MAN
AND HIS DWELLING PLACE.
AN ESSA Y TO WARD THE IiVTERPRETA 7IOV OF NA TURE.
BY
JAMES HINTON,
AUTHOR OF   LIFE OF NATURE," " THE MYSTERY OF PAIN," ETO.
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
549 & 551 BROADWAY
1872.




"As for the possibility, they are ill discoverers who think there is no land when
they can see nothing but sea."-LORD BACON. On the Advancemnent ofLearning.




There was an old man who had abundance of gold. And the
sound of the gold was pleasant'to his ears, and his eye delighted in
its brightness. By day he thought of gold, and his dreams were of gold
by night. His hands were full of gold, and he rejoiced in the multitude
of his chests. But he was faint with hunger, and his trembling limbs
shivered beneath his rags.  No kind hand ministered to him, nor
cheerful voices made music in his home.
And there came a child to the old man, and said: Father, I have
found a secret. We are rich. You shall not be hungry and miserable
any more. Gold will buy all things. Then the old man was wroth
and said: Would you take from me my gold?








PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION.
IT is fourteen years since this book was written;
necessarily, therefore, though the main outlines of the
thought still command my belief, there were many
things in it which inadequately expressed my present
views.  These I have endeavoured to amend, but
more by omitting topics not essential to the elucidation
of the main position of the volume than by additions,
which could hardly have failed to betray the weaknesses they were meant to supplement. The book is
therefore shorter than it was, and I hope more clear.
There is one point, however, on which a distinct
explanation is desirable. When I wrote the book
my feeling was (I suppose the prevalent one) that a
difference, even a contrast, exists between man's
intellectual and his moral life: that there is a want
in respect to the latter which does not exist in respect
to the former; so that while his intellectual progress
has been a consistent advance, an intelligible living
process, his intellectual constitution being perfectly




vi       PREFA CE TO 7IttRD EDITIONA.
adapted to the world in which he lives, his moral
nature  is different: that this is imperfect, and
needs for its perfectness another world and a
different order. This thought I have seen reason to
change.  To me, now, it seems established by
abundant evidence that man's moral and intellectual nature are alike, and his moral and intellectual
progress strictly parallel. The failures which mark
his moral life have their counterparts — without
marring its perfectness-in his intellectual life. So
that, as satisfactory and beautiful as is the one, so
beautiful and so perfectly a subject for joyful contemplation is the other: that they live indeed a
common life, with common failures and common
victories, and have before them a common destiny of
secured and perfect triumph. The contrast between
them is one of period, not one of nature or of end.
The evidence for this belief is not here to be
discussed; but it was necessary for me to state the
change in my convictions, because I think that the
contrary feeling (though it is nowhere expressed as
an opinion) so pervaded the volume that it was hardly
possible to put aside all trace of it.
JAMES HINTON.
London, December I, I871.




PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.
THE reception of this book, both by the public and
by those who have passed a critical judgment upon
it, has been so much more favourable than I anticipated, that I am glad to have an opportunity of
expressing my grateful appreciation of the candour
and generosity with which it has been treated.
Especially my thanks are due to those who, while
sympathizing with my aims, have pointed out what
have appeared to them to be defects in my arguments.  Of many of those defects no one can be
more sensible than myself, nor can I look without
regret upon the faults of grouping and detail with
which, I am conscious, the work abounds. But being
convinced that in their main principles the views
herein advocated are true, and being strongly fortified
in that belief by kind tokens of assent received from
many quarters, and from individuals whose approbation it is a proud satisfaction to have won, I
venture still to submit them to the judgment of the




Viii     PRERFACE TO SECOND EDITI0N.
public, trusting that in the future, as in the past, the
interest and importance of the theme will outweigh
the deficiencies of the advocate. I know quite well
I am not equal to the just treatment of these subjects; I never thought I was; and therefore the
detection of innumerable shortcomings in my work
does not afflict me with any kind of despair. Almost
I am  glad, rather, that the handling should be
unworthy of the topic, that so the question which
I would submit to the reader's judgment may be
commended to him solely by its own intrinsic weight.
It would be impossible for me here sufficiently
to notice the arguments -which have been urged
against my views. But I may, perhaps, briefly refer to
a few points in respect to which my meaning appears
to have been misunderstood. I have seemed to some
to represent knowledge-a mere intellectual enlightenment-as the one thing necessary for man, or, at
least to place my chief reliance on such enlightenment. Nothing can be farther from my thought. I
believe I place such knowledge exactly where St. Paul
placed it when he asked, " How shall they believe on
him of whom they have not heard?"
It has been objected that we'have not any
faculties by which we can gain true knowledge. Of
this I need only say, that the question does not affect
my present object, one way or the other. I only
argue for a change in our way of thinking; in fact,
for a different application of the faculties we are now
using.  The reader can easily decide for himself,
whether he can or cannot think as I suggest.




PREFACE TO SECON.D EDITION.          ix
I believe that the defect in man, which I seek to
prove, is the same with the death of which the New
Testament speaks in describing our present state. I
cannot, therefore, forego the use of the terms Life
and Death. Nor do I think that any-'advantage
would be gained by foregoing them; for I believe
that no one who assents to the thought will feel the
words to be otherwise than strictly and most impressively appropriate.
Whether or not the doctrine of this volume
satisfies the conscience, I can only appeal to the
conscience of the reader. It comes nearer to satisfying mine than any other. It does indeed, to my
feeling, retain and intensify all that elsewhere meets
the demands of the conscience.  For this reason
chiefly I value it, and believe that it must prevail.
For conscience, we well know, is the ruler in the
human soul. But if the reader find that it does not
satisfy his conscience, let him reject it. No voice
more earnestly than mine would entreat him, in such
case, to regard it as a delusion and a snare.
The design of the volume was simply to give
expression to certain convictions that had gradually
grown up in my mind until they pressed upon it with
overwhelming force. I felt that a doctrine, legitimately arising out of studies which seemed purely
scientific in their aim, possessed the highest religious
significance, and not only promised, but gave a solution of some difficulties that had long perplexed the
human mind, and even of some that had been pronounced insoluble. I could not do otherwise than




x        PREFACE TO SECOND EDITIOA.
attempt to utter what I thus perceived. The utterance must have been stammering and feeble, for the
ideas of which I sought to be the medium oppressed
me with their vastness. I did not grasp them; they
held and'used me rather. My fault is that I have
been so imperfectly their instrument.
The time has been long anticipated, when the
results of the modern investigation of nature shall
receive a higher interpretation, and their relations to
moral and religious questions come into clearer light.
Nor have there been wanting indications of a belief
that, when that time shall come, it will be rich in
benefits, and will enable men to take a position which
had previously been beyond their reach. Humbly I
believe that that time has already begun. It needs
only that we should be willing to go where a clear
light shines, and an open path awaits us.
Not that I have sought to introduce scientific
dogmas into the sphere of religion, or have attempted
to explain the mysteries of religion by any scientific
light. Nothing could have been farther from my
seeking; few things could be in my opinion more
irrational. But I think I have seen that science
does of itself become religious, and affirm a doctrine
respecting man which is one with the fundamental
affirmation of the Christian records. I cannot help
seeing this, nor believing that others will see it also.
I cannot help believing that others also will rejoice
to see it, as I rejoice.
Surely our having despaired of a good, is no reason
that we should refuse to accept it when it comes.




PREFACE TO SECOND EDI7YON.-          xi
And if we have schooled ourselves, taught by a long
experience, to believe that our intellectual and our
religious lives must always be alien from each other,
if not opposed, we need not therefore be the more
reluctant to allow them to be in unison when they do
visibly unite. The question is one of fact.
When I think of this matter, I seem to see man,
like an instinct-led creature, doing a work which he
neither designs nbr knows. Under the constraint of
various impulses and desires, he gathers laboriously
together the materials, and constructs the edifice, of
knowledge; under impulses which consciously tend
no farther than the mere construction and desires
which find their gratification in immediate results.
But more is done than he aims to do. Man makes
science as the bird builds its nest: with instincts
satisfied in the work itself, but with ends reaching far
beyond. With fragmentary sticks, and straws, and
moss, and feathers from its own ungrudging bosom,
cunningly built up, doubtless with delight and inward
satisfaction in the doing, the bird has formed for
itself unwittingly a nest-a home adapted to its
highest life. Does God thus take thought for birds,
and has He not granted to man also the privilege of
doing more than he designs? Should it surprise us
to find that in fulfilling desires of their own, mankind
also have wrought out a work of higher usa?
There are two classes of persons to whom I hoped
that the thoughts contained in this volume might be
welcome: those who feel painfully the weight of the
moral problems presented by the world, on the one




xii      PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.
hand; and on the other, those who desire to see a
more satisfactory and more hopeful solution of the
problems which the intellect encounters. If any of
these find help or light in what I have suggested, I
am more than satisfied.




TABLE OF CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
PAGE
The Laws of Discovery-Necessity of considering our own Condition in estimating the Impressions we receive-Nature and
use of Hypotheses-Statement of the Propositions to be argued
-Relation  of Science to Religion..................................................   xix
BOOK I.-OF SCIENCE,
CHAPTER I.
OF THE WORK OF SCIENCE
Various kinds of Proof-Method adopted in this Work-Sources
of Error arising, from Language-Meaning of.the Statement
that Man wants Life-Illustration-Meaning of the word
Phenomena -- Vhat the Limitation of our Knowledge to
Phenomena implies-Man naturally under Illusion-Proofs
that Nature is not Inert-The felt Inertness, therefore, due
to Man —This a Result taught by Science —Adaptation of
Science to teach us respecting ourselves-Use of the words
Appearance, Phenomenon, and Fact-Relation of the Physical
to  the  Spiritual...................................................................................................




xiv                     CONTENTS.
CHAPTER II.
OF THE LAWS OF NATURE.
PAGE
The Thought that the Inertness felt in Nature is due to Man, in
Harmony with Man's Moral and Emotional Nature-Invariableness not Proof of Inertness-The Necessity in Nature not
Passive, but Love-The Argument a Moral one-The Inference
of Passive Forces not justified — Illustration by Light or
Sound-The Idea of ForEce-Law in Nature........................................  1 7
CHAPTER III.
OF THE ILLUSTRATION FROM ASTRONOMY.
Difficulty felt in receiving this View-Its Source-Aid given
by the History of Astronomy —Parallel of the proposed
Correction of our Thought to that effected when the Motion
perceived in the Heavens was referred to a Motion affecting
Man-Mode in which both Problems are solved, by formation
of Hypotheses, and Correction of our Impressions thereby
- Simplicity of the Problem - Apparent Contradiction of
Cousciousness-Reconciliation-Bearing on the Question of
AMan's Freedom-Nature of the Inertness ascribed to Man.......... 24
CHAPTER IV.
OF KNOWING.
Application of the foregoing Argument-Unsolved PrQblems no
reason for rejecting a new View —Our Conceptions, how to be
used-Limitations of Thought —The Place of Sense —Nature
of  Perception...................................................  44
CHAPTER V.
OF BEING.
Recapitulation-Means of correcting our Impressions respecting
the Universe-Part played by Science in this-Why Failure
in the Past-Mystery-What it is to know-Theory of a
Material Substratum - Harmony introduced by admitting
Man's Illusion-Practical Importance of the Question............... 53




CONTENTS.                          xv
CHAPTER VI.
OF MAN.
PAGE
Simplicity and Familiarity of this Method of Judging, by considering our own Condition-The Demonstration of its NecessityInertness a negative Quality-Defect thereby proved in ManThe not-existing felt as existing-Advantages of the Law that
our own Condition is revealed to us by Conditions perceived
as external-Elevation of View thence arising................................... 60
CHAPTER VII.
THE RELATION OF SCIENCE TO PHILOSOPHY.
Positivism, the denial that Man can have Knowledge rightly so
called-Its practical Grounds-Necessity of facing the Problem
Satisfactgry result-the bearing of Scientific Inquiry upon Man
-New Data supplied-The Argument from previous Failure
invalidated-Course of Human Thought-Existence not denied
-Known as Cause-Our Experience not truly with Phenomena- Practical  Results................................................................................  68
BOOK II. —OF RELIGION.
CHAPTER  I.
OF DEATH.
The Question truly a Religious one-Reason of Man's fear-Subjection of the Moral and Religious Convictions to Intellectual
Conceptions-Cause-A Deadness of Man affirmed in the New
Testament-The same also taught by Study of NatureSpiritual Death-Why the Bible has been made to speak an
opposite Language........................................  8I




xvi                      CONTENTS.
CHAPTER II.
OF LIFE.
rAGZ
The Eternal-In what Way to be Known-Not to be intellectually
grasped-The Divine Existence not related to Time as ours
is-Life given in Believing-But not a merely individual
Change-The perfect Life of the Individual is in the perfected
Life of Man-Eternal Life not Happiness.............................................     89
CHAPTER  I I,I.
OF DAMNATION.
A present State-Why conceived as future only-Fire and Worms
-The  Passions-Damnation not Suffering but BadnessSalvation by Believing-Suffering also threatened for SinThe Liking that which is Evil-Its Cure............................................. 94
CHAPTER IV.
OF REDEMPTION.
The Redemption of the WORLD the great Theme of the New
Testament-W-~hy interpreted to mean the Saving of a PartThe Doctrine of Probation-Passages seeming to affirm Final
Ruin-Eternal Punishment-Election-Death-The Liking
Evil-Apparent Oppositions in the New Testament not truly
opposed-Why Sin has been-How God is glorified in it.......... lo
CHAPTER V.
OF HEAVEN.
Christianity not a Religion of Self-interest-The Happiness of
Heaven is in Deliverance from Self-love-The Perfect LifeKnown to the Heart-What we truly want-Heaven revealed,
in     C hrist..................................................................................................................   15
CHAPTER VI.
OF THE RELIGION OF NATURE.
Why we love God-Where God is seen...............   I23




CONTENTS.                           xvii
CHAPTER VII.
OF FREEWILL.
PAGE
The Painfulness of Mystery-Latent Doubt-Deliverance-Freewill, how related to Freedom-Is absence of the true Necessity-God the truly Free-Falsity of our Feeling-Claims of
Consciousness-Law-Its relation to Love-Responsibility..... I29
CHAPTER VIII.
OF THIE SELF.
Self-consciousness a Consciousness of Defect-Actions of SelfIndividuality-Why Man is conscious of Defect-Sin, for
what existing-Self-consciousness involves Feeling of Inertness
-Relation of Man to God-The Infinite-God the Personal
Being-Creation-The Self perverts our Feelings and deceives
-Has led us to the Thought of Nature as a Dead Mechanism
-Which is impossible-The life of Heaven........................................  138
BOOK III.-OF ETHICS.
CHAPTER I.
ON THE FACT OF HUMAN LIFE.
A better understanding of the World leads to a more successful
Course of Action-Need of this-Our Experience exists for,
and is, the Redemption of Man-Worthiness of the End-The
Joy  it introduces  into   Sorrow...................................................................... 159
CHAPTER II.
OF ILLUSION.
The qtuestion of Evil-We feel as Evil that which is not EvilWhy-Evil pertains to the Phenomenal-What would deliver
us from the Feeling of Evil-The privilege of sharing itNecessity of Illusion to Man....................................   X64




xviii                                   CONT~ENTS.
CHAPTER III.
OF REALITY.
PAG E
The World's Redemption, wrought out in our Experience, subordinates all other interests-Gives a Happiness not dependent
upon Circumstances-Makes clear the Mystery of Human Life
-Delivers from the Bondage of Self-Satisfies, in making us
Partakers with  Christ.................................................................................    I70
CHAPTER IV.
OF WRONGNESS.
Man's Failure and its Cause-Error and Ignorance remedied
through Failure -Also in relation to the Eternal-The Feeling
of Evil inseparable from the Self-The Doctrine practicalAttaches to daily Work a higher Value and more imperative
Claim-Gives Harmony to Life-Makes Earthly Life the
Nourisher of Piety..............                                                        I78
BOOK IV.
DIALOGUE  I.................................................                                   189
DIALOGUE II............................................................................................................... 223
DIALOGUE  III..............................................................................................................  243
DIALOGUE  IV.................                                 272




INTRODUCTION.
He who has seen obscurities which appeared impenetrable in
physical and mathematical science suddenly dispelled, and the most
barren and unpromising fields of inquiry converted, as if by inspiration,
into rich and inexhaustible springs of knowledge and power on a simple
change of our point of view, or by merely bringing to bear upon them
some principle which it never occurred before to try, will surely be the
very last to acquiesce in any dispiriting prospects of either the present
or future destinies of mankind.
SIR J. HIERSCHELL: Discourise on  altural P/iilosothy.
IT  has been well observed  that the  child  and  the
savage invent an explanation of everything they do
not understand, whilst the man whose powers are
matured and disciplined investigates. He has learnt
to be patient, and to wait for grounds of knowledge
before he supposes himself to know. Thus progress
is made. From investigation comes discovery. Our
partial and incompetent reason, brought into contact
with the great facts of nature, becomes itself enlarged.
For the natural suppositions by which man explains
the unknown are not equal to the scope of things.
They  express  himself, his  ignorance, his  limited
relations.




xx             XINTR ODUC TION.
All advance in knowledge is a deliverance of man
from himself. Slowly and painfully he learns that he
is not the measure of truth, that the fact may be very
different from the appearance to him. The lesson is
hard, but the reward is great. So he escapes from
illusion and error, from ignorance and failure.
Directing his thoughts and energies no more
according to his own impressions, but according to
the truth of things, he finds himself in possession of
an unimaginable power alike of understanding and of
acting. To a truly marvellous extent he is the lord
of nature.
But the conditions of this lordship are inexorable.
They are the surrender of prepossessions, the abandonment of assumptions, the confession of ignorance.
Hence in all passing from error to truth we learn
something respecting ourselves, as well as respecting
the object of our study. Simultaneously with our
better knowledge we recognize the reason of our
ignorance, and perceive what defect on our part has
caused us to think wrongly.
Either the world is such as it appears to us, or it
is not. If it be not, there must be some condition
affecting ourselves which modifies the impression that
we receive from  it.  And this condition must be
operative on all mankind: it must relate to man as a
whole rather than to individual men.
So far as we could judge without reference to
experience, either of these cases might be supposed.
There is perhaps no sufficient reason, ca priori, why




IJVTR OD UC TION.           xxI
we should not imagine that the appearance might
correspond with the fact of things; and, on the other
hand, we know that circumstances which affect ourselves do continually modify our perception of objects,
so that their appearance differs more or less considerably from that which they truly are. And in some
cases this difference of the appearance from the fact
is very great. Perhaps nothing can be more unlike
the planets than the appearance they present to us;
or, to make the case more striking, let us imagine our
own earth viewed from one of the other planets. Can
anything be more different from this dark solid varied
mass than the bright spot it would appear?
Therefore, when we approach inquiries relating to
nature, and the true relations which we bear to the
universe, we must be treading on unsafe ground if we
assume, without investigation, one of these possible
events to be true to the exclusion of the other. We
cannot be sure that the world does not differ in
extreme degree from its appearance. All experience
combines to teach us caution. The history of human
error is a history of the taking it for granted that
things are as they appear.
Speaking generally, we may say that all speculation
hitherto has been based upon the supposition that the
appearance of the world does correspond with the
fact. All systems are attempts to represent the order
of things on that natural supposition. And not only
is this the case with philosophical systems, it is equally
true of the ordinary and unregulated ideas which lie
in every man's mind. All our conceptions are based




xxi              INVTR OD UC TIOi.
on the implied postulate that the world is as it
appears.
Htow far the result is satisfactory each man must
judge for himself. But it should not be forgotten that
another course is open. If we could recognize any
element in our condition that should have the effect
of causing the appearance of the world in which we
are to differ from the fact, the issue of our speculative
labours might at least be different from that which it
is at present.
That appearances should be deceptive has an
evident basis in nature. For the appearance of every
object, or the way in which it primarily impresses us,
depends upon our relations in respect to it. But these
relations, infinitely varied as they are, must be
ascertained by the study of those objects themselves.
We have not any intuitive knowledge of them. Therefore as our relations to the world become more widely
known to us we are constantly learning to recognize,
as the cause of our perceptions, facts which are widely
different from that which those perceptions at first
suggest. Nor do we feel in doing this any embarrassment or difficulty: it is the very thing which gives
to our conceptions clearness and simplicity.
For right knowledge, it is necessary that the
relations between ourselves and the objects that
affect us should be clearly understood: that we
should know why, the fact being as it is, the appearance must be such as it is to us. The planets appear
so small because of our distance, so bright because of
the laws of reflection of light: they appear tQ be




INTROD UC TIZOA             xxiii
revolving around the earth because we are being
moved. Knowing these things, it is no longer strange
to us to think of those specks of light as orbs kindred
to our own: or of the stars, so like them in respect to
sense, as yet vaster worlds glowing with a radiance of
their own. We entirely mistake if we imagine that
there is any difficulty to the human mind in recognizing
under any sensuous appearance a fact how unlike
soever to that appearance. Nothing is more natural:
to nothing is our native tendency more strong. The.
discovery of facts beneath appearances is the very
work of the intellect, and is indeed but the recognition
of our own relations to the universe. But there is
always a difficulty in first taking this step: that which,
when it is familiar, it seems impossible to doubt, when
it was new seemed not less impossible to believe. The
source of this difficulty lies in our very constitution.
For we necessarily think that an appearance corresponds to the fact until by increasing knowledge we
have learnt otherwise. The intellect demands that
every appearance should be accounted for. Every
impression on us has some cause; and we necessarily
suppose a cause correspondent to every such impression until some other fact be shown to which it may
be more reasonably referred.  This constitutes the
formation of hypotheses; which are accordingly
necessities of our mental being., Thus before
astronomy was understood, men necessarily supposed
that there existed in the heavens a small bright disc
such as the moon appears. This was a hypothzesis,
which the recognition of the true moon sets aside.




xxiv            INTR OD UC TION.
Hence arises one chief difficulty in the advance of
knowledge. For it is the proper work of the intellect
in removing ignorance to connect our impressions with
facts different from those which are first suggested to
us. New truths therefore always come, not only
with an aspect of strangeness, but in apparent opposition to received and established beliefs; sometimes in
opposition to views held sacred, or fundamental to all
knowledge. The hypothesis, or cause that had been
supposed in ignorance in order to account for the
appearance, has a hold upon the mind as if it were a
fact certainly known. It is the hardest thing possible
for men to remember that such hypothesis has no
foundation except their own ignorance. The fact
that they have been obliged to suppose it, and that to
have denied it, without showing how the impressions
of which they are conscious could be otherwise
produced, would have been to leave a ridiculous
vacancy and to run in the face of common sense,
often overpowers all other considerations.  The
demand upon them to give up that which they have
considered as of all things the most certain, is too
much. Evidence is of little avail against that feeling.
The utmost simplicity, beauty, and necessity in
the new opinion often go for nothing in comparison
with it.
And there is, besides, always this argument in
favour of a hypothesis that has by long use become
established as a truth: it is so natural; it answers so
exactly to the impression or appearance which it is
used to account for. This must be the case; being




N7 OD UCTION.                xxv
invented for the very purpose of accounting for our
impressions, a hypothesis cannot be wanting in exact
correspondence with them. In this respect it must
have an advantage, and a very powerful one in relation to some of our strongest feelings, over the truth
which seeks to supplant it. For that truth demands
reflection and thought; it is in a certain sense opposed
to our first natural conceptions, and involves an
exercise.of reason and a regard to the mutual bearing
of various facts. Hence the struggle for the life of a
hypothesis is the more prolonged. If the hypothesis
be assumed, everything is simple, our impressions
need no correcting, and the case is just as it seems.
To all this there is nothing to be opposed but the
argument that, plausible as that belief may be,
investigation and a just use of our powers forbid us
to rest in it. The weak part of a hypothesis is not
that it doef not account for our impressions-this it
can hardly fail to do-but that it will not bear
investigation. The existence of that which is seen in
spectral illusions or in dreams would account perfectly
for their occurrence, and we do indeed at first always
account for them so. That is the natural hypothesis;
but examination proves it impossible, and we have
learnt accordingly to assign them to other causes.
Which causes, it may be observed, are very far from
being such as we should have thought likely.
These are in part the reasons which render the
establishment of a new truth so difficult. Every such
truth has to encounter a hypothesis which perfectly
accounts for the appearances, makes little demand on
2




xxvi            IV7 W' OD UC TIOQV.
the thoughtfulness and reason of men, and, above all,
is established as a certain and unassailable truth,
based on an experience which cannot deceive. It is
no wvonder that under these circumstances false views
of nature should have struggled long with advancing
knowledge. We should not complain that it has been
so: that were to find fault with the very faculties and
mental tendencies through which alone we have been
made capable of learning.
Especially we should avoid the injustice with
which it is too customary to treat the past. We are
apt to think that the men who strove so long against
opinions which are to us almost self-evident must
have been less open to conviction and less willing to
abide by the results of investigation than ourselves.
But herein we do a twofold wrong: we cast undeserved
reproach upon the dead, and inflict a deeper injury
upon ourselves. Reading history so, malking it feed
our own self-confidence and pride, is sadly to abuse
its lesson. Men do not alter: in these days they are
no more willing to give up what they consider settled
facts and principles than they were of old. In all ages
men have been willing to apply principles that have
been proved true, to do again in other forms that
which has been done before; in no age willing, or
likely to be willing, to do more. In the past we may
read the present: we forget what those men whose
errors we pity were called upon to do; we forget how
much we owe them for what they did. They were
called upon to set aside the very principles on which
their mental life was moulded, to abandon, as false,




IZVT7I OD UC TIOA7.         xxvii
convictions which seemed to carry away with them
the entire basis on which a sound judgment or a steadfast faith could be sustained. And they did it. Trusting
in God, the world has given up over and over again
well nigh all its most assured convictions; trusting in
God that the fact must be better than their thought.
Is it for us to boast ourselves? are we willing to do as
much again?
The truth is that every generation of men thinks
that it has at last arrived at the ultimate principles of.
knowledge, and that whatever mental revolutions may
have been necessary before, no more will be needed
thereafter. It must be so. The very fact of men
honestly striving to do their best involves it. Man
cannot foresee the future; his little horizon must seem
to include the scope of heaven and carth. Ever,
therefore, he is anxious to know more in accordance
with his o0w- ideas, but he little anticipates conceiving
differently. Yet it might not be impossible to draw
from history a lesson that should make us truly
wiser, if we would'remember that the thing which
has been is the criterion of that which is likely to be;
and that, as other ages, so we also might be called
upon to admit ourselves in error in some of those
opinions in respect to which we have been most sure
that we are right.
The idea which is commonly entertained of nature
is the best conception that men have been able to form
respecting it, in the absence of definite, or at least
of complete knowledge. Accordingly it corresponds




xxviii           INTOD UC T1 ON.
precisely to their first natural impressions, which
indeed it is constructed to represent as closely as
possible. It is therefore conformable to all experience
that the advance of knowledge should bring men into
collision with this conception, and that it should exist
as an obstacle to a truer interpretation of the facts.
If it be the case that our impressions fall short of the
truth, then of necessity the ideas to which we have had
recourse,to account for those impressions must be.inadequate. They must embody our ignorance, and
differ essentially from those which we should form if
the true relations which exist between ourselves and
the world were known to us. In a word, our conception
of nature is a hypothesis.
Like other hypotheses, however, it has had its
necessity and its use, nor can it be set aside until the
truth be known-the fact itself, and the reason that
we are affected by it as we are. The question which
demands an answer in respect- to the world is at least
susceptible of a distinct and explicit statement. We
require such a knowledge of our own relation to the
fact that truly exists as shall enable us to understand
how that fact, being such as it is, should affect us as
it does.
Many questions of an abstract nature suggest
themselves here. Volumes have been occupied in
discussing whether such knowledge be possible; the
nature of perception and of consciousness. But the
sole answer that will be attempted now is a practical
one; for the question is one that must be solved by
experience and not by anticipation. It is submitted




liV W OD UC TION.           xxix
that man's relation to the fact of the universe may be
ascertained by investigation, and that, when that
relation is understood, it may be known also what that
fact must be, and why it affects man as it does: and
that this knowledge is obtained through thinking more
humbly of ourselves; through giving up our self-assertion, and being willing to admit that man may be
wanting in that which he most confidently assumes
that he possesses.
A brief outline of the view that will be advocated
is here subjoined. It is thrown into the form of
propositions or theses, as a statement of that which is
afterwards to be discussed. This plan has been adopted
in order that the conception may be presented in its
connexion as a whole before any part is treated in
detail.
Briefly, the position maintained is this: That the
study of nature leads to the conclusion that there is
a DEFECTIVENESS in man which modifies his perception; that the universe is not truly correspondent to
his impressions, but is of a more perfect and higher
kind.
To judge rightly of nature, therefore, we must not
be guided by our own impressions merely, but must
remember man's defectiveness. For if man be defective, his apprehension and feeling of nature will be
inadequate, and that which he feels to exist will differ
from the true existence by defect.
Whether this simple change in our point of view,
the application of the principle of considering the
defectiveness of man in our judgment of nature, have




xxx              INTRODUC7ION.
the power of "dispelling obscurities which have
appeared impenetrable, and converting an unpromising
field of inquiry into a rich spring of knowledge and
power," may appear hereafter. It has an immediate
bearing, thus:
I. Nature (or the universe, or the world) is not
truly and in itself such as it is to man's feeling. That
whicfi man feels to be differs from that which is, apart
from him, by defect.
We perceive the world as possessing-certain qualities, or as existing in a certain way which we call
physical. We term it the physical world.
This mode of existence involves inertness. That
which is physical does not act, except passively as it
is acted upon. Inertness is inaction.
That which is inert, therefore, differs from that
which is not inert by defect (by absence of action or
of active power).
2. We cannot avoid conceiving another mode of
existence besides that which is inert. We conceive
of Being which possesses a true, spontaneous and
primary activity. This is necessary, since there must
be such a true activity, or there could not be any
action at all.
To this truly active mode of Being the word
spiritual has been applied; and in this sense that word
will here be used. That to which inertness does not
belong, but which truly acts in a way in which physical
things do not act, is meant by the term spiritual.
The physical, therefore, differs from the spiritual
(in this particular of its inertness) by defect.




INTIR OD UC TIOi.             xxxi
3. It is submitted that it is man's defectiveness
which makes him  feel the world as thus defective:
that nature is not truly inert, but is so to man's
feeling by defect in him.
We have conceived nature to be inert. or physical;
man to be not inert, or spiritual.
It is submitted that investigation demands that
we should correct this natural supposition: and that
the perceived inertness or defect in nature is due to
man's defectiveness.
4. Either the universe is defective as being without action (inert), or man is defective. There is to tus
an inertness; it determines our whole state. We have
to learn whether it be man's or nature's.
SCIENCE gives answer to this question.  By it
proof is given that the perceived defect must be
ascribed to man's condition, and that nature is not
truly inert as it is felt to be. His own condition
having imposed on man a false opinion respecting
the universe, science emancipates him therefrom; it
brings man face to face with nature, and makes him
know ikzlself
5. The history of science is the attempt of man
to understand the universe on the supposition that the
inertness (or defect) exists in nature, as it appears
to him to exist. But this attempt leads to the result,
entirely unforeseen, of transferring the defect to himself; and proving that both the fact of nature and his
own state of being are different from that which he
supposed.
This result science accomplishes



xxxii             IANTR OD UCTION.
I st. By demonstrating an absolute inertness in
that which appears, bringing all phenomena under the
law of passive or physical causation.
2nd. By giving evidence of a fact different from
that which appears to us; showing that it deals only
with phenomena, and not with the very essence of
nature.
It is affirmed, therefore, that inertness does not
belong to the essence and true being of nature, * but
only to the phenomenon.
It is introduced by man. He perceives defect
without him only because there is defect within him.
6. To be inert has the same meaning as to be
dead. So we speak of nature, thinking it to be inert, as
" dead matter." To say that man introduces inertness
into nature, implies a deadness in him: it is to say that
he wants life. This is the proposition which is affirmed.
This condition which we call our life is not the true
life of man.
7. The book that has had greater influence upon
the world than all others differs from all others in
affirming that man wants life, and in making that
statement the basis of all that it contains respecting
the past and present and future of mankind.
Science thus pays homage to the Bible. What
that book has declared as if with authority so long
ago, she has at last deciphered on the page of nature.
This is not man's true life.
* The proof is deferred, not belonging to this place. See Book I.
Chap. i.




INTR OD UC TION.            xxxiii
It is a willing homage. For all men love the
Bible: some of those not least who have most felt
themselves compelled to oppose it. In every heart
the love is deeper than the hatred. For what book
has sounded so the depths of experience, or scaled
like it the highest pinnacles of thought? What man
has not learnt through it better to know himself?
Therefore if the thought that man wants life seem
at first strange to the intellectual apprehension, the
conscience and the heart respond. This is not our
true life. Illusion, and disappointment, and wrong
are in it. We ought to be other than we are.
8. The statements of the New Testament respecting the course and history of the world, starting with
a deadness in men, end in their being made alive.
We naturally conceive the world to be the scene
of man's probation. The Bible represents it as the
scene of his redemption. Man is being made alive:
rewards and punishment, threatenings and retribution, take their place within and in subordination to
this end.
9. That man wants life, means that the true life of
man is of another kind from this. It corresponds to
that true, absolute Being which he, as he now is, cannot know.
He cannot know it because he is out of relation
with it.  This is his deadness.  To know it is to
have life.
Io. To that absolute fact of Being the Bible applies
the words spiritual and eternal. To be spiritual is to
be not inert. To be eternal is to BE.




xxxiv           INT~R OD UC TIOA.
The unknown fact of nature is the spiritual and
eternal world; "the things that are not seen." But
man wants that true life which would place him in
union with it; therefore to him the world is temporal
and physical. He does not know the fact, therefore
he feels that to be which is not.
In other words: there is not a physical world and
a spiritual world besides, but the spiritual world which
alone Is, is physical to man: the physical being the
mode in which man, by his defectiveness, perceives
the spiritual. We feel a physical world to be; but
that which Is, is the spiritual world.
The necessary bearings of the conception that has
been thus proposed may relieve from the charge of
presumption the attempt to comprehend in one view
so many things as are included in this volume. That
is a task imposed by the nature of the case.
The same remark will apply to the objection that
will be felt to the mingling of science and religion.
The justification of this proceeding is simply that it
is believed to be right.
It may be that the separation of our thoughts
concerning things physical and things divine is a disunion of our being, a partition into two imperfect
halves of that which rightly constitutes a harmonious
whole. The separation has indeed been needful and
eminently useful, but only as a temporary expedient;
it cannot be a permanent relation. Religion will not
unite with a science based on the supposition that
man is living and the universe dead; but a sciehce
that recognizes deadness in man in that very act




IVNT OD UC TIOAr.           XXS
becomes religious. Science is of necessity divorced
from religion while it rests in phenomena, but when
it takes cognizance of man's relation to that which is
not phenomenal, it is reunited to its source.
The union of science and religion is not optional,
a thing which may be attempted or avoided. That
union is a fact, to which we must conform ourselves.
Science is religious. All things are so. There is no
object of human activity or interest of which the same
thing may not be said. Nothing is unreligious but
by error and ignorance: only so long as we do not
see what it is, and for what purpose it exists, can any
form of activity or of thought be kept apart from our
religious life.
For religion is simply that which concerns the
very fact and reality of our being. That which constitutes anything religious is its being brought into
relation with that fact, and placed in its true bearings.
That is religious which is felt and known aright, in
its own true nature, and not according to the mere
appearance to ourselves.
Religion is the one thing in which all men are
interested; the one absorbing inquiry to which no
man is indifferent. What am I? what is the world?
Why am I here, and what will be the result? What
justice, what love, what rightness, what hope, what
end? These are questions which no man ceases to
ask, or will cease. To these questions if any man
give answer, the world listens with credulous and
eager ear.
But other interests are partial, and limited, and




xxxvi            ZiVTR OD UC TION.
transient. They ruffle the surface of our life, but do
not stir its depths. Men make them the objects of
their devotion, and try to be content, and fill out their
emptiness with pomp of words and specious self-congratulation, because they fail in their attempts to
deal with those deeper and dearer questions which
rack their souls in secret.




