to blossom and produce fruit. here is a great reservoir or treasure-house of human intelligence out of which new waters may flow and cover the earth. if at any time the great men of the world should die out, and originality or genius appear to suffer a partial eclipse, there is a boundless hope in the multitude of intelligences for future generations. they may bring gifts to men such as the world has never received before. they may begin at a higher point and yet take with them all the results of the past. the co-operation of many may have effects not less striking, though different in character from those which the creative genius of a single man, such as bacon or newton, formerly produced. there is also great hope to be derived, not merely from the extension of education over a wider area, but from the continuance of it during many generations. educated parents will have children fit to receive education; and these again will grow up under circumstances far more favourable to the growth of intelligence than any which have hitherto existed in our own or in former ages. even if we were to suppose no more men of genius to be produced, the great writers of ancient or of modern times will remain to furnish abundant materials of education to the coming generation. now that every nation holds communication with every other, we may truly say in a fuller sense than formerly that 'the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.' they will not be 'cribbed, cabined, and confined' within a province or an island. the east will provide elements of culture to the west as well as the west to the east. the religions and literatures of the world will be open books, which he who wills may read. the human race may not be always ground down by bodily toil, but may have greater leisure for the improvement of the mind. the increasing sense of the greatness and infinity of nature will tend to awaken in men larger and more liberal thoughts. the love of mankind may be the source of a greater development of literature than nationality has ever been. there may be a greater freedom from prejudice and party; we may better understand the whereabouts of truth, and therefore there may be more success and fewer failures in the search for it. lastly, in the coming ages we shall carry with us the recollection of the past, in which are necessarily contained many seeds of revival and renaissance in the future. so far is the world from becoming exhausted, so groundless is the fear that literature will ever die out. phaedrus persons of the dialogue: socrates, phaedrus. scene: under a plane-tree, by the banks of the ilissus. socrates: my dear phaedrus, whence come you, and whither are you going? phaedrus: i come from lysias the son of cephalus, and i am going to take a walk outside the wall, for i have been sitting with him the whole morning; and our common friend acumenus tells me that it is much more refreshing to walk in the open air than to be shut up in a cloister. socrates: there he is right. lysias then, i suppose, was in the town? phaedrus: yes, he was staying with epicrates, here at the house of morychus; that house which is near the temple of olympian zeus. socrates: and how did he entertain you? can i be wrong in supposing that lysias gave you a feast of discourse? phaedrus: you shall hear, if you can spare time to accompany me. socrates: and should i not deem the conversation of you and lysias 'a thing of higher import,' as i may say in the words of pindar, 'than any business'? phaedrus: will you go on? socrates: and will you go on with the narration? phaedrus: my tale, socrates, is one of your sort, for love was the theme which occupied us--love after a fashion: lysias has been writing about a fair youth who was being tempted, but not by a lover; and this was the point: he ingeniously proved that the non-lover should be accepted rather than the lover. socrates: o that is noble of him! i wish that he would say the poor man rather than the rich, and the old man rather than the young one;--then he would meet the case of me and of many a man; his words would be quite refreshing, and he would be a public benefactor. for my part, i do so long to hear his speech, that if you walk all the way to megara, and when you have reached the wall come back, as herodicus recommends, without going in, i will keep you company. phaedrus: what do you mean, my good socrates? how can you imagine that my unpractised memory can do justice to an elaborate work, which the greatest rhetorician of the age spent a long time in composing. indeed, i cannot; i would give a great deal if i could. socrates: i believe that i know phaedrus about as well as i know myself, and i am very sure that the speech of lysias was repeated to him, not once only, but again and again;--he insisted on hearing it many times over and lysias was very willing to gratify him; at last, when nothing else would do, he got hold of the book, and looked at what he most wanted to see,--this occupied him during the whole morning;--and then when he was tired with sitting, he went out to take a walk, not until, by the dog, as i believe, he had simply learned by heart the entire discourse, unless it was unusually long, and he went to a place outside the wall that he might practise his lesson. there he saw a certain lover of discourse who had a similar weakness;--he saw and rejoiced; now thought he, 'i shall have a partner in my revels.' and he invited him to come and walk with him. but when the lover of discourse begged that he would repeat the tale, he gave himself airs and said, 'no i cannot,' as if he were indisposed; although, if the hearer had refused, he would sooner or later have been compelled by him to listen whether he would or no. therefore, phaedrus, bid him do at once what he will soon do whether bidden or not. phaedrus: i see that you will not let me off until i speak in some fashion or other; verily therefore my best plan is to speak as i best can. socrates: a very true remark, that of yours. phaedrus: i will do as i say; but believe me, socrates, i did not learn the very words--o no; nevertheless i have a general notion of what he said, and will give you a summary of the points in which the lover differed from the non-lover. let me begin at the beginning. socrates: yes, my sweet one; but you must first of all show what you have in your left hand under your cloak, for that roll, as i suspect, is the actual discourse. now, much as i love you, i would not have you suppose that i am going to have your memory exercised at my expense, if you have lysias himself here. phaedrus: enough; i see that i have no hope of practising my art upon you. but if i am to read, where would you please to sit? socrates: let us turn aside and go by the ilissus; we will sit down at some quiet spot. phaedrus: i am fortunate in not having my sandals, and as you never have any, i think that we may go along the brook and cool our feet in the water; this will be the easiest way, and at midday and in the summer is far from being unpleasant. socrates: lead on, and look out for a place in which we can sit down. phaedrus: do you see the tallest plane-tree in the distance? socrates: yes. phaedrus: there are shade and gentle breezes, and grass on which we may either sit or lie down. socrates: move forward. phaedrus: i should like to know, socrates, whether the place is not somewhere here at which boreas is said to have carried off orithyia from the banks of the ilissus? socrates: such is the tradition. phaedrus: and is this the exact spot? the little stream is delightfully clear and bright; i can fancy that there might be maidens playing near. socrates: i believe that the spot is not exactly here, but about a quarter of a mile lower down, where you cross to the temple of artemis, and there is, i think, some sort of an altar of boreas at the place. phaedrus: i have never noticed it; but i beseech you to tell me, socrates, do you believe this tale? socrates: the wise are doubtful, and i should not be singular if, like them, i too doubted. i might have a rational explanation that orithyia was playing with pharmacia, when a northern gust carried her over the neighbouring rocks; and this being the manner of her death, she was said to have been carried away by boreas. there is a discrepancy, however, about the locality; according to another version of the story she was taken from areopagus, and not from this place. now i quite acknowledge that these allegories are very nice, but he is not to be envied who has to invent them; much labour and ingenuity will be required of him; and when he has once begun, he must go on and rehabilitate hippocentaurs and chimeras dire. gorgons and winged steeds flow in apace, and numberless other inconceivable and portentous natures. and if he is sceptical about them, and would fain reduce them one after another to the rules of probability, this sort of crude philosophy will take up a great deal of time. now i have no leisure for such enquiries; shall i tell you why? i must first know myself, as the delphian inscription says; to be curious about that which is not my concern, while i am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous. and therefore i bid farewell to all this; the common opinion is enough for me. for, as i was saying, i want to know not about this, but about myself: am i a monster more complicated and swollen with passion than the serpent typho, or a creature of a gentler and simpler sort, to whom nature has given a diviner and lowlier destiny? but let me ask you, friend: have we not reached the plane-tree to which you were conducting us? phaedrus: yes, this is the tree. socrates: by here, a fair resting-place, full of summer sounds and scents. here is this lofty and spreading plane-tree, and the agnus castus high and clustering, in the fullest blossom and the greatest fragrance; and the stream which flows beneath the plane-tree is deliciously cold to the feet. judging from the ornaments and images, this must be a spot sacred to achelous and the nymphs. how delightful is the breeze:--so very sweet; and there is a sound in the air shrill and summerlike which makes answer to the chorus of the cicadae. but the greatest charm of all is the grass, like a pillow gently sloping to the head. my dear phaedrus, you have been an admirable guide. phaedrus: what an incomprehensible being you are, socrates: when you are in the country, as you say, you really are like some stranger who is led about by a guide. do you ever cross the border? i rather think that you never venture even outside the gates. socrates: very true, my good friend; and i hope that you will excuse me when you hear the reason, which is, that i am a lover of knowledge, and the men who dwell in the city are my teachers, and not the trees or the country. though i do indeed believe that you have found a spell with which to draw me out of the city into the country, like a hungry cow before whom a bough or a bunch of fruit is waved. for only hold up before me in like manner a book, and you may lead me all round attica, and over the wide world. and now having arrived, i intend to lie down, and do you choose any posture in which you can read best. begin. phaedrus: listen. you know how matters stand with me; and how, as i conceive, this affair may be arranged for the advantage of both of us. and i maintain that i ought not to fail in my suit, because i am not your lover: for lovers repent of the kindnesses which they have shown when their passion ceases, but to the non-lovers who are free and not under any compulsion, no time of repentance ever comes; for they confer their benefits according to the measure of their ability, in the way which is most conducive to their own interest. then again, lovers consider how by reason of their love they have neglected their own concerns and rendered service to others: and when to these benefits conferred they add on the troubles which they have endured, they think that they have long ago made to the beloved a very ample return. but the non-lover has no such tormenting recollections; he has never neglected his affairs or quarrelled with his relations; he has no troubles to add up or excuses to invent; and being well rid of all these evils, why should he not freely do what will gratify the beloved? if you say that the lover is more to be esteemed, because his love is thought to be greater; for he is willing to say and do what is hateful to other men, in order to please his beloved;--that, if true, is only a proof that he will prefer any future love to his present, and will injure his old love at the pleasure of the new. and how, in a matter of such infinite importance, can a man be right in trusting himself to one who is afflicted with a malady which no experienced person would attempt to cure, for the patient himself admits that he is not in his right mind, and acknowledges that he is wrong in his mind, but says that he is unable to control himself? and if he came to his right mind, would he ever imagine that the desires were good which he conceived when in his wrong mind? once more, there are many more non-lovers than lovers; and if you choose the best of the lovers, you will not have many to choose from; but if from the non-lovers, the choice will be larger, and you will be far more likely to find among them a person who is worthy of your friendship. if public opinion be your dread, and you would avoid reproach, in all probability the lover, who is always thinking that other men are as emulous of him as he is of them, will boast to some one of his successes, and make a show of them openly in the pride of his heart;--he wants others to know that his labour has not been lost; but the non-lover is more his own master, and is desirous of solid good, and not of the opinion of mankind. again, the lover may be generally noted or seen following the beloved (this is his regular occupation), and whenever they are observed to exchange two words they are supposed to meet about some affair of love either past or in contemplation; but when non-lovers meet, no one asks the reason why, because people know that talking to another is natural, whether friendship or mere pleasure be the motive. once more, if you fear the fickleness of friendship, consider that in any other case a quarrel might be a mutual calamity; but now, when you have given up what is most precious to you, you will be the greater loser, and therefore, you will have more reason in being afraid of the lover, for his vexations are many, and he is always fancying that every one is leagued against him. wherefore also he debars his beloved from society; he will not have you intimate with the wealthy, lest they should exceed him in wealth, or with men of education, lest they should be his superiors in understanding; and he is equally afraid of anybody's influence who has any other advantage over himself. if he can persuade you to break with them, you are left without a friend in the world; or if, out of a regard to your own interest, you have more sense than to comply with his desire, you will have to quarrel with him. but those who are non-lovers, and whose success in love is the reward of their merit, will not be jealous of the companions of their beloved, and will rather hate those who refuse to be his associates, thinking that their favourite is slighted by the latter and benefited by the former; for more love than hatred may be expected to come to him out of his friendship with others. many lovers too have loved the person of a youth before they knew his character or his belongings; so that when their passion has passed away, there is no knowing whether they will continue to be his friends; whereas, in the case of non-lovers who were always friends, the