BOOK I,
OF SCIENCE.
Nature is the domain of liberty. —Cosimos
I








MAN AND HIS DWELLING PLACE.
CHAPTER I.
OF THIE' WORK OF SCIENCE.
PROOF is of three kinds: First, the Logical, which
rests on premises and demonstrates that according to
the laws of the human mind a certain conclusion
follows.
2nd. The Historical, which shows that if the case
be as affirmed, the course of human thought in relation
to it must have been such as it has been. It accounts
for the rise and progress of belief.
3rd. That which might be called the Expository,
which, taking the phenomena as they appeal;, gives
a simple statement of the fact which carries its
own conviction. Such is the evidence on which the
Copernican astronomy is received by the mass of
educated men.
Each of these modes of proof is indispensable;
but they are by no means of equal authority. The




4        MOVAN AND HIIS D IELLING PLACE.    [B. I.
logical is principally useful as a means for advancing
knowledge. Its conclusions can never have more
certainty than the premises, and its end is chiefly to
free us from false ideas by leading us to false results
when we reason from them. It makes the latent error
manifest. Logic has less to do with that which is
true than with that which it is reasonable for us to
think with our particular amount of knowledge. The
historical and expository proof have more positive
value. The light which they throw upon that which
has been and which is, gives them an authority to a
certain degree independent of ourselves.
The argument from premises to conclusions will
be the least employed here, not because it is inapplicable, but because it is the least appropriate. It
neither can nor should produce conviction. If an
improbable conclusion be enforced by such reasoning,
the premises are immediately suspected; and rightly
so. It will be sought, rather, to unfold the conception that man is such as he is by a want of his true
and perfect being, and that he is being raised from
this state by having the true life imparted to him;
and so to exhibit this conception in its relation to the
facts of human life that it shall be felt to be the solution of the problem of humanity, the true interpretation of history, the key both to what men have
thought and what they are.
If it can be made manifest that the deadness and
redemption of man is the reconciliation of all enmities, the oneness of all opposites; that it demands of
no man that he should abandon that which he has




CH. I.]    OF THIE WORK OF SCIENCE.             S
revered as sacred or valued as true, but is rather the
perfecting of all these things; that it demands a
willingness not to give up, but only to receive;
putting new meaning into our habitual words, new
life into our daily work, and making light to be
where darkness.has been; this is the evidence on
which reliance will be placed.
Two or three observations will serve to guard
against some possible sources of misapprehension.
I. The first of these relates to the nature of
Language. Words necessarily express to all persons
their own conceptions. Hence the difficulty of conveying by them  ideas that are new, even in any
branch of ordinary knowledge. Much greater is this
difficulty when the question relates, as now, to the
entire conception of existence. No word can be used
that is not already fixed as it were to a different class
of ideas, so that in its new use it may either fail to
convey the meaning, or seem to be misapplied. This
difficulty is inherent in the subject, and is certainly
much increased by want of skill on the writer's part.
Perhaps, however, it will not be found greater than
any one who will seek for the meaning, and make
allowance for deficiencies in respect to words, whether
unavoidable or inadvertent, will easily surmount.
In no respect does greater embarrassment arise
from words than from the various use of the word
To be: employed as it is to express either true existence or mere appearance: absolute, as it is termed,
and relative. We say of God, He Is; but we use
the same word of a shadow, of which the essence is




6    iMAN AND IllS DW YELLING PLA CE.    [In. i.
that there is sot light. The being of a shadow si
only an absence, yet we cannot mark this by the
words which express existence. We cannot deny
that a shadow " exists." It exists as a shadow, or has
such existence as a shadow has..~We say there is
darkness, so expressing negation or denial.  This
source of error must be remembered and watched
against; it cannot, in the present state of language,
be avoided.
"It is a rule," says that great master of discourse,
Lord Bacon, "that whatsoever science is not consonant to presuppositions must pray in aid of siniilitudes. For those whose conceptions are different
from popular opinions have a double labour, the one
to make themselves conceived, and the other to prove
and demonstrate; so that it is of necessity with them
to have recourse to similitudes and translations to
express themselves." The use, therefore, of illustrations and comparisons drawn from sensuous things,
in the following pages, is not designed to snatch an
assent from the fancy which the calmer judgment
should withhold. Nor do the points of difference
which must exist in all similitudes from that which
they are used to illustrate, imply an attempt to argue
from one thing to another, disregarding the diversity
of the cases. The similitudes are used to aid the
conception of the thought.
2. That man wants life may seem to exclude
individual responsibility, and certainly no opinion can
be true that sets aside the moral instincts and does
violence to the conscience. It may suffice here to




CH. I.]     OF TILE tVORK OF SCIVECE.           7
state that our actions, in so far as they are our own,
are held to be not necessary, and that we are, therefore, responsible for them. The doctrine of man's
deadness, so far from diminishing, strengthens and
renders more profound the sense of sin.
3. It may seem unnatural to speak of a conscious
existence as a state of death. But what is affirmed
is, that a sensational existence, such as ours, is not
the Life of MAN; that a consciousness of physical
life does itself imply a deadness.. The affirmations,
that we are living men, and that man has not true
and absolute Life, are not opposed. Life is a relative
term. Our possession of a conscious life in relation
to the things that we feel around us is itself the
evidence of Man's defect of Life in a higher and
truer sense.
Let a similitude make the thought more clear.
Are not we, as individuals, at rest, steadfast in space;
evidently so to our own consciousness, demonstrably
so in relation to the objects around us? But is man
at rest in space?  By no means. We are all partakers of a motion. Nay, if we were truly at rest
we could not have this relative steadfastness, we
should not be at rest to the things around us. Our
relative rest, and  consciousness of steadfastness,
depend  upon our being  not at rest. These are
moving things, to which he only can be steadfast
who is moving too. Even such is the life of which
we have consciousness. We have a life in relation to
physical things, because man wants life. True life in
man would alter his relation to them. They could




8      MANl AND LIES D WELLING PLACE.    [S. I.
not be the realities any more, he could not have a life
in them. As rest to moving things is not truly rest,
but motion; so life to inert things is not truly life, but
deadness.
It is Science which has emphatically preparea tne
way for this mode of thought. The study of Nature
has led men to the conviction that all which we
perceive or can picture in our thoughts as constituting
the physical world is but the appearance to us of
some existence to a true apprehension of which we do
not attain; so that we have a consciousness of being
in a world different from that which truly exists.
The word phenomenon has been introduced into
science to denote this fact: that the true essence of
nature is different from that which we can know by
sense or conceive by intellect; and that the things
which we perceive or think, do not correspond to the
very fact of being. Phenomena are appearances.*
But if these things which we know be but
phenomena, then it follows that we feel them wrongly.
For we feel them as realities; they seem to determine our whole life and condition. Thus our perception and feeling are not true, and we lie under
illusions which have relation not to our intellect
alone, but to our very being. We cannot separate
them from ourselves. While man is such as he is,
that which can only be appearance must be reality to
him. He feels himself in conscious relation only with
that which is not the very essence, the truth of being.
* From the Greek, <ailvopal, to apfiear.




CH. I.]    OF TIE WOR:i OF SCIENrCE.          9
This is the plain teaching of our science stripped of
technicality.
But men could not understand that this was their
true relation to nature, until through long and varied
experience the conviction had been forced upon them.
It is natural to us to suppose, and indeed to feel
absolutely sure, that we do know the true fact of
nature, and that it is such as it appears. That it
should be so is indeed implied in the meaning of the
word "appear."  That alone is an appearance which
men, until they have learnt otherwise, naturally
suppose to be the fact.
And it must have been more difficult for men to
recognize this fact, because of the bearing it has upon
themselves: for if the phenomena that sense perceives, and that science investigates, are'not truly
existing, then we are under illusion in such a way
as must entirely alter our own conception of ourselves.
The true being of man cannot be in us. The true being
of nature is hidden from our eyes because there is not
that within which answers to it.
It is a remarkable thing that men should have
rested in the assertion that we cannot know the
essential being of nature, without recognizing that
this fact necessarily places us under illusion, and
causes us to attribute being to that which does not
possess it.  We understand, however, why they
should have failed adequately to perceive this consequence of their position when we see what the feeling
of non-existing things to be the existing ones involves.
For a life consciously passed among things that are




IO      MALAN A ND HIlS D WELLNAC  PLACE.    [B. T.
not, and in events therefore that are but in seeming
too, cannot be the true life of man. The proofs
which have led men to recognize the difference of
their perception from the actual existence of Nature
are of many kinds, and have been urged in various
ways. But I shall not dwell on these, preferring to
confine myself to the one position that Nature is not,
and cannot be, as Science has heretofore represented
it, wanting in action, or inert. If, however, this idea
itself, of the inertness of Nature, be not familiar, it
may suffice to refer to the now universal conviction
that every material change must have a cause, and that
none can originate itself. This is what is meant by
inertness; it is the basis of the belief in the order of
the physical world.
We feel, then, that the phenomenon is inert, and
controlled by passive necessity. The question is,
therefore, whether this feeling on our part corresponds
to the truth of nature as it is: whether that which
exists, apart from man, be thus inert, or our feeling be
due to man's own state of being.
I. Inertness necessarily belongs to all phenomena.
That which is only fel/ to be, and does not truly or
absolutely exist, must have the character of inaction.
It- must be passive. A phenomenon must be inert
becauzse it is a p/thenomenon. We cannot argue from
inertness in that which appears to inertness in that
which IS. Of whatsoever kind the very essence of
nature may be, if it be unknown the phenomenon
must be inert. \Ve have no ground, therefore, in the




CH. I.]        OF THE  ~WORK OF SCIENCE.                     1I
inertness we feel, for affirming of nature that it is
inert.  We must feel it so, by virtue of our known
relation to it, as not perceiving its essence.
2. The question therefore rests entirely upon its
own evidence. Since we have no reason from the
inertness of the "phenomenal" for inferring the inertness of the "essential," can we know  whether that
essential be inert or not? We can know. Inertness,
as being absolute inaction, cannot belong to that
which truly is.  Being and absolute inaction are contraries. Inertness, therefore, must be a property by
which the phenomenal differs from  the essential or
absolute.
3. Again, Nature does act: it acts upon us, or we
could not perceive at all.  The true being of nature
is active therefore.  That we feel it otherwise shows
that we do not feel it as it is.  We must look for the
source of nature's apparent or felt inertness in man's
condition.*
Our own state has affected  our feeling, and has
necessitated  our thinking of the world as it is not.
Universally this principle is recognised in respect to
individual things: that our own condition affects our
* The perplexity that is always felt respecting perception, and
man's conscious relation to the physical world, whenever the question
is agitated, arises in great part from the incongruous supposition that
inert things act upon us. It is evident, as said above, that in Whatever
world man might be, if he were conscious only of phenomena, that is, if
he did not perceive the essential being of it, he must be conscious of
being in an inert world. That condition carries with it, unavoidably,
the conscious perception of inertness. We may not, therefore, assume
any other cause for our perception of nature as inert.




12       MAN AND  lIS D WELLING PLA CE.          [B. I.
feeling, and that we must have regard to that condition as an element in judging. The application of
this principle to the investigation of the world as a
whole and to conditions affecting all mankind, is all
that is contended for. Before we can know by our
feeling of the world what it truly is, we must understand man's condition in relation to it.*
Here is in an emphatic sense the work of Science.
By investigation of that which he feels to be, man learns
his own condition, and so becomes able to interpret
the appearance of the world. For men, pursuing their
own ends, fulfil God's. All human activity bears
witness to a larger purpose in it than any that is
consciously present to the worker; often the object
sought being of little value compared with the result
that is achieved.
For many generations, now, the chief energies of
thinking men have been devoted to physical research.
Unwearied has been the diligence, patient and selfsacrificing the toil, that have been brought to the
task; glorious the  offerings of self-denial, enthusiasm, life, that have been laid upon that altar. The
results may look cold, barely set forth by weight and
measure, or clothed in uncouth formulas; but a warm
life glows beneath. The dark crater is instinct with
fire.  For those results the largest hearts of human
mould have poured themselves in passionate fervour
upon nature, and ecstasies of joy and hope have
* Guarding against what Bacon calls " the Idols of the tribe;" or
those errors respecting nature to which we are prone through circumn
stances which affect all men.




CH. I.j    OF THE WORK OF SCIENCE.           I3
thrilled to weakness frames which no labours could
exhaust; for God had moved them. The wonder of
His works was as a spell upon them; the mystery
and beauty of the universe wrought like a command
within. They stretched forth their hands to the
Infinite.
And what have they grasped? Some mathematical relations, some undefined ideas about forces, a
perception merely of undeviating law? Have they but
inaugurated a ceaseless strife between the emotions
and the intellect? an everlasting protest of piety
against conviction?  Must they content themselves
with physical advance, and take refuge from perplexity of heart in bridging oceans and annihilating
space, the bright visions which lured them on fading
like the enchantments of a dream? Is this the end?
Not so. In creating science men have done more
than they knew. They have prepared the way for
the removal of an illusion. Hence the discord. For
the truths of science will not blend with the conceptions we have formed of nature without a shock to
ineradicable feelings. The great thought of science
is necessity; the human soul demands above all
things freedom, not only for itself, but even more for
the Power by which the world is governed. Therefore it is that science and religion have been at strife,
Our conception of nature as inert would not permit it
to be otherwise. The establishment of a necessary
connection between natural phenomena has seemed
to put a chain upon the hand of God, and substitute
a dead mechanism for the living sympathy that men
3




I4      MAN ANVD HIS D IVELLINVG PLA CL'. I.
had found in wave and mountain, in storm and sunshine, in the beauty of the earth and the glory of the
sky. The present state of science in the minds of
religious men is, for the most part, a result of opposing
forces, a compromise between the ideas of physical
causation and of the direct action of the Creator. But
it need not continue so. This is an embarrassment
which arises in the course of advancing knowledge,
but which ceases with the misapprehension from
which it springs; the explanation. of the universe
which ignorance has supposed yielding to a juster
knowledge. There is not absence of acting in nature,
but a want of life in man.  Men,have naturally
believed, indeed, that the sole result of Science would
be to enlarge our knowledge of that which appears;
to'discover'the relations of phenomena, and give us
control over physical things. But it has an evident
adaptation to do more than this; and to make us
know ourselves more truly, revealing to us not only
that which is without, but that which is within.
There are three words in established use: appearance, phenomenonl andfact.  Between appearance and
fact there is the widest distinction, they are even
opposites.' Yet the word phenomenon is used sometimes for one, sometimes for the other. Confusion of
thought must result. from such a use of words.* But
the reason of this Vacillating language is, that while
* Coleridge notices "the unconscious irony with which the same
things are termed indifferently facts and phenomena,"




CH. I.]    OF THE VWORK  OF SCIE2NCE.        IS
men are compelled to say that phenomena are but
appearances, they do truly think of them as facts or
realities; for they are felt by us as real. We speak
of things in one way and think of them in another,
for we can only truly think of phenomena, as but
phenomena, by constantly remembering the falseness
of our feeling.
But the right use of these words is distinct and
simple. " Appearance" is that which is to our sense,
but is not true to our thought; e.g. the appearance
of the moon is a bright disc. " Phenomenon " is that
which is to our senses and our thought mutually
correcting and checked by each other; the moon
itself therefore is a phenomenon. Fact is that which
truly and absolutely exists; the essential BEING of
nature, which we cannot think. Fact is that which
Is; phenomenon is that which is to our conception;
appearance is that which is to our sense. Defect of
knowledge makes appearances facts to us; defect of
being makes phenomena facts to us. In the true life
of man, the fact alone should be the fact to him, and
phenomena should be but phenomena instead of being
as now, the realities of his existence; even as true
knowledge is to know and feel appearances to be but
appearances, instead of their being, as they are to
ignorance, realities. Now, the phenomenon is real to
us, moulds and determines all our, experience. We
express this fact by saying we are the slaves of matter.
The discordance of our state with the aspirations and
unquenchable assertions of our soul is felt, but not
understood. It is want of life in man which makes




I 6     AY.A A.ND HIS DWELLING PLA CE.       [B. I.
the universe physical to us, and subjects us to the
tyranny of inert necessities. For nature IS not as we
feel it. Thus do we perceive and feel another different
fact; but not thus is it to be felt for ever. Life is to be
given to man, a life whereby he, being more, shall feel
more truly.  The instincts which assert for man a
truer, worthier being may assume a loftier tone.
Science is their friend and servant, not their enemy;
revealing deadness in respect to man, it explains the
mystery of his present state; adds emphasis to the
prophecy of a different future.




CHAPTER 11.
OF TILE LA WS OF NA TURE.
These three be the true stages of knowledge, and they are as the
three acclamations, Sancte, Sancte, Sancte! holy in the description or
dilation of his works; holy in the connection or concatenation of them;
and holy in the union of them in a perpetual and uniform law.
LORD BACON: Of the Advancenment of Learning.
WITH true action we necessarily connect moral conceptions. The ideas cannot be dissociated. And
that to which moral conceptions apply is by all
termed spiritual. For this reason the fact of nature
has been affirmed to be the spiritual world. That it
is so, follows from the proposition that inertness does
not belong to it. The argument would be the same,
if there were insuperable difficulties in conceiving
how man should be made to perceive the inert
phenomenal world by his presence, in a defective
state, in the spiritual world. The proof that it must
be so would be none the less complete.  But this is
by no means the case. On the contrary, the. light
which the facts of.our experience receive from the
perception that it is truly a spiritual world with
which we are in relation, and that it is physical to us




I8      MlN ANAAD HIS DWELLING PLACE.    rB. I.
only through man's defectiveness —that its being
physical to us denotes, and is evidence of, a dead
state of man, which else we should not know —is
stronger demonstration than any that rests merely on
the intellect. For this evidence embraces all our
faculties, and appeals to all our being; revealing
the source of our inward strife, and taking away perplexities by demonstrating how they must have arisen.
For not only do we thus understand why man is
in a physical world; but we understand also how it
is that we have conceived two modes of being: one
low, inert, passing; the other higher, free, eternal.
This is because man has believed the phenomenal to
have true existence, believing his own deadness to be,
as he perceives it, in that which is around him. But
that our experience is truly due to a spiritual fact,
altered to us by man's defect, speaks for itself. WVe
feel, in spite of all proofs, that we are in relation with
a world that is not inert or dead. Science, in presenting nature as inert, crushes our instincts, baffles
our deepest convictions. Man we would willingly
grant to be in a dead, lifeless state; but not the
universe. It is too full of glory and of beauty-a
beauty that is to us sacred, that we cannot but call
holy. Nature is bound to us by ties so deep and
tender, it is so high above us, stirs us with influences
so mysterious, speaks to us in words so moving,
sympathizes with us so truly, chides us so gently, so
fervently inspires or sternly warns, holds out to us for
ever so bright a pattern, it cannot be the slave of a
mere dead necessity. It seems a ruthless hand that




cit. II.]   OF THIE LA WS OF NA TURE.         19
tears away so bright a veil, and shows us —not
nothing, not a dream, but a dead block, worse than
nothing; a cold carved image with unheeding eyes,
on which we lavish love in vain; which stamps the
life out of our hearts, like idol gods, by blind mechanic
impulse, and no more.
Therefore it is that so many men of strong affections and imagination oppose themselves to science.
They cannot bear to have all this glory and significance reduced to mere results of physical conditions.
All that for which they value nature is destroyed in
such explanations. They loathe to think that the
tenderness and awe which move them so are but
subjective enchantments.  They say, that science
does not account for that which they perceive: like
the knife of the anatomist, it pursues the life in vain.
For man does introduce into nature something
from himself; either the inertness, the negative
quality, the defect; or the beauty, the meaning, and
the glory. Either that whereby the world is noble
comes from ourselves, or that whereby it is mean.
Call it be doubtful which it is?
The course of nature is constant and unvarying,
and for this reason, together with our own consciousness of exertion when we would produce physical
changes, we assert its inactivity. But invariableness
is not proof of inaction. Right action is invariable;
right action is absolutely conformed to law. Why,
therefore, should not the secret of nature's invariableness be, not passiveness, but rightness? If invariable



20       MAiN  AND HIS D WELLI.NG PLACE.    [B. I,.
ness implied passiveness, then God himself who
changes not must be inert.
That the invariableness of nature bespeaks holiness as its cause doubtless involves an appeal to man's
moral sense. But the appeal to an inevitable conscious
association of right and wrong with true action, surely
has not less weight than an appeal to a perception of
intellectual relations. The laws of our nature demand,
that if we banish inertness from our thought of
nature, we should introduce into it the idea of rightness. There must be some reason for the invariableness of the phenomena.  We are bound by our
constitution to attribute rightness to nature if it be
not inert.
And it is easy to understand how man's condition
should be such that he should necessarily have conceived unvarying ACTION as inert necessity. It needs
only that he should not perceive the action. Where
there is true action, not recognized, there passive
causes must be supposed.  Conceive some being,
ignorant of man, ignorant of his spontaneous power
of motion: he would necessarily suppose, on observing human movements, that some force operated upon
man from withQut, to produce them. And if they
were always the same under the same circumstances,
if they were conformed to unvarying principles, to
such a being there would be, in human motions, just
the uniformity we perceive in nature, just such an
appearance of passive law.* In nature is unchanging
* It might be asked, "Can holiness be predicated of nature as of
man? Invariability in the watch I make, is different from invariability




cit. nI.]       OF THE LA WVS OF NA TURE.                      2I
oneness of fact in ever-changing form. These changes
of form impress us with the feeling of force or exertion,
when taking place in certain relations to our consciousness. For our feeling nature as inert involves
our consciousness of exertion. We are such that the
action which is in it impresses us with the feeling of
passive force.
Thus the various forces which science supposes are
easily understood. They are conceptions necessary
for us, and belong to the phenomenon. Science does
not affirm them as existing, only as apparent. Taking
to herself the position of dealing only with phenomena,
she assigns to these forces also but a phenomenal
character. The fact of nature is felt by us as a passive
existence, subject to these various forces, because we
in the child I educate. The child has a will and freedom, and his right
action I call holiness; but unless the watch also has a will and freedom,
I should not call its right action holiness."
It is not the phenomenon that is spoken.of, but that true being,
itself unperceived, which causes the phenomenon to be perceived by us.
The phenomenon is inert, and therefore not possibly holy; but we
speak of the essential fact, which is different therefrom and not inert.
Of this, holiness is affirmed, because the phenomenon is uniform. The
uniformity in that which we feel to be depends on right action, and not
on inaction in that which is.
To take an illustration. If when we look through a stereoscope it
is said to us that the object is double, we might reply in the same way,
" How can that which I see be said to be double? it is single." True;
it is not that which is consciously present to our perception that is
spoken of, but the object which causes us to have such perception, and
to think aright, of which we must remember the subjective laws of vision.
We correct our perception, as it were, by withdrawing our eye from the
stereoscope. So we must mentally withdraw our eye to judge of the
true reality of nature.  Not of that which is consciously present to our
perception, but of that which truly is, we want to learn.




22        M.rAN AND HIS DWELLING PLA CE.                     [B. I.
do not feel it rightly. The passive forces have been
necessarily supposed, because there cannot be true
action  in that which  is but a phenomenon.*
So far we may see clearly. That which we feel to
be is inert only because it is not the very essence of
that which Is; and the invariableness and necessity
throughout nature present now to us a new aspect.
It no more makes the fact of nature passive.  To  be
able to refer all things in nature to invariable laws
would be the glory and the joy of man. This would
be to demonstrate in nature undeviating holiness,
perfect and  unfailing  love.   Understand  that  the
inertness is due to man, and the reducing all things
to an apparently mechanical necessity revolts the soul
no more.
* Because that which is a phenomenon cannot EXIST.  It has a
relative existence only; it "is to us," i. e., it is felt by us as existing;
that which truly exists being different.  Of course, therefore, there
cannot be action in a phenomenon, there not being existence. It is of
necessity characterized by inertness.  It has relative or apparent action,
but is in itself and absolutely inactive. To say that the phenomenon is
different from that which truly is, and to say that it does not exist, are
the same thing. The fact exists, and the phenomenon is felt by us to
exist, because of the existence of that fact.  Thus it is easy to understand how an inert existenct has been supposed. The idea is self-contradictory, yet it must have arisen.  Ignorance necessitates belief in the
existence of that which only is to us, i. e., of the phenomenon. But the
phenomenon is found to be inert, before it is recognized to be only a
phenomenon. It is found to be inert while it is still supposed to BE.
Thus the notion of inert existence comes to be entertained, and grotws
familiar insidiously, so that its impossibility is overlooked; and men
who maintain that the things that are to us are but phenomena, and
do not truly exist, still regard the fact of nature, which does exist,
virtually as inert.




CI. I.]        OF TIlE LA WVS OF NA TURE.           23
Because nature is spiritual, science has been compelled to introduce the conception of law. Incongruous
as it is with our thought of an inert substance, it has
been felt to be not less natural and true to instinct
than indispensable for theory.  And rightly.   In
nature law is fulfilled: perfect.obedience is there;
for the fulfilling of Jaw is love.




24      ALAN AND IIIS DWELLING PLA CE.         [B. I.
CHAPTER III.
OF THE ILL USTRA TION FROM ASTR ONOMY.
CALLICLES.-I know not how it is, Socrates, you appear to me to
speak well. Yet that which happens to most, happens to me; I am not
quite persuaded by you.-PLATO: Gorgias.
THE difficulty which is naturally felt in conceiving
that the fact which causes our experience is spiritual
may be much diminished by the aid of analogy. Not
that analogy furnishes any part of the evidence on
which the statement rests. That evidence claims to
have a demonstrative basis in science, which demands
that we should ascribe the perceived inertness to man,
and recognize that the inert phenomenon denotes a
fact that cannot be inert.  But however sufficient
these or any other proofs might be granted to be,
there still remains a difficulty in respect to the feeling,
a strangeness, and as it were an unnaturalness, that
has its seat chiefly in the sense, and which might
express itself in such terms as these: "What does it
avail to prove the world not physical? of what use is
it to bring arguments that these things which I see
and handle, which I use for food or clothing, which




CH. III.] OF THE LLUSTRATION FROJASTRONOAIY.  25
are passive before my touch, are spiritual? I know
that they are not. This is the world in which I am, and
it is unspiritual enough." All must be subject for a
time to this feeling: it is chiefly the result of habit,
and soon ceases to cause any embarrassment. It
might be sufficient to reply that these things are the
phenomena, the physicalness of which is not denied,
but affirmed, and the reality of which to us is the very
evidence of the want of life of MAN: their not being
felt by us to be, as they are, the appearances of a
different reality, showing man's defectiveness. It might
be urged that no one leads so natural and commonsense a life, as he who knows that he is living face to
face with eternity and all spiritual things, and that a
rectification of his own condition would make him feel
himself to be so. It needs only a liberation from the
chains forged by speculation and hypothesis, to make
it most easy to, us to recognize in all our consciousness a spiritual cause, and a deadness in ourselves.
But assistance in overcoming the natural feeling, which
makes this conviction difficult to acquire against our
preconceptions, may be derived from the course of
man's thought upon other subjects, and especially from
the history of astronomy. Remembering only that
in the one case the intellectual apprehension alone is
concerned and in the other the actual being of man,
the progress of astronomical discovery may serve to
illustrate, in almost every detail, the course of man's
learning that nature is spiritual, and that he wants
life.
We feel it absurd to be told that this is the spiritual




26     AMAN AND IlS D WELLING PLACE.    [B. I.
world. According to all that we believe it is certainly
not so. But we believe that the starry universe is
infinite, or at least inconceivably vast in its extent in
space; we reject with scorn the idea that it is confined
within a petty sphere around the earth.  Yet the
wisest of men before Copernicus could not have
believed the universe to be as we know it to be. It
would have seemed as absurd to them to be told that
the universe is infinite, as it is to us to be told that it
is spiritual. And why? Simply because they ascribed
to the starry heavens a condition which belonged not
to it, but to themselves. On the ground of their own
feelings and perceptions, they believed the heavens
were moving round the earth, and were forced therefore
to conceive of them as they are not. Nothing could
render it possible for men to think rightly of the
universe in its relation to space, but the accepting for
their own a condition which they perceived, and only
could perceive, as existing in that universe. Just so
it is with us. So long as we conceive a deadness in
nature we cannot think of it as it truly is: but if we
will accept a deadness as our own, then there is no
more difficulty. When men ceased to attribute their
own motion to the universe, it expanded to the
infinite; if we cease to attribute our inertness to the
universe, it rises to the spiritual. Self-abnegation is
the law of knowing. The universe cannot be infinite
if it be revolving round the earth; it cannot be spiritual if it be inert.  Is it a dead universe or a dead
humanity? a revolving heaven or revolving earth?
Again, it may be asked: Are these things that we




CT. III.] OF TIHE ILLUSTR'A TION FROMA ASTRON'OMIY. 27
perceive by sense spiritual or what are they? and why
do we perceive them? To this it is to be replied, that
the spiritual fact, acting upon us being such as we are,
causes us to perceive in the way we do; but that the
impressions we thus receive do not correspond with
that which truly exists. Man's own condition has to
be considered; it makes that which we feel to be,
different from that which is. These objects of sense
are the phenomena resulting from the relation of the.fact to us; they are not themselves the fact but the
mode in which man perceives it. The specks of
light which we see in the heavens are the appearances
which result from the relation between the heavenly
bodies and ourselves, but by no means do they
correspond to those bodies.  The heavens are not
as they are to us. A very different thing acting upon
us makes us perceive that appearance and compels
us, while in ignorance, to believe the appearance to
be the truth.
Our perception, our necessary belief in the world
as physical until we have learnt why it appears so;
our being affected by physical things as we are,
so moved by them  and so deceived-that they,
although not truly real, but only phenomenal, are
real to us and determine our entire experience and
life; all this is part of that work in respect to man
in which his relation to the spiritual world consists.
The astronomical fact is not those little specks which
answer to our perceptions, but that mighty universe
which we have learnt from' them. So the true and
absolute fact of nature is not these physical things




28     MaAN AND HIS DWELLING PLACE.    [U. I.
which answer to our perceptions, but that higher
fact which has to be learnt from  them.  Because
of man's littleness and deficiency, the impression
which nature produces upon him is below the truth
of it. We have to remember this before we can think
of it aright.
The problem presented by astronomy to man,
and the mode of its solution, are an image of the
larger and higher problem presented by the world,
and of the mode in which its solution is effected.
Our perception being modified by an unknown condition affecting ourselves, we have to learn what that
condition is. There is only one way in which such
a problem can be solved:The subjective element must be recognized as
subjective, and transferred from that which is apart
from ourselves, to that which implicates ourselves.
In astronomy the history of the process is simple,
and its essential features clearly marked. The appearance of motion due to man's own condition was
observed and investigated, the relations which exist
in respect to it accurately noted, under the conviction
that the truth corresponded to the appearance. From
this work of observation arose hypotheses, which were
necessary to represent the appearances observed.
These were the epicycles. The planetary motions
were so irregular, owing to the combination of their
motion around the sun with their apparent motion
round the earth, that an immense number of revolving
wheels were supposed, in various relations to each
other, by the combined motions of which the apparent




CH. ImI.] OF THE ILLUSTRA TION FROM ASTRONOMY. 29
motions could be accurately conceived.  For the
epicycles were afterwards substituted, first a motion
of the planets round the sun, and finally the motion
of the earth.
It is submitted that in respect to the inertness we
perceive in nature, science as a whole has the same
work to perform as astronomy performed in relation
to the motion we perceive in the heavens: and that
this work is performed in the two cases in precisely
the same way. The appearance is observed, investigated, and the relations which exist in respect to it
accurately noted, under the supposition that it is the
fact. Hence arise hypotheses even more numerous
and complicated than those of the old astronomy:
they are necessary to represent an inertness affecting
ourselves as if it existed in the universe. These
hypotheses, expressing the observed relations, constitute the substance of science as it exists at present.
They accurately and in the best way, represent that
which is the phenomenon, or which man perceives.
But so did the epicycles. Why, then, were the
epicycles rejected. Partly for the reason that they
became too complicated to be endured. They taxed
the mind of man beyond the bounds of possibility;
and the simpler conception took their place because
it was simpler. So with science: the hypotheses
with which it is encumbered have become too complicated. All these hypotheses are rendered necessary
by the supposition that nature is inert; and the
simpler conception that the inertness is due to man
has a claim to take their place because it is simpler.




30         MIAN ANA VD HIS D WELLING PLACE.    [B. I.
Our present science represents an astronomy that
leaves the earth in the centre. As the wrongness of
that conception was made manifest by the suppositions which it rendered necessary, so the wrongness
of our conception  of nature  is manifested  by  the
suppositions we are forced to form. We are compelled to admit our natural idea untenable. The fact
cannot be as it is to us.
We can maintain our natural conception of nature
only so long as we have an unlimited indulgence in
hypotheses, and frame a new supposition, of property,
or principle, or law, for every fresh phenomenon that
is discovered, as the ancients invented a new epicycle
for every new irregularity observed in the planetary
motion. When these suppositions are inquired into,
and tested whether or not they can truly be, the case
begins to appear different.*
* See "A  Speculation  concerning  Matter,"  by PROFESSOR
FARADAY: Philos. Mag.  The celebrated Dr. Young expresses his
dissatisfaction thus:-" It has been of late very customary to consider
all the phenomena of nature as derived from the motions of the
corpuscles of matter agitated by forces varying according to certain
intricate laws which are supposed to be primary qualities, and for which
it is a kind of sacrilege to attempt to assign any ulterior cause.
When a geometrician has translated this language into his own, and
converted the formula into a curve with as many flexures and reflections
as the labyrinth of Daedalus, he imagines that he has depicted to the
senses the whole procedure of nature. Such methods may often be of
temporary advantage as long as we are contented to consider them as
classifications of phenomena only; but the grand scheme of the universe
must surely, amidst all the stupendous diversity of parts, preserve a
more dignified simplicity of plan and of principles than is compatible
with these complicated suppositions."-YouNG's Lects. Kelland's Ed.,
1845, p. 476.




Ciu. iiI.] O T7E IL US TRA TION FROM ASTROVOl Y. 3!
In astronomy men admitted so long that the
mnotion was in the heavens, because it was tacitly
assumed: attention was not directed to that question.
When the inquiry was once distinctly raised, it could
be decided only in one way. So have we admitted
the inertness we certainly feel, to be in nature, only
because it has been tacitly assumed to be so. When
once attention is fixed on it, and the inquiry distinctly
raised; is there inzaction in nature, or inadequate
apprehension on the part of man? can it be decided
except in one way? The difficulty is not to answer
the question, but to ask it fairly; to free ourselves
sufficiently from conclusions which have always been
taken for granted.
The argument which has been used respecting
the Copernican Astronomy; that the senses do not
deceive us in respect to the apparent motion, but give
us an impression which is equally consistent with
either of two explanations, applies in the same way
to the question whether the inertness be in nature or
in man. Our perception of inertness proves only that
there is defectiveness; there is a deadness either in
nature or in man. But this is not all: The force of
the demonstration of the motion of the earth, against
the epicycles, consisted chiefly in this: that it showed
why our perception must be such as it is. The old
astronomy said: We perceive it so because it is so.
The Copernican Astronomy takes a different ground.
It says, These are the facts, and therefore our
perception must be as it is; the appearance must
be this. In this attitude towards our perception, it




32      MIA  AiND HIS DWELLING PLACE.    [B. I.
has an infallible security for prevalence. For the
human mind demands in all cases to know why the
appearance must be such as it is. It demands to see
its perceptions necessary. This constitutes indeed
the necessity of hypotheses; but hypotheses cannot
maintain themselves, for they deceive the instinct
instead of fulfilling it. They do not show our perceptions to be necessary, but merely assert something
on their authority. They are like a vicious argument
in a circle; there is an appearance of proof where
there is truly none. To say, "We perceive nature
inert because it is so, and these are the conceptions
we must form respecting it," is not to show our perception necessary, it is to make a hypothesis. But
the transference of the inertness to man puts these
things in the right relation. We understand our
perception to be necessary, and we see why the
phenomenon must be such as it is. The fact being
the absolute not-inert world, with a deadness affecting
man, the perception should be, must be, that of an
inert world (that is a physical world) even as it is. In
this the mind can rest, its demands are satisfied. The
hypotheses have served their purpose.
The direct proof that the inertness perceived as
external is man's, corresponds also, in part, with that
which supports the Copernican Astronomy; and
especially in this, that to admit the inertness man!s
renders possible a satisfactory belief respecting the
universe itself. Knowing that the heavens are not
revolving as they seem, we can understand and enter
into the relations of its parts; it appears before us a




CH. III.] OF THE ILL USTRA 77 0N FROM ASTRONOMY. 33
reasonable, consistent scheme of things; the entire
conception so commends itself to our judgment that
the evidence amounts to demonstration. Even so,
knowing that nature is not dead as it seems, man and
his relation to the world are presented to us in a way
which we can partly enter into and understand, and
which so assures itself to our judgment and our
feelings, that we cannot doubt the appearance has
received its interpretation. We can think justly of
man, worthily of nature. The problem of the universe
embarrasses the intellect, pains the heart, cramps and
constrains the thoughts no more. It is a thing in
itself and for ever certain that the necessity of nature
must be love. An inert necessity must have been
felt, must have been supposed to exist, by a being
in whom there is defect; but the necessity that can
be is love.
Another respect in which astronomy remarkably
illustrates the doctrine that the inertness felt in
nature is in man, is furnished by the very difficulty
of admitting it. The ground of this difficulty is, or
seems to be, that it is against our consciousness. We
have a conviction, so apparently intuitive and insuperable, that man is not unspiritual, is not inert. The
contrary appears to be his distinguishing characteristic. If we cannot be sure of this, of what can we be
sure? All our life, all our thoughts, are moulded to
this persuasion. We base it on our consciousness.
This is, however, virtually the same difficulty with
which the Copernican Astronomy had to contend
We are certainly conscious, or seem to be conscious,




34      MIAN AiND HIS DWELLING PLACE.        [B. I.
that we are at rest in space, and that the earth is
immovable beneath  us.  The earth  was to  the
ancients distinguished from all the heavenly bodies
by being alone steadfast; and that conviction was
based upon the strongest evidence that consciousness
can afford. Why should not our conviction that man
is distinguished from all the rest of the creation that
he perceives by being spiritual while that is inert, be
a similar error?  Why should not his defect make
him  perceive a universal defectiveness, to which he
feels himself the sole exception?
Even yet it is strange to us when we reflect, that
we should be borne so rapidly through space and have
no consciousness of it; but we admit it freely on the
evidence which observation has supplied; and chiefly
on the ground that the admission is necessary to
enable us to understand the universe.
The same evidence may make us admit that this
is not man's life. For it should be remembered
that the Copernican Astronomy has made good its
ground against our feeling and consciousness, not
merely against an inference or belief. The intensest
natural convictions, the strongest persuasions of sense,
inevitably yield to reason and evidence. That is a law
of nature. If the world is not physical, men will as
certainly believe it as that the heavens do not revolve.
Nor should there be much reluctance. For what
is it but to put ourselves out of the centre, to be
content to conceive of ourselves as subordinate and.not chief, as being little parts of a greater whole
instead of the end for which all exists?




cii. iii.] OF THE IL USTI.4'0zNFROMASTROA'O.AIY. 35
When has it been found that humility, speaking
in the name of reason and observation, has deceived
us? We think too much of ourselves: this gives
the fatal bias to  our thoughts; is the judicial
blindness of our eyes. God punishes us for pride by
ignorance and error.
Let us remember that the aversion to admit the
universe not revolving was of old as great as can
possibly be ours to admit it not inert.  No intensity
of feeling, no apparent absurdity or impossibility in
the idea, or firm conviction of the contrary, can lend
any weight to the argument. Observation and the
sound use of reason are the sole arbiters, our convictions and feelings and necessary persuasions are
nothing. Rather, if they must be taken into the
account, they are on the wrong side; for they are the
fruits of ignorance, they are measurements of infinity
by finitude.
We require to know why, if man be inert, our
consciousness is such as it is; why we feel that our
will is free? For no theory has -any claim to acceptance which does not account for this feeling. The
question of Freewill will be discussed hereafter;
here it may suffice to observe, in general, that it finds
a perfect solution if the spirituality of the universe be
granted. Man and nature cannot both be inert, but
the inertness may be in man if it be not in nature.
We think man free and nature not free. The consciousness of our own rest, and perception of motion
* See Book II., Chap. vii.




36     AIAN AND HIlS DWELLING PLACE.    [B. I.
in the heavens, affords a striking parallel.  That
man's will is free may be granted, if that form of
expression be held to be of value. He has a relative
freedom, hence his capacity for virtue and for
criminality; but that this constitutes true freedom
for man is entirely another proposition. It sounds
strange with the words of the New Testament in our
memory, to hear the freedom of man affirmed as a
Christian doctrine. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is
there is liberty." Man is free just in so far as he has life.
In another respect astronomy aids our thought.
The inertness that is affirmed of man is not such
inertness as we seem to perceive in nature. That
physical inertness does not, cannot, exist at all, it
can only appear. It is a phenomenon due to man's
inertness, but is not the same thing.
Even so the motions that appear in the heavens,
real as they are to those who do not know the
motion that causes them to appear, do not and cannot exist. They are appearances only. The truly
existing motion is of another kind; of such a kind
as to necessitate that appearance, but not the same
as the appearance. Man's inertness is such as to
cause a physical inertness to appear to him in
nature; but it is not that physical inertness. The
inertness of man is spiritual, actual; a true, absolute
death, not a phenomenal one. Physical inertness is
phenomenal only.  From  the true inertness come
self-will, arbitrariness, and sin.
Yet by the study of the merely apparent motions
in the heavens, which have no existence but are only




CH. iii.] OF TI IEL USTRA TION FROMASTRONOMIY. 37
the impression produced on us by another motion of
a different kind, the truth was discovered. From the
study of effects comes the knowledge of causes.
Even so, from the study of the merely phenomenal
inertness in nature comes a knowledge of the true
inertness which affects ourselves.
And the mode in which science effects this result
is beautiful. For as astronomy dealt only with the
motions of the heavenly bodies, having no possible
regard to their essence; that is, chiefly with the
subjective element, which is thereby discovered to
be due to ourselves; so does science deal chiefly
with inertia under the form of cause and effect.
Science puts away the consideration of essence or
being, and regards only causative connection.  It
studies emphatically the subjective element, the
inertia. Hence its adaptation to reveal to us its
source in man. As the stars are at a distance from
us, so that we can only observe their motions; so does
science as it were put nature at a distance, and set
aside all more intimate questions as to what it is, to
study one particular condition. It deals with inertia
alone; with causes and effects, phenomena and laws.
Yet this last expression is true only in a limited
sense. It is true of the present, but not of that
which must be. The true work of science is to
discover facts.  But the other position  must be
taken first, even as the apparent astronomy must have
preceded the Copernican. The old astronomy dealt
with appearances and their laws alone, which it
presented with the most truthful fidelity. To this
4




38      MAN AN2rD HIS D WELLING -PLACE.    [B. 1.
day no better method can be found of representing
those apparent motions. But the interpretation of
those appearances reveals that which is [in relation to
astronomy]- the fact. Nor can science end in phenomena and laws; its destiny, its instincts, call it to
a worthier work. As well might astronomy have left
the earth for ever in the centre of the universe and contented itself with the exhibition of appearances, and
the construction of theories which should account for
them, as science leave nature inert to our belief, and
end its work in manifesting phenomena and laws alone.
Science abjures the inquiry after "essences" only in
order to avoid false essences; first the fact must be
made known before its essence can be inquired into:
to seek the essence of a phenomenon were too great
a mistake; it only appears to be. This is the abasement which comes before exaltation, the self-control
and humbleness which are rewarded with unforeseen
success.  The astronomers of old little foreknew
what work they were preparing for, what higher,
truer knowledge than they could conceive would flow
from their labours. As little could the noble army of
martyrs who have created science have foreseen the
result their labours would achieve. For when the
fact of nature is seen to be not inert but spiritual,
then does science deal with the fact, and no longer
with phenomena alone.
In astronomy, again, we see that the false conception of the universe was overthrown by the
observation of relations.  For the relations which
observation discovers belong rightly to the tnlth,




CH. III.] OF THL ILLUSTRA TION ROif ASTRONOMIY.' 39
and not to the appearance; and will not accord with
the false conception. The attempt to harmonize them
with the false conception necessitated the hypotheses
which became at length so manifestly false.
So does science, by the observation of relations in
nature, overthrow the false conception we have formed
of it.  For those relations belong rightly to the
spiritual fact. The attempt to harmonize them with
our natural impression necessitates our having recourse
to hypotheses which we feel must be false; it
produces a tension, a strain upon the mind, which
ends of necessity in making us give up that false
conception, natural, and at first unavoidable, as it is
Science teaches us that nature is not such as it
appears to us; because, if it be, we must believe
things which cannot be believed, we must invent
hypotheses which will not bear the test of examination
and at the complexity of which our natural instincts
revolt.,The oneness, the necessity, which science
discovers in nature, belong to a fact that is not inert
but truly active; they belong to holiness. It is by
science, not b y speculation, that the life of nature is
made known, because it is by observation only that
those relations become known by which false conceptions can be rectified.
Lastly: our astronomical knowledge enables us
to understand how easily, when once we are familiar
with the thought, we may practically and consciously
recognize through all our experience a spiritual fact,
in spite of our natural feeling. We have no difficulty
in always thinking of the heavens as they are and




40      AlAN AND HIS D VEZLLING PLA CE.    [B. 1.
not as they appear. The apparent relations always
suggest to our thoughts and feelings the true relations.
We do, without any embarrassment or confusion,
recognize what universe w'e live in; and are literally
in a different' universe from those who have not
astronomical knowledge. Just so easy is it for any
man to be consciously aware that the universe is
spiritual; just so naturally may the apparent relations
suggest to him the true ones; just so literally may he
be in a different world from those who do not know
that it is only in appearance physical. If we will
remember that man wants life, as we remember that
the earth is not at rest, we can perfectly well understand and always be conscious that the fact of nature
is spiritual. All our instincts and native tendencies
combine to enforce this belief; to the child and the
utterly ignorant the world is always spiritual, though
in a false and perverted sense.
The work of science, in the discovery of invariableness or law, is not to exclude spirituality or
action, but to.give to it its true meaning of holiness,
and teach us that the true spiritual is not that which
man has, but that which he wants. Science proves
nature different from ourselves; but she places it not
below us, as we think, but above. Man has to rise
to become one with the FACT of nature. There is not
that inert existence which he feels to be.
Nothing is so repugnant, so impossible, as truly
to believe the universe to be such as the theory of an
external inertness represents it to be. It is manifestly
more.  Nature cannot be dead.  We cannot help




CH. III.  OF THE ILL USTRA TION RO OM ASTRONOMIY. 41
speaking of her life, inconsistent though it be. The
difficulties with which science has so constantly to
strive; the obstacles which theologians and poets so
obstinately put in her way, are but the expressions
of this feeling. Why do men so determinately maintain a special vital force, not identical with physical
forces, but because they feel that life is truly spiritual,
and will not have it made mechanical? Granted that
theirs is a blind and unwise struggle; that they deny
the very spirituality they seek to maintain, and treat
their best friend as an enemy. Not the less speaks
humanity in them. Life is spiritual, and nature lives.
Rather, far rather, will men admit man to be dead
than the universe, when once they see that the question comes to that issue. For the point to be decided
is not whether there be a deadness at all. There is a
deadness: we perceive it, and are conscious of it ever.
We have embodied it in our language, asserted it in
our philosophy, made it (as the doctrine of inertia) the
corner-stone of our science. The deadness is the great
fact of our present state of being, that which gives it
its entire character. The assertion of a death is no
new doctrine; it is no doctrine peculiar to religion.
The only question is; where is it, in nature or in man?
absolute or relative; affecting the universal work of God
or our miserable selves? Where is the WANT, the
necessity for being altered? Is nature wrapped in
darkness, or is man blind? This is the simple choice
we have to make.
A recognition that we are in the spiritual world
demands of us no greater change in our conceptions




42      MAN AND HIS DWELLING PLACE.    [B. I.
than has been already accomplished by astronomy.
Nor does our understanding that the phenomenon is
not the fact make any difference to the phenomenon
itself. Our impressions are not altered; the only
question is concerning the interpretation we put upon
them.  We perceive the universe as inert. Why?
because it is inert, or because, by reason of a defect in
man's own being, our impression does not correspond
to the truth? This is almost too simple to lay stress
upon, yet there is apt to be a misapprehension respecting it. The sun rises and sets'to us as it did to the
first of men. If it did not, we could not affirm the
revolution of the earth. If nature were not inert to
us, we could not affirm the deadness of man. The
appearance is not altered by our better knowledge.
The phenomenon is not made less by our knowing the
fact, but more. It is shorn of no glory or value that
it possessed, but receives an added lustre, a new
significance.  To know that the fact of nature is
spiritual leaves us all that is in nature, but adds to it
infinitely more. We do not thereby escape from the
state which makes it physical to us, but we are freed
from  an illusion.  The spiritual world must and
should affect us as it does. For us to be affected
otherwise, either man must be different, or the world
must not be spiritual.
Man's defect is not in his perceiving the world as
physical, but in his perceiving it as a reality; in his
not feeling it to be phenomenal only; even as our
ignorance is not the cause of our perceiving the heavens
move, but of our thinking such motion to be real.




CH. III. ] OF THE ILL USTRA TION FROMASTRONOMY. 43
From this state we cannot escape by any action of our
own, nor is it desirable we should escape; but we can
recognize the truth. We can think more rightly, though
our impressions remain the same. So we are every
way advantaged, and especially better prepared for
action.
From our false feeling we learn what man's state
is. We are such that the spiritual is physical to us,
the active inert, the living dead, love a mechanical
necessity. Such is man; such his defect; such his
necessity for being made new. Here is the secret of
his pride. Because he is dead, he sets himself up as
the centre of all things, and feels himself exalted as
such a king.  He admires himself, extols himself,
seeks to subordinate all things to himself, must make
all things contribute to his pleasure; he must get all
he can, must exercise his arbitrary will, will yield
nothing, nor forego, nor sacrifice: all of which is the
opposite to God.
He does not know that all this is from a miserable
want: that as, through our own motion, the heavens
revolve about the earth and each man feels himself
the centre of the universal sphere, so the secret of selfexaltation, self-will, self-regard and self-assertion is
inertness. He says: I am free, and nature is my
slave: he does not know that this is death. Should he
not rather say: In becoming one with that which
nature IS, I live?




44       AMAY AND HIIS D  ELLING PLACE.       [B. I.
CHAPTER IV.
OF IENO WING.
The inseparable propriety of time, which is ever more and more to
disclose truth.-Advancement of Learning.
THUS astronomy exhibits an instance of a false belief
respecting the universe, due to man's own condition;
a belief established by universal consent, fortified by
powerful arguments, and lasting many ages; yet a
belief fertile in practical evils, and necessary to be
removed before man could use the world aright.
Astronomy shows us also the simple and natural
mode, of observation and learning from nature, by
which such false beliefs are rectified. It should not
therefore be urged against the opinion that the fact
of nature is spiritual, that there is universal belief
against it, and a natural persuasion of the strongest
kind; nor should it prejudice the inquiry that so long
a period has elapsed without the error being rectified.
All these things we know may be; they have been
before; it is natural that they should be. And if
more ages have passed before man learns that he
wants life, than before he discovered that the earth




CH. IV.]          OF ATIVO VINVG.             45
was not steadfast in the centre of the sphere, it may
be remembered that the work is greater, and demands
a larger preparation.
And if there appear to be strong arguments against
this opinion, and much difficulty in admitting it, it
may not be amiss to recall to mind that the true
astronomy, basing itself upon the one certain argument
that the perceived motion could not be in the heavens,
yet, met with many difficulties, and was opposed by
strong arguments. Nothing could persuade a man
so admirable in all respects and so well qualified to
form a right opinion as the Astronomer Tycho Brahe,
that the earth was not at'rest. The firm persuasion
of our steadfastness, except when we move or are
moved relatively to the things around us, he could
not give up; as hard that was to him, as it seems
to us to give up the persuasion of man's life except
~when he physically dies. Apparently he could not
entertain the conception that man might be either
at rest or moving to these things, and yet be not
at rest, truly and in the strict meaning of the
term: even as we find it strange-to think that man
may be living or dead to this earthly life, and yet not
truly living in the strict sense of the word.
More striking still, Bacon himself, who led the van
in man's deliverance from the persuasion of his own
knowledge, rejected the doctrine of the earth's motion;
not lightly, nor from mere prejudice, but on mistaken
arguments drawn apparently from nature. He says:
" So we may see that the opinion of Copernicus touching the rotation of -the earth, which astronomy itself




46       MAN AND HIS DW ELLING PLA CE.    [B. I.
cannot correct, because it is not repugnant to any of
the phenomena, yet natural philosophy may correct."
It seemed to him that there were proofs, from other
grounds, against it. Even so it might appear to us
that, though an inertness in man instead of in nature
could not be disproved from  science, because it necessarily agrees with the phenomena, that is, with an
absolute conformity to law and apparent passiveness
in nature, yet it might be set aside by arguments
drawn from other sources. Bacon's example, therefore,
may teach us caution. The motion of the earth,
proved by astronomy, refuses to be disproved on any
other ground. May not a deadness in man, based
on the simple argument that the perceived inertness
cannot be in nature, compel a like assent?
Doubtless there were many things the Copernican
Astronomy could not explain. Doubtless it was not,
at first, fully reconcilable with all that was justly
held: but also, demands were made upon it that had
no claim to be regarded, and arguments were used
against it founded on opinions which farther examination overthrew. The experience of the past may
teach us patience. Can it be that our impressions of
the universe should need no correcting? is it not
certain they demand to be elevated and enlarged?
Is it evidence in favour of our notions, or not rather
truly against them, that man, such as he has proved
himself to be, has been obliged to entertain them? *
~ "By prejudices of opinion," says Sir John Herschel, " we mean
opinions hastily taken up, either from the assertion of others, from our




CII. IV.]                OF KNO WIATG.                         47
But with regard to all the analogies which may be
urged from our false impressions respecting objects of
sense to support the conclusion that nature in its true
essence is not such as we feel it to be, it must be
remembered that they are but analogies. They are
used only to render the bearing of the argument
more evident, and to show how in human life, as
elsewhere in nature, one thing pre-figulres and prepares for another.
The cases are on a different level. In the one, an
accurate conception is substituted for a conception
conformed to a merely sensuous appearance; in the
other, a belief in that which is not to be conceived is
substituted for a belief in the existence of that which
is conformed to our mode of thought. Which indeed
own superficial views, or from vulgar observation; and which from being
constantly admitted without dispute, have obtained the stronghold of
habit upon our minds. Such were the opinions once maintained that
the earth is the greatest body in the universe, and placed immovable in
its centre, and all the rest of the universe created for its sole use; that
it is the nature of fire and of sounds to ascend, that the moonlight is
cold, that dews fall from the air, &c.' " To combat and destroy such
prejudices we may proceed in two ways, either by demonstrating the
falsehood of the facts alleged in their support, or by showing how the
appearances which seem to countenance them are more satisfactorily
accounted for without their admission.  But it is unfortunately the
nature of prejudices of opinion to remain after all ground for their
reasonable entertainment is destroyed. Against such a disposition the
student of science must contend with all his power. Not that we are so
unreasonable as to demand of him an instant and peremptory dismission
of all his former opinions and judgments: all we require is, that he will
hold them without bigotry, retain till he shall see reason to question
them, and be ready to resign them when fairly proved untenable, and to
doubt them when the weight of probability is shown to lie against them.
If he refuse this, he is incapable of science. "




48      M4AN AND HIS D WELLING PLACE.    CB. I.
is but saying that the very essence of being is above
our power of conceiving.
The position affirmed is that the fact of nature
does not correspond to our conceptions, even as we
know it does not correspond to our sensuous impressions; and that in respect to our conceptions, as to
our senses, a truer knowledge is acquired through the
examination and testing by observation and reflection
of that which we have believed'to be. When it is
proved that things which are to our sense cannot be
that which truly exists, we abandon the belief without hesitation, and infer a different existence. We
regard those impressions no more as authoritative,
but endeavour by due consideration, to infer from
them what the truth must be. So should we act
when it is proved that the things which present themselves to our conception cannot be the fact of nature.
We should have no hesitation in giving them up
also; and in inferring an existence, and a condition
of our own, which would cause us rightly to have
such conceptions, although not themselves answering
to the truth. Our necessary conceptions of nature
are such that we may, by due consideration, infer the
truth from them. The fact which makes us conceive,
as we do, a physical world, we can by taking into
account man's own condition certainly infer to have
quite different properties. Our conceptions should be
placed on the same level as our sensuous impression;
as not themselves authoritative, but as supplying the
means of trustworthy knowledge. Thus, if the moon
be not truly a bright disc, although that is what we




CH. IV.]          OF AzVO WING.                49
must see; so neither can the universe be truly an
inert existence obeying passive laws, although that is
what we must conceive. If we cannot think of it
otherwise, that is of little moment; we may know
it none the less to be otherwise, and by the necessity of our thought know also something respecting
man.
The necessity of our thought is, like the necessity
of our sensuous perceptions, not an authority, not a
thing to which our belief must be conformed, but
a fact of our experience on which our true knowledge
must be based. Both alike bespeak a cause, an
existence, but are no evidence of what kind it is.
And with regard to the existence of the things we
touch and use, what is true of them is only that they
have a relative existence. They are relatively to us:
they have the same existence as our bodies. They
are to man's feeling, to his consciousness. The
existence of phenomenal things is not denied in any
such sense as to leave a blank or vacancy, as if it
were space left empty. They exist as parts of the
whole; but that whole is diffcrent from what we
conceive. It is asserted that our apprehension of the
universe is inadequate.
It should, however, be remembered, with reference
to the illusions of the senses which thought corrects,
that we have no other kind of evidence for those
things which we find most real and certain than we
have for those which are proved to be illusions. The
evidence we have of the earth on which we stand is
not truly different from that which we have of a




50      MAN AND HIS D VWELLING PLACE.    [B. L
bright disc in the heavens; it is more, but it is still
the evidence of sense. We see the moon as a disc,
we see and touch the earth as rock, or water, or tree,
or house; but touch may be deceptive as well as
sight. Two united senses give us no security against
the deceptiveness of sense. We know only that the
earth is to us. It supports us, answers to our efforts,
to our conceptions. And if there be in us an extreme
assurance that that which sight and touch unitedly
affirm must be truly that which is, we should
remember that there is in us the same natural
assurance, until it is corrected, of the certainty of
sight alone. If men have been willing to determine,
upon grounds of sound reason, what is truly indicated
by that which they only see, surely it may be
expected that they will be willing to use the like consideration with respect to that which they both see
and touch. Truth does not come from clinging to our
natural convictions.
And our finding these sensuous things always the
same, or changing according to definite laws, so that
we can calculate upon them, use them, and feel them
reliable, firm, and true: this does not affect the
essential nature of that which is. The fact, being
ever the same, is ever the same to us; that which is
to sense will be to sense again; that which is to
thought will be the same to thought again. There is
that which causes us to see a bright disc in the
heavens, and so long as it is the same and we are the
same, so long shall we see that disc; but that which
we believe in, through such seeing, is very unlike the




CH. Iv.3          OF KNO WING.                51
disc. For our perception of such a disc there must
be more than we perceive.
Never, indeed, can we account for our\ perception
by the existence of things which correspond to it. If
the fact were not more, never could we perceive so
much. Nay, we should certainly not perceive at all.
How should inert things make us perceive? The fact
of our perceiving as we do proves the existence of
more than is perceived. Can our apprehension be
equal to nature's excellence? Do we not, in respect
to each single thing, have to believe more in that
thing than we immediately perceive? How then
should it not be the same in respect to the sum
of all?
For our experience to be such as it is, there must
be,to our feeling, inert or physical things. We must
perceive them and act upon them; they must be the
realities of our existence. How should this be?
Inertness is opposed to being: there cannot truly be
inert existence. We must, therefore, perceive as inert
that which is not inert; only so can the things we
have to do with be passive, dead, material, such that
we can exercise force upon them, and find resistance.
Only in one way can we have perception and experience of inert realities: there must be, apart from man
true not-inert existence, and in him inertness: then
to him there will be inert existence: the existence
without, the inertness within. Is not this the solution
of our perception? Inert things thus will be to us; a
physical world, answering in every way to our feeling
and our action. And not only so; but thus alone can




52     AMAN AND HIS D WELLING PLACE.    [B. I.
it be that the things which are the realities to us
should cease and pass away. For our activity, progress, enjoyment, for this life of man, the things that
are to us must change; they must have bedn, but be
no more. They must not BE, but be temporal and
fleeting: the forms under which an unchanging existence is perceived. With true eternal being around
him, and defect in man, inert and passing things are
his realities. He dwells amid phenomena, and lives a
temporal and earthly life.
Do we ask: How should man be in an inert
world? Let us ask: How should he be in a revolving universe? These two questions admit of one
reply. He is not so. The universe cannot be revolving. Let the universe, therefore, stand fast, and
man revolve. So shall be to him  day and night,
rising and setting suns, noonday brightness for his
work, and solemn revelations of stars to lead him up
to God.-The universe cannot be dead. Let the
universe be living, therefore, and man be dead. So
to him there shall be a world of passive laws and
lifeless uniformity, a world subject to his control,
invitant to his energy, full of deep lessons to his
heart.




CHAPTER V.
OF BEING.
GOD is LOVE.
WE have necessarily inferred,. from our experience,
the existence of an inert world; conceiving that the
fact corresponds to our impressions. But what we
are compelled to infer depends, in every case, upon
our knowledge: only when that is complete and
exact, can an inference, however necessary, or belief,
however unavoidable, possess correctness. Nor is
there any conscious difference to the mind, in respect
to its necessity, between a true and a false belief.
They can be distinguished only by being tested. A
true inference proves itself true on examination: a
false inference is found by the same means to be false,
and proves thereby ignorance on the part of him to
whom it has been necessary.
These are very obvious considerations to apply
to our opinions respecting the world; nor would there
have been any difficulty in applying them, but for one
circumstance, which has seemed to distinguish those




54      MAN AND HIS DtVELLING PLACE.         [B. I.
opinions from our opinions on all other subjects. It
has been thought that the belief respecting the world,
which we derive from our consciousness, must be
held infallible, because, if it is not so, the sole basis for
certainty is taken away. It has been supposed that
if such belief is untrue, we not only are under illusion,
but are hopelessly and inevitably so: under an illusion
from which man can never escape. It is not denied,
on the one hand, by any man who has considered the
question, that our consciousness might be caused in a
manner different from that which we have necessarily
supposed; yet it is maintained, on the other, that it
cannot be so, or else man would lie under an irremediable delusion. The argument is, that we cannot
believe that his Creator would have given him capacities, instincts, and desires only to mock and to
deceive him. And the argument is in itself a good
one. We are persuaded that He has given to man
the means of knowing the truth, and cannot have left
him hopelessly under illusion. If man truly had no
means of correcting his first necessary impressions
respecting the nature of the world, there would be a
fair basis for maintaining that those impressions correspond to the truth.
But this position may be seen to rest on an
imperfect knowledge. It is not to be opposed, for it
merges itself into, and becomes, a different one, whenthe work of science is rightly apprehended. It is not
a true asumption that man has no means of correcting
his impressions respecting the world. If they are
false, he is not left hopelessly under illusion. The




cet. v.]           OF BEING.                  55
means whereby that illusion is escaped from, as in the
case of all other illusions, are at his command; in
investigation, observation, and inquiry; in the right
use of his natural powers. In reasoning upon this
subject men have overlooked, as they naturally must
have done, the true bearing of science: they have
conceived it wrongly; placing it in subordination
to their natural impressions, instead of recognizing in
it a power to correct them. For as an investigation
of nature, not in its parts only but as a whole, science
gives man the knowledge by which he may escape
from the false conception of existence which his
ignorance has imposed upon him.
For it is the conception of EXISTENCE as physical,
or inert, which involves in mystery the problem of
Being. Of physical existence the problem never can
be solved; all attempts must land us in deeper darkness, must make the contradictoriness more manifest.
We are trying to think of that as " being " which cannot be, but can only "appear." All our attempts to
think are brought to nought bythis.error; no hypotheses
will fill the chasm, no imaginings hide from ourselves
the consciousness that the very fact and essence of all
things escapes us. Conceiving an inertness in the universe, a negation not relative but absolute, we are
amazed that we cannot conceive what that BEING can
be, to which inertness belongs. But why should we
be amazed?  How can inertness belong to BEING?
Inertness is deadness. Here, in ourselves, is the Being
to which inertness belongs; we know it but too well:
the Being in whom is death.




56     MAIAN AND HIS DWELLIANG PLACE.    [B. I.
Since then there is in science a means by which
man's natural convictions in respect to the world may
be rectified, there remains no more reason for refusing
to admit them to be erroneous. And there is a great
relief to the mind in being able to take this ground.
Man's life is brought into greater harmony and consistency with itself. For it is the law of our present
state that we should learn truth through illusion. Nor
can we, indeed, conceive it to be otherwise, without an
entire alteration of our mental constitution. Starting
from ignorance, error must have precedence of truth.
In fact, man is under illusions which include all his
being. For does he not find pleasure in that which
may be harmful?-are not poisons sometimes pleasant?
-are not most enticing enjoyments often disastrous?
But to have pleasure in a thing is to feel it good.
Man, therefore, may feel that to be good which is not
good, that to be evil which is not evil. His feeling
of good is no proof of goodness. He is under illusion
as to good.
And does not men often necessarily think that to
be true which is not true? Does not his ignorance
determine his opinions? That which he must think
true may, or may not, be true. He is under illusion
as to truth.
And again. Does not man of necessity think
that to be, which appears to him, although it may not
be? He may feel that to be which is not: he is
under illusions as to being.
There are two possible views which may be taken
of the universe, conformably with the appearance:




cuI. V.]            OF BEING.                   57
two interpretations which may be put upon that
which we perceive and are conscious of. We may
think, as we have been accustomed to think, that
nature is a dead inert entity, subject to mere passive
law, with one being of spiritual capacities and endowments, and he mysteriously failing, sinning, evil, falling
short of all that he should be. The one being, worthy
to be called a Being, marred, and lost, and evil. No
true life except in man, and in him so strangely spoilt.
Or we may think nature perfect in spiritual life;
an universe full of being that is true Being, with no
flaw, with no defect; but in respect to man this Being
wanting; he being the one defective thing. Not that
the universe is imperfect by his defect, marred by his
failure. That is part of its life. He is what he is,
because life is to be given to him; his consciousness,
his work, his action, have reference to a life that is to
be bestowed; his deadness is made conscious, as it
were, to himself, that he may be delivered from it..
Therefore he feels it to be in all that he perceivestherefore the spiritual world is a dead world to him,
the universe is so mean, and he so lofty.
According to our conceptions, there is a rightness
in nature, but that rightness has no worth; man has
worth, but he is wrong. Surely we are right in feeling
this to be a dark and painful mystery. But where
have we learnt that it is true?  That is the phenomeon, that is what is felt by us; but we know that
our feelings are of no weight unless we know and consider also our own condition, and our relation to that
which is their cause. Why should we act against




58      Ai'AN AND HIS DWELLING PLACE.    [E. I.
experience and reason, and assume that, in respect to
nature, our impressions are correct while we are
ignorant, that we can know without the means of
knowing?  The evidence on which we take for
granted that the universe is such as we think it, would
not avail to establish the very slightest fact in our
daily life: viz., that it seems so to us, without our
having learnt, or inquired, whether there were any
circumstances affecting the mode in which it seems
to us.
That man should be under illusion shows only
that there is defect in him. It is but the necessary
consequence of a fact well known.  In recognizing
that-we have been under illusion, we do but assent to
an admitted principle, which we might well marvel
we had not recognized before. How should we, who
without investigation cannot know one single detail
of the course of nature, know without investigation
the essence of the whole? How should we, who are
constantly deceived and under illusions in respect to
matters of the most ordinary import, know that -we
could not have been deceived in respect to the highest
and profoundest of all?
Man may take for himself in God's universe a lofty
or an humble place: as the one living being or as the
one wanting life. He may, in his thoughts, exalt God
or exalt himself. In either case his perception must
be as it is; in either case he must seem to himself the
one living being in a world of death.
It is a simple question, it might seem an idle and




cI1. v.]           OF BEING.                  59
merely speculative one; Is the perceived inertness
nature's or man's? But what practical issues it has,
what a determining power. On the answer to that
question depends the entire attitude of human life.
Men wait to be delivered from illusion: they wait
to know what the FACT is with which they have
to do.




60o       M14AN AND HIS DWELLING PLA CE             [B. L
CHAPTER VI.
OF MAN.
Laudable faith consists in resolving to receive and acknowledge whatever there is good ground for believing, however contrary it may be to
our expectations, wishes, prejudices.... in listening to reason notwithstanding all the strange circumstances that tend to bias the mind the
other way. -ARCHBISHOP WHATELY.
IT might be thought that the idea of a deadness in
man, affecting his condition in all respects, and causing
his impressions and natural convictions to differ from
the truth, would present difficulties to the understanding, and run counter to the feelings.  But the case is
not so. It can be no hard task to recognize in a new
bearing the familiar truth that our condition and
relation to things determine the mode in which we
are affected by them. We do but apply to the whole
that mode of judging which we have already applied
to all particulars. The proposition, therefore, that
the universe is not truly physical in its own being,
but is rendered so to us by man's condition, involves
no new mode of thought or principle of judging. It
is not a -speculation, but a question of ordinary
evidence, appealing to the rules of judgment which




CH. VI.]             OF MA4N.                    6i
are daily applied by all men, and used, more reflectingly and on a larger scale, by men engaged in
scientific work.
For, when inquiry is made respecting the world,
the primary answer is the same, whether it be held
that the appearance does or does not correspond to
the reality: the world exists. Then there arises a
second question: Has that which exists those qualities which we naturally suppose, or are its true qualities
other than its apparent ones?  Is it, or is it not,
necessary that we should take into consideration ourselves and our relations, to  enable us rightly to
appreciate what it is?  Which question, indeed, is
simply whether we should employ the means found
necessary for arriving at true opinions in every other
case, or should adopt another method, against which,
in every other case, experience testifies. Shall we act
according to experience and reason, or on some
supposition to which these general guides of our
conduct lend no sanction?
In truth, our case is thus with respect to nature:
either we cannot know it.truly as it is at all, and
must be hopelessly under illusion, or we must learn
to know it by discovering our own condition in relation
to it, and interpreting the appearance it presents in
conformity therewith. The well-ascertained laws of
mental operation do not permit any other conclusion.
It is necessary thus to insist at length upon this
point, because, simple as it is, the whole question of
the spirituality of nature is contained in it. If this
principle can once be clearly seen; if it be felt that
5




62      AIAN AXND HIS DIVELLIArG PLACE.    [B. I.
a true knowledge of what nature is must depend upon
a recognition of our own relation to it, as in every
other case right knowledge depends upon such recognition of our own relation; if the question can be
brought out of the domain of darkness and assumption,
and be treated on the principles called, in all other
cases, those of common sense, the entire difficulty is
overcome. For the necessity of regarding the apparent
inaction in nature, or that which is wanting in it, as
the result of man's condition, hardly needs to be
insisted on when once it is recognized that a regard
must be had to the condition of man, and that some
part of the apparent quality, or mode of existence, of
nature is due to it.
In truth it is hard to see what other proof could be
so convincing as a simple statement of the alternatives.
For the inertness that we must recognize in that
which is conceived as physical (think of it hbw we
will, or in whatever light we may endeavour to place
it), must retain the character of being an absence
or negation. Call it by what name we may, we cannot
escape from this: in nature as it is perceived by us
there is something that we must admit to be of a
negative character. Men have named it inertness, or
absence of action; but if we object to this, and
prefer to regard it in any other way, its essential
character will not alter, it remains still an absence.
Therefore we must either admit a negation as
absolutely existing; must conceive an universal inertness or absence as in some way created; or else that
nature is not such as we feel it to be. But is not the




CH. VI.]            OF MAAN.                  63
appearance of an universal absence, or defect, simply
the way in which we learn that we do not perceive
that which is truly existing? When we examine the
facts of the external world, we are compelled to think
of them as involving an absence of something: what
can this mean, but that we do not perceive that
which truly is? An absence or defect may well be
in that which we perceive, if our perception do not
correspond to the fact; but how can it be in the
absolute fact itself? Can we conceive a more exact
contradiction than that an universal negation exists?
or that an absence has been created? The idea of
a true instead of an apparent inertness in nature, or
that the universe truly is physical, proves itself impossible the moment it is looked into: whatever the
truth may be, that cannot be true. And then the
other question follows: If nature be not truly physical
why is it physical to us? What condition of ours is
it that makes the not-inert to be felt as inert? Evidently it is some condition which makes the existence
around us to be less to us than it truly is. It is a
non-perception on our part: That which truly is in
nature is not to us. We introduce the negation, the
absence; the negative element, be it what it may, is
ours; we must search for it within. This at least
may be held certain. And how simple it is! We
knew that the truth of nature must be different from
our conception of it, because that conception cannot
be adequate; now we know one respect in which
they must differ. Our conception is of an inactive
nature though  nature cannot be inactive.  (tur




64       MAN AND HIS DWELLING PLA CE.    [B. I.
conception is therefore inadequate in this respect.
The admitted general principle receives a partial
application.
And in this all is involved; it should not be
necessary to add anything more. Let the conclusion
be held fast for a moment and considered. Defect in
man causes the universe to be to him defective. How
simple is the statement-nay, how self-evident, common-place, and trite. Nothing can be less new, less
doubted. In his heart no man thinks otherwise. Yet
how strong an illusion holds us. Against this, which
we know, and are so well assured of, we cannot help
maintaining that the universe is such as it appears;
our nature seems divided against itself. That which
in theory we give up most readily, in practice we cling
to as if for our very life.  We say willingly, that
which exists is not such as it appears; but we dare
not say, that which appears is not that which exists.
Why is it that we are so mocked, so bound? Is it a
mere contradiction in our nature?  By no means.
There is no contradiction, nothing but that which
ought to be. If the case were not as it is, there could
not be that defect on man's part which is the secret
of the whole. For what is the source of the embarrassment but this: that the things which appear are real
to us: that which is not truly the fact is the fact to
us, is felt to determine and control our being? Our
existence, as we are, is in that which is not. Here is
the contradiction. Our reason and our feeling are at
strife. We know, when we reflect, that the things that
appear cannot be the things that are; yet we feel them




ca. VI.]             OF MAN.                   65
to be-they are to us. That constitutes our world
physical; makes the phenomenon our reality.
Thus has arisen the perplexity that embarrasses
us, and makes us say: "It is impossible to understand these things, and therefore we must fall back
upon the infallibility of our own impressions." We
feel that these things which are the objects of sense
certainly are, do truly and really exist, although their
existence can be disproved: but so we should feel;
so it is the defect of man's being reveals itself.
In this there is nothing peculiar or unlike the rest
of our experience. By means of the fact that conditions affecting ourselves modify our perception,
those conditions are made known to us. No arrangement in nature is more beneficent, or better adapted
to its end, than this. Our own condition (which it is
in some sense the most important of all things for us
to know, not only because of its immediate interest,
but also because such knowledge is the basis of all
right apprehension of other things) is revealed to us
by means of its effect upon our perception. If that
which properly belongs to us had not this effect on
the appearance of that which is without us, if our own
state were not thus made apparent to ourselves, and
brought within the sphere of observation and inquiry,
we could never know it, we should have no means of
learning it. By study of that which is without us, we
must learn what we ourselves are. The spiritual
universe, becoming not-spiritual to human apprehension, reveals the defectiveness of man. The spiritual




66      MAANH ANVD HIS DWELLING PLACE.    [B. I.
is felt by him as physical, he feels the appearance as
the fact, that he may know his own deadness, what
and whence it is.
In judging of the being of the world we must take
into consideration the state of man. This is no abstruse idea; it is at the farthest remove from being
speculative. When we place our hands, first in very
cold water, and then in water less cold, the latter feels
warm. We should naturally say: I feel it warm, it is
warm: but would it be an abstruse or speculative
thing to reflect that we must think of the previous
condition of our hands; and that the water was not
warm, although we felt it so? Whatever it may be
to take into account what man is when we would judge
what nature is, it is at least not to be unpractical; it
is not to deviate from the rules and maxims of
ordinary life; it is not to obscure a plain question- by
subtleties.
Still less is it to lose or be deprived of anything.
A feeling is apt to take possession of us, and one
from which we cannot immediately escape, to the
effect, that if the appearance of the universe be not
such as the fact is, then there is less than there would
otherwise be; as if some "existence " would be set
aside. A little reflection frees us from this embarrassment, which indeed is not peculiar to this case, but
arises continually with the advance of knowledge.
The change of an incorrect opinion for a true one
always involves the loss of something that was connected with the former. An idolater in learning better
to understand the divine nature loses his gods of flesh




CH. VI.]             OF Ml1A4zN                67
and blood, his solid, substantial divinities; and finds
it, at first, difficult to understand that he has truly
incurred no loss. Ignorance necessitates suppositions
which knowledge sets aside, but meanwhile those
suppositions have gained a hold upon the thoughts as
if they were realities, and the parting with them is
felt as a deprivation. The slave accustomed to his
bonds misses his shackles in his first days of freedom.
What loss is it to give up the less for the greater, to
loosen the grasp upon the transient to lay hold upon
the eternal, to change that which appears to us for
that which is? How can our thinking differently of
nature alter anything in it: how make it less? What
can we lose by knowing better? And especially, how
can it be a loss to feel that nature is- more than we
have thought, to understand that that which appears
as a want in it is from our non-perception? of what can
this deprive us?
What we miss, and feel to be taken away from us,
as if it were a possession, is the necessity of making
suppositions, of inferring certain things. We need not
any more suppose what we have hitherto been compelled to suppose. The opinion which necessitated
those suppositions being changed, they are no longer
necessary. We have altered our view, and perceive
that the facts demand a different interpretation.
That is all. Nature is more than we thought. And
man is more also; simply our view is enlarged: the
majesty of God, and of His universe, are more worthily
revealed to us.




68      MAN AND HIS D IELLING PLACE.        B. 1.
CHAPTER VII.
OF THE RELA TION OF SCIENCE TO PHILOSOPHY.
BUT it may be asked, is it not better to remain in
such an assurance as the acceptance of our easiest
ideas may give us, and to adjust our conceptions of
spiritual things, and our belief respecting a higher
existence, to that view of the world; pursuing rather
questions of a practical bearing, in respect to which we
can attain definite results?
A fatal objection lies against this compromise;
that it cannot be carried out. Men refuse to be bound
by it. Nor can any means be found of giving it
a practical effect. He who argues against the unflinching pursuit of truth cuts away the basis of all
argument, and man's best instincts take part against
him. Whatever the truth may be, it must be better to
know it than to be in error; it must be a sacred and
pre-eminent duty to accept it. Even if we can have
no knowledge, it is better to know our necessary
ignorance.
The denial that man can havd knowledge rightly so
called is.sometimes termed Positivism. It accepts the




cII. VII.] RE~LATION OF SCIENCE TO PHILOSOPHIY. 69
result of the argument which lands us in universal
denial, and seeks to adapt man's actions to that opinion
of his conditi6n. It says: " All human knowledge is
relative; it is knowledge only of that which appears,
not of that which is. All things that we can perceive
or think are phenomena, not truly facts or existences.
The relations of that which appears we can know, but
deeper we cannot penetrate. Nor need we wish to do
so, for these relations of phenomena are all that concerns us, all that in any way affects our well-being or
our duty. Man's life, in shoit, is a life that has to do
only with appearances and their relations; it is not
his part to inquire concerning existence."
Positivism thus denies that the truth of things
answers to our impressions; in this respect well
representing the tendency of science (whose name
it especially assumes) to exclude ourselves, and any
mental necessities whatever of our own, as a standard
of that which is. It lays down the principle, that that
which is to man is not that which is, and repudiates
any inferences founded on the true existence of that
which he perceives. Of necessity positivism denies
matter; for it denies that the world that exists corresponds to that which appears. In other words, this
world, which is material, exists only relatively to us;
that which truly exists may be different. The phenomenon is one thing, the fact (or absolute) is another,
but with the latter we have no concern. And this
ground is taken by the positivist, for the express
reason that it is,practically the best. He lays it
down, that through pretending to any other know



70       MtAN ANAD HIES DWELLNG PLACE.    [B. I.
ledge than that of appearances, man's powers are
perverted, and his efforts misapplied. Pointing to
the past history of philosophy, he says, only mischief
has come from the belief in the reality of that which
we feel to be, of that which alone we can know.
Men have wasted their labour in pursuits that are
necessarily fruitless, and have turned aside from the
works which alone can truly benefit them.  The
remedy for the evils of the world is to know, and
be content in knowing, that we have to do with
phenomena alone, which are real only to man.
But does it truly appear that this is the final result
of the inquiry on the grounds affirmed. Positivism
seeks to set aside philosophy, or the inquiry into that
which is, and to substitute for it science, or the observation of that which appears. By the study of phenomena and their laws to predict the future, for the
regulation of human action, is the sole object which
it permits to man. But the conclusion which is thus
set forth has not been established. It is true that
science consists in the study of phenomena and laws
alone, and has no reference to the fact of existence;
but it is not proved that its relation to philosophy is
that of successor and destroyer. There is another
part which it may take, and for which it may be
better adapted; that of servant and renovator.
In bringing science and philosophy into relation,
and marking the links which unite them and determine their mutual destiny, positivism does an essential
service; but it is not always giveq to a man rightly
to interpret a relation which he is the first to perceive.