friendship is not lessened by the favours granted; but the recollection of these remains with them, and is an earnest of good things to come. further, i say that you are likely to be improved by me, whereas the lover will spoil you. for they praise your words and actions in a wrong way; partly, because they are afraid of offending you, and also, their judgment is weakened by passion. such are the feats which love exhibits; he makes things painful to the disappointed which give no pain to others; he compels the successful lover to praise what ought not to give him pleasure, and therefore the beloved is to be pitied rather than envied. but if you listen to me, in the first place, i, in my intercourse with you, shall not merely regard present enjoyment, but also future advantage, being not mastered by love, but my own master; nor for small causes taking violent dislikes, but even when the cause is great, slowly laying up little wrath--unintentional offences i shall forgive, and intentional ones i shall try to prevent; and these are the marks of a friendship which will last. do you think that a lover only can be a firm friend? reflect:--if this were true, we should set small value on sons, or fathers, or mothers; nor should we ever have loyal friends, for our love of them arises not from passion, but from other associations. further, if we ought to shower favours on those who are the most eager suitors,--on that principle, we ought always to do good, not to the most virtuous, but to the most needy; for they are the persons who will be most relieved, and will therefore be the most grateful; and when you make a feast you should invite not your friend, but the beggar and the empty soul; for they will love you, and attend you, and come about your doors, and will be the best pleased, and the most grateful, and will invoke many a blessing on your head. yet surely you ought not to be granting favours to those who besiege you with prayer, but to those who are best able to reward you; nor to the lover only, but to those who are worthy of love; nor to those who will enjoy the bloom of your youth, but to those who will share their possessions with you in age; nor to those who, having succeeded, will glory in their success to others, but to those who will be modest and tell no tales; nor to those who care about you for a moment only, but to those who will continue your friends through life; nor to those who, when their passion is over, will pick a quarrel with you, but rather to those who, when the charm of youth has left you, will show their own virtue. remember what i have said; and consider yet this further point: friends admonish the lover under the idea that his way of life is bad, but no one of his kindred ever yet censured the non-lover, or thought that he was ill-advised about his own interests. 'perhaps you will ask me whether i propose that you should indulge every non-lover. to which i reply that not even the lover would advise you to indulge all lovers, for the indiscriminate favour is less esteemed by the rational recipient, and less easily hidden by him who would escape the censure of the world. now love ought to be for the advantage of both parties, and for the injury of neither. 'i believe that i have said enough; but if there is anything more which you desire or which in your opinion needs to be supplied, ask and i will answer.' now, socrates, what do you think? is not the discourse excellent, more especially in the matter of the language? socrates: yes, quite admirable; the effect on me was ravishing. and this i owe to you, phaedrus, for i observed you while reading to be in an ecstasy, and thinking that you are more experienced in these matters than i am, i followed your example, and, like you, my divine darling, i became inspired with a phrenzy. phaedrus: indeed, you are pleased to be merry. socrates: do you mean that i am not in earnest? phaedrus: now don't talk in that way, socrates, but let me have your real opinion; i adjure you, by zeus, the god of friendship, to tell me whether you think that any hellene could have said more or spoken better on the same subject. socrates: well, but are you and i expected to praise the sentiments of the author, or only the clearness, and roundness, and finish, and tournure of the language? as to the first i willingly submit to your better judgment, for i am not worthy to form an opinion, having only attended to the rhetorical manner; and i was doubting whether this could have been defended even by lysias himself; i thought, though i speak under correction, that he repeated himself two or three times, either from want of words or from want of pains; and also, he appeared to me ostentatiously to exult in showing how well he could say the same thing in two or three ways. phaedrus: nonsense, socrates; what you call repetition was the especial merit of the speech; for he omitted no topic of which the subject rightly allowed, and i do not think that any one could have spoken better or more exhaustively. socrates: there i cannot go along with you. ancient sages, men and women, who have spoken and written of these things, would rise up in judgment against me, if out of complaisance i assented to you. phaedrus: who are they, and where did you hear anything better than this? socrates: i am sure that i must have heard; but at this moment i do not remember from whom; perhaps from sappho the fair, or anacreon the wise; or, possibly, from a prose writer. why do i say so? why, because i perceive that my bosom is full, and that i could make another speech as good as that of lysias, and different. now i am certain that this is not an invention of my own, who am well aware that i know nothing, and therefore i can only infer that i have been filled through the ears, like a pitcher, from the waters of another, though i have actually forgotten in my stupidity who was my informant. phaedrus: that is grand:--but never mind where you heard the discourse or from whom; let that be a mystery not to be divulged even at my earnest desire. only, as you say, promise to make another and better oration, equal in length and entirely new, on the same subject; and i, like the nine archons, will promise to set up a golden image at delphi, not only of myself, but of you, and as large as life. socrates: you are a dear golden ass if you suppose me to mean that lysias has altogether missed the mark, and that i can make a speech from which all his arguments are to be excluded. the worst of authors will say something which is to the point. who, for example, could speak on this thesis of yours without praising the discretion of the non-lover and blaming the indiscretion of the lover? these are the commonplaces of the subject which must come in (for what else is there to be said?) and must be allowed and excused; the only merit is in the arrangement of them, for there can be none in the invention; but when you leave the commonplaces, then there may be some originality. phaedrus: i admit that there is reason in what you say, and i too will be reasonable, and will allow you to start with the premiss that the lover is more disordered in his wits than the non-lover; if in what remains you make a longer and better speech than lysias, and use other arguments, then i say again, that a statue you shall have of beaten gold, and take your place by the colossal offerings of the cypselids at olympia. socrates: how profoundly in earnest is the lover, because to tease him i lay a finger upon his love! and so, phaedrus, you really imagine that i am going to improve upon the ingenuity of lysias? phaedrus: there i have you as you had me, and you must just speak 'as you best can.' do not let us exchange 'tu quoque' as in a farce, or compel me to say to you as you said to me, 'i know socrates as well as i know myself, and he was wanting to speak, but he gave himself airs.' rather i would have you consider that from this place we stir not until you have unbosomed yourself of the speech; for here are we all alone, and i am stronger, remember, and younger than you:--wherefore perpend, and do not compel me to use violence. socrates: but, my sweet phaedrus, how ridiculous it would be of me to compete with lysias in an extempore speech! he is a master in his art and i am an untaught man. phaedrus: you see how matters stand; and therefore let there be no more pretences; for, indeed, i know the word that is irresistible. socrates: then don't say it. phaedrus: yes, but i will; and my word shall be an oath. 'i say, or rather swear'--but what god will be witness of my oath?--'by this plane-tree i swear, that unless you repeat the discourse here in the face of this very plane-tree, i will never tell you another; never let you have word of another!' socrates: villain! i am conquered; the poor lover of discourse has no more to say. phaedrus: then why are you still at your tricks? socrates: i am not going to play tricks now that you have taken the oath, for i cannot allow myself to be starved. phaedrus: proceed. socrates: shall i tell you what i will do? phaedrus: what? socrates: i will veil my face and gallop through the discourse as fast as i can, for if i see you i shall feel ashamed and not know what to say. phaedrus: only go on and you may do anything else which you please. socrates: come, o ye muses, melodious, as ye are called, whether you have received this name from the character of your strains, or because the melians are a musical race, help, o help me in the tale which my good friend here desires me to rehearse, in order that his friend whom he always deemed wise may seem to him to be wiser than ever. once upon a time there was a fair boy, or, more properly speaking, a youth; he was very fair and had a great many lovers; and there was one special cunning one, who had persuaded the youth that he did not love him, but he really loved him all the same; and one day when he was paying his addresses to him, he used this very argument--that he ought to accept the non-lover rather than the lover; his words were as follows:-- 'all good counsel begins in the same way; a man should know what he is advising about, or his counsel will all come to nought. but people imagine that they know about the nature of things, when they don't know about them, and, not having come to an understanding at first because they think that they know, they end, as might be expected, in contradicting one another and themselves. now you and i must not be guilty of this fundamental error which we condemn in others; but as our question is whether the lover or non-lover is to be preferred, let us first of all agree in defining the nature and power of love, and then, keeping our eyes upon the definition and to this appealing, let us further enquire whether love brings advantage or disadvantage. 'every one sees that love is a desire, and we know also that non-lovers desire the beautiful and good. now in what way is the lover to be distinguished from the non-lover? let us note that in every one of us there are two guiding and ruling principles which lead us whither they will; one is the natural desire of pleasure, the other is an acquired opinion which aspires after the best; and these two are sometimes in harmony and then again at war, and sometimes the one, sometimes the other conquers. when opinion by the help of reason leads us to the best, the conquering principle is called temperance; but when desire, which is devoid of reason, rules in us and drags us to pleasure, that power of misrule is called excess. now excess has many names, and many members, and many forms, and any of these forms when very marked gives a name, neither honourable nor creditable, to the bearer of the name. the desire of eating, for example, which gets the better of the higher reason and the other desires, is called gluttony, and he who is possessed by it is called a glutton; the tyrannical desire of drink, which inclines the possessor of the desire to drink, has a name which is only too obvious, and there can be as little doubt by what name any other appetite of the same family would be called;--it will be the name of that which happens to be dominant. and now i think that you will perceive the drift of my discourse; but as every spoken word is in a manner plainer than the unspoken, i had better say further that the irrational desire which overcomes the tendency of opinion towards right, and is led away to the enjoyment of beauty, and especially of personal beauty, by the desires which are her own kindred--that supreme desire, i say, which by leading conquers and by the force of passion is reinforced, from this very force, receiving a name, is called love (erromenos eros).' and now, dear phaedrus, i shall pause for an instant to ask whether you do not think me, as i appear to myself, inspired? phaedrus: yes, socrates, you seem to have a very unusual flow of words. socrates: listen to me, then, in silence; for surely the place is holy; so that you must not wonder, if, as i proceed, i appear to be in a divine fury, for already i am getting into dithyrambics. phaedrus: nothing can be truer. socrates: the responsibility rests with you. but hear what follows, and perhaps the fit may be averted; all is in their hands above. i will go on talking to my youth. listen:-- thus, my friend, we have declared and defined the nature of the subject. keeping the definition in view, let us now enquire what advantage or disadvantage is likely to ensue from the lover or the non-lover to him who accepts their advances. he who is the victim of his passions and the slave of pleasure will of course desire to make his beloved as agreeable to himself as possible. now to him who has a mind diseased anything is agreeable which is not opposed to him, but that which is equal or superior is hateful to him, and therefore the lover will not brook any superiority or equality on the part of his beloved; he is always employed in reducing him to inferiority. and the ignorant is the inferior of the wise, the coward of the brave, the slow of speech of the speaker, the dull of the clever. these, and not these only, are the mental defects of the beloved;--defects which, when implanted by nature, are necessarily a delight to the lover, and when not implanted, he must contrive to implant them in him, if he would not be deprived of his fleeting joy. and therefore he cannot help being jealous, and will debar his beloved from the advantages of society which would make a man of him, and especially from that society which would have given him wisdom, and thereby he cannot fail to do him great harm. that is to say, in his excessive fear lest he should come to be despised in his eyes he will be compelled to banish from him divine philosophy; and there is no greater injury which he can inflict upon him than this. he will contrive that his beloved shall be wholly ignorant, and in everything shall look to him; he is to be the delight of the lover's heart, and a curse to himself. verily, a lover is a profitable guardian and associate for him in all that relates to his mind. let us next see how his master, whose law of life is pleasure and not good, will keep and train the body of his servant. will he not choose a beloved who is delicate rather than sturdy and strong? one brought up in shady bowers and not in the bright sun, a stranger to manly exercises and the sweat of toil, accustomed only to a soft and luxurious diet, instead of the hues of health having the colours of paint and ornament, and the rest of a piece?