CH. VIi.] RELA TION OF SCIENCE TO PHILOSOPHY. 71
Science labours so strenuously in her work of observing
phenomena and tracing laws, and achieves such
triumphs in that field, that it may well be long before
it is perceived that she has any other or higher task.
Science has been conceived simply as the instrument
by which our understanding of phenomenal relations
is to be enlarged, and our practical command over
phenomena extended, by ever-increasing knowledge
of their laws. But as we have seen, there is another
possible result of science, in addition to greater knowledge of phenomenal relations: it may also teach us
something of ourselves; and may show us that some
condition perceived as apart from man should have
its cause looked for within him. By the nature of
science, as the study of that which is perceived, it
has an essential adaptation to this result. And if
this be so, if through scientific study of phenomena
we are made to understand that a quality, or mode
of existence, in that which is perceived,.does not
belong to that which is, then it is evident, also, that
philosophy stands in quite a new relation to the
problem with which it seeks to deal. The experience
which demonstrates its incompetency in the past has
no force in respect to the future, for the conditions
of the problem are altered. It was before: from that
which appears to discover that which is, our own
condition, on which the mode of our perception
depends, being unknown. Now it is: our own condition being known, from that which appears to
discover that which is. And the latter problem is
as evidently within reach of the human faculties, as




72      MAN ANAD HIS D WELLING PLACE.    [B. I.
the former is beyond them. For philosophy has
found her problem insoluble hitherto, not because
man has not the requisite faculties, but because the
conditions, or data, essential to a determination of
it, were not at her command. Science supplies the
indispensable element, for lack of which philosophy
has trod a weary round in vain. It transfers the
negative element to man; giving demonstration of
an inaction in that which man is conscious of which
cannot belong to that which truly exists.
In truth, the relation of science to philosopny
exhibits, in an eminent light, the life and mutual
dependence which mark the progress of human
thought.  Man's strivings after knowledge, in all
his tortuous windings and blind errors, are not
mere idle waste, but form a mutually connected and
balanced whole, no part of which is unnecessary, and
which tends with perfect aim to the development of
his nature.
For man's true work is that to which his instincts
prompt him; to learn that which is: passing beyond
and through the seeming to the fact. But in this
effort he fails and is baffled. Over and over again
he fails, for he takes the true being to be what seems
to him. He seeks the absolute; but this absolute he
conceives to be, first, that which he can see, or otherwise perceive by sense, and then that which he can
think. He seeks an absolute that is phenomenal.
Philosophy is embarrassed by the effort to conceive
true being that has negative elements in it; real
existence that is physical or inert, an absolute that




CH. VII.] RELATION OF SCIENCE TO PHILOSOPHY.  73
can be conceived. It embarrasses itself with needless
contradictions.  How, then, can it be liberated?
Only in one way; only by science. For when the
impotence of philosophy stands confessed, the
direction of men's energies is altered. They no
more seek, so earnestly or so exclusively, to know
that which is; they give themselves to the investigation of that which appears, to the study of that
which is to them, to the tracing of relations, to the
establishment of laws. They say: We can never
know the very fact of things, we were mistaken
ever to try.  Meanwhile, with these very words
upon their lips, they remove, under a guidance
unrecognized, the error which made that attempt
a failure.  They make manifest that the phenomenon does not correspond to the fact; they give
demonstration in what respects it necessarily differs,
revealing so what the element in our own condition
must be which is affecting our perception, and to
which we must have regard in all our thoughts
respecting that which is.
Positivism, therefore, is partly true, partly mistaken; true in its basis, mistaken in its practical
conclusion; for it fails to recognize an essential
elem'ent in the case, overlooking the power that is
in science to make us know more of man. It isinconsistent also, inasmuch as it takes no account
f the significance of its own fundamental position.
For while it asserts that all with which we seem to
have to do, is phenomenon only; while it lays stress
on the fact that this, which truly is not, affects us as




74       MANN AND HIS DWELLING PLACE. ['. I.
if it were the only reality, it omits to note the
remarkable fact which it thereby proves respecting
ourselves. It turns to no account the fact that we
feel wrongly, which yet it puts forth as its especial
discovery. This great and striking certainty, amid
all the uncertainty which. it points out, it overlooks.
We thank it for its revelation of a strange, and
strangely neglected, truth respecting ourselves, which
we will pursue to its true bearings, and turn to its
right account. For to affirm that man's existence is
only relative is to deny that he has absolute existence: and what is this but to say that he has not
true, actual life; to affirm him wanting, dead?
Postivism does not deny that there is true existence; that were impossible to one who allows that
anything appears, or that there are phenomena. It
asserts further that this true existence is not identical
with the world of phenomena of which, by sense and
intellect, we know the relations and the laws. Most
unjustly, therefore, were positivism charged with atheism; and it is in the farthest degree removed from
materialism. But it evidently errs in stating that our
concern is with phenomena alone. That which EXISTS
must be that which truly acts; must be the only
CAUSE. That which only appears can have no action.
Think or feel as we may, our true concern must be
with that which exists. If we feel otherwise, then
we are deceived, but the case is not altered; for a
mere appearance, as it has no true existence, can have
no true action. There is an evident misapprehension
in the statement that we have to do only with phe



CH. VII.]  RELATION  OF SCIENCE  TO PHILOSOPHY.  75
nomena; for if that with which we concern ourselves
do truly act on us, then it is not only a phenomenon;
if it do not, but only seem  to do so, then  it is not
that with which we truly have to do. Accordingly
there is an inconsistency in the language of positivism,
marking this inconsistency of thought; for these
phenomena, of which it is affirmed that they are not
that which truly exists, are, at the same time, spoken
of as facts, or as realities. The truth is, simply, that
which positivism expresses but practically ignores;
that we are under illusion, and feel that which is not,
as if it were. Hence all the mystery, all the confusion.
It seems to us that we have to do only with things
which may be shown to be mere appearances, and not
true realities; but the fact is not, and cannot be so.
Under the appearance of these phenomena, our real
concern lies with the true existing fact We are wrong
in thinking the phenomena to be that fact.*
If we may apply to positivism its own language,
we might say: the phenomenon is, that we have to do
* There is a curious parallel between the practical teaching of
positivism, and the theory of idealism. The idealist, examining that
which we perceive, and finding it not to be a thing which can exist
apart from a mind, affirms that that which exists, exists in a mind; that
it is an idea. The positivist, finding that the things which we feel to
affect us are phenomena, not true realities, affirms that our concern is
with phenomena, and not with the true reality. But both are inconsistent; both deny their own affirmation in making it; both are misled by
the fact of our perceiving and feeling not according to the truth. The
idealist should say: These things, that can only exist in a mind, are not
that which truly is; they only seem tb be. The positivist should say:
Our concern seems to be with phenomena alone, but this is an illusion:
the truly important thing is other than these.




76      MAN AND HIS DWELLING P~LACE.    [B. I.
only with phenomena. That is what appears; such
it is to our feeling and apprehension; but it cannot
be the fact. And again: when the positivist argues
that man can know only phenomena, and cannot know
the true fact, it is obvious, in reply, that if his argument
be correct, it is impossible for him to know what he
affirms. For he can, at most, know that man appears
unable to know the fact; this is the phenomenon-so
it is to his apprehension. He cannot know that the
fact is so, else does he know more than phenomena
with their relations and laws. For man's relation to the
fact of being is not one of the " relations of phenomena,"
to which the positivist affirms our knowledge to be
confined. The data necessary to prove that man can
only know phenomena can never be forthcoming, for
their existence would overthrow the proposition.
Positivism evidently makes too little of man.
Recognizing that defect of his being which cuts him
off from true reality, it bids him sink to the level of
that state; from which all his strife and error, and
vain disappointing labour rather should confirm his
hope to be set free. But there is much instruction in
the system. Positivism proves at least that the denial
of matter, the denial of the reality of the things that
are felt as real by us, is not unpractical, does not lead
to neglect, or the witholding from those things of all
due regard. For the very doctrine which most emphatically takes this ground in theory, in practice devotes
the most intense regard to the affairs of life. If this
be the result of the merely sceptical denial of the
reality of that with which the senses deal, how much




cii. vii.] RELATION OF SCIEN~CE TO PIIILOSOPHY. 77
deeper, more worthy, must be his heed to his daily
life,' who recognizes in ordinary things, not mere
material existences, not bare phenomena with no
deeper meaning, but the absolute fact of being, filled
with all the worth of the eternal, than which there can
be no other and no higher, and which are obscured
and darkened to our apprehension only by the want
of a respondent life in us.
For while the positive theory, in rejecting any
essential existence in phenomena, gives great liberty
to thought, and overthrows some inveterate and
baneful errors, its benefits are purchased at too great a
cost. Its gifts are treacherous; uttering words of honour
it inflicts on science a deadly wound. For science
lives by the pursuit of truth and of reality. So she
grew to her vigorous maturity; so must she continue
to grow, or she must languish and decay. No languid
impulse to ascertain relations can feed with throbbing
life her mighty limbs. The warm current of her blood
congeals at that icy touch. The balancing of profit
with no hope to know more of God, is a sickness at
her heart. Enthusiasm and belief, an assurance that
there is a reality, a being, a life verily responsive to
our appeals, in that with which we have to do, these
are the secret of her strength; "her liver, heart and
lungs, whereby she lives." Like Samson shorn of his
locks, and delivered helpless to his foes, were science
robbed of these. Mixed with errors, and false thoughts,
and beliefs unfounded, and mistaking of phenomena
for facts, have been these living powers; but they are
living: like all life, struggling towards objects unfore



78     RMAN AND HIS D  ELLING PLACE.    Le. I.
seen in failure and illusion, the longed-for rest ever
forbidden to her weary feet, each solid-seeming goal
found to be but an unsatisfying semblance when it is
attained, and constituting but a new starting point
in the pursuit.
Because the true ends are not man's but God's.
Because in all that seeming failure and delusion, God's
ends are fulfilled. The true life dwells with Him
triumphant, rounding our restlessness with everlasting
calm, swallowing up our sorrows in the eternal joy.
There is no failure. The failure is phenomenon, not
fact; that which we feel because we feel wrongly, and
know not that which Is. While we go mourning, the
heavens clap their hands, and earth rejoices. Nature
palpitates through every nerve with infinite delight
To know is to be glad. The attainment of our ends,
our success, our content, -were life no more, but death;
death undestroyed, the victory of that which is not
Love, whose victory were absolute defeat.




BOOK II.
OF RELIGION.
Then I saw that God hath a larger mouth to speak with than I had
a heart to conceive with.








CHAPTER I.
OF DEA TH.
Nor is it at all incredible that a book which has been so long in the
possession of mankind should contain many truths as yet undiscovered.
For all the same phenomena, and the same faculty of observation, from
which such great discoveries in natural knowledge have been made in
the present and the last age, were equally in possession of mankind
several thousand years before.-BUTLER: Analogy of Religion.
TiIIS then is the point at which we have arrived:
that the study of that which we perceive without us
teaches us something respecting our own condition.
A twofold change is called for in our thoughts: on
the one hand, in our thought of the world in which we
are; and on the other in our opinion respecting ourselves.  The  two  changes  must go  together:  the
recognition that Nature is more, and the feeling that
Man is less. We can accept the fact that our life is
a life lived amid things that are but appearances only
by accepting also the conviction that this is not, in the
true sense, our life. So that the question whether
inert things must not be merely the phenomena of an
existence not itself inert, comes into relation with the
deepest moral problems, and rises from the region of




82       MAN  ANAD HIS D WELLING PLACE.    [B. II.
speculation to that of religion. In what way then does
it affect our religious thought?
Man is in no other sense prejudiced than as he
clings to that which he cannot feel himself justified
in resigning. He is not unwilling to advance, but he
is fearful. His very timidity, his consciousness of his
liability to err, drive him to assume positions which
only the most perfect self-confidence could justify;
for there is no rashness like that of fear. We are so
bound to that to which we have been accustomed,
because to us the unknown is full of vague terrors.
The instinct which makes the stoutest heart shrink
from darkness, and peoples it with phantoms, is equally
strong in the intellectual world. On the accustomed
principles certain results can be secured, and we wish
to rest. We are almost content not to grow wiser if
we can but feel sure. But God will not let us rest.
He has other work for us to do. Above all, He will
cure us of our mistrust. For the secret of this misgiving is that man has not faith in God. The evil of
his nature shows itself in fear. He that is conscious
of wrong must be afraid. Adam, when his conscience
had awakened, hid himself at the voice of God; so
do his children hide themselves at the votice of truth.
It was a just fear in Eden, it is a just fear now; but
it issues now, as then, in a foolish deed. At the feet
of God the shrinking conscience must regain her peace;
the timid intellect renew her daring, bowing herself to
truth. We do right to fear; we do right to come to
that of which we are afraid, that the cause of fear may
be taken away.




CH. I.]            OF DEA T7.                 83
Men adapt their moral and religious convictions
and their intellectual conceptions to each other, and
build them up into a more or less connected system.
When, therefore, our intellectual opinions are in any
considerable degree affected by the results of inquiry,
it necessarily happens that our moral beliefs appear
also to be implicated, and much embarrassment is
caused in this way. It is hard to remember the
essential independence of two things which have been
thus closely united; and all the power of the moral
nature is often enlisted on behalf of merely intellectual
opinions, which are in themselves most antagonistic
to religious principles, but to which those principles
have been, more or less laboriously, adapted. Often,
also, the more opposed to the spirit bf religion a
particular opinion is, the more intimately it appears
to be involved with our religious convictions; for the
very reason that a larger amount of toil and thought
has been bestowed upon the task of bringing them into
even an appearance of agreement.
The writers of the New Testament declare men to
be dead. They speak of men as not having life, and
tell of a life to be given them.  If, therefore, our
thoughts were truly conformed to the New Testament, how could it seem a strange thing to us that
this state of man should be found a state of death?
how should its very words, reaffirmed by science,
excite our surprise? Would it not have appeared to
us a natural result of the study of nature to prove a
death in man?  Might we not, if we had truly
accepted the words of Scripture, have anticipated that




84      I~MAN ANAAD ItlS DWELLING PLACE.   [B. II.
it should be so? for if man be rightly called dead,
should not that condition have affected his experience,
and ought not a discovery of that fact to be the issue
of his labours to ascertain his true relations to the
universe? Why, have we been using, in our religious
speech, words which affirm man dead, and feel startled
at findingthem proved true in another sphere of inquiry?
Do we say that man is "spiritually" dead? That
is the very thing affirmed by science. Spiritual death
is actual death; death in respect to true being: the
death which constitutes the world a dead world to
us. Science reveals to us a result of man's being
spiritually dead; shows that death to be a profounder, more real thing, more truly worthy the name
of death, tha'n we had thought it. That death causes
our life to be not truly life: a life to that which zi, not.
When we see that there is a deadness in man,
scales fall from our eyes in reading the Bible; our
thoughts are in harmony with it. For one chief part
of the wonder of that book lies in this: that whereas
ve have taken it for granted that man has his life, the
men who wrote those pages knew that it was wanting
to him. They are saying what every man in his soul
affirms to be true. But their words are truer than our
thoughts: if we would do them justice, we must take
them as they are, not bending them to our conceptions. The affirmation of the New Testament is that
men are dead, and that they are to be made alive
through Christ. But we have been compelled to make
it affirm man's life, and have, therefore, given to its
words whatever meaning we could best, and most




CHi..]            OF DEA 711.                85
reverently, put upon them consistently therewith.
For by reverent and loving hands has this violence
been done; not through fault, but unavoidably. How
could it have been otherwise? While science seemed
to be demonstrating deadness throughout all nature,
how could man's deadness be maintained? WVas there
to be no life in the universe at all? While to our
ignorance the uniformity of nature seems a dead
necessity, we cleave to the life and spirituality of man
as the only basis on which a religious faith can rest.
We are compelled to deny that man can be inert,
compelled to assert for him freedom, compelled to
take his state as the type and evidence of spiritual
being. There has been no choice before us. We have
been compelled to interpret the words of the New
Testament conformably, for we could see otherwise no
possibility of religion at all.
But can words more plainly affirm that man is not
spiritual, and that he has not life? Must we not have
been laid under constraint, subjected to a perverting
force, in interpreting the Scriptures? Does not the
recognition of death as the state of man, come from
what source it may, set free the Bible from conceptions
alien to its spirit?
Nothing can be more striking than the simple way
in which the deadness of man is laid down in the New
Testament. It seems almost to be assumed, as if it
were a' thing known and evident, not needing to be
proved or made matter of special demonstration. As
is the existence of God to the Old Testament, so is
the deadness of man to the New; the fact central to
6




86       dAN AND HIS DVWELLING PLACE.   [B. I1.
the whole, the postulate, as it were, on which the
entire volume rests. May not a reason be, that the
death of man is a central fact of the Old Testament
also-that man died in Adam, becoming such as he
is through that transgression? Therefore, when the
New Testament writers take up the history and tell
of life bestowed, of a true spiritual life bestowed on
man, they do not attempt to prove the death, for that
is the known, the evident fact, only theirs to reveal
the deliverance from death. The burden of the New
Testament is that man is to be made alive.
If this be the Gospel, what a glory follows. What
light and joy break in upon this dark and miserable
world. We may almost begin to see it as God sees
it, and understand that our ignorance alone has
clothed it in such appalling gloom. If this were man's
life, truly it were a dark, a fearful, a mysterious
world; a world to fill with despair the most trustful
heart, and tax too much the strongest faith. But
what if it be man's death? What should death bring
but sin, and folly, and delusion, and agony, and vain
grasping at shadows, and sickness, and remorse?
What but this world should be, could be, the fruit of
the death of man? Knowing the death and the
redemption, the very spirit of prophets and apostles
comes into our hearts, and we feel their words become
simply true. Man is dead, therefore we are as we are;
and God has saved us, and will make us new, yea, give
us life, in Christ.
For the impossibility we have found in recognizing
that Christ is the Saviour of the WORLD, in believing




cII. I.]            OF DEAr 7Z                  87
that He will draw ALL men unto Him, arises from
our belief that this state is the life of man; from our
not having been able to see that the New Testament
calls it death. If we can alter our point of view here,
all the else insuperable difficulties in the absolute
redemption of the world are gone. Clear and consistent, satisfying all demands of conscience, and
heart, and intellect, stands before us the solution of
the world: man, from death, is being made alive.
Surely we should let every book explain itself, and
be judged by its own words. The Bible may be
rejected as a guide; every one must judge for himself; but to interpret it against itself is surely to do it
wrong. To ignore, when it speaks of death, that it
has defined death, and expressly stated what it is,
that it speaks of the present state of man as a dead
state, is to. deal it hard measure. How can we be
surprised that, dealing thus with its language, we
should be conducted to results which appal our hearts,
and baffle our thoughts, and clothe in tenfold mystery
the already too great mystery of life; that although
we call it the Book of God, it should seem to remit
still to the future those great questions of His love and
justice, which it is the very life of our souls to know?
When we are seeking to understand the Bible,
what does it matter what we think is life, what we
think death must be? The sole question is, what
does that book speak of as life, what does it term
death? Using its words consistently with themselves,
are not its statements summed up in this: that Christ
has died for men that they may be saved from death,




88       MAN AND HIS DWIVELLING PLA CE.    [B1. 1T.
and that believing in Him they shall have life? What
affirmation can be plainer, if we remember that the
same testimony has affirmed that men are dead? The
two statements are integral portions of one whole. To
separate them is to distort them.
We have been regarding the death from which
Christ saves as temporal, as a thing which may be
postponed. But it is eternal; it has relation to man's
actual being, not to changing circumstances. Our
embarrassment has arisen from our not having been
able to perceive that man is now and truly dead;
from bending all the words which declare it into
another meaning. Some have said the death is
future, man is condemned to die, in danger of dying;
some, it is a figure; some, it is a death indeed in a
spiritual sense, but different from that true death of
misery which is to ensue hereafter. But all these
opinions have had one basis: inability to believe that
this state, which men like so well, could be the death
spoken of in such terms of awe. From the death of
man has come this thought; the saddest fruit, the
most convincing proof, of the very death that is
denied. For what is it we are saying, but even this,
that mere wickedness, mere self-indulgence, merely
being alienated from God, is not worthy to be called'
death, unless there be misery conjoined with it; that
suffering is more to be feared than sinning? In that
speaks the death of man, it needs no more words to
prove it; that is death which makes man fear suffering
more than sinning.




CHAPTER II.
OF LIFE.
FROM tne state in which man is, Christ died to save
him. His life he gives for man who has not life. So
we are made to know God in the true sense of
knowing, and in that knowledge have our part in the
life eternal.
The difficulties which have rendered the nature of
the eternal life bestowed by Christ a matter of dispute, resolve themselves when it is remembered that
man is dead. For the affirmation of the New Testament is, that in Christ is given to men a life which
makes them alive from death. Therefore this life is
the opposite of the death in which they are. If that
be eternal life, then is this eternal death. So that by
the death which we know, ive may know also what
the life must be. But as we cannot know this life by
sense, so neither can we know it intellectually. We
cannot thinzk it. A chief part of all the difficulty that
has beset religious questions arises from our resolution to conceive the eternal. It cannot be conceived.
It is to be known spiritually, actually; it will not be




9o      ALAN AND HIS D WELLING PLACE.   [r II.
put into our thought. IHaving learnt that by our
intellect we can know no veritable fact at all, but
only the appearance of things, how should we suppose
that by the intellect we should know the eternal? We
have made ourselves the standard, and, projecting
our own deadness into an endless future, have called
that eternal life. But God's thoughts are not as our
thoughts.
The first necessity for a right attitude towards the
eternal is, that we should abandon the supposition
that our intellects can conceive it. Whatever is so
conceived becomes in that very process no more
eternal. When science and philosophy unite in
testifying that the essence of things is not by them
to be discovered, they do but reaffirm  St. Paul's
declaration, that spiritual things must be spiritually
discerned. The eternal is known in living. It is the
fact which the intellect has proved and confessed its
inability to grasp; the one fact which all phenomena
alike partially present. Let the intellect take its
place, as dealing not with the very fact of being but
with phenomena, which is now no more a religious
dogma only, but the accepted result of physical and
metaphysical research, and the meaning of the eternal
ceases to be difficult, ceases to be fraught with pain
either to the intellect or to the heart. The eternal
ought to be, as it is, inconceivable by thought, else
it could not be true being; else must it also be a
passing show, like earthly things. To know the
eternal is to Live.
If there is a deadness in man he is no standard;




cif. I.]             OF LHFE.                   91
his necessary conceptions have no authority, are
necessarily wrong. That which truly is cannot be
according to his thoughts, but he has to be made
different, to be raised to a truer state of being and of
feeling. Yet it is not difi cult for us to know that
there must be a state of being differently related to
time from ours; a life to which the phenomenal
things are not, as they aire to us, realities. We grow
old, the lapse of time affects and alters us; our being
is in time, and is determined by its course. But not
so is God. IHe is not older. Time and things in
time are not to Him as they are to us, but as they
truly are. To be in time is for mere phenomena to
be our realities. God is as a rock beside which flows
a stream; we are as a straw which it bears along.
That is the eternal life which God possesses; of that
man. is to partake. "This is life eternal to know
Thee." Eternal life is that which Christ had given
to His disciples, because in seeing Him they had seen
and known the Father also.
But it may be said: believing in Christ does not
make us different; we remain just as we were,
except in the feeling of our hearts. That is true.
The individual life does not remove the deadness of
man. That deadness, as it does not arise from a
condition affecting the individual alone, so it cannot
be removed by an individual change. Therefore, the
man who has received eternal life from Christ is
described thus by Paul: " I delight in the law of God
after the inward man, but I see another law in my
members, warring against the law of my mind, and




92      MAAN AND IllS D WELLING PLACE.    [B. 11.
bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, -which is
in my members. We wait for the adoption, the
redemption of our body." In him there is life
struggling with death; a life that is given to him by
Christ, a death that he partakes with humanity. The
perfect redemption of the individual is in the redemption of man. When man is saved, then there is no
more death.
For eternal life is not everlasting happiness;
salvation is not being saved from misery. They are
blessings which man's heart longs for infinitely more.
In all his ignorance and wickedness, man is not sunk
so low as not to feel that what he wants is something
better than happiness, that the curse under which he
groans is not suffering. He knows not what it is, nor
how to utter it. His prayers are inarticulate, his toils
a weary, undirected strife. But in his inmost soul he
cries out to be delivered from himself, to be saved
from the fatal spell that is upon him, whereby he
must seek his own pleasure, must seek to gratify and
to exalt himself; to be saved from passion, from the
inward gnawing death that leads him into all evil,
itself the greatest of all evils. He wants life, to BE, to
act, to be no more a slave.
Eternal life is given us in Love: God's own Life
put within man's breast. When man is made alive,
we shall no more be compelled to pursue our own
happiness, to seek for self-satisfaction. Love shall be
made perfect in us. Our life shall be like God's, one
with His who lives in giving only. And while the
death yet cleaves to man, still we have the life. A




cr. II.]             OF LIFE.                   93
new  being is within us; a life, a knowledge, a
relation, that we had not before. For we know God;
know Him truly as He is. Our whole thought of life
and good is altered; in giving up ourselves is all our
glory, all our hope and wish. The whole fact of the
universe is altered to us, for we know its life, and
source, and centre.
We are delivered from the death that bound us.
It is no more, as it was before, necessary to us to have
concern for ourselves: by knowing God we have been
made free.  For knowing Him, first we trust Him
perfectly, and feel no more the need of caring for
ourselves; and next, we loathe and detest ourselves
that we are so unlike Him. All our heart and soul
are changed. To have regard to self is hateful'to us,
for we know that that is death. All that is good or
lovely in our eyes is in sacrifice of self. Suffering and
loss have terrors for us no more. Our joy is to be one
with God in giving: we want only the perfect deliverance from death; we rejoice with joy unspeakable,
knowing that God is making that deliverance complete
in giving life to all men, we also being fellow-workers
herein with him. Our life is eternal, we know that
passing things are not the fact with which we have to
do. We look for the crown of life in heaven; the
crown of life in love perfected in sacrifice made
complete.




94        AlAN A ND IaIS D WELLING PLA CE.            [B. TI.
CHAPTER III.
OF D A MNA TI ON.
IMOGEN. — I draw the sword myself. Take it and hit'The innocent mansion of my love, my heart.
PISANIO.-                 Hence, vile instrument;
Thou shalt not damn my hand.          Cymtbeline.
He that doubteth is damned if he eat.
If thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into
life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire unquenchable; where their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched.
He that believeth not shall be damned.
OUR fatal habit of putting the eternal at a distance
from us perplexes all our thoughts of Scripture.
Therefore it is that we hardly dare to speak the word
damnation, that to utter it seems like sacrilege;-we
have put it so far away. But that which the writers
meant was not a thing they were afraid to speak of.
They had not banished it into the future. The damnation of which they spoke was a thing that is, an
eternal thing, the true and actual death of man. Men
are damned in sinning, of which we think so little.
Why is it that when the Bible speaks of death and of
damnation as present things, we reduce them to so
small a matter; but when it uses the same words with




cHI. III.]      OF.DA4ANA TIOAi.             95
a reference to the future, immediately we fill them
with a meaning the most awful we can conceive?
Why do we make this distortion of its language;
why put its words thus upon the rack, and cramp
or stretch their meaning according to a rule of tenses?
Do we not deal thus with the Bible, because this
state of sinfulness is pleasant? We cannot believe
that this is really the damnation because men
like it. It. never occurred to us that to like to be
wicked could be to be damned.  That was not bad
enough.
Here we behold ourselves. We have taxed our
thoughts to find the worst thing that could befall,
and have invented suffering. Of all the many sins we
must confess to God, is not this the head and chief?
It is without excuse; for it is a violence not only to
the light of nature, but to the plainest use of the very
words on which the meaning has been forced. The
fatal virus of the disease has turned the very medicine
into poison. For to what end is the Bible written, but
to make us know and feel the awfulness of sin, to make
us afraid of sinning, to rouse the capabilities of our
nature to a knowledge of what it is to be opposed to
God, to instil into us a fear of wrong as wrong, to give
us that new feeling which should make our hearts
respond to words which describe a sinful state as the
chief of evils? Why. should not sin be treated as
the most awful of things? Is it not so? Do not all
men, as they approach to God, more and more feel it
so? How, then, should God not speak so?
Sinning is damnation: self-indulgence is to be cast




96      AMAN AND HIS DIWELLING PLACE.    [B. II
into hell. These are the most fearful terrors, the chief
of evils, in the sight of God. Let the words be read
and tested. The difference between that thought and
ours is the difference between life and death. Does
not that which we most like or dread depend on what
we are? Self-indulgence is hell; the worm that dieth
not, and the fire that is not quenched, unbridled
passions. It is better maimed to enter into LIFE, than
having two hands to go into hell. But what life is we
know: it is the opposite to self-indulgence, the being
onewith God; and unchecked passions are an unquenchable fire, a consuming flame that is never slaked, that
burns more fiercely in the soul with each attempt to
quench it. No words can be more simple than are these;
it is their truth that makes them difficult.  That the
worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched, proves
them  not physical.  Physicalness is excluded -by
denial of its characteristic property of ceasing. A
worm and fire not physical, what should they be but
the devouring and consuming passions, consuming
ever, yet leaving unconsumed; or how should a trueseeing man speak of them otherwise? " Enter into
life with loss of all things, but be not self-indulgent,
be not cast into hell."* The message of the New
Testament to men is that they are damned, and they
know that it is true. They do not fear a future damnation that is not like the present. They know that the
burning passions in their hearts are never quenched,
* In Revelations xiv. I., the words, " the smoke of their torment
ascendeth up for ever and ever, and they have no rest day nor night,"
are used to describe a state of men in this world.




CH. III.]         OF DAIN_~A TIOZN.                97
nor can be quenched: fhat one desire sated, another
takes its place; that the imperious appetites are their
plague and torment. This is eternal death, the lake
that burneth with fire and brimstone. It is here and
now; to see it we need only that our eyes be opened,
we need only that the life that was in the men who
wrote should be in us, who read.
Do we ask what hell-fire is? God has answered
us. "If thine enemy hunger feed him, and if he
thirst give him drink; for in so doing thou shalt heap
coals of fire on his head.  Here is shown us hell: God
overcoming evil with good, consuming man by bounty.
For what is it fills our hearts with passions, and burns
us up with the fire of insatiable desires, but God's own
gifts, the charms of nature, the good things with which
He crowns our life? God's gifts kindle the fire within
us, His bounties are our torment. So he casts us into
hell, surrounding us with good; for love is fire. To
be loved by a man whom we treat as an enemy, is to
have coals of fire heaped upon our head. To be loved
as God loves us, we being such as we are, is to be cast
into a lake of fire.
God saves us from hell, saves us from damnation;
saves us through believing. He who believeth not
shall be damned; must be, certainly, inevitably, will be.
He who does not know God to be such as Christ reveals
Him, will be damned.' He will be wicked; there is
* In the original language of the Bible there is no distinction for
shall and will. Either word may be used as seems most expressive of
the sense. Perhaps the beauty is impaired sometimes in our translation
by the use of shall where will might be better.




98       MAN' AN.D ILS DWE~LLINAG PLACE.   [B. II.
no escape from sin,. and the dominion of self, but by
faith, for, save thereby, God cannot be known. There
is no other name given among men whereby we must
be saved. For if God be not known as Christ reveals
Him, nothing else can avail to extricate man from death.
The men who wrote about damnation in the
Scriptures saw things rightly; they had true perceptions, feelings justly attuned to the reality. They
were living men. To them, to sin was to be damned;
they put sinning above and before all other things as
the great and chief calamity; the fact that there was
a power, a life, that could save men from sinning,
filled their hearts with wonder, and made their lips
overflow with words that cannot be forgotten. That
fact made them beside themselves; dwarfed all things
else in their regard. And the heart of man responds
to their words; what they have affirmed is true. Sinning is worse than suffering; we know and mean it-in
spite of our own words. To be damned is not to be
miserable, but to be bad. The love of Christ, the
sight of God as He truly is, must have power to save
all men from sin. Christ must draw all men to Him.
But although damnation is not suffering, it is not
therefore to be inferred that suffering is not threatened
as punishment for sin. It is so threatened. All sin
brings punishment: God will render to every.man
according to his works. But it is from damnation,
and from death, that Christ saves us. His work has
relation to the eternal.  Our view here has been
obscured, as everywhere, by treating the eternal as
future. Throughout the Scripture, Christ is spoken




CH. III.]        OF DAMNA TION.                 99
of as saving us from sin, from corruption, from vain
conversation, from this evil world, never from pain;
from that which is the worst thing, not from that
which we most fear. Our familiarity with the latter
idea renders us unconscious what we read. The death
that is our present actual state, our condition in
relation to the eternal, is that evil, fearful thing from
which Christ has died to redeem us. Our thoughts
being other than those of the Bible, we have with
great effort adapted its words to meet them; we have
transferred them from the eternal and spiritual that
is, to the suffering or happiness that we look forward
to. Our conceptions are so moulded to this latter
idea, that it is difficult to look simply at the words of
Scripture, and see how much more is in its declarations
than in our thoughts. Christ died for the world, to
save it from the curse of death under which it is; not
a future death of misery, but an actual death of worse
than misery; a death which involves our liking that
which is evil.
We find it hard to believe that damnation can be a
thing that men like. But does not what every being likes
depend on what it is? Is corruption less corruption, in
man's view, because worms like it? Is damnation
less damnation, in God's view, because men like
it?  And God's view is simply the truth.  Surely
one object of a revelation must be to-show us things
from God's view of them, that is, as they truly are.
Sin truly is damnation, though to us it is pleasure.
That sin is pleasure to us, surely is the evil part of
our condition.




I00      IANX A ND IlS D WELLING PLA CE.    [. I.
Suppose there were a child who liked to eat dirt,
should we not tell him that it was filthy? But how
could he think that to be filthy which he liked?
Would he not suppose that we referred to some
consequences, to some future, which he would not like?
When God warns us of damnation, present and future,
we, liking it, think He is speaking of consequences.
But the instructed child learns that to eat dirt is filthy,
then he understands his teacher; man learns that sin
is damnation, then he understands his Maker.
A sinful state is eternal death. It is death in
relation to that absolute being which the eternal
denotes.  The application of the word translated
eternal to an everlasting duration arises from our
misapprehension of man's present state, from the false
conception we entertain of all things, through our
ignorance of man's want of life. Men are now dead
or damned eternally; a state from which eternal life
raises them. An eternal state is one which relates,
not to our conditions or circumstances, but to our very
being. Christ gives eternal life, a life that makes us
truly and absolutely living; not such life as the physical,
which leaves us dead, being life only in seeming. So
sin is true and absolute death, not like the physical
death which does but appear to be so. In sin we have
consciousness of death. "Sin revived," says St. Paul,
"and  I died."  Doubtless man shall not like sin
for ever. He must feel it differently, feel it the
greatest misery. But how can that be to be damned?
Surely that were rather to be saved.




CHAPTER IV.
OF R.E D EP TI O.
Foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and
perdition.
THE great fact of the New  Testament is the redemption of the WORLD; the saving of all men through
Christ.  Perhaps no single statement is so often
repeated, or asserted in so many different forms. It
would be of no avail to enumerate the passages; for
the most part they are well known. We have rather
to ascertain why they have been interpreted to mean
the salvation of part of the world, and the final loss of
the rest. What necessity has acted on our minds to
compel us to that conclusion, not less against the
apparent meaning of those passages, than against our
own deepest hopes and wishes?
The reasons have been of two kinds: in part the
apparent meaning of other passages of Scripture, in
part the evident fact that so many men do not believe,
but die without participating in religion. Of these
two elements, the latter is that which truly determines
our opinion. For no passages can be plainer, or more




Io02    AMAN AND HIS D WELLING PLA CE.    [B. II.
emphatic, than those which seem to declare the
absolute salvation of all men. No words can be more
direct, or apparently decisive, than such as these: "I,
if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." " God
sent not His son into the world to condemn the world,
but that THE WORLD through Him might be saved."
If there be others which seem as directly to affirm that
all are not saved, then it must be on other evidence
that the interpretation is decided.  One class of
expressions will be taken as the standard, according
to our general conceptions of the world and of man;
and the others will be conformed to them.
Accordingly, the absolute salvation of man has
been given up, because we could not otherwise understand that which we see in the world, and especially
the fact that men die unsaved. That one circumstance
outweighs in our estimate all other arguments. For
we have not been able to conceive the world otherwise
than as a probation for eternity. On this theory we
interpret all those statements of Scripture which
declare that all men are to be made partakers of life
through Christ. It is well that we should see clearly
what we do.  For in truth, familiarity with the
doctrine of a partial salvation of men has so moulded
the thoughts of the greater part of the believers in the
Bible, that they no longer see that the passages which
affirm salvation of all have even an apparent opposition
to their idea. A certain meaning is so constantly
associated with them, that men have almost ceased to
be aware that they might have any other; their force
and bearing are entirely lost.  How many of those




CIn. IV.]       OF REDEMIPTIOAr.               103
who think that some men go after death to a final
and unredeemable ruin, are aware that there is in the
Bible a single passage which opposes a difficulty to
that opinion?
The doctrine of a probation for an everlasting
destiny, of the final misery and loss of a part of
mankind and happiness of another part, is man's
natural supposition, from which the New Testament,
revealing to us God and life and death as they truly
are, is the means of our deliverance. For a probation
for eternity implies that this is man's life, that men are
not dead; it implies that men are not in eternity, but
that the eternal is a thing to come; it implies that
men are not now damned, but only in danger of it.
Therefore we feel so much difficulty in interpreting the
New Testament, which says the opposite of all these
things. Convinced by its evidences, have we not been
trying to submit our thoughts to its words, while yet
retaining a fundamental conception of ourselves, which
those words emphatically set aside? It refuses to be
interpreted on the doctrine of man's life.  Precisely
there it is, that its thoughts are above our thoughts;
so much above them, so much truer, so much in
advance, that we could not understand  it.  The
question of religion turns upon this point: Is this
state, or is it not, the LIFE of man.
If we can see that man truly wants life, there is
no more difficulty respecting the absolute salvation:
for probation is thereby excluded, and that man
necessarily supposes his own state to be life, can afford
no evidence that it is so; none to weigh against the




104     MAN AND HZIS DWELLING PLACE.    LB. II.
fact that he perceives deadness all around' him, and
finding no eternal in anything with which he has to do,
thinks the eternal must be to come. Too plain it is
that man has not Life-the being to whom the eternal
IS not.
It is true that we are practically under a probation: we are dealt with according to our works, are
under a system of trial, of rewards and punishments.
But this is not being under probation for eternity.
These are means through which the work that is to
be done in man is accomplished; means through which
his death is removed, and he is brought to be no more
the subject of rewards and punishments. They do not
give the character of probation to his state, in relation
to the eternal; and the express statements of Scripture exclude it.  Only our own conceptions could
have made us so interpret the statements which affirm
the punishment of evil-doers. The latter in no way
involves the former. Children are subjected to a
system of trial, and are dealt with by rewards and
punishments, but a school is not a state of probation.
Have not the words in the New Testament, which
appear to affirm the final loss of part of mankind,
received that meaning against their natural and
necessary sense; have not we ourselves put into the
Scripture the teaching which we find there? These
passages are of three kinds: those which speak of'
eternal punishment, those which speak of death as the
result of sinning, and those which relate to election.
But reflection will remove the conception that such
words are opposed to the absolute salvation of the




CH. IV.]           OF REDEMPTION.                    o05
world. They are, rather, words which necessarily flow
from it. Let the statements which affirm that the
world is to be saved through Christ be first received,
and all these passages, which seem to us so opposite,
conform themselves to it perfectly. There is not
even a semblance of opposition in the words themselves.
For the eternal is not future: the state of corruption
is eternal punishment, or ruin, or perdition: * a state
from which men are set free by having eternal life
given to them. Election is a simple fact before our
eyes. Does not St. Paul, speaking of the Jews, say
first, " The election hath obtained it, and the rest
were hardened," and  add  immediately  afterwards:
"So all Israel shall be saved"? The passages which
speak of death as the result of individual sin, such as
"the, end of these things is death," present no embarrassment when the twofold aspect under which
men are regarded is borne in mind. The individual's
death results from his own sin; the death in which all
are is a condition affecting man. Sinning truly leads
to death, but it is from death that Christ redeems.
He makes the dead alive.
What we learn from the Bible is the fearfulness of
this state which is ours; this- state which men like so
well, the evil of which we naturally regard so lightly,
and yet feel truly to be so fearful when once our eyes
* Very remarkable is the expression co6Xcatc atlvioC (Matt. xxv. 46),
an eternal discipline, or chastisement, a correction in respect to the
eternal. ic6Xaat means pruning, as of a tree. So strongly is the meaning
of discipline in it, that it is used for chastened, in the sense of moderate,
desires.   Alr-isf   fti,-s, iii. 12.




to6     MIA N A,VD HIs DIVELLrNAG PL.A CE.    In. II.
are opened. Shall we never understand that we may
be in hell, and like it; that of all evils that is the
worst and most to be deplored, and the one of which
if God speaks to us, He must warn us in the terms of
deepest awe and most touching love? Speaking of
liking evil, must not He say: "Turn ye, turn ye, why
will ye DIE?" He whose Life is shown us in the Cross?
How should He speak of pain as death, whose heart
we see in Jesus? And for the power which should
make us flee, the terror by which we should be moved
to escape, does not God open our eyes to see things
as they are? By showing us Himself, He makes us
fear the true evil. He makes us fear that which we
did not fear, by making us know that which we did
not know. Can he, who believes that he sees God in
Christ, and that in HIM is the LIFE of man, fail to feel
that sin is the most awful punishment; must he not be
saved from damnation?
Upon the conception that the world is not absolutely to be saved, no view can be taken that does
not bring us apparently into direct opposition with
some words of Scripture.  So the Calvinist and
Arminian systems continue to divide the world, and
with no prospect of reconciliation. For each side
finds some of its positions clearly in the words of
Scripture; each finds other words which it can scarcely
embrace. Men are Calvinists or Arminians according
as they think most of the universal dominion of God,
or of the freewill of man; whether they most demand
justice or grace in the divine dealings.  Their fatal
agreement in postponing the eternal to the future, and




CH. IV.]        OF REDEiIPTIOA              IoI07
seeing death in suffering, renders all other agreement
impossible. Very striking it is to observe how one
man rejects a provision of salvation for all, which takes
effect upon some only; not perceiving that his own
conception, of a salvation not provided for all, is even
more impossible to others than the thought that any
for whom Christ died shall not be saved is to himself.
Yet is nothing more simple than the union that seems
so far off. Well does the Calvinist affirm that all for
whom Christ died must be saved; well the Arminian,
that Christ died for the world, for all men. What
then prevents that they should unite in affirming
that the world must be saved? This only: that
both have a certain idea about man and human
life; that both think the eternal is an everlasting
future, that both think men cannot now be dead, in
the worst sense in which the New Testament speaks
of death.
The doctrine of election receives beautiful elucidation from those words, " Strive to enter in at the strait
gate;" for those who are saved are not few, but a
company "whom no man can number."  Evidently
the words refer to the facts of life: few enter the
strait gate, but many go in the broad path which
leads to death; for "she that liveth in pleasure is dead
while she liveth."
The numerous passages, especially in the parables,
which speak of the separation of the righteous and
the wicked, and the various terms in which the future
punishment of some is described, come to our minds
as if they were in opposition to a salvation which




Io8    ilMAN AND HIS DWELLING PLA CE.    [B. II.
should be effective in the case of all. Yet why should
we conceive them to be in opposition? Why should
we array against each other passages which do not
clash? If the salvation of the world be absolute, if
all men shall be brought to Christ, are those passages
the less true? There is no reason to modify their
language, or to endeavour to evade their meaning.
The redemption of the world from death does not
contravene punishment, does not involve a confounding of the evil and the good. Let the absolute salvation be believed; do those other passages lose their
meaning, their force, their necessity? Sin shall be
punished, the workers of iniquity shall be banished
from God; they shall be overwhelmed with " eternal
ruin,'" "drowned in destruction;" yet none the less
shall Christ draw all men to Him. None the less is
" the free gift come upon all men unto justification of
life." The absolute salvation of all men is an explicit
statement of the New Testament, an emphatic and
unequivocal declaration on the part of the very men
who affirm the supposed opposite things. Nothing
more is needed to prove them not opposed than simply
to'believe them all.
Nor is it, indeed, difficult to understand why men,
whose aim and work it was to reveal the salvation of
the whole race of man, should have dwelt so largely
on the doom of the evil, the'punishment of sin. It
behoved them, above all, not to ignore the divine
justice, to treat lightly the demands of law, to seem
to confound good and evil. Their part, especially, it
must have been, to show that the demands of the




CH. IV.]        OF RRDEiMPTION.              lo9
conscience were not set aside by the salvation they
affirmed, the wrong and guilt of human life not disregarded. How else should they have been believed?
There are many who tell us that the world shall come
all right at last, that there is nothing so much amiss;
but we cannot believe them. Our conscience tells a
different tale, demands a different issue. But when
the very men who, more than all others, have stirred
our conscience, opened our eyes to the majesty of the
divine law, the hatefulness of sin, the impossibility of
evil escaping vengeance; when they go on to affirm
that, with all this, as the sum and conclusion of the
whole, the WORLD is to be redeemed from death, and
that God shall reconcile ALL THINGS to Himself, how
should we disbelieve them? on what ground. base our
disbelief, what reason allege any more for refusing the
Gospel that they preach?  They have themselves
anticipated all objections, made their own all the
ground that might be taken against them. Do we
say: that God must punish sin? so have they said:
that the holy must be distinguished from the sinful,
and a broad contrast of fate allotted to them? so have
they said: that God will say, "Depart from me all
workers of iniquity?" so have they said: that tribulation and anguish must be the portion of those that do
evil? so have they said: that death must be the
wages of sin, and the wicked be destroyed with an
absolute, an eternal ruin, the opposite of eternal life?
so have they said. With all this, ruling and reconciling and crowning all, weaving all into one scheme
of glory, comes the proclamation of the Christ, the
p.




1 o.4MAV AND HIS D IWELLING PLACE.      [B. II.
Redeemer of the world; who, first subduing all things
to Himself, shall lay down His honours at His Father's
feet, and God be all in all; death swallowed up in
victory.
Shall we dare to put against this our pre-conceptions? Shall we disbelieve the Gospel, because we
do not see how men are to be saved after the death
of the body? What avails our ignorance to overthrow
God's word? If we examine ourselves, do we not
find that we have moulded our opinion of the whole
Gospel upon the supposition that we know what
happens when men die? On this assumption it is
that we have converted the proclamation of the
redemption of the world, to believe which is Life, into
an offer of salvation to be accepted before the body's
death or lost for ever. But how should the dying of
the body prevent men from believing in Christ? How
do we know the nature of the change which passes
upon men in that so-called death? It is our supposition, indeed, that the Bible affirms that there is no
salvation after death, but have we ever looked to see
if it be truly so? *
But not only is the salvation of the world affirmed
so emphatically, in direct terms, by the New Testament writers, it is the spirit and life of all they say.
Allusions to it break out continually, as if it were the
great subject of their thoughts, the great joy of their
* The passages commonly quoted to prove this idea might furnish
the best evidence that it is foreign to the Scriptures. "As the tree
falleth so it lieth," for example. For further remarks on this subject,
see Dialogue 2.




CH. IV.]        OF R.EDEIMPTiON..              I 
hearts, the centre about which their life revolved.
It seems the source and consummation of all their
message. "He is the propitiation for our sin," says
St. John; "and not for ours only, but for those of the
whole world." The former could not suffice without
the latter, of which it is, indeed, but an offshoot and
consequence. For, that Christ takes away the sin of
the world is the essence of the Gospel; the salvation
of the individual arises out of, and flows from, the
salvation of mankind. If Christ did not give Life:to
the world, it were given to no man. A common death
and curse is ours, a common deliverance alone avails
to save us.
And in St. Paul's language a constant reference to
the same thought is seen. Inseparable from the curse
and condemnation, from the threatenings and warnings, ever comes the fact of the redemption; because
they never forgot the redemption, the apostles never
forgot the curse; they were able to assert the righteous
judgment of God, the unswerving justice, the awfulness of the damnation, because the salvation was ever
present to their thought. Our tongues falter, and our
hearts fail, when we would assert the death that is
the wages of sin, because we see not the fulness of
the life that is the gift of God. The letting go of the
absolute redemption benumbs our grasp of all the
rest. We dare not speak as they spoke, because we
are not thinking as they thought.  How could we
say with St. Paul, "Therefore God shall send them a
strong delusion that they should believe a lie, that
they all might be damned who believe not the truth.




1I2    AIAN AND HIIS DWELLING PLACE.   [B. It.
but have pleasure in unrighteousness?"  Can we
picture to ourselves what man it must have been who,
thinking as we do of damnation, could have written
those words? But if to be damned is to do sinful
things, and if from this damnation all men must be
saved, why should it not be even so? Why should
we shrink from words which do but express the facts
of the world's history? God sends men strong delusions, and they believe lies, and are damned. They
are damned that they may be saved. Even as God
includes all in unbelief that He may have mercy upon
all; or as by the law is the knowledge of sin. For
how could man be saved except through sin? Men
are not evil because they do wickedly, but they do
wickedly because they are evil. Only by the wickedness of our deeds could we learn the evil of our hearts,
or know our need of being made new. If the world
were not wicked, if men under temptation and delusion
did not run into crime, fall into damnation, Christ had
died in vain to save it. To have been not sinful, man
must have been left in hopeless death.
For the history of the world is the making man
alive; that is the resolution of the mystery: Man
being raised from a state so evil that he might not
continue in it, a state of which God's very being
necessitates the destruction. All this sin, all this
woe, must be, for death must be destroyed. Man
cannot be left the self-regarder, the alien from Life
that he has been. At all expense of sinning and of
suffering he must be freed. The weary waste of
human life becomes quite new when we see what it is.




CH. iv.]        OF REDEMiPTIONI.             I3
for. God's glory is the light which glows even in the
lurid flames of hell; one glory.with heaven's own
brightness, the glory of eternal love. The fire that
consumes all evil, lights with perpetual day the
heavenly city.  "God is glorified alike in those
that believe and in those that perish." He is glorified
in sin; even in chief degree glorified in sin; for He
bears sin, bears it for man. That evil thing which His
soul hateth He endures that man may live. He is
glorified in sin, as when a righteous man bears wrong
and insult, unavenged, for love. Then and therein is
glory, the glory wherewith God was glorified when
Christ hung upon the cross, the glory for which He
prayed: "Glorify me Now, with thine own self, with
the glory which I had with Thee before the world
was."
God bears sin for love; for love of man. We see
Him in the Man who bore our sins; he shows us
therein what He is. No heart is tortured by sin and
misery like His, whose prerogative it is to bear alone
the name of Love. No bosom throbs so deep with
pity, or burns so intense for justice. But He endures
for love of man. The infinite patience faints not, nor
is weary. Nor hastens; for there is no delay. The
slow progress of the painful hours passes not too sadly,
the catalogue of wrongs and woes grows not too full.
The Father's eye watches the unfolding life, and
rejoices over the Son that from the dead is made
alive again. For He has shown us how He sees
mortal life; the type and pattern of humanity, the
Man to whom it was given to have life in Himself,




11 I4    AlAN ANAD HIS D WELLIVG PLA CE.    [B. II.
has revealed it. It is interpreted in Christ. Life,
His own life, given to the dead; for in Him God
reconciles the world unto Himself, not imputing their
trespasses unto them.




CHAPTER V.
OF HEA YEEN.
Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into
His glory?
IT cannot be denied that the Bible has sometimes
been laid as a yoke upon the human heart. If any
man think that a repudiation of its authority can
proceed only from the evil part of our nature, he
has more to learn respecting humanity; he may
have much to learn respecting himself. For is it
not sometimes taught that the Bible makes selfinterest the basis of religion? Is not that reproach
inseparable from the doctrine that life and death are
happiness and suffering? Let these ideas be refined
to the utmost, the pollution of self-love cannot be
purged from them.  Men will still say that religion
is but another form of self-seeking, and not deliverance from it. The world rejects a Gospel clothed
in a garment which makes it seem but the reflex of
themselves. The substitution of future happiness and
misery for life and death, of something to be got for
ourselves for deliverance from the necessity of selfregard, is the death of Christianity. It cannot rob,




I-6      MIAN AND IS D VELLING PLACE.    LB. 1I.
indeed, the death of Christ of its saving power over
individual men, but it despoils the Gospel of its prerogative, and quenches in darkness the life that
should be the light of men.
For the absolute salvation of the world must be
denied, if salvation be identified with a future
happiness, with the escape from misery or suffering.
Necessarily denied; for so conceived the conscience
protests against it. That wicked men should pass to
a happy future after death could not be admitted;
the eternal laws of right demand a different result.
The everlasting misery, which seems to be the only
alternative, is accepted of necessity. It is our nature
to think of the future in this way, to conceive it as
the scene of enjoyment or of suffering; and to erect
our system of religion on the basis that the eternal
life must be, in its essential elements, such as ours is
now.  We stipulate for ourselves that we shall be
happy, that we shall have enjoyment. We hold
forth to men that heaven consists in highest, purest
pleasures, but in pleasures still.
A very different thought, indeed, is in the heart
of many who hold this language. By the happiness
of heaven they mean love only. But the doctrine is
that which must be spoken of; the doctrine not the
feeling is presented to the world. Men for the most
part are not told of heaven as love or life, but as
happiness; of hell as not loving or death, but as
misery. This is the Gospel that man rejects, and
does right to reject. The world thirsts and groans
for life; it is weary and in despair for lack of love;




CH. V.]           OF HEA VEX.                 117
but a future happiness it will not have, a future
misery it does not fear. With desperate resolve it
clutches the present; with a madness no experience
can tame, men pursue wealth, pleasure, glory; the
undying worm within them cries for ever: Give.
That which is now is that which is for them. It is
right: the voice of God within them bids them cleave
to that which Is. The present is the eternal. If the
world would have accepted a salvation from that
which is future, it could not have been saved; for
its ruin is eternal. The grasp upon the present is, a
blind protest for the eternal against the temporal.
To hold to the present is not to take the seeming
for the fact; really to cleave to that which is, men
must know that which is; they must know  the
eternal. Men are deceived; they perish for lack of
knowledge. God has sent them a strong delusion,
that they should believe a lie, for they believe that
the eternal is not now; that things which perish in
the using are the facts that ARE. In very truth they
do believe that a man's life consists in the abundance
of the things that he possesses; that life is not
eternal life, but transient pleasures, pursuits, activities.
They do not KNOW, and thus are lost and ruined, for
phantoms sway them as realities; they make their
LIFE in that which does but seem. Therefore to save
them, God shows them that which is, the true eternal
fact which they see not, although'tis all around them.
Himself He shows them, His own being, His own
life, partaker of their death, that they may know the
eternal in utterest sacrifice of self.




Ii8    MaAN AND HIS DWELLING PLACE.    [B. II.
Knowing what salvation is, it no more does
violence to the conscience that all men should be
saved.  It subverts no justice, that the power of
Christ's love should subdue in every man all selfregard, all the force of sin and of desire: that, in
the redemption of man from death, all men should
be made complete in love, and, striving with death,
should utterly sacrifice themselves, and endure like
Him. For this is the salvation which God bestows:
to be one with Christ, who while He trod the earth
was in the bosom of the Father; and shows us heaven
in sorrow.
Christ saves us, not from suffering, but from
death; not from pain, but from that which makes
us flee from pain. The men whom Christ has saved
are known for eminence in suffering. The stream
of Life runs red with blood. "They were destitute,
afflicted, tormented; they wandered in deserts, and
mountains, and dens and caves of the earth." To them
"it was given to suffer for His name."  Life is, not to
be afraid of suffering: to be so perfect in love that
loss and sacrifice, extremest and utter sacrifice, the
having nothing but giving and bearing all things, is
perfect joy. A life which we cannot fully have while
we are in this earthly state, while man is wanting in
his life; but by the bestowment of which on man his
deadness is taken away.  For herein differs the
physical from the, spiritual, man from God; that to
man sacrifice is -pain; love brings suffering, that which
we dislike and would fain avoid. We groan, being
burdened with this weight of flesh, which, making us




Cu. v.]           OF HEA VEN.                 I9
feel the work of love as evil, puts perfect life beyond
our reach. For to God, and to us when man is wholly
made alive, that which we call sacrifice, the entire selfabnegation, has no pain. There is nothing to which
the loving act is unwelcome. For the character of
our present state is, that the action which love prompts
is painful; there is that in us which is opposed to love.
Here is the evil of our condition; we like that which
is not good. When man is made perfect then shall
that which is now painful to him be no more painful.
Perfect sacrifice is heaven to those in whom love is
perfect. Not in our circumstances can be the change
from earth to heaven, it must be in us; in the taking
away that deadness by which man is as he is. Then
is perfect sacrifice, solely and only giving, no more a
pain. We cannot think it, but we know it. In our
hearts we know it. Not in vain has Christ shown us
God. Our thoughts are truer than our words; that
which we believe and hope for, than that which we
profess. In heaven we look not for enjoyment but
for love. Only certain intellectual conceptions, notions
which we have formed on abstract questions, interfere.
Our speculative ideas make us speak of heaven as we
do not feel, and the world laughs us to scorn. For
the Gospel of happiness and misery is not true to the
heart of man. It does not touch the strongest chords
in human nature, the true movers of human life. Men
know indeed that they love self, that they are guided
by self-regard and pleasure, that they do seek what
they like; but they also despise themselves for it;
they utterly contemn that life, and treat it with bitter




120     iAN AND HIS DWELLING PLACE.    [B. II.
scorn. That is not humanity. It should be no strange
doctrine to man to hear that he is dead; who could
have said it more plainly than himself, or in words of
deeper mortification and despair, scarcely veiled by
the thin disguise of mockery.
It is not true to the human heart, it is not fair
to man, to come to him with a religion that concerns
his happiness, his escape from  suffering.  Such a
religion cannot save the world.  Can he be saved
from  himself?  Can he be made different in his
inmost being, raised from regarding his own pleasure,
from  seeking his own  interests?  This is the
question religion has to solve for him. The question
for humanity, this day, concerns the resurrection of
the dead.
Is not that which God gives to man in saving him,
in making him alive, the power of giving; of true and
absolute self-giving like His own? Is not that our
want? is it not truly what we long for, and yet do
not know? That is the Eternal, that is God's own
life; that is the water, drinking of which man shall
thirst no more. For it were mere stagnation and
satiety, to get so that we should never want again:
that were the end of all enjoyment, it were merely
mean and small capacity. We are to.be delivered
from the necessity of getting; from that which makes
hell, and is the very bond of death. Getting and
enjoying have been tried all these ages: amid God's
richest gifts, amid His infinite bounty, man has lived
to get; and the result we know.  In no form  or
way could that continue everlastingly. Can we be




CH. V.]            OF HEA VEAr                121
made givers, be made alive? To be made different
in ourselves, so that we shall not be for ever grasping
for our own, that is the true, the eternal life.
We suffer ourselves to speak as if the cause of our
evils were in God, and not in ourselves: as if our unhappiness were from the poorness of His gifts, because
He has surrounded us with conditions so imperfect,
with pleasures so unsatisfying. But it is not so.
God's benefits know no abatement nor increase. He
gives us all things richly to enjoy, crowning our life
with loving-kindness. Man banishes the glory; and
seeing not, thinks darkness is around him. Heaven
has no other joy or glory than is now, but man shall
be different: active where now he is passive; partaker
of the life which now he feels to crush and to subdue
him. For heaven nothing must or could be changed
but man; nothing but the death destroyed or taken
away. Not less of sacrifice, of being utterly given
up: not less of love without us, only more love
within.
We deceive ourselves if we think that altering the
form of our getting could make a heaven; the self
would be our torment still. It is not the things we
have to bear that crush and ruin us; it is our necessity
to get, our want of something for ourselves, our constant craving: that is our perdition. God must give
Himself to us; He must be in us; His life be ours.
So we shall want no more; have no more emptiness
to fill. We shall be like Him, able to be content
with giving. There shall be no more want; the
infinite life shall fill us; the absolute love and




122     MAN AND JZZS D VETLLIVG PLACE.    [B. Ir.
sacrifice, in which alone eternal being is, shall be ours,
shall be enough for us. Evil can be to us no more,
nor sorrow; for all sacrifice, all giving up, all that is
now enduring, resigning, bearing, being tortured, set
aside, and downcast, then shall be our joy. The
death that makes it pain shall have been done away.
What is it that never faileth, which alone vanisheth
not away, but the love that endureth all things,
beareth all things, seeketh not her own? This shall
never cease. Would we put away self-sacrifice from
heaven? It cannot be. Heaven must be self-sacrifice
made perfect; ceasing to be sacrifice, only because
complete.
Therefore must Christ have been a man of sorrows;
therefore must He have borne our sills and carried
our sorrows, and taken on Himself the chastisement
of our peace. He had to show us God, to make us
see what He is: by life in death to make known life to
death. In that which we call sorrow and humiliation
and sore distress, all things borne and sacrificed for
all, God is seen; and so only can He be seen by us,
while we are as we are, and love brings pain with it.
Heaven is, to be and do what Christ was and did, and
find no pain in it, because no more is there in us anything that is opposed to love.




CHAPTER VI.
OF THE RELIGION OF NA TURE.
HEAVEN is happiness, the deliverance of man from
all that makes him subject to sorrow; but not, therefore, can it be sought as happiness; for happiness is in
the leaving off that search. There is no happiness
like that of love, but it cannot be obtained by seeking.
Love must be given us, must carry us away, must
become our nature and our life. That which makes
the happiness is gone when happiness is sought. Is
the love of God less sacred than that of wife or
friend? Can He accept a love which friend or wife
would repudiate with disdain? WMe are compelled to
love IHim; that is the overmastering passion of our
souls, the joy of our hearts, our life and breath. Such
passion we have felt faint traces of before, when most
of loveliness has moved our souls to ecstasy, and
bowed our hearts to worship. When we could.not
contain ourselves for joy, and earth was glorified by
one presence everywhere, then was revealed to us the
image and the shadow of the love of God. We love
Him; it is the one fact of our life which flows into all




124    MIAN AND HIS D WVELLING PLACE.    [B. II.
things. To love Him is but to know Him, but to
awake from sleep, to have sight given to our eyes,
life to our hearts.  One presence glorifies all the
world, for all things are the presence of Him we love.
All passions in this passion receive their fulfilment,
reveal their true meaning, become absorbed, and die
into life. All human passions mean the love of God,
but men know it not. They clasp in ignorance that
which fades and passes and is not, not knowing the
eternal joy for which their souls cry out.
How should love be spoken or explained? We
love and are happy. We do not want, we do not
pursue. We want to be, to do, that which He wills
and does. We want to give, to bear, to sacrifice ourselves. We love the Infinite, the Eternal, Him in
whom, and for whom, and to whom are all things,
whose will is done in heaven and earth. His will is
our will; we have nothing to get; we love Him. For
He is the Redeemer: He takes away our iniquities,
delivers us from sin, and will make us perfect and
unblameable. He takes away the sins of the whole
world, and will be death's destroyer. The Vanquisher
of evil by good, who shows us what it is to LIVE; how
should we not love Him? How should we cease to
rejoice and to be glad in Him? The joy flows too
fulI, it overflows and carries us away.
It is difficult to love God because we do not see
that He saves the WORLD; and this we do not see
because we make the New Testament express our own
conceptions, instead of suffering it to speak its own
language.  We make it even below ourselves, and




ci. vI.]   OF THE RELIGIONv OF NVA TURE.      125
cannot escape from the feeling that we could conceive
a better history for man than God in his sovereignty
has ordained. It is this crushes our affection, paralyses
our hearts, makes our piety  so  lifeless.  God's
redemption is the making MAN alive; the making
all men perfect in self-sacrifice, uniting them to Himself: not some men saved from future misery, but all
delivered from this eternal death. We think Christ
came to give us that which we most wish for, happiness;
to save us from suffering which we most fear; but he
came to give us a better gift, to save us from a worse
evil. He came to give us life, that we might feel the
true good; light, that we may see the true evil; to
cure us, that our desires may be different. Christ is
the physician; He heals the sick humanity, allays the
burning fever in its veins, calms its delirious passion,
dispels its dreams, soothes its mad appetites, satisfies
its wants, restores it whole and in its right mind to
God. He gives us LIFE. With Him we are raised
up from the dead.
Our conceptions are of no weight, because man
is wanting. We are no standard; it is we that have
to be altered, a different existence is to be made ours.
Never should we use the words which say that man
was made in God's image, without remembering that
the same words affirm that man is not as God made
him. We look in vain for God's image in ourselves.
That is to seek the living among the dead. Not in
our powers, our arbitrary will, our reach of thought,
our dignity of virtue, not in any of these things is
God's likeness to be found. Show us thy glory, 0




i26    NMAN A ND HIS DWELL1NC PLA CE.    t. II.
God, that we may see Thee. Come forth from the
clouds and darkness that are about thy throne, that
the resplendent light may scatter all the shade. We
will gird up our hearts to bear the terror, our shuddering souls shall face the awful splendour.  Let the
majesty of thy power be seen, though it crush us and
we die.
God doth reveal Himself:-a Man hanged on a
gallows. It is too much, 0 God! Art thou so much
above us; are we so unlike thee? is this the power
whereby thou art able to subdue all things to thyself;
all power in heaven and earth given unto love? 0
foolish heart to tremble and be afraid of God! 0 idle
sense to heap up images of vastness! 0 proud and evil
thought that God was like us, only more. Well might
vague terrors haunt our souls, and secret dread, and
enmity, and the vain wish to hide; for we thought
God was like ourselves. Unlike us most of all in this,
that while we turn away from our own image, erected
to us for the God we do not know, HE seeks us, loves
us, will not let us go; will make us know him, will
make us friends. For to know HIMI is to love.
We cannot see God as He is, for we see ourselves
instead. We cannot see Him in nature, for we put
our own deadness into it. We draw our thought of
God not from that which IS, but from that which we
feel to be, and make Him a self-seeker like ourselves.
God is not to be seen in nature, as we see it. The
fact would teach us God, but the phenomenon will
not. He is such as the true being of nature would




CH. VI.]   OF THE RELIGION OF NA TURE.        127
show Him; not such as we infer from nature as we
feel it. We do not see love in nature; we persuade
ourselves we do, and so make our dim vision dimmer
still. The love we fancy there is such love as ours.
Not even such.  Nothing can' more pervert the
religious sense than calling what we see in nature the
love of God; this " ruling providence," this exercising
of power, this giving enjoyment, even if it were much
more perfect than it is. This is man's love; this is
our way of loving, as far as the earth is beneath the
heavens from any that can be called divine. There
is no sacrifice in it.'Tis like a rich man who, happy
and comfortable himself, takes pleasure in making
his dependants so; keeps good order, protects virtue,
and does, without trouble, everything benevolent. It
corrupts the heart to think of God's love so. If we
would truly see God's love, we must seek it where
Christ sought it, in sorrow, and sin, and agony; in
that which is wretchedest and vilest.  Not in the
beauty and delight of earth, which cost Him nothing,
but in darkest woe and fearfullest despair. God's love
is seen in sacrifice. When we can look on nature
thus, seeing in all that is saddest and most evil the
fact of perfect and intensest love; life given for the
dead; when we can interpret nature by the cross of
Christ, then we see God in it; but not till then.
We cannot express it, God forbid! how could
that be infinite which man could say? and what need
to say it, what scope for words, what place for idle
breath to draw faint images? The fact unutterable,
inconceivable, is here. In death endured for man,




I2     IM iAN AND HIIS D WELLNG PLA CE     [B. II.
God's own heart wrung with human agony and
bowed to willing shame, there and there only can we
see the love of God. So HE loves. Let us not
profane that holy word, the love of God, which, seen
even so, is but darkly seen, as man's fainting eye can
bear, not the true brightness of that glory, but the
image veiled and softened for our sight: let us not
profane that word to aught less worthy. Till we can
see nature as one with this, we do not see it; we
search in vain in it for God. "Behold I go forward,
but He is not there; and backward, but I cannot
perceive Him; on the left hand where He doth work,
but I cannot behold Him; He hideth Himself on the
right hand, that I cannot see."
The secret of the universe is learnt on Calvary.
In that death the life of nature is revealed. For it
is love, perfect and utter sacrifice; it is the life
that shall be ours when man is made alive. Then
deadness shall no more be felt around; love shall
know love, and life within shall answer to the life
without.




CHAPTER VII.
OF FREE WILL.
Love is the visible form of freedom.
THERE is nothing of which men are more conscious
than of their failure to solve questions which are of
the greatest interest to them, a solution of which
would be received as an invaluable boon, not only for
theory but for practice. There is no necessity of their
condition to which they submit more reluctantly, than
to this enforced acceptance of that which they cannot
understand. It is not too much to say that no thinking
man is satisfied: the cherished expectation of knowing
more fully in a future world sufficiently proves the
feeling of loss and want, which the acquiescence in
mysteries does but disguise.
It were an infinite joy if the mystery could be
taken away from our life, and we could know the true
answers to those earnest questionings, which men
from earliest to latest times have addressed to themselves and td all things around them. No heart
would not beat high at the prospect, would not
purchase it at any sacrifice. The promise rouses now




130     AtlIN AND HIS DWELLING PLACE.    [B. II.
indeed but a feeble interest; for faith has grown
weary, and disappointment by long use passes for
success. We gild the chains upon our hands; almost
we have persuaded ourselves that they bespeak no
slavery; but the true heart is not deceived. The
fettered limbs are motionless, that the galling be not
felt: the frantic struggles to break free have given
place to calm; but it is the calmness of despair, that
mocks itself with laughter, and hides its writhing
agonies with boastful words. It is despair; that
mimics trust, that compels itself to resignation, that
smiles the bitter smile of scorn, that despises, disbelieves, or believes because it will believe, while the
cruel doubt within, the cruel sin without, torture the
faith they cannot slay. Despair-intensest, bitterest
despair-drives its victims in the path of pleasure,
pursues their steps with madness of desire, gives
them no rest day or night, seeking happiness for
ever. Despair proclaims its gospel: take care of,yourself, obtain happiness, flee from pain, ask no
questions about the world, but secure your own
well-being.
How can this be the life of man? how can his life
be in getting? when the true life, tnat which he wants,
is the opposite of getting, is in self-giving only. How
can the remedy for human ills be in the persuasion
that we cannot know? Life is to know; death broods
over us in this unnatural calm, this falsely-called
content. Doubt about God, doubt for man, doubt of
absolute right, of the perfectness of love; the dread
that there is something which is opposed to these,




CHI. vII.]        OF FREE WIIL.                131
which no light'could make clear, no better knowledge
reconcile: these are the things which eat into our
hearts, and leave us no alternative but reckless strife
or deadly apathy. Not doubts that we would express
in words; doubts that we crush like sins, and deny,
and prove that they ought not to be; only they are
the worse for being crushed, the blacker that we will
not face them; poisoning the very springs of piety
and making it false even of love to say, " She seeketh
not her own."
All comes from measuring God's work by ourselves, taking our feeling as the standard of that
which is. There is no more doubt if we will verily
believe that we are deceived. The secret of man's
perplexity is, that he believes himself. Feeling himnself free, he affirms his freedom, asserts his life; but
Christ's words affirm that he is free only when God
makes him so, dwelling in him and giving him a life
he had not. We have mistaken freewill for freedom.
The deception we have been under, its source and
necessity, the whole history of thought on the subject
of freewill, are transparent, when we recognize the
central fact of human history, that man wants life.
True freedom belongs to manhood; the freewill of
which we are conscious belongs to death. Freewill is
not denied in denying man's freedom; but freedom is
asserted to be a different thing. God is free, to whom
sin is impossible. Man is free when sin is impossible
to him.
For if our conception of freewill be analysed, it
will be found in itself to indicate, and correspond to,




132      AIAN AND l1S DIVELLIVG PLA CE.    [B. II.
a state of defect; the essence of it is, that the action
should be not necessary. It is not necessary to man
to do right. It is worthy of remark that the ideas of
rightness, or holiness, and of wrong, are differently
related to necessity. For while necessity excludes
sin, and an action which is necessitated loses the
character on account of which we can attribute
criminality to it, the case is not the same with holi-..
ness. The highest holiness is necessary holiness.
Necessity is wanting in respect to man. He is not
therefore free, but he is conscious of freewill. He is
under law, and justly amenable to reward and punishment. When he is freed from this state of defect,
necessity will no more be wanting to his action. He
will be holy even as God is holy; no longer liable to
sin; free, and controllable by punishment or reward
no more.
Reward and punishment may be regarded as
serving to supply the defect of necessity in the being
to which they are applied. They have evidently this
tendency, though but imperfectly. They tend to
insure that rightness of action which otherwise might
be wanting. Technically speaking, freewill, and all
that belongs to it, is a result of "negation." Man
differs from God in not being free; or by absence of
that which in the Divine nature makes holiness
necessary. Whatever it be, that is not in man; and
man's characteristic of possible doing either right or
wrong evidently depends upon that absence, is wholly
accounted for by it, and needs no other supposition.
Surely God is truly the Free. He must be taken as




CH. VII.]        OF FREE WILL.                133
the type of freedom. In what respects we differ from
Him, so far do we depart from the true perfectness of
freedom. And in this especially we are unlike God,
that it is possible to us to do wrong.
What makes a difficulty here is, that we do not
feel as if our freewill, our arbitrary power of doing or
not doing, depended on a defect. To us it seems a
great capacity, the prerogative by possession of which
we are exalted above all the world. But should it be
so hard to us to understand that we put darkness for
light, and light for darkness? We pride ourselves on
arbitrariness, which God puts far away from Him,
which freedom knows but as her direst foe. Our own
words reprove us.
We labour under a confusion which has its source
in the belief that the world is as it appears. We feel
that we are free as compared with the inert things
around us. This is true. These things are subject
to an inert necessity; man feels himself not to be so.
And he dares not acknowledge himself to be not free,
for fear of reducing himself to the level of those things.
But this perplexity is removed when it is remembered
that things are but phenomena: that there is no inert
necessity, nor can be; that it can only appear. In
maintaining his freedom man denies his subjection to
the phenomnenal or inert necessity, to which he is
conscious that he is not subject; but he overlooks his
want of the true not-inert necessity. The inertness
in that which man perceives, and the arbitrariness in
himself, are correlative; two forms of the same
negation or defect. Nature is free, man is not free,
8




134      MAN  AND HIS DWELLIVG PLACE.    [B. I.
therefore he feels himself arbitrary, and nature bound
in fate. Nature's holiness to him is inertness.
With respect to the attempts which have been
made to bring man's actions into one category with
physical phenomena, and prove him subject to an
inert necessity (whether metaphysical, by logical
arguments, or inductive, by accumulation of statistics),
one remark may suffice. Whatever the force or value
of these proofs may be, they are evidently incomplete.
The theory does not fulfil the conditions of a theory,
for it does not account for the phenomena. It is true
that consciousness is not authoritative, but it demands
to be accounted for. This is a claim that cannot be
foregone. Any theory of man's action, that can pretend
to correctness, must show why our consciousness
should be such as it is. If man be the subject of an
inert necessity, as phenomena are, why does he feel as
if he were not?
It accounts for all, and answers all demands, to
recognize man's deadness and his presence in a living
world.  Life and freedom  are one.  What man
recognizes in his- feeling of freewill is a difference
between himself and nature. He is not deceived in
this; he errs only in interpreting his consciousness
into proof bf his freedom. By his deadness it is that
nature is to him inert; that the necessity in it appears
to exclude action. For truly, action and necessity
are one. What man calls his freedom, that very thing
is his- bondage.  His self-action is inaction.  For
what is sin but' the absence of the true action of the
man, when he is swayed by passion, led captive




CH. VII.]         OF FREE WILL.                 135
passively? In sin there is action which is perverted
and evil, because the MAN'S action is wanting in it.
All nature's partwas perfect, but there was a demand
for human action, and it was wanting.* Is it not
wonderful that piety compels us to take all evil action
to ourselves, and to say of all good that it comes from
God, that it is God's work in us and not our own?
Those words are true. Only when God acts in him is
man truly free.
That is true freedom in which the action is the
Being's own, wholly determined from within. Such
action is one and invariable, is necessary; the Being
does not change, nor, therefore, the action. True
freedom involves holiness. Action which is variable,
which may be either right or wrong, is dependent
upon circumstances; it is the inaction, not the true
action of the Being. Action, freedom, necessity, holiness, all are one. Necessity and freedom are one
in love. True life, or being, and love cannot be
separated. It is not a mere figure of speech that God
is Love.
Thus the idea of responsibility takes its right
place. Doubtless man is responsible; in that way
his want of life expresses itself. By absence of the
life which constitutes the true necessity, arises that
want of necessity which places under law, and gives
rise to duty. Law is from the absence of love. When
that which fulfils it is not present, then law is felt.
~ "I dare do all that may become a man;
Who dares do more is none."