--such a life as any one can imagine and which i need not detail at length. but i may sum up all that i have to say in a word, and pass on. such a person in war, or in any of the great crises of life, will be the anxiety of his friends and also of his lover, and certainly not the terror of his enemies; which nobody can deny. and now let us tell what advantage or disadvantage the beloved will receive from the guardianship and society of his lover in the matter of his property; this is the next point to be considered. the lover will be the first to see what, indeed, will be sufficiently evident to all men, that he desires above all things to deprive his beloved of his dearest and best and holiest possessions, father, mother, kindred, friends, of all whom he thinks may be hinderers or reprovers of their most sweet converse; he will even cast a jealous eye upon his gold and silver or other property, because these make him a less easy prey, and when caught less manageable; hence he is of necessity displeased at his possession of them and rejoices at their loss; and he would like him to be wifeless, childless, homeless, as well; and the longer the better, for the longer he is all this, the longer he will enjoy him. there are some sort of animals, such as flatterers, who are dangerous and mischievous enough, and yet nature has mingled a temporary pleasure and grace in their composition. you may say that a courtesan is hurtful, and disapprove of such creatures and their practices, and yet for the time they are very pleasant. but the lover is not only hurtful to his love; he is also an extremely disagreeable companion. the old proverb says that 'birds of a feather flock together'; i suppose that equality of years inclines them to the same pleasures, and similarity begets friendship; yet you may have more than enough even of this; and verily constraint is always said to be grievous. now the lover is not only unlike his beloved, but he forces himself upon him. for he is old and his love is young, and neither day nor night will he leave him if he can help; necessity and the sting of desire drive him on, and allure him with the pleasure which he receives from seeing, hearing, touching, perceiving him in every way. and therefore he is delighted to fasten upon him and to minister to him. but what pleasure or consolation can the beloved be receiving all this time? must he not feel the extremity of disgust when he looks at an old shrivelled face and the remainder to match, which even in a description is disagreeable, and quite detestable when he is forced into daily contact with his lover; moreover he is jealously watched and guarded against everything and everybody, and has to hear misplaced and exaggerated praises of himself, and censures equally inappropriate, which are intolerable when the man is sober, and, besides being intolerable, are published all over the world in all their indelicacy and wearisomeness when he is drunk. and not only while his love continues is he mischievous and unpleasant, but when his love ceases he becomes a perfidious enemy of him on whom he showered his oaths and prayers and promises, and yet could hardly prevail upon him to tolerate the tedium of his company even from motives of interest. the hour of payment arrives, and now he is the servant of another master; instead of love and infatuation, wisdom and temperance are his bosom's lords; but the beloved has not discovered the change which has taken place in him, when he asks for a return and recalls to his recollection former sayings and doings; he believes himself to be speaking to the same person, and the other, not having the courage to confess the truth, and not knowing how to fulfil the oaths and promises which he made when under the dominion of folly, and having now grown wise and temperate, does not want to do as he did or to be as he was before. and so he runs away and is constrained to be a defaulter; the oyster-shell (in allusion to a game in which two parties fled or pursued according as an oyster-shell which was thrown into the air fell with the dark or light side uppermost.) has fallen with the other side uppermost--he changes pursuit into flight, while the other is compelled to follow him with passion and imprecation, not knowing that he ought never from the first to have accepted a demented lover instead of a sensible non-lover; and that in making such a choice he was giving himself up to a faithless, morose, envious, disagreeable being, hurtful to his estate, hurtful to his bodily health, and still more hurtful to the cultivation of his mind, than which there neither is nor ever will be anything more honoured in the eyes both of gods and men. consider this, fair youth, and know that in the friendship of the lover there is no real kindness; he has an appetite and wants to feed upon you: 'as wolves love lambs so lovers love their loves.' but i told you so, i am speaking in verse, and therefore i had better make an end; enough. phaedrus: i thought that you were only half-way and were going to make a similar speech about all the advantages of accepting the non-lover. why do you not proceed? socrates: does not your simplicity observe that i have got out of dithyrambics into heroics, when only uttering a censure on the lover? and if i am to add the praises of the non-lover what will become of me? do you not perceive that i am already overtaken by the nymphs to whom you have mischievously exposed me? and therefore i will only add that the non-lover has all the advantages in which the lover is accused of being deficient. and now i will say no more; there has been enough of both of them. leaving the tale to its fate, i will cross the river and make the best of my way home, lest a worse thing be inflicted upon me by you. phaedrus: not yet, socrates; not until the heat of the day has passed; do you not see that the hour is almost noon? there is the midday sun standing still, as people say, in the meridian. let us rather stay and talk over what has been said, and then return in the cool. socrates: your love of discourse, phaedrus, is superhuman, simply marvellous, and i do not believe that there is any one of your contemporaries who has either made or in one way or another has compelled others to make an equal number of speeches. i would except simmias the theban, but all the rest are far behind you. and now i do verily believe that you have been the cause of another. phaedrus: that is good news. but what do you mean? socrates: i mean to say that as i was about to cross the stream the usual sign was given to me,--that sign which always forbids, but never bids, me to do anything which i am going to do; and i thought that i heard a voice saying in my ear that i had been guilty of impiety, and that i must not go away until i had made an atonement. now i am a diviner, though not a very good one, but i have enough religion for my own use, as you might say of a bad writer--his writing is good enough for him; and i am beginning to see that i was in error. o my friend, how prophetic is the human soul! at the time i had a sort of misgiving, and, like ibycus, 'i was troubled; i feared that i might be buying honour from men at the price of sinning against the gods.' now i recognize my error. phaedrus: what error? socrates: that was a dreadful speech which you brought with you, and you made me utter one as bad. phaedrus: how so? socrates: it was foolish, i say,--to a certain extent, impious; can anything be more dreadful? phaedrus: nothing, if the speech was really such as you describe. socrates: well, and is not eros the son of aphrodite, and a god? phaedrus: so men say. socrates: but that was not acknowledged by lysias in his speech, nor by you in that other speech which you by a charm drew from my lips. for if love be, as he surely is, a divinity, he cannot be evil. yet this was the error of both the speeches. there was also a simplicity about them which was refreshing; having no truth or honesty in them, nevertheless they pretended to be something, hoping to succeed in deceiving the manikins of earth and gain celebrity among them. wherefore i must have a purgation. and i bethink me of an ancient purgation of mythological error which was devised, not by homer, for he never had the wit to discover why he was blind, but by stesichorus, who was a philosopher and knew the reason why; and therefore, when he lost his eyes, for that was the penalty which was inflicted upon him for reviling the lovely helen, he at once purged himself. and the purgation was a recantation, which began thus,-- 'false is that word of mine--the truth is that thou didst not embark in ships, nor ever go to the walls of troy;' and when he had completed his poem, which is called 'the recantation,' immediately his sight returned to him. now i will be wiser than either stesichorus or homer, in that i am going to make my recantation for reviling love before i suffer; and this i will attempt, not as before, veiled and ashamed, but with forehead bold and bare. phaedrus: nothing could be more agreeable to me than to hear you say so. socrates: only think, my good phaedrus, what an utter want of delicacy was shown in the two discourses; i mean, in my own and in that which you recited out of the book. would not any one who was himself of a noble and gentle nature, and who loved or ever had loved a nature like his own, when we tell of the petty causes of lovers' jealousies, and of their exceeding animosities, and of the injuries which they do to their beloved, have imagined that our ideas of love were taken from some haunt of sailors to which good manners were unknown--he would certainly never have admitted the justice of our censure? phaedrus: i dare say not, socrates. socrates: therefore, because i blush at the thought of this person, and also because i am afraid of love himself, i desire to wash the brine out of my ears with water from the spring; and i would counsel lysias not to delay, but to write another discourse, which shall prove that 'ceteris paribus' the lover ought to be accepted rather than the non-lover. phaedrus: be assured that he shall. you shall speak the praises of the lover, and lysias shall be compelled by me to write another discourse on the same theme. socrates: you will be true to your nature in that, and therefore i believe you. phaedrus: speak, and fear not. socrates: but where is the fair youth whom i was addressing before, and who ought to listen now; lest, if he hear me not, he should accept a non-lover before he knows what he is doing? phaedrus: he is close at hand, and always at your service. socrates: know then, fair youth, that the former discourse was the word of phaedrus, the son of vain man, who dwells in the city of myrrhina (myrrhinusius). and this which i am about to utter is the recantation of stesichorus the son of godly man (euphemus), who comes from the town of desire (himera), and is to the following effect: 'i told a lie when i said' that the beloved ought to accept the non-lover when he might have the lover, because the one is sane, and the other mad. it might be so if madness were simply an evil; but there is also a madness which is a divine gift, and the source of the chiefest blessings granted to men. for prophecy is a madness, and the prophetess at delphi and the priestesses at dodona when out of their senses have conferred great benefits on hellas, both in public and private life, but when in their senses few or none. and i might also tell you how the sibyl and other inspired persons have given to many an one many an intimation of the future which has saved them from falling. but it would be tedious to speak of what every one knows. there will be more reason in appealing to the ancient inventors of names (compare cratylus), who would never have connected prophecy (mantike) which foretells the future and is the noblest of arts, with madness (manike), or called them both by the same name, if they had deemed madness to be a disgrace or dishonour;--they must have thought that there was an inspired madness which was a noble thing; for the two words, mantike and manike, are really the same, and the letter tau is only a modern and tasteless insertion. and this is confirmed by the name which was given by them to the rational investigation of futurity, whether made by the help of birds or of other signs--this, for as much as it is an art which supplies from the reasoning faculty mind (nous) and information (istoria) to human thought (oiesis) they originally termed oionoistike, but the word has been lately altered and made sonorous by the modern introduction of the letter omega (oionoistike and oionistike), and in proportion as prophecy (mantike) is more perfect and august than augury, both in name and fact, in the same proportion, as the ancients testify, is madness superior to a sane mind (sophrosune) for the one is only of human, but the other of divine origin. again, where plagues and mightiest woes have bred in certain families, owing to some ancient blood-guiltiness, there madness has entered with holy prayers and rites, and by inspired utterances found a way of deliverance for those who are in need; and he who has part in this gift, and is truly possessed and duly out of his mind, is by the use of purifications and mysteries made whole and exempt from evil, future as well as present, and has a release from the calamity which was afflicting him. the third kind is the madness of those who are possessed by the muses; which taking hold of a delicate and virgin soul, and there inspiring frenzy, awakens lyrical and all other numbers; with these adorning the myriad actions of ancient heroes for the instruction of posterity. but he who, having no touch of the muses' madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks that he will get into the temple by the help of art--he, i say, and his poetry are not admitted; the sane man disappears and is nowhere when he enters into rivalry with the madman. i might tell of many other noble deeds which have sprung from inspired madness. and therefore, let no one frighten or flutter us by saying that the temperate friend is to be chosen rather than the inspired, but let him further show that love is not sent by the gods for any good to lover or beloved; if he can do so we will allow him to carry off the palm. and we, on our part, will prove in answer to him that the madness of love is the greatest of heaven's blessings, and the proof shall be one which the wise will receive, and the witling disbelieve. but first of all, let us view the affections and actions of the soul divine and human, and try to ascertain the truth about them. the beginning of our proof is as follows:-- (translated by cic. tus. quaest.) the soul through all her being is immortal, for that which is ever in motion is immortal; but that which moves another and is moved by another, in ceasing to move ceases also to live. only the self-moving, never leaving self, never ceases to move, and is the fountain and beginning of motion to all that moves besides. now, the beginning is unbegotten, for that which is begotten has a beginning; but the beginning is begotten of nothing, for if it were begotten of something, then the begotten would not come from a beginning. but if unbegotten, it must also be indestructible; for if beginning were destroyed, there could be no beginning out of anything, nor anything out of a beginning; and all things must have a beginning. and therefore the self-moving is the beginning of motion; and this can neither be destroyed nor begotten, else the whole heavens and all creation would collapse and stand still, and never again have motion or birth. but if the self-moving is proved to be immortal, he who affirms that self-motion is the very idea and essence of the soul will not be put to confusion. for the body which is moved from without is soulless; but that which is moved from within has a soul, for such is the nature of the soul. but if this be true, must not the soul be the