[36     MAN AND HIS D WELLING PLACE.    [B. II.
There is then, and then only, that which is "due,"
because it is not rendered; that which is "owed,"
because not freely paid. The law is holy, just, and
good, for it expresses love; but love in relation to
the not-loving. It is not a condition of the perfect
life; it is the form of love where the fact is not.
It expresses not the relation in which the living stand
to the living God, but a relation from which God
redeems by giving life to the dead. Law is latent, as
it were, in love, like an inscription in a fountain, to be
read only when the stream is dry. Subjectness to
law marks the difference between ourselves and nature:
we dream of laws in nature; not law is there, but
liberty or law fulfilled. We are under law, who boast
of freedom  and are slaves.  For man and nature
differ as does a dishonest from  an honest man.
Nature will certainly do the thing that ought to be;
under whatever variety of form, through whatever
changes, infallibly that one thing shall be: the form
may change without limit, the. fact never. But man
may, or may not, do that which ought to be; he will
do it if he likes. Nature wants no laws; the love that
is her life necessitates her being, she cannot be other
than she is.
It is delusion that finds freedom in our ability to
sin; yet a necessary one. Man's freedom cannot be
given up but with his life. Freedom belongs to man's
life, and must be maintained by those who do not see
his deadness.  But the denial of man's freedom
imperils nothing if that be recognized. To disprove
nlan's freedom is to give the crowning proof that he




CIm. vII.]       OF FREE WILL.               I137
has not life. This is the work in which those have
been engaged who have assailed the doctrine of freewill. They have been proving on behalf of Christianity
the death of man; laying anew the foundation on
which the Gospel is erected, which Christian men have
razed with pious zeal.
Therefore have there been the strong arguments
against man's freedom which we have so resented
and deplored. Therefore have we been compelled to
say that freewill was a mystery not to be submitted
to examination. These things were to teach us to be
wiser; to wean us from that strong delusion that man
has life..For the argument against freewill, that seeks
to establish in man an inert necessity, answers
precisely to idealism; has the same strength of logic,
the same weakness of conclusion, the same inevitable
rejection by mankind. Each brings us to a result
which does not account for the consciousness it undertakes to explain; but each also proves an error in
our thought, and contributes its share to demonstrate
that false feeling in man which makes evident his
defect. As this life of man-life to that which is not
the true reality-is not truly life; so is the freewill
which is connected with it, the freedom relatively to
these things, not true freedom. Man is relatively free,
therefore responsible; absolutely not free, not free in
respect to the eternal which truly is; therefore to be
redeemed and introduced into liberty, made partaker
of God's freedom as of His life.




I38     AIAN AND HIS DWELLING PLACE.    [B. Ii.
CHAPTER VIII.
OF THE SELF.
We are such stuff as dreams are made of.
IF our self-action be not true action, what is our Self?
of what are we conscious? We are conscious of defect;
man's consciousness of self is the feeling of his want
of being.
There is in this conception nothing abstruse, or
remote from our ordinary modes of thought. It is as
familiar to us to be conscious of defect as of the contrary.. When we are conscious of cold, for example,
we are conscious of defect of heat. There is a certain
heat natural to the human body, defect of which we
are conscious of as cold; or in many other respects
we may have consciousness of defect; of weakness
for example, or of the loss of a member, or a sense.
So we might equally be conscious of defect of beingof want of the true being of man within us.
Man is defective. This we know. The perfection
of man has never been maintained by any. Therefore, being conscious, man should be conscious of
being defective; that is, conscious of a defect of being.




CH. VIIi.]        OF THE SELF.'39
To be true, man's consciousness must contain this
element. And can it be doubted that it is this element
of his consciousness to which the name of Self has
been assigned? Is it not an emptiness that we are
conscious of within, and call it Self? *  If it be
asked, what then is conscious of self, if the self be
defect? It may be answered: man is conscious of it.
Man is conscious of defect of being. We constantly
distinguish, in our language, between the man and the
self. We say: I hate myself, despise myself. We are
deeply conscious that the self is not the true manhood, though obscurely, not having distinctly made
the question a subject of thought.
"There is the Self." True: even as there is a
shadow. Why should we not as well be conscious of
defect of being, as perceive defect of light? Only by
experience and long inquiry does man arrive at the
knowledge that a shadow is a negation, and understand that the effects produced by shadows are due
only to want of light.  He perceives shadows as
things. Always the absence of anything is felt as an
existence by us, while we do not recognize that of
which it is the absence. Nay more, even to our
instructed eyes a shadow will often appear to be the
substantial portion of an object; and the important
part which a mere negation may play in our experience, may be understood the better by a reference to.
* The unconscious suggestions of language are very striking..We
speak of "self-consciousness" familiarly, as a defect in a person's
character.




I40       MAN AND HIS DWELLING PLACE.    [B. II.
the painter's art; for drawing is little more than a
correct use of shadows.
We are conscious of our self as acting; we recognize actions of the self. Truly: but we also recognize
the action of cold; yet we admit that cold is but
absence of heat, that the "actions of cold" are the
effects of a negation. Does not our experience teach
us that the actions of the self are the effects of want
of action in man? Is it not thus that self-will is
slavery?
It should be remembered, however, that to affirm
the self, of which man is now conscious, to be defect,
is not to repudiate personality. Personality does not
depend upon the self. There is in us an emptiness
where there should be a fulness; the true personality
of man lies in the bestowment on him of a truer
life.,
Recognizing in the self, of which we are conscious,
defect of being, a light diffuses itself over all our
experience; the whole thought of man and of the
world becomes transparent. There is a defect in us
which we apply, as it were, to all things. In all things,
as they are to us, our self has left its mark, defect is
introduced, the being is banished. Remembering this,
it is no longer a mystery that we have been so perplexed and baffled. So must we have arrived at a
* We may either say that the self, as such, is defect of being, or
that the self we are conscious of is not the true, right self, which is
" being." Whichever be preferred, the idea is the same: the argument
refers to this self which is in us.




CH. VImI.]         OF TIZE SE'LF.               14I
knowledge of the truth. To say that the things that
are real to us are not the true realities, is but another
way of saying that our self is not truly being. Thus
too we see why, in our inquiry respecting nature, we
must inquire also into ourselves. How should that
which a defective being feels, fail to indicate his
defect?  Must it not differ by defect from  that
which Is?
If this self be defect of being, then must all true
good, all life to man, be in self-sacrifice.  In the
utter destruction and casting out'of this self, the
doing away of the defect, man's life is given him;
there can be no other true life for man. And when
man truly sacrifices self, it is God's act in him. From
the self comes no goodness, it must be made new.
Self-righteousness is not righteousness; only when
our self is filled, our emptiness destroyed, by God
in us, then does man live and act. That is the true
humanity. That also is man's true freedom. Sin,
as the assertion of the self, is the bondage, the death
cf man.
Thinking of our self as "being," we are lost in
darkness; but the right knowledge of our self enables
us to reconcile almost all contradictions. We enter
into the mystery of man's condition: that he is so
glorious, yet so mean, so elevated, yet so ignoble,
has such capacities, yet effects such unworthy results,
is the one thing which seems to come short of its
destiny.  Humanity looks towards and demands a
different being from  this.  There is demanded, in




142      MAN AND HIS D WELLING PLACE.           [B. II.
respect to man, an existence that is not yet;
his nature, his feelings, his consciousnness are attuned to  a different being.   He  is conscious of
defect; conscious of it, because it is to be supplied.
For how should man be conscious of defect, except
that he is to be delivered from it? What is it to be
conscious of defect, but to have an aspect towards a
truer being, a relation to a state of freedom from
defect?  So the true relations of sin are seen; it
arises from the self, and exists for its destruction.
For human experience is the destruction of the self,
the doing away of the defect in man, the making him
alive. Because it is being destroyed, the self runs
into such excess, such madness. Driven by fiends,
burnt up by torturing fire, it writhes and struggles in
its death agony, grasping at every pleasure for shortlived relief, rushing into insane riotings, consuming
itself with known and deliberate pangs, because ungovernable cravings gnaw its heart. Around it sweep
the everlasting flames, the wrath of God filled up, and
sparing not.' For in sober and literal truth this is
hell.  The self makes hell fcr itself, nor can escape,
nor shall.  "I will be thy plague, 0! death; 0!
destruction, I will be thy destroyer." Sinning is hell,
the burning up of the self with unquenchable fire.
That cruel mystery of sin is this: should not death
be destroyed, should not man be made alive? Let
* "And I saw another sign in heaven, seven angels having the
seven last plagues; for in them is filled up the wrath of God."Rev. xv. I.




CH. VIII.]        OF TIIE SELF.                 I43
all miseries be incurred, let all vain remedies be
tried, so shall God's remedy at last be found the only
one.
For by life only can self be cast out, only by
self-sacrifice, only through the love that is in knowing
God. Thinking of that which we feel to be, as if it
were that by which we must judge existence, we do
not see that a change in man's BEING must be a
spiritual change.  The want of life whereby he is
in a world not spiritual must be done away. For
well has it been observed, that our consciousness of
self is that which determines our state of being, and
gives the character to our perception. This self that
we are conscious of makes the world inert to us. Our
present self-consciousness demands, as its correlative
and condition, an inert existence around us, which
passively obeys our exertion, and is respondent to
our force. Self-consciousness, involving the sense of
exertion, is therefore inseparable from a feeling of
passiveness in that on which we act.
In our conceptions of the future state, the same
element is necessarily present. We cannot conceive
of ourselves except as in a world thus passive.
However we may hold that world to be spiritual,
though we may even say it is apart from matter, this
characteristic of inertness cannot be separated from
our thought. We give to that which is thus inert, indeed,
emphatically the name of substance; and are but too
apt to fancy active powers inhering in such a substance, even when we think of spiritual being. This
self of ours carries inertness inseparably with it;




144     1MAN AND HIS DWELLING PLACE.    [B. T,.
where it is, inaction must be perceived. No stronger
proof could be that' it is the negation: put it wheresoever, surround it howsoever, a negation must be
present to it. At least we may say this: inasmuch
as the self that we are conscious of, by its own
nature, involves the feeling of inertness, therefore
our feeling the world to be inert can be no evidence
that it is truly so.
From this necessity under which we lie of feeling
inertness around us, evidently has arisen our conception of the universe as an inert existence on the one
hand, peopled by active beings on the other: and
these beings, also, we conceive to be such as we are;
that is, to partake of those feelings which in us constitute, though unrecognized, the consciousness of
defect.
Even God we have conceived as such a self.
Scarcely can we prevent ourselves from attributing
to Him intellect such as ours, exertion of force like
that we feel, difficulties, contrivances, ideas.  All
this has been necessary from our taking our self as
the standard of being; not reflecting that our mode
of consciousness involves a consciousness of defect,
and that, therefore, there must be a consciousness
different from ours.
Thus the question of man's relation to God, how
he can be distinct from the Divine Being, becomes
free from the difficulties with which it has been felt
to be encompassed.  It no longer even appears to
be a contradiction to say that God is infinite, and yet




CH. vIlI.]       OF THE SELF.                145
deny that man is divine. Man is not divine, because
his self is defect of Being.  God is not in this
humanity, not because He is limited, but emphatically because He is without limits. Of Him no
darkness, no negation can be affirmed. The defect
in man, our consciousness of a self which cannot be
divine, has been truly the cause of our entertaining
side by side in our minds the beliefs that God is
Infinite, absolutely without limits, and yet that there is
other EXISTENCE besides Him. The direct contradiction between these propositions is evident; and
though it does not, therefore, follow that either ought
to be abandoned before we know what to put in its
place, yet it is at least clear that there must be a
juster and more adequate way of regarding the subject, if it could be attained. If mere contradictions are
sometimes necessary to us through our imperfection,
yet they certainly cannot be in the things themselves.
Does not the recognition of our self as defect of
being, do away with the necessity of maintaining a
contradiction in this case? Our self is emphatically
not God, for it is not being. We had to reconcile the
feeling that our self was not divine with the false
opinion that our self was being; and this confused us,
made us assert a BEING not divine, while yet we could
not renounce God's infinitude. How much not only
philosophy but religion has suffered from this paradox,
those well know who have studied the history of
human thought.' But in recognizing what man's self
is, the disturbing force is taken away, and our thoughts
right themselves. No contradiction is here any more,




146     MAN AND IliS DW YELLING PLACE.  -n. ii.
or is to be feared. For in asserting that man's self
is not God, we do not contravene His infiniteness,
but assert it. And the religious feelings are relieved
almost as much as the intellectual sense, while the
language of Scripture receives striking illustration.
To be not divine is man's death: what he wants
is to have Being in him, to be united to God and
apart from him no more. And the Name,- The
I A.M, The JEHOVAH, becomes full of a new meaning,
a new glory. God is TIlE BEING. And not less do
the words of the New Testament reveal their true
force. Is not this its doctrine throughout that man's
life is, to partake God's life. We need only to give
up the persuasion that our self is Being, to see a new
and awful meaning in the familiar words. Have
we not warped the New Testament to our thought
of man's life apart from God, while it affirms his
death?
Man's death:-his self-defect of being; surely
these are the same.  In consciousness of this self
surely man is made conscious of his death; conscious
of death, because he is to be made alive.
And our thought of God also loses a great part
of its difficulty. Ever the battle is renewed, on one
hand or the other: Is God a Person? If not, He is
nothing to us. We must have a Person for our God,
or we are without hope in the world. But the difficulty in maintaining this lies in our taking our self
as the standard of personality. God is not such as
man: surely not; no such Self is in Him. Falsely
we call ourselves PERSONS. We want personality.




CIT. VIII.]      OF THE SELF.                147
Then first are.we truly personal when God fills us
with Himself. And God is not A Person; one among
many. God forbid: He is THE PERSON. Then are
we personal when we are divine: when the overmastering Spirit dwells within us and ACTS, and we
can say, " I labour, yet not I."
What dream is it from which we shrink, when we
fear to be absorbed in God? as if to be one with God
were loss instead of gain; as if our self were Being
that we should fear to lose. To be divine is to be
personal, to be in the true sense man. Least of all
should a Christian man have feared to be made one
with God, for what is shown us in Christ but the
perfection of humanity in oneness with God? If
Christ be divine and yet human, why may not we
be human and yet divine? The notion of "absorption" bears self upon its face: we think of God as
physical.
And if we say, how then can God create, if He
be the only Being? would it not become us rather
to keep reverent silence, than to suppose that creation
must conform to our conceptions? Should we not
rather learn what creation is from facts, than insist
upon a creation answering our ideas? Why should not
creation depend upon the true infinitude and soleness
of God's bleing? If we admit creation inconceivable,
can there be greater folly than to assert what its
mode must be? And yet again: If man have his
true life only when God dwells and acts in him, may
we not be well content to believe the same of all His
creatures?




148       MIAN AND HIS DWELLING PLACE.                [B. I.
The applying physical conceptions to the Divine
Being is the secret of the difficulty that has been felt
here. For in truth a just thought of the Creative
Act seems not so impossible when we remember that
God is Love. To our thought love must be selfsacrifice, because of the defect that we are conscious
of. Love must be the sacrifice of that which is in
us: where death is, life must be its destruction. In
self-sacrifice, therefore, we must find the truest conception  of  creation.   Love, sacrificing  self:  God
limiting Himself as it were, giving up Himself for
the creature's life; in this most truly may we present
to ourselves creation. As Creator, not less than as
Redeemer, is God revealed to us in Christ.*
In denying our self to be Being, the relations of
things are left untouched.  These things that "are
to us," still are to us. This life of ours, such as it
is, is not denied. When a shadow is pointed out to
be a shadow, an absence and not an existence, nothing
is changed except a false conception for a true one.
A reference is made, in our thought and appreciation,
to an existence before unnoticed or disregarded. To
recognise a shadow is to know the light, to under* Theoretically, it seems simple to say that creation is by negation,
not by addition. From infinite Being, by infinite variety of negation,
infinite variety of being; that is of relative, or creature being. But
such theoretical statements are of little value, except for the purpose
of excluding worse ones. They should never be demanded, nor valued,
even as approximations.  The intellect can only deal with human
conceptions, not with the very fact of being.




CH. VIIi.]        OF THE SELF.                  149
stand that there is more than was supposed, not less.
How glorious that being must be, by defect of which
is our life with all its beauty, joy, and good; its
responsibilities, affections, and pursuits. Even this
is not the very fact of life, it is life mingled with
death; good enough if it be for us, it is not good
enough for God. He who has Life in Himself cannot
so be content for any of His creatures.
For our self-life is not true life, taken even at its
best. Let us look into it and see. Is not our being
such selves as we are, apart from any perversion or
depravity, itself a deception and wrongness? For
are we not thus compelled to feel things quite out
of any proportion to their true proportionate value?
A trifle directly affecting ourselves is felt as more
by us, is more to us, than great interests which do
not implicate our own welfare. Not because we are
bad, but because we are "selves." We should be
wanting in the essential properties of this state of
humanity if we did-not feel so. We have to struggle
against the feeling; it seems as if we never could
be freed from it. By the very nature of our self, we
feel things not according to their true value. A less
thing is more important to us than truly greater
ones. We are not right to the universe. All things
are distorted, twisted, turned from their true relations,
so far as we are concerned, by the fact of our selfship. Is there not a fact here which ought not to
be ignored? Nay more; often we cannot but feel
as good to ourselves the calamities and evils of other
men. They are good to the self. And in wrong




IO5    niMAN AND HIS DWELLiVNG PLA CE.    [B. II.
doing, what is there but the natural result of this
warping of our feelings by self? In doing wrong, a
man evidently acts against the true value and relations of things, moved by his wrong feeling of them.
He violates right to gratify self.  Sin is treating
things as they are to the self, not as they truly are.
Virtue to us means self-denial; yet is virtue nothing
but acting according to the truth of things; letting
the most weighty have the greatest weight. And
when we consider the meaning of the word virtue,
that it is manhood, and reflect how  it consists in
opposing self, surely it should be clear to us that the
self is not man's BEING.
Self is our great enemy; it deceives us. It makes
us feel things to be good which are not good; evil
which are not evil; great which are trivial. If therefore we should be disposed to say: the self of which I
am conscious is my true being, or else I am deceived;
let us reflect that by this very self we certainly are
deceived, and made to feel things as they are not.
To God all things must be as they truly are, all felt in
right and just proportion. He cannot be a self as we
are. He is love; our self is not love. He is light,
our self is darkness.
And again, not understanding that by self a
defect is introduced into our feeling, and the action
and life of nature made wanting to us, we have been
compelled to suppose the most incredible things
respecting our perception; that we put so much into
nature; that it is to us so much more than it is in




CII. Viii.]       OF THE SELE.                 15[
itself! Light is from mere motion affecting our eye,
music from mere motion affecting our ear; all the
value that nature has, it has through the mysterious
virtues of our Self, which turns dead mechanical
impulses into this various life! Our self a storehouse
of all sweet and glorious and wondrous things, to
which the universe ministers mere occasion, as it were,
to be conscious of its riches!  What could have
brought men to such a thought? But it cannot be
true. Not we are rich and nature poor; not so, but
we turn out the life from that which is around us, and
to our self there is no more the living fact of Being
but inert forces, a mere dead mechanism, which leaves
us utterly amazed to think how it can be so much to
our perception and our hearts; how glorious we must
be to make so much out of so little!
Let us protest one moment against ourselves.
Let rational inquiry be heard  against assurance.
What cause does our experience of nature bespeak?
What things should' they be which thrill our souls
with rapture, penetrate our hearts with sweet or
solemn thoughts, speak with such mystic language,
inwind themselves with our deepest feelings, and
make themselves part of the very fountain of our
life; which are beautiful, gentle, living, full of truth,
of majes.ty, of joy or awe, of comfort or of warning;
which are bound to us by infinite relations; which
teach us solemn lessons, rousing our souls to ecstacy
or anguish; which say to us, Be more, be better, join
heart and hand with us?
Matter and dead forces?  It cannot be.  Tile




152     MAN AND HIS D WELLING PLACE.    [B. II.
theory is self-condemned. It does not actount for,
nor touch, the most pregnant facts of the case. The
question turns itself the other way.  We must ask
rather why we have been compelled to make such an
inference; what that self of ours can be that has
forced upon us such a thought?
For our experience let us be bold enough to
affirm an adapted cause; a possible one.  Let us
not wantonly make mystery, and say: Nature is
matter and force; but how it can affect us thus
passes comprehension: make two mysteries indeed;
first, that we should know, without a full and reasonable investigation, what nature is, and then that it
should be so inconceivably unlike all that its effects
and powers would indicate it to be. For there is no
man who has not felt in his heart what a miserable
failure our investigation of nature is; what poor and
even ridiculous results we educe. The secret of its
being palpably escapes us: the things we discover cannot be accepted as the facts. Imaginary
ideas are invented without end to satisfy the necessity of finding, in nature, something that at least may
seem to make its wonder less incredible. Whereas
all that is needed is that we should bethink ourselves, that that which is felt to be by us, may be,
nay must be, other than that which Is. Must be; for
our self is in it; defect, negation, that which banishes
its true being.
For that our self is defect of being is, perhaps,
in no respect more manifest than in this; that to it
the phenomenal is the real. Real to the SELF, unreal




CIi. VIII.]       OF THE SELF.                 I53
to the MAN. Man feels and knows that to be unreal
which yet is real to him. The discord of his life is
here, in that defect which makes him such a self as
he is. The defect, unrecognized to be defect, clothes
all things with mystery; surrounds with ever multiplying doubts. The inert and transient world, which
does but seem, is the reality to the self. Hereby we
know the self: it is that to which the unreal is the
real. When we are freed from that, the phenomenal
shall be reality to us no more. Because no defect
shall be any more in us, the eternal fact in which is
no defect, shall be our reality-that spiritual fact of
which our experience testifies so plainly, but which
now we cannot find, which disappears when we seek
it, because of the blindness in our eye. The life in
time is a life of defect, of passion, of getting, from
the pressure and torment of our want. The life
of heaven, the life eternal, is the life of being, of
action, of giving from the riches of our having.
Slaves now, rendering a fearful and reluctant service
for what we can obtain: Kings then, from royal
bounty, of our own freedom, bestowing. No deadly
self, coiled like a serpent in our breast, gnawing at our
hearts; that we can see nothing, heed nothing, do
nothing, but feed for ever its ravenous hunger. Not
this self, the Tyrant, the Destroyer. Destroyed by
the mightier Love, its pale and wounded victims shall
arise, with freed hearts and holy hands, and join
the universal life. No more isolated and apart, in
self-pursuit, but wholly one with all, rejoicing
beyond reach of sorrow, happy beyond touch of




154      1tAN ANMD HIS DWELLING PLA CE.   [B. II.
harm, blest with God's own blessedness of absolute
surrender.
Man is degraded, low, an outcast; open to the
cruel shafts of sarcasm, his bleeding heart fair mark
for jest and scoffing. Poor is his virtue; a fair pretence, pierced through by gaping wounds, betraying
the rotten selfishness beneath. So let it be. Yet
stay, 0 scorner, till the true man be seen. Crushed
beneath his enemy, striving vainly with a foe that is
himself, bearing death unknown within, and seeking
helplessly the secret of his misery everywhere but
there; speak not rash words of him. Let death have
reverence. Rather, let Life that strives with death
and overcomes, the kindling powers that shall know
no quenching, the battling light and darkness, the
war heaven with hell, receive the homage of an
awful joy.
For He is party to the strife whose Presence is
accomplished victory; whom nothing withstands,
nothing delays: who hath abolished death, and with
His own blood sealed man's deliverance. Life has
been given for life, the law of life has been fulfilled.
Christ has borne our death; has brought life into
contact with our self and shown it vanquished: the
power is there, the work shall surely be accomplished.
For He triumphs even now; earth doth confess Him
Lord. Suffering and sacrifice, shame and sorrow, by
these He is known to be Divine. The weary ears of
men listen, and drink in the tale, and own that it is
true. Sorrow and sacrifice, God taking our death




CH. VIII.]        OF THE SELF.                155
upon Him, made to be sin for us, these bring salvation; they have a charm which cannot fail. The
glad heart bounds to hear it; herein it reads the
secret of its being; the mystery is opened; Heaven
is revealed. Now it knows that the self-life is death;
it knows God, and lives.








BOOK III.
OF ETHICS.
He trusted in God.
9








CHAPTER I.
OF TIltE FA CT OF HUMAN LIFE.
As seeing that which is invisible.
THtE views which have been suggested have an
evident bearing on the regulation of our life. Our
action should correspond to reality, and not to a false
impression. If, therefore, man's feeling in respect to
the world in which he is be erroneous, it is a necessary consequence that principles of action based on
that feeling should mislead: if we are under illusion,
only by escape from that illusion can we hope wisely
to conduct our life.  Nor is evidence wanting that
man does need, for practical purposes, a truer knowledge than he has hitherto brought into exercise.
Man fails in his dealings with the world. Not in respect to his action upon phenomena: of these, so far
as he knows and obeys their laws, he proves himself
the master. HIe can use the physical world for his
purposes, but he fails to conform himself truly to the
nature of things; there is a want of accord between
himself and nature, of which he bitterly rues the
consequences.  Evidently  he goes wrong, incurs
disappointment, runs into evil while seeking good.




i6o     MifAN AND HIS D WELLINVG PLA CE'.  [B. III.
Therefore, it were an unquestionable practical gain
to recognise the illusion under which we have been
in respect to the world, even if we could know no
more. From innumerable mistakes it might save us
of treating that as the true reality which is not; or of
suffering ourselves to think of that as truly good or
evil which we do but feel so. But this is not all. The
illusion yields, not to uncertainty, but to a knowledge
worthy of the name. The fact and meaning of human
experience we know: it is the making man alive.
Remembering this, the world stands before us all in
light. From an evil state, the worst of states, of which
alone it can be truly said that it is death, the state
which constitutes him a self-seeker and is the cause
of all sinful deeds, man is being raised: raised to a
state of true and actual life, absolute and eternal;
death being destroyed, so that he shall have to regard
self no more.
The world is being redeemed: this is the fact of
human life. Whatever our experience may be, that
which causes it is the raising up of man from death.
The evidence of this lies in the necessity which has
been traced in it. Science, proving that all things
are bound together by an inevitable chain, of which
no link, even the minutest, might be wanting, gives
demonstration that all which we experience is necessary for that which is the fact of the world's history;
necessary f6r the carrying out of man's redemption.
Christ has interpreted to us the Necessity of nature:
has shown us the fact which is the one and universal
Cause. For the cause of our experience is not that




CH. I.]    OF THE FACT OF HUMANAV LIFE.       i6i
inert existence we have conceived; the necessity by
which all things are determined is not that dead
necessity we have supposed. It is the necessity of
love: the love of God which must redeem the world.
Let us say it with reverence: human experience
is the making man alive. This'is the fact on which
to fix our eye; which, if we would be right to the
world, we must regard; seeing which we see it as it
truly is. We must remember that man is dead and
must be made new; so new that he must be delivered
wholly from  himself. We are appalled at sin, and
think: Can that work man's redemption? But it is
even so: the evil is not in the sin, but in that which is
the cause of sin. By sin our death is made conscious
to ourselves, and man learns what he is. If there were
no sin there were no less evil, man were not less dead;
but the death could not be destroyed. There is no
difficulty in seeing rightness and love in the existence
of sin, while our loathing of it and feeling of guilt in it
are increased, if we can see the evil of the state from
which man is raised; that sinful deeds do but make
manifest an evil which exists apart from them, and is
their source: an evil which, without them, could not
be done away. How evil must be that state of man
which turns the love of God into occasions of iniquity;
and which, even at the expense of the whole mass of
human crime, God must destroy.  For the end is
worthy: worthy not only of the woe mankind have
borne, the tears they have shed, but also of their
crimes and guilt. Because that end is not happiness
but holiness, the perfection of self-sacrifice, the only




I62      MAN AND IlS D WELLiNG PLA CE.   [B. III.
good.* The evil is not that dead humanity should
sin: that is a proof and triumph of Eternal Love; for
therein man is redeemed.
Fixing our eye upon the fact of man's redemption, all things are made new to us. A glory almost
too great to bear transfigures this poor life: passing
all thought and all desire, passing all dreams and yet
no dream, but plain and demonstrable truth. Not
less can content the infinite heart of God, nor the
Saviour's boundless love: His heart who gives us
more than we can ask or think, HIis love who makes
us one with Himself, and bowed His head to death
that He might be the first born of many brethren.
For the fact of all our pain, and sorrow, and distress,
that for which all are necessary, is the making man
alive. God gives to us to suffer for that end; Christ
gives to us to be even as He was. He has made
known the fact of human life; the Son of Man is
revealed in Him. Every suffering, every loss, is borne
for man's life, necessary to that end which could not
be without them: necessary, not as conditions or as
means, but as the very fact itself, the mode in which
it is wrought out.
To believe is salvation: to believe in Christ the
Redeemer of the world, that He saves MAN, and will
subdue all to Himself: this saves us. It makes us
know God; and to know Him is life. To know Him
it is enough. It was ignorance, and blindness, and
* Happiness, except as one with self-sacrifice, cannot be said to be
good. It is only felt as good, which is entirely different.




c.. I.]   0OF THE FACT OF HUMAN LIFE.        163
mistrust, that held us captive, and bound us in the
chains of death. Because we knew Him not, nor His
work, we grasped at pleasure, we fled from pain and
sacrifice, we exalted our own will, and found our good
in that which was pleasing to ourselves. To know
God turns darkness into light, sorrow to gladness,
evil and pain and wretchedness into unbounded joy:
makes welcome to us every loss, ennobles all things
trivial, gives to earth the blessedness of heaven. To
the saddest, weariest hours comes a delight which
makes all other pleasures poor. From the sorrow the
rejoicing springs: we are suffering that man may
live. Therein are we one with Christ, whom all
hearts do pronounce Most Blessed, and fill up that
which is behind of the sufferings He bore. We too
are ready to be offered. Our hearts are taken captive
utterly by love. The terrors that have haunted us,
the evils we have shunned, were but dark shadows
from the blackness in ourselves. We look abroad
again, and the light of heaven glows unchequered
over all. Our fears are gone. If there be no evil but
that which love makes necessary, then there is no
evil: if no pain but pain borne for man's life, then is
pain utterly transformed. The one Love, that is in
and through all things, by which all things are, the
Love that is the only joy, smiles also through the tears
of sorrow. Life stands confessed beneath the mask
of death.




164    AIAN AND HIS DW;ELLING PLACE.  [B. B. I.
CHAPTER II.
OF ILL USION.
THAT man is being raised from a dead state into
life gives a solution of the otherwise insoluble problems of our experience.  The light which this
thought throws upon sin, showing it to be a necessary result of the death from which man has to be
delivered (the evil of which it displays and brings to
our consciousness, but cannot increase), is but one
example of its bearing upon the mystery around us.
Our perplexity arises from our inadequate apprehension of the fact that our present state of being is not
the LIFE of man; from our not reflecting that a being
in a wrong state must feel, as well as act, wrongly.
Thus, for example, there has come confusion into.
our ideas respecting good and evil.  For it is evident
that the raising man from death to life is good, the
only possible true good for him; and whatever things
are included in, or necessary for, that end must be
also perfectly good. But these things are felt as evil
by us; to us they are evil, involving the loss of that
which we value, the failure of that which we attempts




Cli. Il.]         OF ILL USION.               i65
the bearing of that which is painful. We feel as evil
that which is good. It is evident that we do so, for
we feel as evil that which God does: things which
constitute part of the course of nature, and cannot be
dissociated from His immediate agency. The fact,
therefore, with which we have truly to deal is, that
we feel as evil things that are not evil. We should
ask: What is the matter with us that we feel God's
act as evil? But instead of this, taking our feelings
as expressing the truth, we have been asking: How
can there BE so much evil? By our confidence in
our own impressions, our whole thought has been
perverted.
Why must we feel so much evil? is quite a different question from the other, How can so much evil be?
and especially different in this, that it can be answered.
We must feel evil because man i; in a wrong state,
and is to be made right. It is not an evil thing that
man, being as he is, should feel evil. If his feeling
were not of evil, the fact could not be good; for he
does not feel things as they are. Nor can the amount
of the evil felt by him, however absolute or enormous,
affect the case. -It does but prove more emphatically
the wrongness of his feeling, and place in clearer
light, thereby, the wrongness of his, being.  That
cannot be the true humanity, by which things are
felt as they are not; God's act felt as evil. The false
feeling proves the wrongness of the state to which it
belongs.
Evil pertains to the phenomenon. The feeling of
evil is inseparable from the feeling of the phenomenal




i66      MAIV AND IlS D WELLING PLACE.   [B. III.
as existing; it is inseparable, therefore, from the
present state of man. Evil must be felt by us, until
the defect of our being is done away: but this false
feeling on our part need not mislead us: we need not
act as if it were true. Even while our feeling continues erroneous, our belief and understanding may
be right, and our action thereby be redeemed from
misdirection. We can recognize the cause, in our
own condition, which makes us feel as we do; we
can fix our eye upon the fact, we can make our action
true to that which is. In all our feeling of evil we
can think: I am feeling as evil that which is not so.
We can make even our words conform to truth, and
say of every misfortune, not "how evil this is," but,
"how evil I feel this." Nay, we may go farther,
knowing the fact of man's redemption.  Even the
feeling of evil, though it cannot be altered, may be
swallowed up and lost, so absorbed into a larger
happiness that its very character is changed.  If
through the feeling of evil man must be redeemed, how could we be willing not to bear our
part?  Is it evil that we should feel pain, should
suffer loss, in order that man may live?  Can we
fail to find in that our truest blessedness? To regard
the fact; to know the redemption of the world, and
to fix our eye on that; this is the cure for sorrow.
This is the gospel, the gbod tidings of great joy,
which are to all people, flooding earth with a sea of
gladness.
Christ shows us that the world is going right, not
wrong as we suppose; that it is full of God's glory.




CH. II.]          OF ILL USIO.                i67
So He gives us happiness. For the sting of evil is
that we think it truly evil; that we do not know that
the fact is good, utterly and entirely good. If we
will recognize the death of man, his need to be made
alive, and the fact that he is being made alive, and
that all human experience is necessary for that end,
evil is no more evil. All this is the form in which
man's redemption is presented to us, and we therein
rejoice and will rejoice. What does it matter that
it is painful to us, if the world therein be saved?
The mystery of evil is that we feel it, not that
it is: and that is no mystery. Christ has taken it
away, showing us the death of man that is, his life
that shall be: showing us the meaning of all pain,
and loss, and failure; that it is for the life of man.
What we naturally seek and desire is to have the
world as we should like it, conformed to our feelings
of good and right; such as suits us in this present
state. And we think it evil that it will not be so,
and lament over the mystery of God's ways. But
to have that which we naturally desire were to have
man confirmed in death, to forego his redemption.
He must be made different from that which he is;
therefore, the world must be evil to him. Because
it is too good for him, he feels it evil; because it is
so truly, absolutely good. We would have it good
to the self; but the only goodness is the destruction
of the self. For which destruction, misery must be,
and cruellest pains, and crushing of tenderest hope
and love; nor only so, but rampant guilt, and wrong
triumphant, and sacrifice of noblest aims.  That




I68      ALAN AND HiS DtWELLING PLACE.   [n. II.
which were good enough for man's desires is not
good enough for God. If there were not that which
we feel as evil, that perfectly good fact which God
wills could not be. In all afflictions we may say:
it is very hard to bear, but the world is going right;
shall I not bear this, if man be saved and this be
necessary? If this cup may not pass away, shall I
not drink it?
Is not Christ's death the joy and glory of the
world, the best thing that ever happened? In it we
may see the difference of the fact from the appearance. For from a human point of view what is the
death of Christ but a black murder; deceit and
violence crushing the hopefullest of lives? "We
thought it had been He who should have restored the
kingdom unto Istael."  But more was to be done
than that, more and better; a work for which not
His life only, nor His agony, but lives unnumbered
must be given, and agonies drawn out through every
age.  At all expense of woe, man must be made
alive.
Thus we see, also, why man's present life must
have been such a deception: why he feels that which
is phenomenal as existing, finds the spiritual physical,
and has been condemned all these ages to believe it
so. To have been in error and deceived was right
for him. This also is the fact of his redemption; for
so he pursues unrealities, places his confidence in that
which falsifies its promise, seeks rest where no rest can
be found. So he fails, and learns his ignorance; so




Ci. II.]          OF ILLUSION.               I69
he rushes into sin, and learns his vileness. So he is
taught that in his very being he must be made new;
must be delivered from himself, and be made liviing
with an eternal life. The reason of man's perceiving
as he does is, that this experience is necessary for the
work of his redemption. He must have this consciousness, that thereby his state may be altered: he
is under illusion, not that he may continue so, but
that he may be delivered; that he may feel its evil,
and escape its tyranny. " The creature is made subject to vanity," but it is in hope.  We cannot be
holden of its chains. For what bondage is so wretched
as being ruled and driven by an illusion; spell-bound
beneath the power of a phantom world? To know
that we have been so deluded is itself deliverance.
Once convinced that the eternal is the only true existence, our slavery is at an end. Man wakes from his
troubled dream to see the glory of eternal day around
him; braces himself to waking life, and looks back,
with mingled gladness and surprise, upon the dim
chimeras which his unnatural slumber had invested
with a brief reality, a transient power to make him
glad or sorry, hopeful or afraid.