self-moving, and therefore of necessity unbegotten and immortal? enough of the soul's immortality. of the nature of the soul, though her true form be ever a theme of large and more than mortal discourse, let me speak briefly, and in a figure. and let the figure be composite--a pair of winged horses and a charioteer. now the winged horses and the charioteers of the gods are all of them noble and of noble descent, but those of other races are mixed; the human charioteer drives his in a pair; and one of them is noble and of noble breed, and the other is ignoble and of ignoble breed; and the driving of them of necessity gives a great deal of trouble to him. i will endeavour to explain to you in what way the mortal differs from the immortal creature. the soul in her totality has the care of inanimate being everywhere, and traverses the whole heaven in divers forms appearing--when perfect and fully winged she soars upward, and orders the whole world; whereas the imperfect soul, losing her wings and drooping in her flight at last settles on the solid ground--there, finding a home, she receives an earthly frame which appears to be self-moved, but is really moved by her power; and this composition of soul and body is called a living and mortal creature. for immortal no such union can be reasonably believed to be; although fancy, not having seen nor surely known the nature of god, may imagine an immortal creature having both a body and also a soul which are united throughout all time. let that, however, be as god wills, and be spoken of acceptably to him. and now let us ask the reason why the soul loses her wings! the wing is the corporeal element which is most akin to the divine, and which by nature tends to soar aloft and carry that which gravitates downwards into the upper region, which is the habitation of the gods. the divine is beauty, wisdom, goodness, and the like; and by these the wing of the soul is nourished, and grows apace; but when fed upon evil and foulness and the opposite of good, wastes and falls away. zeus, the mighty lord, holding the reins of a winged chariot, leads the way in heaven, ordering all and taking care of all; and there follows him the array of gods and demi-gods, marshalled in eleven bands; hestia alone abides at home in the house of heaven; of the rest they who are reckoned among the princely twelve march in their appointed order. they see many blessed sights in the inner heaven, and there are many ways to and fro, along which the blessed gods are passing, every one doing his own work; he may follow who will and can, for jealousy has no place in the celestial choir. but when they go to banquet and festival, then they move up the steep to the top of the vault of heaven. the chariots of the gods in even poise, obeying the rein, glide rapidly; but the others labour, for the vicious steed goes heavily, weighing down the charioteer to the earth when his steed has not been thoroughly trained:--and this is the hour of agony and extremest conflict for the soul. for the immortals, when they are at the end of their course, go forth and stand upon the outside of heaven, and the revolution of the spheres carries them round, and they behold the things beyond. but of the heaven which is above the heavens, what earthly poet ever did or ever will sing worthily? it is such as i will describe; for i must dare to speak the truth, when truth is my theme. there abides the very being with which true knowledge is concerned; the colourless, formless, intangible essence, visible only to mind, the pilot of the soul. the divine intelligence, being nurtured upon mind and pure knowledge, and the intelligence of every soul which is capable of receiving the food proper to it, rejoices at beholding reality, and once more gazing upon truth, is replenished and made glad, until the revolution of the worlds brings her round again to the same place. in the revolution she beholds justice, and temperance, and knowledge absolute, not in the form of generation or of relation, which men call existence, but knowledge absolute in existence absolute; and beholding the other true existences in like manner, and feasting upon them, she passes down into the interior of the heavens and returns home; and there the charioteer putting up his horses at the stall, gives them ambrosia to eat and nectar to drink. such is the life of the gods; but of other souls, that which follows god best and is likest to him lifts the head of the charioteer into the outer world, and is carried round in the revolution, troubled indeed by the steeds, and with difficulty beholding true being; while another only rises and falls, and sees, and again fails to see by reason of the unruliness of the steeds. the rest of the souls are also longing after the upper world and they all follow, but not being strong enough they are carried round below the surface, plunging, treading on one another, each striving to be first; and there is confusion and perspiration and the extremity of effort; and many of them are lamed or have their wings broken through the ill-driving of the charioteers; and all of them after a fruitless toil, not having attained to the mysteries of true being, go away, and feed upon opinion. the reason why the souls exhibit this exceeding eagerness to behold the plain of truth is that pasturage is found there, which is suited to the highest part of the soul; and the wing on which the soul soars is nourished with this. and there is a law of destiny, that the soul which attains any vision of truth in company with a god is preserved from harm until the next period, and if attaining always is always unharmed. but when she is unable to follow, and fails to behold the truth, and through some ill-hap sinks beneath the double load of forgetfulness and vice, and her wings fall from her and she drops to the ground, then the law ordains that this soul shall at her first birth pass, not into any other animal, but only into man; and the soul which has seen most of truth shall come to the birth as a philosopher, or artist, or some musical and loving nature; that which has seen truth in the second degree shall be some righteous king or warrior chief; the soul which is of the third class shall be a politician, or economist, or trader; the fourth shall be a lover of gymnastic toils, or a physician; the fifth shall lead the life of a prophet or hierophant; to the sixth the character of poet or some other imitative artist will be assigned; to the seventh the life of an artisan or husbandman; to the eighth that of a sophist or demagogue; to the ninth that of a tyrant--all these are states of probation, in which he who does righteously improves, and he who does unrighteously, deteriorates his lot. ten thousand years must elapse before the soul of each one can return to the place from whence she came, for she cannot grow her wings in less; only the soul of a philosopher, guileless and true, or the soul of a lover, who is not devoid of philosophy, may acquire wings in the third of the recurring periods of a thousand years; he is distinguished from the ordinary good man who gains wings in three thousand years:--and they who choose this life three times in succession have wings given them, and go away at the end of three thousand years. but the others (the philosopher alone is not subject to judgment (krisis), for he has never lost the vision of truth.) receive judgment when they have completed their first life, and after the judgment they go, some of them to the houses of correction which are under the earth, and are punished; others to some place in heaven whither they are lightly borne by justice, and there they live in a manner worthy of the life which they led here when in the form of men. and at the end of the first thousand years the good souls and also the evil souls both come to draw lots and choose their second life, and they may take any which they please. the soul of a man may pass into the life of a beast, or from the beast return again into the man. but the soul which has never seen the truth will not pass into the human form. for a man must have intelligence of universals, and be able to proceed from the many particulars of sense to one conception of reason;--this is the recollection of those things which our soul once saw while following god--when regardless of that which we now call being she raised her head up towards the true being. and therefore the mind of the philosopher alone has wings; and this is just, for he is always, according to the measure of his abilities, clinging in recollection to those things in which god abides, and in beholding which he is what he is. and he who employs aright these memories is ever being initiated into perfect mysteries and alone becomes truly perfect. but, as he forgets earthly interests and is rapt in the divine, the vulgar deem him mad, and rebuke him; they do not see that he is inspired. thus far i have been speaking of the fourth and last kind of madness, which is imputed to him who, when he sees the beauty of earth, is transported with the recollection of the true beauty; he would like to fly away, but he cannot; he is like a bird fluttering and looking upward and careless of the world below; and he is therefore thought to be mad. and i have shown this of all inspirations to be the noblest and highest and the offspring of the highest to him who has or shares in it, and that he who loves the beautiful is called a lover because he partakes of it. for, as has been already said, every soul of man has in the way of nature beheld true being; this was the condition of her passing into the form of man. but all souls do not easily recall the things of the other world; they may have seen them for a short time only, or they may have been unfortunate in their earthly lot, and, having had their hearts turned to unrighteousness through some corrupting influence, they may have lost the memory of the holy things which once they saw. few only retain an adequate remembrance of them; and they, when they behold here any image of that other world, are rapt in amazement; but they are ignorant of what this rapture means, because they do not clearly perceive. for there is no light of justice or temperance or any of the higher ideas which are precious to souls in the earthly copies of them: they are seen through a glass dimly; and there are few who, going to the images, behold in them the realities, and these only with difficulty. there was a time when with the rest of the happy band they saw beauty shining in brightness,--we philosophers following in the train of zeus, others in company with other gods; and then we beheld the beatific vision and were initiated into a mystery which may be truly called most blessed, celebrated by us in our state of innocence, before we had any experience of evils to come, when we were admitted to the sight of apparitions innocent and simple and calm and happy, which we beheld shining in pure light, pure ourselves and not yet enshrined in that living tomb which we carry about, now that we are imprisoned in the body, like an oyster in his shell. let me linger over the memory of scenes which have passed away. but of beauty, i repeat again that we saw her there shining in company with the celestial forms; and coming to earth we find her here too, shining in clearness through the clearest aperture of sense. for sight is the most piercing of our bodily senses; though not by that is wisdom seen; her loveliness would have been transporting if there had been a visible image of her, and the other ideas, if they had visible counterparts, would be equally lovely. but this is the privilege of beauty, that being the loveliest she is also the most palpable to sight. now he who is not newly initiated or who has become corrupted, does not easily rise out of this world to the sight of true beauty in the other; he looks only at her earthly namesake, and instead of being awed at the sight of her, he is given over to pleasure, and like a brutish beast he rushes on to enjoy and beget; he consorts with wantonness, and is not afraid or ashamed of pursuing pleasure in violation of nature. but he whose initiation is recent, and who has been the spectator of many glories in the other world, is amazed when he sees any one having a godlike face or form, which is the expression of divine beauty; and at first a shudder runs through him, and again the old awe steals over him; then looking upon the face of his beloved as of a god he reverences him, and if he were not afraid of being thought a downright madman, he would sacrifice to his beloved as to the image of a god; then while he gazes on him there is a sort of reaction, and the shudder passes into an unusual heat and perspiration; for, as he receives the effluence of beauty through the eyes, the wing moistens and he warms. and as he warms, the parts out of which the wing grew, and which had been hitherto closed and rigid, and had prevented the wing from shooting forth, are melted, and as nourishment streams upon him, the lower end of the wing begins to swell and grow from the root upwards; and the growth extends under the whole soul--for once the whole was winged. during this process the whole soul is all in a state of ebullition and effervescence,--which may be compared to the irritation and uneasiness in the gums at the time of cutting teeth,--bubbles up, and has a feeling of uneasiness and tickling; but when in like manner the soul is beginning to grow wings, the beauty of the beloved meets her eye and she receives the sensible warm motion of particles which flow towards her, therefore called emotion (imeros), and is refreshed and warmed by them, and then she ceases from her pain with joy. but when she is parted from her beloved and her moisture fails, then the orifices of the passage out of which the wing shoots dry up and close, and intercept the germ of the wing; which, being shut up with the emotion, throbbing as with the pulsations of an artery, pricks the aperture which is nearest, until at length the entire soul is pierced and maddened and pained, and at the recollection of beauty is again delighted. and from both of them together the soul is oppressed at the strangeness of her condition, and is in a great strait and excitement, and in her madness can neither sleep by night nor abide in her place by day. and wherever she thinks that she will behold the beautiful one, thither in her desire she runs. and when she has seen him, and bathed herself in the waters of beauty, her constraint is loosened, and she is refreshed, and has no more pangs and pains; and this is the sweetest of all pleasures at the time, and is the reason why the soul of the lover will never forsake his beautiful one, whom he esteems above all; he has forgotten mother and brethren and companions, and he thinks nothing of the neglect and loss of his property; the rules and proprieties of life, on which he formerly prided himself, he now despises, and is ready to sleep like a servant, wherever he is allowed, as near as he can to his desired one, who is the object of his worship, and the physician who can alone assuage the greatness of his pain. and this state, my dear imaginary youth to whom i am talking, is by men called love, and among the gods has a name at which you, in your simplicity, may be inclined to mock; there are two lines in the apocryphal writings of homer in which the name occurs. one of them is rather outrageous, and not altogether metrical. they are as follows: 'mortals call him fluttering love, but the immortals call him winged one, because the growing of wings (or, reading pterothoiton, 'the movement of wings.') is a necessity to him.' you may believe this, but not unless you like. at any rate the loves of lovers and their causes are such as i have described. now the lover who is taken to be the attendant of zeus is better able to bear the winged god, and can endure a heavier burden; but the attendants and companions of ares, when under the influence of love, if they fancy that they have been at all wronged, are ready to kill and put an end to themselves and their beloved. and he who follows in the train of any other god, while he is unspoiled and the impression lasts, honours and imitates him, as far as he is able; and after the manner of his god he behaves in his intercourse with his beloved and with the rest of the world during the first period of his earthly existence. every one chooses his love from the ranks of beauty according to his character, and this he makes his god, and fashions and adorns as a sort of image which he is to fall down and worship. the followers of zeus desire that their beloved should have a soul like him; and therefore they seek out some one of a philosophical and imperial nature, and when they have found him and loved him, they do all they can to confirm such a nature in him, and if they have no experience of such a disposition hitherto, they learn of any one who can teach them, and themselves follow in the same way. and they have the less difficulty in finding the nature of their own god in themselves, because they have been compelled to gaze intensely on him; their recollection clings to him, and they become possessed of him, and receive from him their character and disposition, so far as man can participate in god. the qualities of their god they attribute to the beloved, wherefore they love him all the more, and if, like the bacchic nymphs, they draw inspiration from zeus, they pour out their own fountain upon him, wanting to make him as like as possible to their own god. but those who are the followers of here seek a royal love, and when they have found him they do just the same with him; and in like manner the followers of apollo, and of every other god walking in the ways of their god, seek a love who is to be made like him whom they serve, and when they have found him, they themselves imitate their god, and persuade their love to do the same, and educate him into the manner and nature of the god as far as they each can; for no feelings of envy or jealousy are entertained by them towards their beloved, but they do their utmost to create in him the greatest likeness of themselves and of the god whom they honour. thus fair and blissful to the beloved is the desire of the inspired lover, and the initiation of which i speak into the mysteries of true love, if he be captured by the lover and their purpose is effected. now the beloved is taken captive in the following manner:-- as i said at the beginning of this tale, i divided each soul into three--two horses and a charioteer; and one of the horses was good and the other bad: the division may remain, but i have not yet explained in what the goodness or badness of either consists, and to that i will now proceed. the right-hand horse is upright and cleanly made; he has a lofty neck and an aquiline nose; his colour is white, and his eyes dark; he is a lover of honour and modesty and temperance, and the follower of true glory; he needs no touch of the whip, but is guided by word and admonition only. the other is a crooked lumbering animal, put together anyhow; he has a short thick neck; he is flat-faced and of a dark colour, with grey eyes and blood-red complexion (or with grey and blood-shot eyes.); the mate of insolence and pride, shag-eared and deaf, hardly yielding to whip and spur. now when the charioteer beholds the vision of love, and has his whole soul warmed through sense, and is full of the prickings and ticklings of desire, the obedient steed, then as always under the government of shame, refrains from leaping on the beloved; but the other, heedless of the pricks and of the blows of the whip, plunges and runs away, giving all manner of trouble to his companion and the charioteer, whom he forces to approach the beloved and to remember the joys of love. they at first indignantly oppose him and will not be urged on to do terrible and unlawful deeds; but at last, when he persists in plaguing them, they yield and agree to do as he bids them. and now they are at the spot and behold the flashing beauty of the beloved; which when the charioteer sees, his memory is carried to the true beauty, whom he beholds in company with modesty like an image placed upon a holy pedestal. he sees her, but he is afraid and falls backwards in adoration, and by his fall is compelled to pull back the reins with such violence as to bring both the steeds on their haunches, the one willing and unresisting, the unruly one very unwilling; and when they have gone back a little, the one is overcome with shame and wonder, and his whole soul is bathed in perspiration; the other, when the pain is over which the bridle and the fall had given him, having with difficulty taken breath, is full of wrath and reproaches, which he heaps upon the charioteer and his fellow-steed, for want of courage and manhood, declaring that they have been false to their agreement and guilty of desertion. again they refuse, and again he urges them on, and will scarce yield to their prayer that he would wait until another time. when the appointed hour comes, they make as if they had forgotten, and he reminds them, fighting and neighing and dragging them on, until at length he on the same thoughts intent, forces them to draw near again. and when they are near he stoops his head and puts up his tail, and takes the bit in his teeth and pulls shamelessly. then the charioteer is worse off than ever; he falls back like a racer at the barrier, and with a still more violent wrench drags the bit out of the teeth of the wild steed and covers his abusive tongue and jaws with blood, and forces his legs and haunches to the ground and punishes him sorely. and when this has happened several times and the villain has ceased from his wanton way, he is tamed and humbled, and follows the will of the charioteer, and when he sees the beautiful one he is ready to die of fear. and from that time forward the soul of the lover follows the beloved in modesty and holy fear. and so the beloved who, like a god, has received every true and loyal service from his lover, not in pretence but in reality, being also himself of a nature friendly to his admirer, if in former days he has blushed to own his passion and turned away his lover, because his youthful companions or others slanderously told him that he would be disgraced, now as years advance, at the appointed age and time, is led to receive him into communion. for fate which has ordained that there shall be no friendship among the evil has also ordained that there shall ever be friendship among the good. and the beloved when he has received him into communion and intimacy, is quite amazed at the good-will of the lover; he recognises that the inspired friend is worth all other friends or kinsmen; they have nothing of friendship in them worthy to be compared with his. and when this feeling continues and he is nearer to him and embraces him, in gymnastic exercises and at other times of meeting, then the fountain of that stream, which zeus when he was in love with ganymede named desire, overflows upon the lover, and some enters into his soul, and some when he is filled flows out again; and as a breeze or an echo rebounds from the smooth rocks and returns whence it came, so does the stream of beauty, passing through the eyes which are the windows of the soul, come back to the beautiful one; there arriving and quickening the passages of the wings, watering them and inclining them to grow, and filling the soul of the beloved also with love. and thus he loves, but he knows not what; he does not understand and cannot explain his own state; he appears to have caught the infection of blindness from another; the lover is his mirror in whom he is beholding himself, but he is not aware of this. when he is with the lover, both cease from their pain, but when he is away then he longs as he is longed for, and has love's image, love for love (anteros) lodging in his breast, which he calls and believes to be not love but friendship only, and his desire is as the desire of the other, but weaker; he wants to see him, touch him, kiss him, embrace him, and probably not long afterwards his desire is accomplished. when they meet, the wanton steed of the lover has a word to say to the charioteer; he would like to have a little pleasure in return for many pains, but the wanton steed of the beloved says not a word, for he is bursting with passion which he understands not;--he throws his arms round the lover and embraces him as his dearest friend; and, when they are side by side, he is not in a state in which he can refuse the lover anything, if he ask him; although his fellow-steed and the charioteer oppose him with the arguments of shame and reason. after this their happiness depends upon their self-control; if the better elements of the mind which lead to order and philosophy prevail, then they pass their life here in happiness and harmony--masters of themselves and orderly--enslaving the vicious and emancipating the virtuous elements of the soul; and when the end comes, they are light and winged for flight, having conquered in one of the three heavenly or truly olympian victories; nor can human discipline or divine inspiration confer any greater blessing on man than this. if, on the other hand, they leave philosophy and lead the lower life of ambition, then probably, after wine or in some other careless hour, the two wanton animals take the two souls when off their guard and bring them together, and they accomplish that desire of their hearts which to the many is bliss; and this having once enjoyed they continue to enjoy, yet rarely because they have not the approval of the whole soul. they too are dear, but not so dear to one another as the others, either at the time of their love or afterwards. they consider that they have given and taken from each other the most sacred pledges, and they may not break them and fall into enmity. at last they pass out of the body, unwinged, but eager to soar, and thus obtain no mean reward of love and madness. for those who have once begun the heavenward pilgrimage may not go down again to darkness and the journey beneath the earth, but they live in light always; happy companions in their pilgrimage, and when the time comes at which they receive their wings they have the same plumage because of their love. thus great are the heavenly blessings which the friendship of a lover will confer upon you, my youth. whereas the attachment of the non-lover, which is alloyed with a worldly prudence and has worldly and niggardly ways of doling out benefits, will breed in your soul those vulgar qualities which the populace applaud, will send you bowling round the earth during a period of nine thousand years, and leave you a fool in the world below. and thus, dear eros, i have made and paid my recantation, as well and as fairly as i could; more especially in the matter of the poetical figures which i was compelled to use, because phaedrus would have them. and now forgive the past and accept the present, and be gracious and merciful to me, and do not in thine anger deprive me of sight, or take from me the art of love which thou hast given me, but grant that i may be yet more esteemed in the eyes of the fair. and if phaedrus or i myself said anything rude in our first speeches, blame lysias, who is the father of the brat, and let us have no more of his progeny; bid him study philosophy, like his brother polemarchus; and then his lover phaedrus will no longer halt between two opinions, but will dedicate himself wholly to love and to philosophical discourses. phaedrus: i join in the prayer, socrates, and say with you, if this be for my good, may your words come to pass. but why did you make your second oration so much finer than the first? i wonder why. and i begin to be afraid that i shall lose conceit of lysias, and that he will appear tame in comparison, even if he be willing to put another as fine and as long as yours into the field, which i doubt. for quite lately one of your politicians was abusing him on this very account; and called him a 'speech writer' again and again. so that a feeling of pride may probably induce him to give up writing speeches. socrates: what a very amusing notion! but i think, my young man, that you are much mistaken in your friend if you imagine that he is frightened at a little noise; and, possibly, you think that his assailant was in earnest? phaedrus: i thought, socrates, that he was. and you are aware that the greatest and most influential statesmen are ashamed of writing speeches and leaving them in a written form, lest they should be called sophists by posterity. socrates: you seem to be unconscious, phaedrus, that the 'sweet elbow' (a proverb, like 'the grapes are sour,' applied to pleasures which cannot be had, meaning sweet things which, like the elbow, are out of the reach of the mouth. the promised pleasure turns out to be a long and tedious affair.) of the proverb is really the long arm of the nile. and you appear to be equally unaware of the fact that this sweet elbow of theirs is also a long arm. for there is nothing of which our great politicians are so fond as of writing speeches and bequeathing them to posterity. and they add their admirers' names at the top of the writing, out of gratitude to them. phaedrus: what do you mean? i do not understand. socrates: why, do you not know that when a politician writes, he begins with the names of his approvers? phaedrus: how so? socrates: why, he begins in this manner: 'be it enacted by the senate, the people, or both, on the motion of a certain person,' who is our author; and so putting on a serious face, he proceeds to display his own wisdom to his admirers in what is often a long and tedious composition. now what is that sort of thing but a regular piece of authorship? phaedrus: true. socrates: and if the law is finally approved, then the author leaves the theatre in high delight; but if the law is rejected and he is done out of his speech-making, and not thought good enough to write, then he and his party are in mourning. phaedrus: very true. socrates: so far are they from despising, or rather so highly do they value the practice of writing. phaedrus: no doubt. socrates: and when the king or orator has the power, as lycurgus or solon or darius had, of attaining an immortality or authorship in a state, is he not thought by posterity, when they see his compositions, and does he not think himself, while he is yet alive, to be a god? phaedrus: very true. socrates: then do you think that any one of this class, however ill-disposed, would reproach lysias with being an author? phaedrus: not upon your view; for according to you he would be casting a slur upon his own favourite pursuit. socrates: any one may see that there is no disgrace in the mere fact of writing. phaedrus: certainly not. socrates: the disgrace begins when a man writes not well, but badly. phaedrus: clearly. socrates: and what is well and what is badly--need we ask lysias, or any other poet or orator, who ever wrote or will write either a political or any other work, in metre or out of metre, poet or prose writer, to teach us this? phaedrus: need we? for what should a man live if not for the pleasures of discourse? surely not for the sake of bodily pleasures, which almost always have previous pain as a condition of them, and therefore are rightly called slavish. socrates: there is time enough. and i believe that the grasshoppers chirruping after