170      MAN AND HIS D WEtLLIVG PLA CE.  [B. II.
CHAPTER  III.
OF REALITY.
THE error of our feeling is that phenomena are as the
fact to us; the error of our practice is that we treat
them as the facts. We do not see the worth of temporal events. Overlooking their relation to the fact
of man's redemption, we overlook all that is absolute
in them, all that constitutes their value and necessity.
If in all things we regard the fact, letting our thoughts
go on beyond our own impressions to that which truly
is, then we can treat all things aright. For the world's
redemption is a fact which, by its nature, surpasses
and subordinates in our regard all others. In its presence, illusions lose their power; new forces influence
us; the world is not to us what it was before, but
infinitely more. Our whole being is enlarged. A
new and overpowering thought absorbs the private
regard. It cannot give us any more to suffer, or to
forego our own desires. A joy so great springs out of
the suffering, in our knowledge of that for which it is,
that suffering itself is changed. Knowledge of man's
redemption, which shows all suffering to be suffering




CII. III.]        OF REALITY.                171
for the world, makes a new thing of human life; inverts it; more than doubles it; extracts from that
part of it (how lage a part!) which we have deemed
mere loss and evil, a value infinitely exceeding all the
rest; makes suffering more to be desired than that to
which we have heretofore abused the name of joy.
For in suffering we are one with Christ.
We have not seen the truth of human life, we
have overlooked the very fact of that which it is;
what wonder, then, that it has been found a gloomy
mystery? For that men have found it so cannot be
denied. It stands written in imperishable records.
Literature is man's thought of life, wherein he gives
verdict that it is inscrutable and dark. Ar4 it is so
utterly unless man be in a state which makes all the
evil that attends his course necessary for his deliverance; unless we can turn the clouds that are around
his path to brightness, recognising their true secret;
and understand that this Being, so surrounded and
penetrated by evil, is not the true Man; this monstrous course of crimes and errors not man's life, but
the making him alive. The evil cannot be denied:
it is too foul, too loathsome. The universal conscience
of mankind rises up to rebuke him who would make
light of it. To interpret human life we must learn
some unknown fact, which shall bring evil into a new
light. This unknown fact is supplied by the perception of man's death. This takes away all evil; or
leaves it, rather, but as the manifestation. of infinite
and boundless love, the perfect Good. Our thought
that things are as we feel alone prevents our knowing,




1 72    MN ANi) HIS I X WELLING PLACE.   [n. IT.
and compels us to unite evil with our thought of
God.
We cannot be happy, nor content (it were inhuman
to be so), while we think that there is truly evil, that
the world is going, even in part, to an evil end. And
we cannot, without closing our eyes to facts, think
otherwise, unless we can recognise something more in
human life than it appears to us; a reference to some
other end than those which we have recognized in it.
For in respect to those ends it is a failure palpable
and manifest.  Neither man's enjoyment, nor his
virtue, is secured. But to know man's need of redemption from a state of death, and to understand
the fact 8f it, makes all things right; gives us a source
of happiness perfect and unassailable, a spring of
energy which nothing can damp. Be the phenomenon
what it may, of misery or wrong, our eye is fixed
upon the deep underlying fact: in this, too, man is
being delivered from himself, being raised from selfseeking to self-sacrifice.  Nothing could be spared,
nothing could be otherwise.  Man, being as he is,
must so be made alive. Nothing is evil in that which
is. In the saving of man from self-dominion, from
wrong-feeling and the possibility of sin, there is no
evil; none in the fact on which God looks, and all
look who truly see; all who see aright the state in
which man is, and the necessity that he be saved
from it.
Seeing thus in all things the fact of man's redemption, the world is made a new and different world to
us. The things which make us do evil lose their




CIu. III.]         OF RREALITY.             173
power; we no more covet, are no more afraid. Our
action becomes right to nature; conformed to the
truth of things; it cannot end in disappointment
therefore; cannot fail.  For we feel truly.  In all
things we look at man's redemption, and when it
comes that we are made to suffer and to lose, and our
desires are set at nought and frustrated, then glows
our heart with a joy unparalleled, too great for words,
filling our faith and love to the uttermost, making us
know what heaven is, and what the joy God chooses
for himself. the eternal joy, wherewith the infinite fulness of His bosom throbs, whereby he is the BLESSED
God: His own joy, but a joy he keeps not to Himself, but gives to us also, too unworthy; the joy of
sacrifice for man's redemption. Passing belief, and
yet not passing; the humblest faith must stretch her
hands even to that height of glory, and human love
expand its puny measure to become the heir of God.
Of God revealed in Christ, made manifest in Him so
that we know Him, truly actually know him, and see
Him as He is. He Is the Sacrificer, joining' us with
Himself therein: that is to know God: it is to be one
with Christ the Saviour.  We can believe it, for
though it is we receive the too great blessedness, it
is God who gives: who is the Giver, whose happiness
is in giving, all whose gifts surpass our thoughts and
fill us with an infinite surprise.
Oh weary and woe-stricken world, oh vainly
striving men, your misery is that you do not know;
that you see not that which Is:-Why you are sacrificed, why you are wretched, by what NECESSITY. such




174     MAN AND IlS D WELLING PLACE.   [B. III.
cruel pains assault you, such bitter lacerations of the
dearest ties. A sevenfold mystery besets you round,
and tears as of blood drop from your darkened eyes.
Behold and see! The Man who has gathered up all
sorrow, and deprived it of its sting; the pattern of all
mourners; the revealer of the Father. Giving His
life for the world, He stands, the head and crown of
humanity, which drinks in life from Him, and grows
into His image. We, too, are made conformable to
His death, drink of His cup, with His baptism are
baptized. For if in our agony the world is saved, ours
shall be a willing agony like his.
There is no true consolation for sorrow but in
knowing man redeemed; in knowing that the world
is going right. That is, in fixing our regard upon a
good so great that it makes all evil good, and satisfies
us for the loss and overthrow of our best desires and
hopes. Placing our happiness not in having what we
like, in obtaining what we should choose, but in the
goodness of the FACT, the only rightful ground of
happiness, we have obtained a perfect consolation in
all ill. Revealing the perfectly good fact, the redemption of man from being such as he is, Christ
gives peace: a comfort not infected with the bane of
self-regard. For only by knowing and believing this,
can we escape that worst of wretchedness. If man be
not going right, if all be not well for him in spite of
seeming, what is left us to rejoice in but the thought
that we are or shall be happy, though others be not
so? which rejoicing is the greatest of all curses, the




CH. III.]          O REALITY.                  175
very depth of death. All that is in us, not utterly
corrupt, abhors that most of all.  Therefore do some
men deny man's sin, or represent it as a trifling thing,
repudiating God's just anger and the inevitable
punishment. They crush the voice of conscience,
because they cannot be content that Man should not
be saved; because they will not place their happiness
in their own unparticipated good. Therefore do others
say: our happiness will be in God's glory and perfect
justice, irrespective of the doom of those who reap
the just reward of guilt; crushing the human instincts
in their breast by the overpowering force of conscience.
For what man could be happy in his brother's execution, because justice is fulfilled and the honour of the
law, God's law though it be, maintained? If this be
man's life, and therewith his probation, the conscience
and the heart are hopelessly at variance. But see the
reconcilement of this strife in the recognition of man's
death and his deliverance. Man's redemption from a
state in which he wants that which constitutes his
Life, known as the history of the world, fulfils all the
demands of our nature, justifies all our convictions,
satisfies all our aspirations: accounts for all that is
within us, all that is around; displays the dark and
tangled labyrinth in clear and glorious light.
For even such a deliverance we need: to be saved
wholly from ourselves. When we look into our hearts,
how mean and unworthy is even that which is best in
us, how utterly marred and spoilt. A  self-regard
lurks in it all, which wve would fain hide even from our
own eye. And in this we feel it most, that when we




176     MAiAN AND HIS D WELLING PLACE.   [B. III.
have done the best deed, and most have given up ourselves, then the hateful thing will come again, and we
think: Now I have done well; then I was truly
good. "Who shall deliver us from the body of this
death?"
Christ shall deliver us, by the Fact he shows us,
the God He makes us know. By showing us what
Life is and what Death, and what all things are,
making the world so different, He shall drive that
demon wholly from our hearts, and God himself shall
dwell therein. He shall save us utterly from selfregard, swallowing it up in an absolute and boundless
joy in that which is..A joy in God, perfect and complete, a delight so full in the eternal good that no self
concern can have any place: self-sacrifice so perfect
that it is no more a sacrifice.
For his true salvation, man needs to be delivered
from himself, from the necessity of making his own
gratification  his  chief object.   The problem  of
humanity is to make love the spring of human
actions.  It is apparently a hopeless task: experience seems to forbid the expectation, reason will not
sanction it, calm investigation of what man is shatters
the fond dream. It seems man's nature to act from
interest and from passion; as if it were impossible to
do more than wisely to direct his regard to his own
welfare, that he may prefer that which is most to be
valued, and subordinate the passing and inferior to
the superior and endless. But this is the question
whether the dead can live. If the true fact be known,
it may be answered the other way. Believing man's




CH. IIi.]         OF REALITY.                 177
redemption, and knowing what the world truly is,
love must take the place of self regard. It asserts its
rightful power; its lost dominion is restored. With
that alteration of our thought, our life too is altered;
we cannot be as we were before. The whole scope of
our regard, affection, and desire is new. We are taken
out of ourselves by a Power above ourselves and
understand what-that saying means: "That which
is impossible with man is possible with God." We
want no more, because we have. There is nothing
for us to desire, except to be made free from the remaining death: no other blessedness, no other glory
than this we have, of being one with Christ: only that
we might be fully one with him.
And the glory of this life embraces not only the
great events which rouse enthusiasm, and kindle
energy in all; it extends to the mean and ordinary
incidents in which we are so weak. There is no great
or small where all alike is necessary. Nothing is so
trivial that in it the eternal fact is not; nothing so
mere an accident that it must not have been for man's
redemption.




178       MAN AND HIS DIELLING FLACE.    [B. III.
CHAPTER IV.
OF     R O  G NES S
Either make the tree good and his fruit good, or else the tree corrupt
and his fruit corrupt.
Let none admire
That riches grow in hell, that soil may best
Reserve the precious bane.-Paradise Lost.
USING the world as we naturally do, we can attain
certain ends and achieve much that we feel desirable.
Yet an incurable fatality seems to attend our actions.
Permanent satisfaction fails us. The results will not
answer to our hopes, and a mysterious necessity of
evil seems to be in the world, that leaves the most
sanguine, at last, hopeless of a remedy. This experience
is too familiar, and has been described too often, to
need any more to be insisted on. But there is an advantage in understanding it, and in seeing that it is
no mystery, but a natural and necessary thing. It is
the inevitable effect of error. Whoever attempts any
work under a false conception, meets with the same
experience as men find in dealing with the world as if it




cIr. IV.3        OF WRONGNES'S.               179
were what it seems to them. Under a misapprehension
of the true nature of that with which he has to do,
a man places certain objects before himself which he
feels convinced will ensure what he desires; he uses
means in pursuit of these objects with ardour and satisfaction; he rejoices in them, he is assured he will
succeed, he seems to himself to have all that he needed
for success:-but the end is failure. He is astonished,
perplexed, angry; he feels sure there has been some
accident, perhaps some precaution omitted, he repeats
his efforts. All the old enthusiasm is rekindled for a
time; there is the same ardour and satisfaction in
the work, followed by the same disappointment and
recoil. It must be so: his energies are misdirected.
He is acting undqr a false conception, according to
appearance, not according to the truth.
Just in such case are we. In dealing with the
world as we naturally do, we are treating it according
to its appearance, and not according to the truth.
We are acting under a false conception. We have
enthusiasm and pleasure, a certain satisfaction in our
pursuits, and a firm expectation of success:-But what
is the result?
For true success there must be right knowledge.
We are not acting according to the truth of things.
Again: Not only does error necessarily lead to
failure but in this very failure is the remedy for the
error. We learn by failing. Starting from a'state of
ignorance we necessarily act upon false conceptions
before we obtain true ones, and are delivered from our
ignorance only through the evils which it brings upon




I80     MAN 4ND HIS D WELLING PLACE.    [B. III.
us. All human history tells the same tale: of wisdom
learnt through error; defects remedied through loss.
Save by passing through mistakes and failures, which
make him feel himself wrong, in apprehension or in
feeling, there is not true good for man. They are
necessary, therefore, and good in their evil. Their
goodness is in their felt evilness. Man's errors are
rightly wrong: their wrongness is their rightness.
They are wrong for the results he aims at;right for
their true result, of making him wiser, and curing his
defects.
Even so is man in his relation to the eternal. His
defect is made conscious to him by its results; he
learns through error. By his failure he is forced to
recognize his misapprehension, and to know that the
world which he treats as physical will not be so
treated unavenged. Truly the world is wrong; but
it is rightly wrong. Therein the true ends which it
subserves for man are perfectly fulfilled; though not
the ends which he proposes. The phenomenon is
wrong, but the wrongness of the phenomenon is the
rightness of the fact. The wrongness and evil are
the removal of man's deadness; even as his errors
respecting material things are the removal of his
ignorance.
The work of raising man into true manhood we
feel as evil: it is evil to the self. But so it ought to
be. The work of making man alive is a larger good
than our capacity can grasp: it includes ourselves,
involves our being made different from that which we
are. Therefore to us it must involve the feeling of




CH. IV.]              OF WR ONGNAESS.                        S I
evil. That is no more than that a child should find
the arrangements of its home bring with them that
which it feels as evil; that being often felt by it most
evil upon which its welfare most depends.
Where there is a self, such as that of which we are
conscious, there the feeling of evil, or at least the
liability  to  it, must be.  The  self carries the consciousness of evil with it. We cannot conceive self
apart fram  the wish to avoid and to get.  Above all,
there must be the feeling of evil where there is the
self, or how could there be self-sacrifice? And how
could self-sacrifice be foregone; the one joy and
beauty and delight that does not mock the name;
the one thing that redeems the earth and makes it
worthy of its place in heaven? How can there be
self and self-sacrifice be impossible, until Satan has
triumphed over God? Yet this must be if we separate from self the feeling of evil. If nothing painful
were to be encountered, nothing to be sacrificed, how
could there be at once self and love?*
* Love necessarily involves that which is evil to the self. Love is in
sacrifice. But where love is, there the evil to the self is no more felt
as evil; sacrifice is joy. This is what man wants to put him in heaven;
perfect love, that the evil to the self may be converted into joy. He
wants LIFE that he may be in the eternal world; he wants the self
destroyed.  For is it not strange to think what lurks in our thought of
heaven? This self shall be in us still, but there shall be no possibility
of self-sacrifice: there shall be nothing to be suffered. This is why the
devoutest men can hardly finid food for enthusiasm in the thought of
heaven. They ought not. That heaven is not so good as earth; where
with all our shortcomings we can still sacrifice ourselves; can still endure
for love,
10




182     AMANV AND HILS D WELLING PLACE.   [C. I1n.
But the question will naturally arise: if we are to
think thus of the things which constitute the realities
of this earthly life, will not this lead us to their
neglect?  Why should we attend to our business,
why seek to advance the comfort or maintain the
order of life, if the goodness of the world be in its
evil?  A little reflection will show that a regard to
the fact, instead of the appearance, would be as
advantageous for the comfort and progress of the
earthly life as for higher objects. For, whence come
the disorders and evils of that life but from selfseeking, and from too intense an eagerness to possess
-that which is pleasant? How could evil result from
substituting love and duty as the prompters to activity,
instead of ambition and desire? That were surely an
excess of caution, which should dread the effects of
too great a subordination of the self-regard to joy in
the work of God. What evil so afflicts us now [as it
seems to some above all other ages] as the frantic
desperation of men to do well for themselves? Orin
what have the moralists and wisest men of all ages so
agreed, ais in testifying to the want of something
which should moderate the violence of the passions?
Do we uot, also, well know that incomparably less
toil, freed from the perverting power of selfishness,
would ensure a far more rapid progress than is ever
likely to arise from the conflict of private interests?
Is not virtue the true wisdom? Does not the
truest worldly success attend it in the end? Do not
crooked courses lead to loss and ruin? Yet what is
virtue, but the treating these things as of no value in




CuI. IV.]        OF W1RONGiNESS.               I83
themselves, scorning them, casting them utterly aside,
as merest trifles, in obedience to the fact which speaks
in duty? The glory of virtue and nobleness is that
they treat the phenomena as phenomena: they are
true to the nature of things: they are success.  And
all meanness, vice, and hatefulness, what are they,
but the treating these things that we- like and fear
with an undue regard, as if they were the realities?
Or again: There are two agencies which prompt
us to action, our desires and our conscience: the
stimulus of pursuing that which we enjoy, or escaping
that which we feel painful, on the one hand, and the
sense of right upon the other. Let it be conceived
that the former of these were done entirely away,
that we were made absolutely indifferent to pain or
pleasure, what then would regulate our actions?
Clearly the conscience. The sense of right alone
would regulate our conduct.  Would the world be
worse or better, if men were moved to action only by
the conscience?
But in truth, this doctrine of the world, so far
from diverting attention from the practical matters of
our daily life, is of all doctrines the most practical.
It exalts these things to their true dignity, raises them
from a false and most fatal depreciation.  It affirms
for them a value not less, but infinitely greater, than
that which is assigned to them; but it regards the
fact, and not the seeming. These things are not
merely the trivial things which we suppose; they are
the mode in which the eternal presents itself to us.
We slight them and do them wrong, give them not




184      MIAN AND HIS D WELLING PLA CE.   [B. III.
half the heed which they demand. These are the very
facts with which our concern lies —our sole concern;
the fact of these daily, ordinary duties.  The present
is the Eternal. Vainly do we fancy to ourselves an
eternal in the future; the eternal is now, or it is never.
The spiritual world and the material come not in succession even to us; they co-exist; they are fact and
phenomenon. The material is the appearance of the
spiritual. Why we misuse the world so much, is that
we estimate it too low.  We do not see enough in it,
therefore we so abuse it.  More rash and reckless far
than he who should use gold for brass, we squander
Heaven's own wealth as if'twere merely gold.
There is a fatal practical defect in the belief that
the physical is one FACT and the spiritual another,
which may go far to account for the apparently incurable errors of our lives. Disjoining thus the one
existence we can rightly apprehend neither world,
the apparent nor the true, still less rightly act by
them.  Either we regard the present as merely
physical, or, if we seek to regard the spiritual, it is as
another different world, drawing our thoughts away
from that which is now around us, and mostly, as
pertaining to the future. So we vibrate between a
worldly regard to this world, and a spiritual disregard
to it; with what results we see. There is a strife
between our religious and our earthly life. But the
true regard to the world is a spiritual regard to it; a
regard to the fact.  Not two things, but one, are the
religious and the earthly life: the one the fact, the
other the form; answering to the true relation of the




cir. Iv.]        OF MWRONGNESS.        $       85
eternal and the temporal. So grows our life into one
harmonious whole; the living fountain within springing up and filling the else empty cisterns of this life
of forms. Not foreign to our piety nor deadening it,
but its very life and being, are the tasks of our earthly
course, the routine'of our daily work. Seeing these
as they are, regarding the fact of them in man's redemption, they separate us not from God, but draw
us to him; they bind us to Christ, whose life and
death-alone enable us to understand them, fill them
with all their meaning, make them  to be that which
they are to us. To us to live is Christ.
But, as we naturally think of the world, not only
do our passions and our self-seeking pervert our actions
and draw us aside from right; even our best impulses
and desires lead us astray. Nothing has been more
productive of mischief than ill-directed zeal for good.
We snatch prematurely at results, impatient of error
and delay; and so we mar the working of beneficent
laws, and fall into errors which can be redeemed only
through the most terrible convulsions. This comes
from our want of faith, from not seeing that God is
glorified, and that His glory can suffer no diminution.
On us it can depend, only, whether God shall be
glorified in our willing action. Not by securing certain results rather than others, but by simple right
doing in spite of all consequences, alone, can we subserve His glory. He does reign, and His kingdom
ruleth over all. The perfectness of Eternal Love is
here and now.  No care of ours can take that which
we feel as evil oit of the world, nor ought to do so.




I86     ALAN AND HIS D WELLING PLA CE.   CB. III.
Man's salvation is in it. Thus seeing, we can keep
our action straight, level to the true line of uprightness, and are delivered from the evils which flow from
attempting to do good unrighteously. For we leave
off acting for results. Results belong to God. We
know not what is good, even in the narrowest sense of
securing our own greatest pleasure; much less what
is good for man. For the true goodness of this world
is neither enjoyment, nor virtue, nor any other
thing that we call good, but that which IS; man
being made alive from death, and raised to a new
BEING.




BOOK IV.
DIALOGUES.
H5YLAS.-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.
PHILONOUS.-You see the water of yonder fountain, how it is
forced upwards 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.




The following Dialogues are expository, not controversial. They
do not profess to answer all objections to the views that have been
proposed, but are designed rather to exhibit them in relation with
a wider circle of thought.  The reader will perceive that he is
unceremoniously, simply for the author's convenience, converted to
his views.




DIALOGUE I.
READER AND WRITER,R. IF I have understood you rightly, what you say
rests upon this principle: That the defective state of
man causes our feeling not to correspond with the
truth of things; so that we can only understand aright
either ourselves or the world by remembering that
man is wanting in life.
W. It is so. I say that all defect, perceived as
absolutely existing apart from us, proves itself by its
very nature to be due to man's own condition; implies
defect in relation to him.
R. Your position, I grant, is a reasonable one to
consider; but there remain many grave objections. I
will not mention the strangeness of the idea, and the
alteration it demands in our way of thinking. That
may be due only to its novelty. It may be as natural
to conceive of defect within us as without us-of
ourselves as being conscious of defect, as to conceive
the opposite-when once we are familiar with the
thought. It would be unfair to press you with that
as an argument, which may rest only upon custom.




19go    AIAN AiND HIS D WELLING PLACE.   [B. IV.
But let me mention, first, an objection which should
weigh much with every reasonable man. Do you not
put yourself in opposition to the universal opinions
of mankind, and give direct contradiction to sentiments which have all the authority that human conviction can bestow? And this, not on some few
points in which we might expect that error should be
detected, but in relation to the entire scope of human
thought. Is it not most unlikely that you are right?
W. If the case were as you have stated, I should
agree with you. I should think any deductions which
one man might make, however supported by argument, to be of little value, if they were in opposition
to the real convictions of mankind. Understand me
better. All my confidence is placed on the very
ground on which you would have it rest. If I have
not uttered the true convictions of man, and have not
on my side the affirmations of all who are most worthy
to be believed, I would wish everything unsaid. I am
a learner, not a teacher. All that may seem new I
have learned from the living lips of men, or from
pages on which man's life throbs inextinguishably. I
have not said one thing that you may not find better
said before, or gather, fresh with the dew of simplicity,
from the way-side as you walk. Mine has been an
humble task: to listen to what men say, and let it sink
into my heart, and repeat it to themselves: the child's
part, who may sometimes see what his elders overlook, because of his conscious ignorance. For men,
sometimes, in their great progress, sceing so many
things, have not time to attend to all, and may suffer




DIALOGUE 1.                I9I
old ideas to remain in their minds, without observing
that they are incompatible with their better knowledge. Listening to the large discourse of humanity,
with an humble heart and willing to be taught, as
became one so little worthy to do more than the
scholar's part, I have heard it affirm all the things
that I have said. I have heard and believed, for they
seemed to me true; and I could not help seeing
that they formed a consistent whole, and that men
need not contradict one another any more. For who
does not, in his heart, affirm nature to be living and
active; when has it been otherwise spoken of by man,
speaking his true thought? And in what age of the
world has not a deadness been recognized in man?
who is not conscious of the sad truth in his very soul?
But that there is a deadness in, man and that nature
is not dead, is all that I have said. It is not I that
say it, but man. These two truths had not been
brought into relation. For if there is a deadness in
ourselves, how could we but perceive a deadness in
nature, and become conscious of it, to our wonder and
distress, when science taught us to observe? And
who does not say that we are in the eternal world;
that God and all spiritual being, if there be any such,
is here and now present; and that these things are
only hidden from us by our inability to see? the
present state of man making them to be to us as if
they were not. I bow to the assertion: it is true.
We are in the eternal world; the very actual world in
which we are, that is the eternal. And when I hear
the men of science say that all the things which sense




192     MAN ANzD) IIS D WELLING PLACE.   [R. Iv.
and thought present to us are but phenomena, and
that the very fact of being is unknown, how can I
help recognizing here that which I have assented to
before? These things must be but phenomena, for
they are not the eternal, they are not that world in
whice we ARE, they are the world in which we seem,
and feel ourselves, to be. And when, again, I hear it
said that these phenomena are the realities of our life,
the only things with which we have to do; when it is
affirmed that these things, which are not the very fact
of being, are the facts to us; how can I help recalling
what I had been taught before, that there was a deadness in man? how could I help seeing that a life in
that which is not the very fact of being is not the
very fact of life?
And I have read no book to which man has confirmed the meed of immortality, I have conversed
with no pure and truthful heart, that did not affirm to
me the unreality of earthly things; that these things,
which are real to me, strictly are not, but are shows
and forms, which to trust is to be deceived. How
could I help seeing that I needed to be more; that
the things which are but shows might be but shows to
me, the things that are truly real be the realities?
How could I not perceive that things ought to be
known and felt by me as they are, and not as they
are not? And when I heard almost all men affirm
another being for man, in which these things should
be to him no more as they are now, but he should be
in the eternal world; how could I fail to see in that a
deliverance from the deadness, a life to that which Is,




DIALOGUE I.               193
phenomena being no more realities?  "Accuse me
not of arrogance." How could I believe the true
things that men say, if I believed not as I do.
R. You would imply, that in these things the true
utterances of man are found, and that the statements
which are inconsistent with these are only inconsistencies, not contradictions.
W. Even so. The apparent contradictions are seen
not to be truly such, when the hurry and excitement
of our life subside, and we have time quietly to look
into our thoughts, and see what we really know. For
men truly know much more than they are aware of,
if they would only bring the knowledge which lies
scattered in isolated portions into its right relations.
Opinions which seem opposed often need only to be
regarded in connection, to give to each other mutual
explanation and support.
R. For instance, that the world is physical, or
consists of inert matter, may mean only that it is so
to our feeling or consciousness? We perceive it so,
and have been obliged to draw corresponding inferences;' which is an essential part of your representation?
W. Yes. But one chief test of an opinion is
that it should embrace, and draw into itself, all the
opposing views, and show each one to have been
necessary in its place and order; so presenting the
history of human thought as a true living development. What, for instance, so confirms the Copernican interpretation of the heavens, as its explaining
the order of men's thoughts respecting astronomy?




194     MIAN AND HIS DWELLING PLACE.   [B. Iv.
R. I grant that if, by a condition affecting man,
our perception of the world is modified, and caused
to be of an inert instead of an active existence, men
must have constructed science as it is, and ought to
find such an interpretation of it as you suggest. If
the absolute being in nature be spiritual, and man be
defective, doubtless investigation ought to make him
aware of those facts by such a process as you say.
But this brings me to another remark, which is not so
much an objection to the truth of your idea, as to its
value. What claim to certainty can any such speculations possess? Innumerable solutions of these problems have been put forth, each one announcing
itself as successful, but all, as you necessarily imply,
erroneous. Why should this have any better fate than
its predecessors? Is not the prudent caution, with
which all such attempts are now regarded rather as
interesting amusements than as serious work, justified,
and as much so in your case as in others?
WV. Far be it from me to attempt to exalt myself
by a depreciation of others; any speculations of mine
are of no more value than the idlest of the past. Nor
do I enter into any competition with those men of
gigantic ability, who have reared speculation to a
height which has demonstrated to all future time at
once her power and her incapacity. If I claim for
my work a more permanent value, it is precisely
because it is of so much humbler pretensions. I
present to you no speculation, no attempt to erect
man's intellect into a judge of the universe. I present
to you, indeed, nothing of my own. But this I say:




DIALOGUE I.                195
that man is the INTERPRETER of nature as well as
her servant, and that by science he has interpreted
her.  It would be a false modesty which should
prevent my insisting on the value of the work that
MAN has done. What part have I in it that I should
pretend it to be less than it is? I say, that science
demonstrates that the perceived inertness is due to
man: demonstrates it as certainly, more certainly
(if demonstration admitted of degrees), as that the
motion perceived in the heavens is the earth's. If any
man will say that there exists an absolute negation, I
will allow that, to him, I cannot prove my fundamental position, and consent that the doubt shall
remain; but even then I will not admit it more
doubtful than all things else must be to him.
R. By science, you would say, the conditions of
the problem are altered, and that which was impossible made possible. If the inertness must be ascribed
to man, the statement that he has not truly life is but
another mode of expressing the same thing. You
would make the entire position a question of science,
not of speculation?
Tf. That is what I would do. I only ask the
question, science answers it. Thus would be attained
that certainty and demonstrativeness in philosophy,
which has been so earnestly sought, and latterly pronounced so hopeless. All men agree in scientific
truth, bowing to evidence not to be questioned. Why
should not all men agree that the perceived inertness is
man's? It is a question of science. It cannot remain
in doubt; it must be decided one way or the other.




I96     MAN AND HIIS DWELLING PLACE.   [B. IV.
R. That question certainly alters somewhat the
scope of' philosophic inquiry. If the inertness be
demonstrably due to man, something at least is done;
but can this be demonstrated? is it not only an
opinion still, although we may grant that the opposite
may be reduced to a verbal contradiction?
ZV. I have tried to give demonstration of it; but
the question must rest with each man's thoughts. I
would rather ask than answer it. I cannot doubt
what any man will reply, who will ask himself: I
cannot expect or wish that any man should suffer
me to make reply for him. Try yourself to conceive
the case; the inaction of nature, as it is to us, is
absolute:-that it acts as it is acted upon is the very
proof of its absolute inaction.  But surely absolute
inaction must distinguish that which is not from that
which is: phenomenon from fact. Nature cannot at
once BE, and be absolutely inactive.
R. Of course nature acts, in some sense; no one
will dispute that. But may not nature act physically,
and so be physically, and yet be inert in the other
sense of not originating action? The earth e.g. acts
in the sense of attracting.
W. Being and acting cannot be dissevered, even
in seeming. To be physical and to act physically are
the same; but the being physical is itself being inert,
or not acting. You have here noticed a result of our
endeavour to maintain inert existe:nce. We are compelled at once to assert action, and to deny it. The
phenomenon must act phenomenally, or appear to act,
or else it could not appear to be. So a phenomenon




DIALOGUE I.                 I97
which is felt as reality must impress us as if acting,
and yet, when it is examined, be found to be inert.
Thus it is discovered not to be the reality we feel it.
Our perception of this passive action demonstrates
an existence not passive. It is curious to see how a
little difference in words enables us to overlook an
inconsistency in thought. We could not say the
earth acts, and yet does not act; but we can say, the
earth is inert and yet acts. [Is not this a penalty we
pay for the advantage of using words of diverse
origin?] Physical things are felt by us as acting, but
do not truly act.
R. Do not you forget that the inertness of matter
is denied by many eminent men: M. Comte, for
example, and Mr. J. S. Mill?
W. By no means.  I agree with them  entirely
that the existence which acts upon us is not inert,
I claim them, indeed, as authorities for that position.
But I find their statement incomplete. They do not
sufficiently observe that this existence, which they
truly say is not inert, is felt as inert by us. That fact
they do not account for. It is the turning point of
the whole. Why is the not-inert inert to us? Is not
the question as simple as this: Why is the not-moving
moving to us? or, why is the earth, which is not at
rest, at rest to us? Further, I think it is a mistake to
speak of that which is thus affirmed to be not-inert
under the name of matter. It confuses language.
Matter means, if anything, surely that which is inert;
the phenomenon or that which we feel to be. Surely
those writers would not assert that a phenomzenmz




t r8     MIAN AND HIS D WELLNG PL,4 CE.    [S. IV.
ACTS; still less that the phenomenon is not material.
In brief, I find nothing so simple as that nature,
though it cannot be inert, should be inert to us,
because the very essence of it is unperceived. A
phenomenon is inert of course. It is the same thing
to say that man knows only phenomena, and to say
that he introduces inertness into nature.
R. When put in this abstract form, the argument
seems more powerful in words than in fact. It must
be granted that inertness is inaction, that inaction is
a negation, that a negation cannot exist. Also when
you point out that the negation which we feel in nature
is absolute, I must admit that it cannot truly be as we
feel it; for absolute inaction is absolute not-being. But
all this rather makes out a case for inquiry than establishes anything. There is more interest in the moral
argument, for I perceive it is a question of practical life.
W. I am glad you feel it to be so. We must give
the proposition its scientific, demonstrative basis, and
so connect it with inertia and phenomena and such
unfamiliar terms. Positions which lay claim to scientific proof (which has never been held a disadvantage)
must in part be treated so. But the sooner that
ground can be left the better; nor need it, indeed, be
tarried on; for the very same argument, which thus
appeals to the intellect, addresses itself also to the
other faculties of man. How could nature possibly be
what it is to us, if it were in fact so little as our science
represents it? Nature cannot be dead; it was called
nature because it was felt to be living. But our science
seems dead enough.  Are we not filled with im



DI'A L O G UE 1.             199
patience by its incessant multiplication of dead
forces? Has not almost every one some contrivance
in his mind for reconciling his science to his feelings?
The denial of the inertness of matter may be one. Do
not some, again, say that all physical causation is the
direct act of the Creator? * Others, that physical
causation is not efficient cause, but only connection in
reason? - Do not all these things mean that nature
must be more than it is felt to be by us? For if
causation be God's direct act, why is it not to us as it
is? Why does God's direct act affect us as inert
force? If it be truly a connection in reason, why is
it to us a connection by a passive unreasoning necessity? What causes nature to be to us different from
what it is? This I seek to know. If it be not want
of life in man, what is it? Of all things surely this
is one of the most important for us to know; must
be one of the easiest to learn. If nature is more than
it is felt by us to be, do we not introduce defect into
it? And if the fact of nature's laws be God's immediate act, is not God's act spiritual? It cannot be
meant that God first makes inert things, and then
moves them mechanically. Nor can it be meant that
there are these mechanical processes, and yet no true
causation in them. It must be, that a fact not truly
mechanical is felt by us as if it were so. I find all
men virtually assert nature spiritual; but often without reflecting that it must be the defect of man that
makes it otherwise to him.
* Dr. CARPENTER.      t Rev. BADEN POWELL.




200     MAN AN D HIS D WELLING PLACE.    [n. IV.
R. We will leave this question of inertness, which
still remains somewhat abstract, and conie to matters
more practical. Be our state what it may, can we be
other than we are, while we are in this world? In
this state, man is obliged to deal with physical things
-phenomenal, if you like to call them so. Must we
not take up our position as it is? Perhaps hereafter
we shall be different.
W. Let me first remark that I think the question
whether nature truly be inert or active; whether there
be in it passive necessity or Love-true actual Being
and Life, instead of deadness-can seem abstract only
by my fault. If I could speak of it worthily, the
words would glow with intensest warmth, and kindle
a fire in every soul. If this be the fact, is not poetry
infinitely surpassed; surpassed as God surpasses man?
Is it possible that we have thought man's fancy should
add beauty to God's work, exalt His world to a more
illustrious grace? Poor reparation has the poet made
to nature for the life of which man has robbed her.
Poor, and yet man's best, and willingly received. But
no-not his best. Not his best homage to the BEING
God has made is rendered by his fancy, but by his
steadfast pursuit of fact: not his best worship in
fictitious reverence, but in sober learning of the truth.
Science is the interpreter of nature; knowledge, not
fancy, shows her living.  WVe clothe nature with a life
and beauty from our own souls, raising her to undeserved renown! Let the thought perish, and be no
more remembered to our shame! Science henceforth
joins hands with poetry; they are one: the image




DIALOGUE I.                201
loses itself in the reality; the shadow fades from our
regard, for our hands grasp the substance. Wise poetheart, to strive, though with what vain endeavour
and pitiful shortcoming, to maintain a life in nature,
a sympathy, a love, a voice to human sours. The
tardier science doth approve thee true, and crown
thee king.
But did you ever, with great toil and patience,
using both hands and all your ingenuity, straighten
out a bent spring? And when you had at length
achieved the task, and seemed to see your labour
finished, did the unsubdued twist renew itself, and the
whole thing spring back exactly as it was at first?
Just so do you serve me. You invite me to begin my
whole task again; all that I have said is the answer to
your question.
R. Yet I must repeat it. While we are in this
world, must not our business be with physical things?
Must we not accept our life as God has ordained it?
W. Assuredly we must. That is what I wish
above all to do: to learn what our life is, that as God
has ordained it, and not under a false notion of my
own, I may accept it. Let me remind you what I
say. The world is more than it is felt to be by us:
it is the spiritual world. This alone we truly have to
do with, for it alone truly exists. We feel it as we do,
because of man's defectiveness. To think of it aright,
we must (as we most easily can, most naturally do),
think of it as being more than merely correspondent
to our impressions; remembering that we-not are
to be-but are in the eternal world, and that the fact




202     MAN ANrD HIS D WEZLLI VG PLA CE.    [B. IV.
with which we have to do is the raising man to his
true Life. Perhaps you decline to adopt this view;
but at least be just. Do not say it is difficult, or
unlike things that we commonly admit. What is
more constantly our habit than to remember that our
apprehensions are inadequate, and that the truth of
things differs from our impressions'? Do we not
always add in our thoughts to that which, strictly
speaking, we perceive? When we look at a chair, for
example, do we suppose it to correspond to the impression on our sense? Clearly not; we see only
parts of it: such a chair could not be; we infer, and
conceive as existing, that which is not to our sight.
We supply something wanting, the unseen portions of
the chair, and then the thing is possible. What more
easy than to do the same by nature, to add to it in
our thought something that is wanting in our impression; to remember- that our perception implies an
existence unperceived; that the true existence is
active, not unacting; living and not dead?
R. I cannot say that is difficult.
W. Then, if you do that, you distinguish petween
that which truly acts on you, and that which seems
to do so. You understand that your feeling yourself to be in an inert world is a false feeling on your
part.
R. That is, I consider that which exists to be very
unlike that of which I have the impression.
W. And the cause of this difference of your impression from the truth is a condition of your own,
which you share with all men. In considering the




DIALOGUE S.               203
relation of the whole human race to the existence
which is present to them, you have regard to the
condition of the whole human race.  You reflect that
man is defective-that all men are so-and that all
therefore perceive the world as defective.
R. This may be very well in theory, but the practical
difficulty remains:-that the world we feel and know
does not exist. How can we believe it?
W. We feel these material things: we know them
to exist? We are quite sure of it?
R. Yes.
W. An ignorant man feels that he knows many
things; he is quite sure they are true: as that the
sun moves, or that smoke rises because it is light?
R. True: the more ignorant the man, the more
sure he feels.
W4. An ignorant man feels himself to know,
but the things he knows are not true.  Is that
knowledge?R. No. That is ignorance.
r4. Suppose that we feel certain things to exist,
but the things we feel *do not exist: what would
that be?.R. It would mean something false in our feeling.
I perceive the argument, but you have to make good
that the things we feel to exist do not exist.
W. That cannot be difficult.  How can a world
answering to our inadequate feeling and apprehension
exist? That which has not action is thereby proved
not to be itself an existence, but an appearance produced by the action on us of something else. A world




204     MAN AND HIS D 5 WELLiG PLACE.   [B. IV.
such as we feel can no more truly BE than a chair
could stand erect with the two legs we might happen
to see: and for the same reason, viz., that our apprehension is inadequate. Why should it more influence
our thoughts that we feel a world that is inert, than
that we should see a chair with only two legs. If
that which answers to our impression cannot exist,
then our impression does not correspond with the
truth.  There is no maxim more thoroughly familiar
in practice, or incorporated into our habitual thoughts,
than this. Therefore I say that we can now perfectly
well know the world to be spiritual, and deal with it
so: knowing that our apprehension of it is defective
and why it is so.  That is only to recognize our true
position, not to alter it. Let me take another instance: suppose it had been said, in reply to the
assertion of the earth's motion, that while we are as
we are the sun must be revolving to its, and that we
should continue to think and act as if it were truly so:
were not that ridiculous in theory, absurd and hurtful
in practice? But not more than that we should regard the world as truly physical, because while we
are as we are it must be physical to us.  I say that
we may know that it is not truly so, and that our
thoughts and practice must conform to our true
knowledge, not to our false impression. As astronomers treat the earth as moving though they feel it
steadfast, so may we treat the world as spiritual,
though we feel it inert.  Is not thus acting according
to truth, and not to appearance, always what is
meant by common sense? Is it not opposed to




DIALOGUE I.                 205
reason, first to say these thincgs are but phenomena,
and then to say, treat them as the realities? That
which is but a phenomenon, or appearance produced
by something else, I will treat so; I will treat it
as it is.
But there is truth in your remark that while man
is as he is we must feel as we do, and have the experience we have of a physical, material life. And
hereafter, assuredly, we hope to be different. But
let us not mistake. The question is, how we should
act zowa: what is the truth of this present state?
The answer I give is: remember man's defect of
being, which alone makes us feel as we do; and treat
the world as it truly is, as spiritual: have regard in
all things to man's redemption.  When man is made
alive then phenomena shall be no more as the existence to him.  Can we not easily understand that as,
by defect of knowledge, man has opinions not corret
sponding to the truth, so by defect of being he has
feelings or perceptions not corresponding to the
truth.
R. This is the very point.  There is a difference
between the cases.  An opinion is a thing which we
can alter; we understand how we are aiid must be
under mistake about things; but our experience and
feelings we cannot' change. The material world is
real to us, as you say; then should we not treat it as
being real to us? What other reality can we have
anything to do with?  And again with reference to
your illustration of the chair of which only two legs
are seen, we have a means of knowing how it truly is.
11