their manner in the heat of the sun over our heads are talking to one another and looking down at us. what would they say if they saw that we, like the many, are not conversing, but slumbering at mid-day, lulled by their voices, too indolent to think? would they not have a right to laugh at us? they might imagine that we were slaves, who, coming to rest at a place of resort of theirs, like sheep lie asleep at noon around the well. but if they see us discoursing, and like odysseus sailing past them, deaf to their siren voices, they may perhaps, out of respect, give us of the gifts which they receive from the gods that they may impart them to men. phaedrus: what gifts do you mean? i never heard of any. socrates: a lover of music like yourself ought surely to have heard the story of the grasshoppers, who are said to have been human beings in an age before the muses. and when the muses came and song appeared they were ravished with delight; and singing always, never thought of eating and drinking, until at last in their forgetfulness they died. and now they live again in the grasshoppers; and this is the return which the muses make to them--they neither hunger, nor thirst, but from the hour of their birth are always singing, and never eating or drinking; and when they die they go and inform the muses in heaven who honours them on earth. they win the love of terpsichore for the dancers by their report of them; of erato for the lovers, and of the other muses for those who do them honour, according to the several ways of honouring them;--of calliope the eldest muse and of urania who is next to her, for the philosophers, of whose music the grasshoppers make report to them; for these are the muses who are chiefly concerned with heaven and thought, divine as well as human, and they have the sweetest utterance. for many reasons, then, we ought always to talk and not to sleep at mid-day. phaedrus: let us talk. socrates: shall we discuss the rules of writing and speech as we were proposing? phaedrus: very good. socrates: in good speaking should not the mind of the speaker know the truth of the matter about which he is going to speak? phaedrus: and yet, socrates, i have heard that he who would be an orator has nothing to do with true justice, but only with that which is likely to be approved by the many who sit in judgment; nor with the truly good or honourable, but only with opinion about them, and that from opinion comes persuasion, and not from the truth. socrates: the words of the wise are not to be set aside; for there is probably something in them; and therefore the meaning of this saying is not hastily to be dismissed. phaedrus: very true. socrates: let us put the matter thus:--suppose that i persuaded you to buy a horse and go to the wars. neither of us knew what a horse was like, but i knew that you believed a horse to be of tame animals the one which has the longest ears. phaedrus: that would be ridiculous. socrates: there is something more ridiculous coming:--suppose, further, that in sober earnest i, having persuaded you of this, went and composed a speech in honour of an ass, whom i entitled a horse beginning: 'a noble animal and a most useful possession, especially in war, and you may get on his back and fight, and he will carry baggage or anything.' phaedrus: how ridiculous! socrates: ridiculous! yes; but is not even a ridiculous friend better than a cunning enemy? phaedrus: certainly. socrates: and when the orator instead of putting an ass in the place of a horse, puts good for evil, being himself as ignorant of their true nature as the city on which he imposes is ignorant; and having studied the notions of the multitude, falsely persuades them not about 'the shadow of an ass,' which he confounds with a horse, but about good which he confounds with evil,--what will be the harvest which rhetoric will be likely to gather after the sowing of that seed? phaedrus: the reverse of good. socrates: but perhaps rhetoric has been getting too roughly handled by us, and she might answer: what amazing nonsense you are talking! as if i forced any man to learn to speak in ignorance of the truth! whatever my advice may be worth, i should have told him to arrive at the truth first, and then come to me. at the same time i boldly assert that mere knowledge of the truth will not give you the art of persuasion. phaedrus: there is reason in the lady's defence of herself. socrates: quite true; if only the other arguments which remain to be brought up bear her witness that she is an art at all. but i seem to hear them arraying themselves on the opposite side, declaring that she speaks falsely, and that rhetoric is a mere routine and trick, not an art. lo! a spartan appears, and says that there never is nor ever will be a real art of speaking which is divorced from the truth. phaedrus: and what are these arguments, socrates? bring them out that we may examine them. socrates: come out, fair children, and convince phaedrus, who is the father of similar beauties, that he will never be able to speak about anything as he ought to speak unless he have a knowledge of philosophy. and let phaedrus answer you. phaedrus: put the question. socrates: is not rhetoric, taken generally, a universal art of enchanting the mind by arguments; which is practised not only in courts and public assemblies, but in private houses also, having to do with all matters, great as well as small, good and bad alike, and is in all equally right, and equally to be esteemed--that is what you have heard? phaedrus: nay, not exactly that; i should say rather that i have heard the art confined to speaking and writing in lawsuits, and to speaking in public assemblies--not extended farther. socrates: then i suppose that you have only heard of the rhetoric of nestor and odysseus, which they composed in their leisure hours when at troy, and never of the rhetoric of palamedes? phaedrus: no more than of nestor and odysseus, unless gorgias is your nestor, and thrasymachus or theodorus your odysseus. socrates: perhaps that is my meaning. but let us leave them. and do you tell me, instead, what are plaintiff and defendant doing in a law court--are they not contending? phaedrus: exactly so. socrates: about the just and unjust--that is the matter in dispute? phaedrus: yes. socrates: and a professor of the art will make the same thing appear to the same persons to be at one time just, at another time, if he is so inclined, to be unjust? phaedrus: exactly. socrates: and when he speaks in the assembly, he will make the same things seem good to the city at one time, and at another time the reverse of good? phaedrus: that is true. socrates: have we not heard of the eleatic palamedes (zeno), who has an art of speaking by which he makes the same things appear to his hearers like and unlike, one and many, at rest and in motion? phaedrus: very true. socrates: the art of disputation, then, is not confined to the courts and the assembly, but is one and the same in every use of language; this is the art, if there be such an art, which is able to find a likeness of everything to which a likeness can be found, and draws into the light of day the likenesses and disguises which are used by others? phaedrus: how do you mean? socrates: let me put the matter thus: when will there be more chance of deception--when the difference is large or small? phaedrus: when the difference is small. socrates: and you will be less likely to be discovered in passing by degrees into the other extreme than when you go all at once? phaedrus: of course. socrates: he, then, who would deceive others, and not be deceived, must exactly know the real likenesses and differences of things? phaedrus: he must. socrates: and if he is ignorant of the true nature of any subject, how can he detect the greater or less degree of likeness in other things to that of which by the hypothesis he is ignorant? phaedrus: he cannot. socrates: and when men are deceived and their notions are at variance with realities, it is clear that the error slips in through resemblances? phaedrus: yes, that is the way. socrates: then he who would be a master of the art must understand the real nature of everything; or he will never know either how to make the gradual departure from truth into the opposite of truth which is effected by the help of resemblances, or how to avoid it? phaedrus: he will not. socrates: he then, who being ignorant of the truth aims at appearances, will only attain an art of rhetoric which is ridiculous and is not an art at all? phaedrus: that may be expected. socrates: shall i propose that we look for examples of art and want of art, according to our notion of them, in the speech of lysias which you have in your hand, and in my own speech? phaedrus: nothing could be better; and indeed i think that our previous argument has been too abstract and wanting in illustrations. socrates: yes; and the two speeches happen to afford a very good example of the way in which the speaker who knows the truth may, without any serious purpose, steal away the hearts of his hearers. this piece of good-fortune i attribute to the local deities; and, perhaps, the prophets of the muses who are singing over our heads may have imparted their inspiration to me. for i do not imagine that i have any rhetorical art of my own. phaedrus: granted; if you will only please to get on. socrates: suppose that you read me the first words of lysias' speech. phaedrus: 'you know how matters stand with me, and how, as i conceive, they might be arranged for our common interest; and i maintain that i ought not to fail in my suit, because i am not your lover. for lovers repent--' socrates: enough:--now, shall i point out the rhetorical error of those words? phaedrus: yes. socrates: every one is aware that about some things we are agreed, whereas about other things we differ. phaedrus: i think that i understand you; but will you explain yourself? socrates: when any one speaks of iron and silver, is not the same thing present in the minds of all? phaedrus: certainly. socrates: but when any one speaks of justice and goodness we part company and are at odds with one another and with ourselves? phaedrus: precisely. socrates: then in some things we agree, but not in others? phaedrus: that is true. socrates: in which are we more likely to be deceived, and in which has rhetoric the greater power? phaedrus: clearly, in the uncertain class. socrates: then the rhetorician ought to make a regular division, and acquire a distinct notion of both classes, as well of that in which the many err, as of that in which they do not err? phaedrus: he who made such a distinction would have an excellent principle. socrates: yes; and in the next place he must have a keen eye for the observation of particulars in speaking, and not make a mistake about the class to which they are to be referred. phaedrus: certainly. socrates: now to which class does love belong--to the debatable or to the undisputed class? phaedrus: to the debatable, clearly; for if not, do you think that love would have allowed you to say as you did, that he is an evil both to the lover and the beloved, and also the greatest possible good? socrates: capital. but will you tell me whether i defined love at the beginning of my speech? for, having been in an ecstasy, i cannot well remember. phaedrus: yes, indeed; that you did, and no mistake. socrates: then i perceive that the nymphs of achelous and pan the son of hermes, who inspired me, were far better rhetoricians than lysias the son of cephalus. alas! how inferior to them he is! but perhaps i am mistaken; and lysias at the commencement of his lover's speech did insist on our supposing love to be something or other which he fancied him to be, and according to this model he fashioned and framed the remainder of his discourse. suppose we read his beginning over again: phaedrus: if you please; but you will not find what you want. socrates: read, that i may have his exact words. phaedrus: 'you know how matters stand with me, and how, as i conceive, they might be arranged for our common interest; and i maintain i ought not to fail in my suit because i am not your lover, for lovers repent of the kindnesses which they have shown, when their love is over.' socrates: here he appears to have done just the reverse of what he ought; for he has begun at the end, and is swimming on his back through the flood to the place of starting. his address to the fair youth begins where the lover would have ended. am i not right, sweet phaedrus? phaedrus: yes, indeed, socrates; he does begin at the end. socrates: then as to the other topics--are they not thrown down anyhow? is there any principle in them? why should the next topic follow next in order, or any other topic? i cannot help fancying in my ignorance that he wrote off boldly just what came into his head, but i dare say that you would recognize a rhetorical necessity in the succession of the several parts of the composition? phaedrus: you have too good an opinion of me if you think that i have any such insight into his principles of composition. socrates: at any rate, you will allow that every discourse ought to be a living creature, having a body of its own and a head and feet; there should be a middle, beginning, and end, adapted to one another and to the whole? phaedrus: certainly. socrates: can this be said of the discourse of lysias? see whether you can find any more connexion in his words than in the epitaph which is said by some to have been inscribed on the grave of midas the phrygian. phaedrus: what is there remarkable in the epitaph? socrates: it is as follows:-- 'i am a maiden of bronze and lie on the tomb of midas; so long as water flows and tall trees grow, so long here on this spot by his sad tomb abiding, i shall declare to passers-by that midas sleeps below.' now in this rhyme whether a line comes first or comes last, as you will perceive, makes no difference. phaedrus: you are making fun of that oration of ours. socrates: well, i will say no more about your friend's speech lest i should give offence to you; although i think that it might furnish many other examples of what a man ought rather to avoid. but i will proceed to the other speech, which, as i think, is also suggestive to students of rhetoric. phaedrus: in what way? socrates: the two speeches, as you may remember, were unlike; the one argued that the lover and the other that the non-lover ought to be accepted. phaedrus: and right manfully. socrates: you should rather say 'madly;' and madness was the argument of them, for, as i said, 'love is a madness.' phaedrus: yes. socrates: and of madness there were two kinds; one produced by human infirmity, the other was a divine release of the soul from the yoke of custom and convention. phaedrus: true. socrates: the divine madness was subdivided into four kinds, prophetic, initiatory, poetic, erotic, having four gods presiding over them; the first was the inspiration of apollo, the second that of dionysus, the third that of the muses, the fourth that of aphrodite and eros. in the description of the last kind of madness, which was also said to be the best, we spoke of the affection of love in a figure, into which we introduced a tolerably credible and possibly true though partly erring myth, which was also a hymn in honour of love, who is your lord and also mine, phaedrus, and the guardian of fair children, and to him we sung the hymn in measured and solemn strain. phaedrus: i know that i had great pleasure in listening to you. socrates: let us take this instance and note how the transition was made from blame to praise. phaedrus: what do you mean? socrates: i mean to say that the composition was mostly playful. yet in these chance fancies of the hour were involved two principles of which we should be too glad to have a clearer description if art could give us one. phaedrus: what are they? socrates: first, the comprehension of scattered particulars in one idea; as in our definition of love, which whether true or false certainly gave clearness and consistency to the discourse, the speaker should define his several notions and so make his meaning clear. phaedrus: what is the other principle, socrates? socrates: the second principle is that of division into species according to the natural formation, where the joint is, not breaking any part as a bad carver might. just as our two discourses, alike assumed, first of all, a single form of unreason; and then, as the body which from being one becomes double and may be divided into a left side and right side, each having parts right and left of the same name--after this manner the speaker proceeded to divide the parts of the left side and did not desist until he found in them an evil or left-handed love which he justly reviled; and the other discourse leading us to the madness which lay on the right side, found another love, also having the same name, but divine, which the speaker held up before us and applauded and affirmed to be the author of the greatest benefits. phaedrus: most true. socrates: i am myself a great lover of these processes of division and generalization; they help me to speak and to think. and if i find any man who is able to see 'a one and many' in nature, him i follow, and 'walk in his footsteps as if he were a god.' and those who have this art, i have hitherto been in the habit of calling dialecticians; but god knows whether the name is right or not. and i should like to know what name you would give to your or to lysias' disciples, and whether this may not be that famous art of rhetoric which thrasymachus and others teach and practise? skilful speakers they are, and impart their skill to any who is willing to make kings of them and to bring gifts to them. phaedrus: yes, they are royal men; but their art is not the same with the art of those whom you call, and rightly, in my opinion, dialecticians:--still we are in the dark about rhetoric. socrates: what do you mean? the remains of it, if there be anything remaining which can be brought under rules of art, must be a fine thing; and, at any rate, is not to be despised by you and me. but how much is left? phaedrus: there is a great deal surely to be found in books of rhetoric? socrates: yes; thank you for reminding me:--there is the exordium, showing how the speech should begin, if i remember rightly; that is what you mean--the niceties of the art? phaedrus: yes. socrates: then follows the statement of facts, and upon that witnesses; thirdly, proofs; fourthly, probabilities are to come; the great byzantian word-maker also speaks, if i am not mistaken, of confirmation and further confirmation. phaedrus: you mean the excellent theodorus. socrates: yes; and he tells how refutation or further refutation is to be managed, whether in accusation or defence. i ought also to mention the illustrious parian, evenus, who first invented insinuations and indirect praises; and also indirect censures, which according to some he put into verse to help the memory. but shall i 'to dumb forgetfulness consign' tisias and gorgias, who are not ignorant that probability is superior to truth, and who by force of argument make the little appear great and the great little, disguise the new in old fashions and the old in new fashions, and have discovered forms for everything, either short or going on to infinity. i remember prodicus laughing when i told him of this; he said that he had himself discovered the true rule of art, which was to be neither long nor short, but of a convenient length. phaedrus: well done, prodicus! socrates: then there is hippias the elean stranger, who probably agrees with him. phaedrus: yes. socrates: and there is also polus, who has treasuries of diplasiology, and gnomology, and eikonology, and who teaches in them the names of which licymnius made him a present; they were to give a polish. phaedrus: had not protagoras something of the same sort? socrates: yes, rules of correct diction and many other fine precepts; for the 'sorrows of a poor old man,' or any other pathetic case, no one is better than the chalcedonian giant; he can put a whole company of people into a passion and out of one again by his mighty magic, and is first-rate at inventing or disposing of any sort of calumny on any grounds or none. all of them agree in asserting that a speech should end in a recapitulation, though they do not all agree to use the same word. phaedrus: you mean that there should be a summing up of the arguments in order to remind the hearers of them. socrates: i have now said all that i have to say of the art of rhetoric: have you anything to add? phaedrus: not much; nothing very important. socrates: leave the unimportant and let us bring the really important question into the light of day, which is: what power has this art of rhetoric, and when? phaedrus: a very great power in public meetings. socrates: it has. but i should like to know whether you have the same feeling as i have about the rhetoricians? to me there seem to be a great many holes in their web. phaedrus: give an example. socrates: i will. suppose a person to come to your friend eryximachus, or to his father acumenus, and to say to him: 'i know how to apply drugs which shall have either a heating or a cooling effect, and i can give a vomit and also a purge, and all that sort of thing; and knowing all this, as i do, i claim to be a physician and to make physicians by imparting this knowledge to others,'--what do you suppose that they would say? phaedrus: they would be sure to ask him whether he knew 'to whom' he would give his medicines, and 'when,' and 'how much.' socrates: and suppose that he were to reply: 'no; i know nothing of all that; i expect the patient who consults me to be able to do these things for himself'? phaedrus: they would say in reply that he is a madman or a pedant who fancies that he is a physician because he has read something in a book, or has stumbled on a prescription or two, although he has no real understanding of the art of medicine. socrates: and suppose a person were to come to sophocles or euripides and say that he knows how to make a very long speech about a small matter, and a short speech about a great matter, and also a sorrowful speech, or a terrible, or threatening speech, or any other kind of speech, and in teaching this fancies that he is teaching the art of tragedy--? phaedrus: they too would surely laugh at him if he fancies that tragedy is anything but the arranging of these elements in a manner which will be suitable to one another and to the whole. socrates: but i do not suppose that they would be rude or abusive to him: would they not treat him as a musician a man who thinks that he is a harmonist because he knows how to pitch the highest and lowest note; happening to meet such an one he would not say to him savagely, 'fool, you are mad!' but like a musician, in a gentle and harmonious tone of voice, he would answer: 'my good friend, he who would be a harmonist must certainly know this, and yet he may understand nothing of harmony if he has not got beyond your stage of knowledge, for you only know the preliminaries of harmony and not harmony itself.' phaedrus: very true. socrates: and will not sophocles say to the display of the would-be tragedian, that this is not tragedy but the preliminaries of tragedy? and will not acumenus say the same of medicine to the would-be physician? phaedrus: quite true. socrates: and if adrastus the mellifluous or pericles heard of these wonderful arts, brachylogies and eikonologies and all the hard names which we have been endeavouring to draw into the light of day, what would they say? instead of losing temper and applying uncomplimentary epithets, as you and i have been doing, to the authors of such an imaginary art, their superior wisdom would rather censure us, as well as them. 'have a little patience, phaedrus and socrates, they would say; you should not be in such a passion with those who from some want of dialectical skill are unable to define the nature of rhetoric, and consequently suppose that they have found the art in the preliminary conditions of it, and when these have been taught by them to others, fancy that the whole art of rhetoric has been taught by them; but as to using the several instruments of the art effectively, or making the composition a whole,--an application of it such as this is they regard as an easy thing which their disciples may make for themselves.' phaedrus: i quite admit, socrates, that the art of rhetoric which these men teach and of which they write is such as you describe--there i agree with you. but i still want to know where and how the true art of rhetoric and persuasion is to be acquired. socrates: the perfection which is required of the finished orator is, or rather must be, like the perfection of anything else; partly given by nature, but may also be assisted by art. if you have the natural power and add to it knowledge and practice, you will be a distinguished speaker; if you fall short in either of these, you will be to that extent defective. but the art, as far as there is an art, of rhetoric does not lie in the direction of lysias or thrasymachus. phaedrus: in what direction then? socrates: i conceive pericles to have been the most accomplished of rhetoricians. phaedrus: what of that? socrates: all the great arts require discussion and high speculation about the truths of nature; hence come loftiness of thought and completeness of execution. and this, as i conceive, was the quality which, in addition to his natural gifts, pericles acquired from his intercourse with anaxagoras whom he happened to know. he was thus imbued with the higher philosophy, and attained the knowledge of mind and the negative of mind, which were favourite themes of anaxagoras, and applied what suited his purpose to the art of speaking. phaedrus: explain. socrates: rhetoric is like medicine. phaedrus: how so? socrates: why, because medicine has to define the nature of the body and rhetoric of the soul--if we would proceed, not empirically but scientifically, in the one case to impart health and strength by giving medicine and food, in the other to implant the conviction or virtue which you desire, by the right application of words and training. phaedrus: there, socrates, i suspect that you are right. socrates: and do you think that you can know the nature of the soul intelligently without knowing the nature of the whole? phaedrus: hippocrates the asclepiad says that the nature even of the body can only be understood as a whole. (compare charmides.) socrates: yes, friend, and he was right:--still, we ought not to be content with the name of hippocrates, but to examine and see whether his argument agrees with his conception of nature. phaedrus: i agree. socrates: then consider what truth as well as hippocrates says about this or about any other nature. ought we not to consider first whether that which we wish to learn and to teach is a simple or multiform thing, and if simple, then to enquire what power it has of acting or being acted upon in relation to other things, and if multiform, then to number the forms; and see first in the case of one of them, and then in the case of all of them, what is that power of acting or being acted upon which makes each and all of them to be what they are? phaedrus: you may very likely be right, socrates. socrates: the method which proceeds without analysis is like the groping of a blind man. yet, surely, he who is an artist ought not to admit of a comparison with the blind, or deaf. the rhetorician, who teaches his pupil to speak scientifically, will particularly set forth the nature of that being to which he addresses his speeches; and this, i conceive, to be the soul. phaedrus: certainly. socrates: his whole effort is directed to the soul; for in that he seeks to produce conviction. phaedrus: yes. socrates: then clearly, thrasymachus or any one else who teaches rhetoric in earnest will give an exact description of the nature of the soul; which will enable us to see whether she be single and same, or, like the body, multiform. that is what we should call showing the nature of the soul. phaedrus: exactly. socrates: he will explain, secondly, the mode in which she acts or is acted upon. phaedrus: true. socrates: thirdly, having classified men and speeches, and their kinds and affections, and adapted them to one another, he will tell the reasons of his arrangement, and show why one soul is persuaded by a particular form of argument, and another not. phaedrus: you have hit upon a very good way. socrates: yes, that is the true and only way in which any subject can be set forth or treated by rules of art, whether in speaking or writing. but the writers of the present day, at whose feet you have sat, craftily conceal the nature of the soul which they know quite well. nor, until they adopt our method of reading and writing, can we admit that they write by rules of art? phaedrus: what is our method? socrates: i cannot give you the exact details; but i should like to tell you generally, as far as is in my power, how a man ought to proceed according to rules of art. phaedrus: let me hear. socrates: oratory is the art of enchanting the soul, and therefore he who would be an orator has to learn the differences of human souls--they are so many and of such a nature, and from them come the differences between man and man. having proceeded thus far in his analysis, he will next divide speeches into their different classes:--'such and such persons,' he will say, are affected by this or that kind of speech in this or that way,' and he will tell you why. the pupil must have a good theoretical notion of them first, and then he must have experience of them in actual life, and be able to follow them with all his senses about him, or he will never get beyond the precepts of his masters. but when he understands what persons are persuaded by what arguments, and sees the person about whom he was speaking in the abstract actually before him, and knows that it is he, and can say to himself, 'this is the man or this is the character who ought to have a certain argument applied to him in order to convince him of a certain opinion;'--he who knows all this, and knows also when he should speak and when he should refrain, and when he should use pithy sayings, pathetic appeals, sensational effects, and all the other modes of speech which he has learned;--when, i say, he knows the times and seasons of all these things, then, and not till then, he is a perfect master of his art; but if he fail in any of these points, whether in speaking or teaching or writing them, and yet declares that he speaks by rules of art, he who says 'i don't believe you' has the better of him. well, the teacher will say, is this, phaedrus and socrates, your account of the so-called art of rhetoric, or am i to look for another? phaedrus: he must take this, socrates, for there is no possibility of another, and yet the creation of such an art is not easy. socrates: very true; and therefore let us consider this matter in every light, and see whether we cannot find a shorter and easier road; there is no use in taking a long rough roundabout way if there be a shorter and easier one. and i wish that you would try and remember whether you have heard from lysias or any one else anything which might be of service to us. phaedrus: if trying would avail, then i might; but at the moment i can think of nothing. socrates: suppose i tell you something which somebody who knows told me. phaedrus: certainly. socrates: may not 'the wolf,' as the proverb says, 'claim a hearing'? phaedrus: do you say what can be said for him. socrates: he will argue that there is no use in putting a solemn face on these matters, or in going round and round, until you arrive at first principles; for, as i said at first, when the question is of justice and good, or is a question in which men are concerned who are just and good, either by nature or habit, he who would be a skilful rhetorician has no need of truth--for that in courts of law men literally care nothing about truth, but only about conviction: and this is based on probability, to which he who would be a skilful orator should therefore give his whole attention. and they say also that there are cases in which the actual facts, if they are improbable, ought to be withheld, and only the probabilities should be told either in accusation or defence, and that always in speaking, the orator should keep probability in view, and say good-bye to the truth. and the observance of this principle throughout a speech furnishes the whole art. phaedrus: that is what the professors of rhetoric do actually say, socrates. i have not forgotten that we have quite briefly touched upon this matter already; with them the point is all-important. socrates: i dare say that you are familiar with tisias. does he not define probability to be that which the many think? phaedrus: certainly, he does. socrates: i believe that he has a clever and ingenious case of this sort:--he supposes a feeble and valiant man to have assaulted a strong and cowardly one, and to have robbed him of his coat or of something or other; he is brought into court, and then tisias says that both parties should tell lies: the coward should say that he was assaulted by more men than one; the other should prove that they were alone, and should argue thus: 'how could a weak man like me have assaulted a strong man like him?' the complainant will not like to confess his own cowardice, and will therefore invent some other lie which his adversary will thus gain an opportunity of refuting. and there are other devices of the same kind which have a place in the system. am i not right, phaedrus? phaedrus: certainly. socrates: bless me, what a wonderfully mysterious art is this which tisias or some other gentleman, in whatever name or country he rejoices, has discovered. shall we say a word to him or not? phaedrus: what shall we say to him? socrates: let us tell him that, before he appeared, you and i were saying that the probability of which he speaks was engendered in the minds of the many by the likeness of the truth, and we had just been affirming that he who knew the truth would always know best how to discover the resemblances of the truth. if he has anything else to say about the art of speaking we should like to hear him; but if not, we are satisfied with our own view, that unless a man estimates the various characters of his hearers and is able to divide all things into classes and to comprehend them under single ideas, he will never be a skilful rhetorician even within the limits of human power. and this skill he will not attain without a great deal of trouble, which a good man ought to undergo, not for the sake of speaking and acting before men, but in order that he may be able to say what is acceptable to god and always to act acceptably to him as far as in him lies; for there is a saying of wiser men than ourselves, that a man of sense should not try to please his fellow-servants (at least this should not be his first object) but his good and noble masters; and therefore if the way is long and circuitous, marvel not at this, for, where the end is great, there we may take the longer road, but not for lesser ends such as yours. truly, the argument may say, tisias, that if you do not mind going so far, rhetoric has a fair beginning here. phaedrus: i think, socrates, that this is admirable, if only practicable. socrates: but even to fail in an honourable object is honourable. phaedrus: true. socrates: enough appears to have been said by us of a true and false art of speaking. phaedrus: certainly. socrates: but there is something yet to be said of propriety and impropriety of writing. phaedrus: yes. socrates: do you know how you can speak or act about rhetoric in a manner which will be acceptable to god? phaedrus: no, indeed. do you? socrates: i have heard a tradition of the ancients, whether true or not they only know; although if we had found the truth ourselves, do you think that we should care much about the opinions of men? phaedrus: your question needs no answer; but i wish that you would tell me what you say that you have heard. socrates: at the egyptian city of naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was theuth; the bird which is called the ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters. now in those days the god thamus was the king of the whole country of egypt; and he dwelt in that great city of upper egypt which the hellenes call egyptian thebes, and the god himself is called by them ammon. to him came theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them; he enumerated them, and thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them. it would take a long time to repeat all that thamus said to theuth in praise or blame of the various arts. but when they came to letters, this, said theuth, will make the egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. thamus replied: o most ingenious theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. and in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. the specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality. phaedrus: yes, socrates, you can easily invent tales of egypt, or of any other country. socrates: there was a tradition in the temple of dodona that oaks first gave prophetic utterances. the men of old, unlike in their simplicity to young philosophy, deemed that if they heard the truth even from 'oak or rock,' it was enough for them; whereas you seem to consider not whether a thing is or is not true, but who the speaker is and from what country the tale comes. phaedrus: i acknowledge the justice of your rebuke; and i think that the theban is right in his view about letters. socrates: he would be a very simple person, and quite a stranger to the oracles of thamus or ammon, who should leave in writing or receive in writing any art under the idea that the written word would be intelligible or certain; or who deemed that writing was at all better than knowledge and recollection of the same matters? phaedrus: that is most true. socrates: i cannot help feeling, phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. and the same may be said of speeches. you would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. and when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves. phaedrus: that again is most true. socrates: is there not another kind of word or speech far better than this, and having far greater power--a son of the same family, but lawfully begotten? phaedrus: whom do you mean, and what is his origin? socrates: i mean an intelligent word graven in the soul of the learner, which can defend itself, and knows when to speak and when to be silent. phaedrus: you mean the living word of knowledge which has a soul, and of which the written word is properly no more than an image? socrates: yes, of course that is what i mean. and now may i be allowed to ask you a question: would a husbandman, who is a man of sense, take the seeds, which he values and which he wishes to bear fruit, and in sober seriousness plant them during the heat of summer, in some garden of adonis, that he may rejoice when he sees them in eight days appearing in beauty? at least he would do so, if at all, only for the sake of amusement and pastime. but when he is in earnest he sows in fitting soil, and practises husbandry, and is satisfied if in eight months the seeds which he has sown arrive at perfection? phaedrus: yes, socrates, that will be his way when he is in earnest; he will do the other, as you say, only in play. socrates: and can we suppose that he who knows the just and good and honourable has less understanding, than the husbandman, about his own seeds? phaedrus: certainly not. socrates: then he will not seriously incline to 'write' his thoughts 'in water' with pen and ink, sowing words which can neither speak for themselves nor teach the truth adequately to others? phaedrus: no, that is not likely. socrates: no, that is not likely--in the garden of letters he will sow and plant, but only for the sake of recreation and amusement; he will write them down as memorials to be treasured against the forgetfulness of old age, by himself, or by any other old man who is treading the same path. he will rejoice in beholding their tender growth; and while others are refreshing their souls with banqueting and the like, this will be the pastime in which his days are spent. phaedrus: a pastime, socrates, as noble as the other is ignoble, the pastime of a man who can be amused by serious talk, and can discourse merrily about justice and the like. socrates: true, phaedrus. but nobler far is the serious pursuit of the dialectician, who, finding a congenial soul, by the help of science sows and plants therein words which are able to help themselves and him who planted them, and are not unfruitful, but have in them a seed which others brought up in different soils render immortal, making the possessors of it happy to the utmost extent of human happiness. phaedrus: far nobler, certainly. socrates: and now, phaedrus, having agreed upon the premises we may decide about the conclusion. phaedrus: about what conclusion? socrates: about lysias, whom we censured, and his art of writing, and his discourses, and the rhetorical skill or want of skill which was shown in them--these are the questions which we sought to determine, and they brought us to this point. and i think that we are now pretty well informed about the nature of art and its opposite. phaedrus: yes, i think with you; but i wish that you would repeat what was said. socrates: until a man knows the truth of the several particulars of which he is writing or speaking, and is able to define them as they are, and having defined them again to divide them until they can be no longer divided, and until in like manner he is able to discern the nature of the soul, and discover the different modes of discourse which are adapted to different natures, and to arrange and dispose them in such a way that the simple form of speech may be addressed to the simpler nature, and the complex and composite to the more complex nature--until he has accomplished all this, he will be unable to handle arguments according to rules of art, as far as their nature allows them to be subjected to art, either for the purpose of teaching or persuading;--such is the view which is implied in the whole preceding argument. phaedrus: yes, that was our view, certainly. socrates: secondly, as to the censure which was passed on the speaking or writing of discourses, and how they might be rightly or wrongly censured--did not our previous argument show--? phaedrus: show what? socrates: that whether lysias or any other writer that ever was or will be, whether private man or statesman, proposes laws and so becomes the author of a political treatise, fancying that there is any great certainty and clearness in his performance, the fact of his so writing is only a disgrace to him, whatever men may say. for not to know the nature of justice and injustice, and good and evil, and not to be able to distinguish the dream from the reality, cannot in truth be otherwise than disgraceful to him, even though he have the applause of the whole world. phaedrus: certainly. socrates: but he who thinks that in the written word there is necessarily much which is not serious, and that neither poetry nor prose, spoken or written, is of any great value, if, like the compositions of the rhapsodes, they are only recited in order to be believed, and not with any view to criticism or instruction; and who thinks that even the best of writings are but a reminiscence of what we know, and that only in principles of justice and goodness and nobility taught and communicated orally for the sake of instruction and graven in the soul, which is the true way of writing, is there clearness and perfection and seriousness, and that such principles are a man's own and his legitimate offspring;--being, in the first place, the word which he finds in his own bosom; secondly, the brethren and descendants and relations of his idea which have been duly implanted by him in the souls of others;--and who cares for them and no others--this is the right sort of man; and you and i, phaedrus, would pray that we may become like him. phaedrus: that is most assuredly my desire and prayer. socrates: and now the play is played out; and of rhetoric enough. go and tell lysias that to the fountain and school of the nymphs we went down, and were bidden by them to convey a message to him and to other composers of speeches--to homer and other writers of poems, whether set to music or not; and to solon and others who have composed writings in the form of political discourses which they would term laws--to all of them we are to say that if their compositions are based on knowledge of the truth, and they can defend or prove them, when they are put to the test, by spoken arguments, which leave their writings poor in comparison of them, then they are to be called, not only poets, orators, legislators, but are worthy of a higher name, befitting the serious pursuit of their life. phaedrus: what name would you assign to them? socrates: wise, i may not call them; for that is a great name which belongs to god alone,--lovers of wisdom or philosophers is their modest and befitting title. phaedrus: very suitable. socrates: and he who cannot rise above his own compilations and compositions, which he has been long patching and piecing, adding some and taking away some, may be justly called poet or speech-maker or law-maker. phaedrus: certainly. socrates: now go and tell this to your companion. phaedrus: but there is also a friend of yours who ought not to be forgotten. socrates: who is he? phaedrus: isocrates the fair:--what message will you send to him, and how shall we describe him? socrates: isocrates is still young, phaedrus; but i am willing to hazard a prophecy concerning him. phaedrus: what would you prophesy? socrates: i think that he has a genius which soars above the orations of lysias, and that his character is cast in a finer mould. my impression of him is that he will marvellously improve as he grows older, and that all former rhetoricians will be as children in comparison of him. and i believe that he will not be satisfied with rhetoric, but that there is in him a divine inspiration which will lead him to things higher still. for he has an element of philosophy in his nature. this is the message of the gods dwelling in this place, and which i will myself deliver to isocrates, who is my delight; and do you give the other to lysias, who is yours. phaedrus: i will; and now as the heat is abated let us depart. socrates: should we not offer up a prayer first of all to the local deities? phaedrus: by all means. socrates: beloved pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and inward man be at one. may i reckon the wise to be the wealthy, and may i have such a quantity of gold as a temperate man and he only can bear and carry.--anything more? the prayer, i think, is enough for me. phaedrus: ask the same for me, for friends should have all things in common. socrates: let us go.