206      MANr AND IlIS DW VELLING PLACE.   [B. V.
We can see all four legs by looking, or we can feel
them. There is not a parallel. We cannot feel the
world not to be physical as we can see a chair not to
be of such a form as it presents to our sight. We
always feel the world inert.
/W  These are the very things that will make clear
my meaning, and show you that we are not really
opposed. All that I seek is to alter an opinion. We
have thought that the reason we perceive and feel as
we do is that there truly exists such a world as
answers to our feeling. I say, let us think that the
truly existing world is more than it is to us and that
we are defective. This cannot be impossible. I seek
only to understand our experience, not to alter it. If
it were altered, what I say would be no longer true.
The whole position of man's want of life is founded
on the fact of his experience being of a physical,
~material world: in a word, of a dead world. The
proof of man's deadness would be destroyed if nature
were not felt by him as inert.
You say that we have means of correcting our
impressions respecting individual things but not
respecting nature as a whole: there is here, however,
exactly the difference there ought to be. We cannot
correct our impression of the world as inert, by means
of our senses: it is inert to all our senses unitedly,
and in every use of them; but we can correct it by
means of our thought. We have an intellectual as
well as a bodily perception. The laws of thought,
equally with' the feelings of the sense, determine our
opinions. We can as certainly know that our impres



DIALOGUE I.                  207
sion of the world as inert differs from the ruth as we
can that any other impression does so. We must use
the appropriate means: due consideration and a right
use of reason.  We must reflect whether it is possible
that our feeling should not be defective; whether that
which is but a phenomenon and not the very fact that
exists must not necessarily be unacting; whether it is
not absurd to infer that therefore the very fact must
be unacting also. In short, we must consider whether
the argument that the world is physical to man only
by his defect, be not good and sound. There is no
other way in which the question ought to be decided.
Nor is the question in itself peculiar. It differs from
other cases of the use of reason only in its bearing
and results, not in its nature.
But this is not the end.  When you say that we
cannot feel the world not to be inert as it is to our
feeling, I join issue with you entirely.  I affirm that
we do most emphatically feel nature not to be that
dead, inert mechanism which it is to our conceptions.
I appeal to all the history of human thought, to literature, poetry, science; all are leavened with this feeling
which you deny: that nature is more than we feel it
to be. I would appeal to science above all; for all
its history is a strife between these two feelings: that
nature is living and that it is dead. All the strangeness and repulsiveness with which it affects uninitiated
men, all the strife which it undergoes in extending
its domain, the ever-renewed collision between it
and religion, are due to this two-foldness of our
feeling. It cannot be mere DEAD necessity that con



208     MAAr AND  IlS D WEL LING PLA CE.   [B. IV.
stitutes this wondrous life. It is no matter that we
feel it so; we feel as much that it is not so. We FEEL
a deadness and we FEEL a life. What shall we say?
How  shall we apportion them?  Is the deadness
man's, man's only? May we, dare we, think so? Is
this the consummation of the hope, the resolution of
the doubt, the interpretation of the mystery? Manl
wrestling so long with nature, to gain this victory: to
know himself? Let me bow my head in shame, it is
delight to be abased; let me lift up my soul in joy, I
will exult in God. Thou narrow and contracted heart,
seeking thy own good, labouring fearful and in doubt,
expand thyself, cast off thy shackles, melt and be
utterly dissolved away. This is death, not life. Let
glad laughter take the place of tears, and energy, new
born of joy, chase weariness for ever. Oh sacred Life,
that bearest us in thy bosom, swelling around our
empty souls that shall be filled with thee; in thee we
do rejoice. Man's life, his hope, his destiny rise so
much higher to our thought. Because our aspirations
were not large enough, because we were too easily
content, because we mistrusted God so much and
hoped so little; therefore the world has been so
dark. Our LIFE is more than we have dared to
think.
E. The question now is, not what is beautiful, but
what is true. In speaking in this way about life and
death, are you not confounding words, and introducing
perplexity instead of giving definite knowledge? We
are living now, and we die when the breath leaves the
body. These words may of course be applied, figura



DIAL OGCE I.                209
tively, to other conditions but you do not seem to
use them so. It is difficult to make the thought
follow you.
W. When was a new conception, however true or
simple, first introduced without such difficulty? How
long it takes a person to whom the idea is strange, to
understand that at the antipodes people have not their
feet uppermost. And the feeling has every justification. Nothing can be plainer than that it is entirely
a new use of words to say that they are not head
downwards; in no possible case can the evidence of
sense be more complete. Yet the whole secret lies in
this: that up and down are relative terms. So are life
and death. So indeed are almost all our words. It
introduces no perplexity to think of this physical life
and death as having their relative place within that
true deadness which constitutes man physical. All
our thoughts in so far as they are disciplined, or
approach towards accuracy, are moulded into this
relative form. Do we not think of things as being at
once large and small in different relations, or as rela-.
tively true yet absolutely false? May not a thing be
truly moving, yet relatively at rest, so tlat we consider it as either, according to the relations in which
we regard it? Even so may man be truly dead, yet
relatively living, and be considered as either, according
as he is regarded in relation to the absolute, or to the
phenomenal-to the true life or to the apparent. I
deny that there is any perplexity here, or any laxity
in the use of language.  I use the words life and
death because I mean the things. And for justifica



2IO      ALAiV ArND HIS DWEVL'LLAYVG PLACE.   [n. IV.
tion I appeal to every literature. What tongue is
there in which a life and death of man, apart from
bodily life and death, are not recognised; another
relation of man than to the physical?
R. But you seem to invert the natural order of
ideas. WVe have been accustomed to regard the life
which we are conscious of as being primary, and as
the basis of all:-that we are truly living as men, but,
according to the state of our feelings or our will, we
have or have not a life to the spiritual. You seem to
imply something the opposite to this.
Y47. I admit that I seek to associate a new thought
with the words life and death. But am I not right in
doing so? Do I not rather restore, than invert, the
truly natural use? Have I not made it good that
this physical life, with consciousness of the self within
and perception of external deadness, is not the true
life of man: that it arises, and must arise, from want
of life in him?  If this be true, then I am right in
speaking as I do of life and death. If it be not, then
my whole thought is wrong, and my use of these words
is only part of a larger error. Words must follow
thoughts, although they may also lead them.
I say that if we perceived things as they truly are,
we should consciously perceive that man is wanting
in life; and that we may now think and act according
to the truth, unembarrassed by our false consciousness.  Our consciousness of life, when man is not
living, need no more perplex us than our consciousness of rest when man is not at rest.
R. You would have us take a view apart from our




DIALOGUE L.                 211
own mode of feeling, and rise above that which is perceived by man as he now is, to that which would be
perceived by him if he were different?
W. Exactly. All our perplexity comes from
making our consciousness the measure of the fact,
instead of recognizing it as the measure only of the
phenomenon, from which the fact is to be learnt.
Assuming that which is consciously present to our
perception to be that which is, we can comprehend
nothing. Intellectually the world is a mystery to us;
morally a fearful problem. Am I wrong in saying
that there is a remedy for this state of things in
remembering that man's deficiency modifies his
impressions and convictions, and in endeavouring to
ascertain in what respects the very fact that is must
exceed what is to his consciousness? That is, technically, to find out and exclude the negative element
in his perception by taking it into himself. If we will
do that the clouds rolr back, the darkness turns to
light. Nothing is altered: but we understand. Our
daily work remains the same as before, but it is done
with a new spirit. We direct our aim to the reality,
using the phenomena with reference to that, treating
them not falsely, as for or by themselves, but truly as
they are, in relation to a different fact which alone
causes them  to be perceived.  We live for man's
redemption. We see that the raising man to true
and worthy life is the secret of human experience, the
sacred mystery of nature.
R. Here let me ask you another question. There
is a want of coherence in your language. You say,




212     MAN AND HIS D WVELLiV'G PLA CE.    [B. IV.
first, the cause of our experience is our presence in a
defective state in the spiritual world, and then that it
is the raising man to life. Do you mean to say that
these are the same? If I granted that a spiritual
object (as defined by you, i.e. a not-inert one) is the
cause of my perception of an inert object, say a
table e.g., how can the redemption of man be also
that cause? When I ask of you: what causes me to
perceive a table? I might receive as a fair answer,
"the action on you of an object different from a table,
and especially in this, that it is not inert as the table
is;" but what can I think of such an answer as this:
" Man's being made alive causes you to see a table:"
and especially what am I to think when both these
answers are given at once? To me they seem, to
say the least, by no means the same.
W. I owe you more explanation on this point, but
I think you will easily see that the inconsistency is
only apparent. Let me revert to the ordinary ideas
that our perception is caused by the operation on us,
of physical things. Now I ask the same question:
What causes me to perceive a table? and you answer
me, "the action on you of the table." But again I
ask you, this time as a physiologist: What causes
me to perceive a table? and you say, "a certain
condition of your nervous system, some molecular
operation in your nerves and brain."  Ought I to
charge you with inconsistency? These are two views
of the same thing.  My two positions, that the
cause of our experience is the action on us of
spiritual existence, and that it is the raising man




DIALOGUE I.                 213
to a truly living state, are two views of the same
thing likewise.
R. But you do not make clear your view with
respect to our perception of physical things.
W. My expressions may have seemed obscure,
because they were meant to be general. I do not give
any opinion as to the details of our perception, nor
do I attempt to separate perception of physical things
from the total of our consciousness. Of that consciousness as a whole I say that it must be due to the
action on us of an existence not inert (or physical),
and that our having conscious perception of inert
things as the existence demonstrates a defect in man.
But I do not go farther. Possibly we may hereafter
attain sufficient knowledge to enable us to understand
why our perception must be in all respects such as it
is. But we should ill have profited by the past if,
directly a new problem is presented to us, we began
to guess.
R. I understand you to say that you only affirm,
in general, that the Fact which truly exists is
spiritual, and that the action of this true existence
upon us may be represented by saying that it is the
making man alive. This is man's relation to the
spiritual: but you do not attempt to go further.
W. Yes. I do not entertain any opinion why the
truly existing (or absolute) should cause us to perceive
stars and planets, or earth and water, or trees and
animals. I think some dim intimations of why it should
be so may be gathered, some guides to investigation
feebly grasped; but such questions do not press for




214     AMANz ArD IIS DD tELLIXG PLA CE.   [B. IV.
solution; they do not bear upon the question whether
the perceived defect is in man or apart from him.
If I might illustrate my meaning again, I would
say that the proof that the earth revolves, and not the
heavens, is entirely independent of any question about
the nature of the starry universe, or the reasons of
the planetary courses.  These were problems for
future investigation, and even yet they are but begun.
But the knowledge of the earth's motion was the
indispensable basis for the commencement of the
researches. which promise us, in these respects, so
ample a reward.  So I conceive that the recognition
of deadness as man's, and not as nature's, is a basis
indispensable for the commencement of an investigation as to what nature truly is, and why we must feel
it as we do.
R. When you say that the spiritual world is the
Fact which causes me to perceive a physical one, I
must neither suppose you to mean that chairs and
tables are spiritual, nor that there are spiritual chairs
and tables, of which these are the images, as perhaps
some Neo-Platonists meant; but simply that my
perception of these phenomena is due to the existence
and action of Being which is different from them, of
which we can know that it is certainly spiritual, and
that the inertness we perceive cannot belong to it;
but you do not pretend to say why it should cause us
to perceive as we do. In.a word, you leave the
particular relation of the phenomenal to the existing to be investigated, if it be found capable of
investigation.




1D/ALOG&E' I.              2I1
[Z. Precisely so: the effect which the fact must
produce upon our consciousness involves the three
elements-ist of what it is, 2nd what we are, 3rd the
relation between us and it. If we knew more of ourselves and our relations to the fact of nature, the
effect on us, of which we are conscious, would surely
enable us to know  something respecting it.  But
nothing is truly so unreasonable as our habit of
inferring causes directly from the phenomena we
perceive, in cases in which our knowledge is not
complete. I was struck with a trivial illustration of
this a short time ago, when a bright circle of light
suddenly darted around the walls of my room.  The
children were delighted. I do not know what they
thought of the cause, but I should never have
imagined it myself, without a good deal of experience
of the deceptiveness of sense: a man was carrying a
tin can past the window in the sun.   Now it is easy
to see how this cause should produce such an impression on me when I understand the circumstances:
tbe sunshine, the reflection of light, and so on.  But
suppose me.without such knowledge: how then
should I possibly have inferred a tin can from what I
saw?  I cannot even now detect the slightest resemblance between what was present to my consciousness,
and that which caused it to be so.  I could not help
thinking what an infatuation possesses us when we
fancy we can imtnnediately infer from our impressions
of nature, from that which is present to our consciousness, what that is which causes it to be so. I wondered
that I ever should have inferred, from the aggregate




2I6     MAN AND HIS DWELLING PLA CE.   [B. IV.
of my impressions, that the cause of them is a material
world corresponding thereto.  I am by far too ignorant. This only I venture to say: that if we could
ascertain all the circumstances, we should see that
our impressions ought to be such as they are, and
should be able to trace how they must arise; even
as I can, in scientific fashion, trace my impression
of that meteoric flash to the sun and the tin can.
But I bethink me of another use of my illustration.
Have you not watched children trying to catch such
flashes? Alas, my friend, that is not only done in
play and amid merry shouts of laughter. My ears
are filled with groans and blasphemy instead, and
faces pale with care and scarred with passion rise
before my eyes.  The scene is changed; but not the
actors nor the game.  Game do I call it? it is grown
to deadly earnest; a mad battle for the glancing
shadow.  Hope and despair; triumph and rage;
hatred and envy-let the scene be closed. These are
our Brothers that we look upon —ourselves. Will
no voice warn us? Shall we never know? Never,
like grown men, turn from the Appearance to the
CAUSE?
R. I understand you then to say that the Fact
which causes all these things to be present to our
consciousness is spiritual; and that in relation to us
this spiritual fact is the making Man alive.  Consequently that to regard things as they truly are, and to
act according to the fact and not to the mere appearance, we must in all things consider and have respect
to the redemption of man.  That is the reason which




DIALOGUE L                 217
necessitates, and is the only true cause of, all our
experience.
And you say that our natural, and as it were intuitive, conviction of the true existence of these inert
things is due to our natural ignorance: being just
such a conviction as a person looking through a
stereoscope, without knowledge of the circumstances,
would have of the existence of a solid body. And as
to act aright, or to succeed in his action, in reference
to the object of his vision, the gazer through a stereoscope must act not according to his impressions, but
according to a knowledge founded on examination
and reflection; must act with reference to something
different from that which "is to him; " even so must
we. If we would practically succeed, we musf treat
that with which we have to do as being of a different
kind from that which we are immediately conscious
of. We must guide ourselves by a knowledge which
subordinates our natural impressions.
W. Even so. If we separate the phenomena, the
things that are present to our consciousness, from
their connection with that existence (of whatever kind
it be) which is truly acting upon us to make us perceive, and then ask whether those phenomena exist,
of course they do not. It is like asking whether a
single solid thing exists in a stereoscope, ignoring the
pictures.  The entire difficulty about the material
world arises from the disconnexion of the phenomena
from the fact. Let them be rejoined, and nothing
can be simpler. The physical world exists as a thing
that we are made to perceive by our relation to the




218     MAN AN!,D HIS D WELLIG PLACE.    in. IV.
spiritual. It has this existence and no other. There
would never have been any need to discuss the existence of the phenomenal, unless such a false, isolated
existence, apart from that which is not phenomenal,
had been asserted for it, through our ignorance. Any
person may see the nature of the case directly, who
will suppose himself, through ignorance, convinced of
the presence of a solid body in a stereoscope, and
another person denying it, and trying to make him
understand that there are two pictures instead.  Let
him conceive that the denial of the solid body seems
to him like a denial of common sense, like affirming
that there is nothing there at all, but that all is an
illusion, and that to refer his impressions to two pictures and the laws of his own vision seems to him
absurd: then he will realize the nature of the
difficulty which is felt when the physical world is
denied to exist, and our consciousness of it referred
to a spiritual existence and the state of man's
own being.
R. It is only through ignorance that we are so
convinced of the existence of physical things?  That
is an impression which needs to be corrected by
learning the true circumstances of the case?
tV. Yes. It is not they that exist, but something
more and better than they.
R. But it is difficult to avoid being confused by
these illustrations. The difference is so great between one material thing making us seem to perceive
a different one, and that which is not material making
us truly perceive things which are material.




DAIALOGUE 1.                219
[i. Hold fast to the difference. If the cases were
the same, how could one serve to illustrate the
other? The one relates to portions of our relative
experience, the other to man's experience as a whole.
Yet these instances of known sensuous deception are
true to the point in hand. They help us to understand what the nature of perception is; to recognize
that what is consciously present to our perception
must depend on what we are, and how we are circumstanced.  They should at least suffice to break
through the only real obstacle to an understanding
that the world is not physical, viz., our firm persuasion
that what we set down as our consciousness cannot
land us in a false conviction.
R. There is more besides. This physical world is
so very unlike what we hold the spiritual to be. Ask
yourself like a reasonable man: How can our being
in a spiritual world make us live upon a solid earth,
build material houses, eat material food, do all these
unquestionably material things?   Why should we
not think that we are spirits dwelling in material
bodies, as we have always believed? It makes everything so simple. That I —I was going to say-that I
understand.
IV. It is well you stopped.  Do not you see that
this is exactly the hypothesis, or supposition according to appearance, of which it is the nature to seem
simple at first, and be found mysterious and incomprehensible at last?  That is to the intellect the
broad path that leads where it should refrain from
going.  \Ve must be content to enter the strait




220     MIAN ASND HIS DW ELLIVG PLA CE.   [B. IV.
gate.  In respect to knowledge, as to life, heaven is
inexorable: the path is only one. We must submit
to use reflection and thought, to be guided by evidence, to incur trouble, to set aside convictions
however cherished, if they will not stand. \We must
begin so.  The entrance is hard; not the end.  The
end is liberty, and light, and gladness. If I could
make you feel what it is to know that man is wanting
in his life and that we are deceived, you would not
argue with me any more.
R. But it is hard to conceive that these solid
things do not exist. We take them as the type of
existence rather; when we say of any other things
that they exist, we mean that they are as real
as these.
W. It is not exactly so. Of some things we are
obliged to say that they are more real than these.
And in truth the difficulty is not so great as it
appears. It is the substantialness of the world that
makes it real to us; that we work and walk about in
it.  In fact, it is its existence iln space. Did it ever
occur to you to ask yourself what space is? or how
man arrives at the notion of it?  Reflect for a
moment.  Is not space exactly negation-absence of
existence-pure and entire " not-being." We cannot
think of utter absence of being under any other mode
than that of space; we cannot exclude space from our
thought when we think of absence of existence.  For
when we try to exclude space from our conception,
we have to think of BEING that is not in space; as
spirit is held to be by some. Is it not a striking




DIALOGUE' 1.                221
thing, that we have obtained from our experience of
the physical world an idea which, when we examine
it, we find to be that merely of not-being; and that
this not-being is the essential condition of the physical. Let us not scruple to use our reason. Surely
the feeling and conception of space is the very one
which we ought to receive in feeling that to exist
which does not exist. Space, or not-being, may well
be the condition, or mode of existence, of the "phenomenon."  It is like the inertia, or not-action,
which we also associate with it, and tells truly the
same tale.
R. It is of course the occupancy of space that
makes things solid or substantial to us.
W. It is their "existence in not-being!" that
which we feel as real demands "not-being" as its
condition! Do we not find out, by this curious linking of our ideas, that we are feeling that to be which
is not? Or again: let it be supposed that man feels
that to exist which does not truly exist: can we
think of any other way in which this could be, than
by means of that very solidity which we associate with
existence in space. Inert things thus are our realities.
Their existence is not truly existence, and we aptly
term it existence in space: it is the reality to us of
the unreal. Man feels himself in space by his defectiveness; by his want of being, "not-being" is felt
around him.
R. Let us leave these abstract thoughts.  I grant
that I cannot prove the existence of any world at all
by the present metaphysics.




222      MAN AiND HIS DlWELLING PLA CE.    [B. IV.
W. Analogies help us more, and they are never
wanting to anything that is true, for nature lends all
her treasures to adorn whatever she acknowledges.
What we feel so strange is that we should perceive
around us so definite and substantial a habitation as
this earth, if the physical does not exist absolutely,
but is merely the phenomenon to us of some other
existence.  But look at the sky at night.  Consider
the firmament. Is it not stretched as a canopy folding
in the earth, of definite circumference, and solid look?
Do not say no; for humanity would testify against
you.  History proves that it appears so to man's
natural eye. Is there any such canopy around the
earth? Is there anything like it? Man dwells, to
his consciousness, in an encircling heaven-which is
not. A habitation, bright with gems and stretched
on everlasting pillars, has been prepared for him;
by what? By his presence to infinity bestrewn with
lavish worlds. And why?  Because it is the nature
of his sight. Why should not man's presence to the
spiritual infinitude of Being place him, to his consciousness, in a home like earth, amid a universe.of
stars? Do we ask why it should? Because it is the
nature of his present state to feel as dead that which
is living; because the phenomenon which he perceives
is different from the fact, and by his defect of being
the phenomenon is his reality.




DIALOGUE II.
R. I CLEARLY see your meaning: one thing acts
upon us, and another is consciously present to our
perception. The former you call the Fact, and assert
that it is spiritual or active; the latter is the phenomenon, and it is physical or inert. The spiritual truly
exists, the physical exists only as an appearance. If
man were in a truly living state-not defective in his
being-he would have feelings correspondent to the
truth: but inasmuch as he is defective, his feeling is
wrong.  He feels that which is only phenomenal to
be, if not the sole,'at least a true existence. And
then, thinking according to this false feeling, he finds
himself in entire perplexity and unable to understand
the very being of anything. You would say that he
needs to direct his thoughts according to a different
plan.
W. If we directly know only phenomena, what is
the practical inference?  How should we learn, or
try to learn, the fact from them?
R. Of course we must have regard to the state of
man, and consider any conditions which may modify
his impressions. This is not new, for the common
idea of the world, as consisting essentially of matter




224     MIAN AND HIIS D VELL~ZG PLA CE.    [B. IV.
and force, also involves a consideration of man, and
how things are altered to his perception. It reduces,
for example, sound and light to mere motions of
particles, and supposes in man such a "nature" as
causes him to perceive this bright and variegated
and musical and odorous world, through the action
on him of something wonderfully different.
WV. Quite true. I only wished to apply an established principle. If any one will take up this question
simply on its merits, I cannot doubt that he will agree
with me in thinking that nature must be less to us
than it truly is, and not more: and that we have only
for a time fallen into the other way of thinking of it,
because of our ignorance.  Surely any idea which
enables us to escape from the necessity of supposing
that matter and motion mysteriously affect us with
such perceptions as we have, ought to be welcomed
as a great relief. We get accustomed to such views,
and so lose all sense of their amazing difficulty, and
quite fail to remember how they would impress us if
we now heard them for the first time.
Thus the question stands: Nature is not truly and
in itself such as it is to our perception.  This is common ground: Nature is altered to us by man's being
such as he is. What then is that in man which alters
it? Is it his known defectiveness, or is it a power in
him of adding innumerable qualities? According as
we answer this question will be our inference from
our perceptions. If it be the latter, then we infer an
inert matter and endless forces different from what
we are conscious of: if the former, then we infer an




DIAL OGUE IH.               225
acting, spiritual world different from  what we are
conscious of. Is not the relation between these views
evident in the mere statement?  Are they not, respectively, hypothesis and truth? Is not the former
merely a construction man puts upon his experience
in his ignorance, before he has learned to read it
aright? Does he not cling to it now, as he has clung
to all other such errors, for no reason but that he is
accustomed to it?
R. You might strengthen your argument logically
by asking also whether it be, on any ground, admissible to assume many positive elements in man, as
altering nature to him, when one known defect will
serve the purpose. There would be no reasoning at
all, there would be no more any science, if one
known cause could not demand to be received, instead of several merely assumed to account for the
phenomena.
IW. You are right. Man's defectiveness is known.
That is a point on which all schools of thought agree.
So that my position is this: Nature is made to differ,
to our consciousness, from that which it truly is by a
known cause; namely, by man's defectiveness. That
defective or inert existence therefore, which we conceive, is not the truth of nature, any more than that
which is to our sense.
R. That is, indeed, only saying that science deals
with phenomena alone, and that man's thought does
not penetrate to the fact.
W. But observe: I affirm of the fact, not only
that it is not inert or material, but that it is spiritual.




226  A.AN AND HIS D WIE'LLINCG  PAC C.    [C. iv.
Here I fall back upon the conscience in man. I say:
If we admit that the fact of these phenomenal processes is not an inert necessity, but is true action,
then we must admit it to be ri/aizt action. Science
proves the true being of nature holy, in proving the
phenomenon of it inert.  If there were not necessity,
or holiness, in the Fact, how should there be necessity,
or inertia, in the appearance? For can we separate
moral quality from action truly so called?
R. But does excluding the perceived inertness
from the fact of nature, truly involve its spirituality,
in the sense of such activeness as we can denote holy?
W[V. I should be most happy for this conclusion to
be tested in every way; but I cannot myself think at
all in any other. I cannot even conceive any third
course.  By saying that there is true action, I mean
holy action, and cannot suppose myself meaning
anything else. If the moral element be rejected, I
am landed in inertness again at once.  On this point,
therefore, I am  wholly in your hands.  But if the
argument needed re-enforcing, might we not appeal to
that which nature is, to the wonderful processes and
results of the organic and inorganic laws, and ask: If
there be not passive necessity as cause of this, then
what cause? if neither mechanical, nor spiritual,
necessity is here, then what necessity at all? how can
these things be?  I should  say: Inert necessity
appcars to account for the course of nature; Holiness
does truly account for it. But besides these, what
account can possibly be conjectured?  Especially,
what account Nwhich does not re-introduce the banished




DIALOGUS' ]I.                227
inactivity?  If it be replied that we are not called
upon to account for it at all, I should make answer
that all systems do give account of it'in some mode
or other, and that if my argument be allowed, we
have agreed that that which exists is not inert.  We
have gone so far as to account for the course of
nature by true, and not by apparent, or passive action.
R. I remark here a difficulty you labour under in
respect to words. You do not mean to affirm of the
fact all that we associate with the word "moral."
Not such moral action as ours; such holiness, maintained against temptation and in spite of self; but a
holiness from which these elements of strife are
banished; a true, spontaneous, necessary holiness,
such as we hope for in heaven, such as we adore in
God. You are obliged to use the word moral, but the
idea it conveys needs elevating.
WV. The word spiritual is better. That seems to
me to express the true conception. I might define it
as that in which holiness is necessary. Man's toil and
struggle to be holy arise from want of the spiritual in
him; they arise from self. There is true holiness in
nature because self is not: there is no liking evil,
which alone makes "virtue " possible. But in one
word nature's necessity is Love. Holiness is action
made necessary by love.
R. But if the inertness we perceive be not truly in
nature, if that particular defectiveness be due to man's
condition, still it does not follow that there is not
some defect in nature. We do not thereby assert its
absolute perfectness. I presume you would admit this,




228     AMAN AND HIS D WELLiNG PLACE.   [B. IV.
TV. Certainly. All possible questions of that sort
remain open. I affirm  only that the phenomenon
alone is inert or material: the true existence of nature
acts, or is spiritual.
R. I see that our inference of a material world
rests upon our perception of inertness. Matter and
motion are what we must infer, assuming our impression of nature as inert to be correct. And the
question you would have us ask is: Why are our impressions such as they are; such that, not recognizing
them to be influenced by man's defectiveness, we have
necessarily inferred the material world, with all its
properties and forces?
But do we not here come to this fact: that we are
ourselves conscious of inoving?  This consciousness
of motion is the chief ground of belief in matter and
motion as constituting the world.
TV. True.  That which we feel to exist is in
space; that which we are conscious of involves motion.
I do not deny the materialiess of th/epkhenomenon, or
of that which is to our consciousness. Keep your eye
steadily to the point. Nature is material to its; we
consciously move in it, and must do so. But the
question is: What is the true cause of this consciousness? What is nature apart from us?
R. You mean that there is not truly motion, although we are conscious of it: that which truly exists,
and makes us feel motion, is different. You treat
motion as we have treated luminousness, and say that
we are made to be conscious in that way by something
that does not resemble that which we are conscious of.




DIAL OGUE I1.                229
W. That is what I mean-and I have, at least,
examples to urge in support of it-that motion is a
mode in which we feel something that is not itself
like motion. But again: evidently the question of
nmotion and that of space are one. As space is a condition of all phenomenal existence, so does motion
seem to be of all phenomenal action. It is curious
that we cannot think of any material action, except
under the form of motion. Some men argue, absolutely, that all material processes can be nothing else
than forms of motion, and for my own part I profess
an inability to conceive them in any other way than as
motions, either of larger or of smaller particles. This
fact is full of instruction. Motion, in this respect,
agrees with all those qualities which are introduced
into our perceptions by our own condition (all subjective qualities), viz., in being universal. It applies
to all our perceptions: as any condition must which
belongs to ourselves. I would suggest that it is a
condition of our own that necessitates our conceiving
all perceived actions as motion. -All the action of
nature, of whatever kind, is motion to man's thought.
Light, or sound, or warmth, everything which he perceives, refuses, when he endeavours to conceive it, to
be anything but motion to him. And indeed, if we
consider, it is evident that the mere fact of man's consciousness of space necessitates this.  All that he
perceives he must refer in thought to action in space,
or in respect to space, which is motion.
R. Perhaps there is something in this. I do not
wish to be one of those men of whom William Harvey
12




230     MIAN AND HIS D IVLLIzVG PLACE.   [B. IV.
says, that " they will not receive a new system unless
it explains everything." It is surprising how natural
it is to adduce any unexplained circumstance as an
argument against a new view, without considering
whether that view ought to explain it, or whether it
is better explained the other way. All of us have a
feeling, as if an opinion we have before entertained
ought to be held, not only until there is sufficient
evidence in favour of another, but until that other has
given an explanation of every question we can ask.
I have learned to be on my guard against that
weakness.
W. Harvey could not explain why the arteries
were found empty after death. At least he could
only suggest probable reasons. The idea that they
contained vital spirits accounted perfectly for that
circumstance. Yet it was proved that the blood circulates, although the reason of the emptiness of the
arteries remained to be investigated.
R. It may be proved, you would say, that the
Fact of nature is spiritual, although many things
cannot be accounted for.
W. Observe: I do not deny that "we move;"
but I inquire what is the true meaning of that statement. There is motion, of course, in the same sense
as there are physical things. Motion is either truly
existing, or is phenomenal only, according as that
which EXISTS is truly physical, or only phenomenally
so. The question is whether our consciousness is to
be assumed as correct, or whether it is to be investigated and accounted for.  And I would  suggest




9AIL OGCUE I.                 23I
farther, whether the right question for us to ask
respecting all our experience be not this: why we are
so impressed; why we have been obliged to make
such suppositions and entertain such convictions?
In connection with the material world, the sole fact is
that men have been, and we are, impressed with a
conviction of its existence. But why should it be
called a "melancholy" fact if there be not such a
world? What should follow but that there is a better
one? Where is the harm if we are at first under
illusion? ~ When once we know ourselves to be so the
practical evil is at an end. Or if we erect our impressions into an authority, and say, "There is a
material world," what are we advantaged? We have
gained for our belief a world of low inferior order,
one that even we cannot but feel to have some evilness
and degradation in it. If we will admit a different
plan of thinking, and consider man's known defect,
then we may believe a world at least excelling that
in value, one that is at least perfect to our thought.
It is every way a gain. Is the -sun less bright, the
earth less solid, food less satisfying, are smiles less
sweet or words less full of meaning, to one who believes that the world is different from that which it is
felt by him to be, than to another? Is his confidence
less in the stability of the natural laws, because he
refers them to an absolute holiness, instead of to mysterious "properties," of which he cannot know that it
may not be the property to alter, or at least to produce different effects, to-morrow? It can, at least,
be no loss. Our sensations are not altered by the




232     ifAN AND HIS D WELLNG PLACE.    [n. IV.
change in our views, as all agree in urging. What
then is the difference-the difference to thought and
belief, in respect to which alone a difference exists?
Is it not wholly an advantage? One has, to his belief,
a low dead world, not to be understood, with some
strange badness in it: the other a world infinitely
glorious, thrilling his soul to. ecstasy, and a conviction
of deadness in himself that rises into aspiration towards
a worthier life for all.
For is it not evident that we need not affirm
defect without us, if we will admit it in ourselves, in
man? Suppose defect within: will it not be perceived
without? And to perceive defect without, what could
that be but to be in a material world, or something
essentially the same? I will not go so far as to say
that a Being who, by defect within, perceives defect
uithout must feel himself surrounded by, and embodied in, matter: but I can think of no other way
in which theie could be perception of defect as
external. Must not such a Being feel inertness in his
world, and be conscious of exertion, -and of force?
Would he not necessarily infer matter, and suppose
"inertia," and construct a science of passive laws,
based on the fact that the action around him did not
vary? He would think nature dead, nor even ask
himself the question whether it could be truly so,
until he had exhausted all contrivances to maintain
his impression as the truth.
R. As to our being conscious of moving, it occurs
to me that there is what you call a phenomenal illustration, which might help us to understand it. We




DIALOGUE U.                 233
feel ourselves conscious of being steadfast, and of the
earth being at rest, yet we have good reason for
believing, not only that it is not so, but that there is
no such thing as that kind of rest in the universe, and
that all the stars are in motion. If we can be conscious
of steadfastness while there is truly no such thing, why
may we not be conscious of moving though there is
truly no such thing as motion? What we are conscious of and what truly exists are different questions.
W. I thank you for your suggestion.  Parallels
of this kind are at least of avail to meet objections
that are apparent only; and help to clear the course
of an argument from considerations which do not
truly affect the conclusion. And let me point out to
you how your remark also bears upon what you just
now observed, that nature may not be wholly free
from defect, although not having in it the defect
which we perceive as inertness-although that may
be from man. The sun and stars are moving, although
the obvious motion which man at first attributes to
them is due to his own. We need first to understand
their relative steadfastness, and our own motion, before
we can begin to examine whether they truly move.
So, perhaps, we may inquire respecting defect in
nature, when we have first recogniised its relative
perfectness, and man's defect.
And while this idea is before us, let me remark an
application of it to the question of freewill. We feel
conscious of an arbitrary freedom. Yet perhaps it
may be, not only that man's arbitrariness is not free(lom, but that there is and can be no such freedom;




234     MAN AND HIS DWELLING Z'LA CE.    [B. iv.
that man feels himself conscious of a thing that cannot
be, and that in fact freedom excludes arbitrariness.
R. That may be true: at least it is beautiful to
think. Then God, as of all Beings the most free, is
also the most free from  arbitrariness. With Him
wrong is impossible. His sovereignty is His absolute rectitude.  His will nothing can constrain or
draw aside.
But let me put an illustration. of yours in my own
way. The sun is revolving to us, but we think of it
as at rest, and of man as revolving: nature is inert,
or dead, to us, why should we not think of it as active
or living (spiritual), and of man as wanting life? We
are not conscious of man's motion, we infer it from his
perception: so we are not conscious of man's deadness, we infer it from his perception. And in each
case we find a practical benefit in our better knowledge.
W. Thank you.
R. Let me try again. As, in respect to any solid
body, that which we can perceive by sight (or see)
must differ from the truth of that object by defect;
that is, the object must be more than can be perceived
by sight-as that which can be " seen " is only
surface or appearance, and to say of that "it is"
would be to affirm the existence of an appearance:so, in respect to true existence, that which we can
perceive by the intellect (or think) must differ by
defect from that which IS. That which can be
thought is only a phenomenon: and to say that "IT
IS," is to affirm the existence of a phenomenon.
Thus, for example, we must think of the world as




DIALOGUE I.                235
material, must conceive matter and force; but we
should never think of saying it IS.so. Matter and
force differ from the true BEING of nature by defect.
TV. You understand that these are used as
illustrations of a proposition independently proved,
and not as themselves proofs.
R. I understand. That which is not the true
existence of nature must differ from that existence in
not acting. Let me ask you a question here. The
phenomenon may be defined as that which is present
to consciousness. Now when that which is present to
consciousness differs from that which truly exists, of
course it will be inert; it will be a phenomenon only,
and cannot act. But might there not be a case in
which the phenomenon and the true existence should
be the same? Might not that which is present to
consciousness correspond truly to the fact?  And
then would not the phenomenon also be not-inert,
also be active or spiritual?
W. I think with you; in such a case, in which
the phenomenal and the absolute should be one, or
perception agree with the truth of things, the Being
would surely be conzsciously in a spiritual world.
R. Now I see that I have been defining the very
thing that you call the true life of Man. If Alan's
defect or deadness were removed, then that which he
is conscious of would not any more be defective or
inert. The true existence of nature would be to him
as it is; he would perceive things as they are, and
the distinction between phenomenon and fact would
be done away.




236     MIAN AND HIS DW ELLiNG PLACE.. V.
W. It might be so. This would surely answer
well to the idea of being in a spiritual world, that the
world should be to us, as it is in truth, spiritual; and
this could only be by the taking away from us of the
defectiveness which modifies our feeling. That would
be to escape from the physical. The thought seems
consistent and simple enough; yet I would not affirm
it. These simple and natural thoughts are apt to
deceive. They must be false when our knowledge is
imperfect, and I do not think we yet know all that
mfnst determine the' answer to your question. Perhaps
the phenomenon may always, and necessarily, differ
from the fact, but when man's defect of being is
removed they may be consciously associatcd izn his
feeling; and the physical may present itself to us
aright, not as that which Is, but as the mode under
which that which Is appears to us. This latter thought
more commends itself to the affections. Do you see
that so this beautiful phenomenal universe (it may be
under ever changing forms) might always remain to
us, but not as the reality; being known and felt as it
is, in its true dependence on spiritual being, and as
perceived by us only by our relation to that being?
Do not you see how in that way we might retain our
hold on all that we have loved and lived for, not
losing it in passing to a different state, but having it
glorified and gladdened, and enriched with unspeakable meaning? and not only so, but we may conceive
of unnumbered universes, equal to, or surpassing this
in glory, though this surpasses infinitely all our
thought. Unnumbered universes, perceived, enjoyed,




DIALOGUE IZ.              237
and known as the phenomena of the one true Universe
that IS. Thus we multiply creation, infinitely, to our
thought. Nor let it be said: that were to make a
mere illusion of all. How should it be so? What
value is there in matter? Will any one pretend that
the dead substratum has any worth, of any sort, real
or imaginary, and that the Universe we know would
not be more rather than less, if the inference of
matter were proved a mistake?
R. We have an idea that God's power is displayed,
or proved, by the creation of matter: bringing into
existence that which did not exist. So we have a
certain momentary reluctance to part with it, until
we reflect that we give it up only for a Universe more
noble, and in which God's creative glory is therefore
more displayed. We must be glad rather than sorry,
to understand that this low, evil thing is not that
which God has created, but that which man has
invented;' that it measures man's power of apprehending, not God's power of making. But I do not
know that I wholly see your meaning about unnumbered universes, perceived by different classes of
Beings, as phenomena of one and the same true
Universe.
W. Will you allow me another illustration? The
relation between the phenomenal and the fact seems
to me exactly to resemble that between false appearances and the truth of things. I should say: as
the appearance is to the phenomenon, so is the
phenomenon to the fact. From an appearance, by
considering our phenomenal relations, we learn the




238     MAN ANAD HIS DWELLNG PLA CE.   C[. Iv.
phenomenon, or that which is true to thought: from
the phenomenon, by considering man's actual relations, we learn the fact, or that which is the very
truth of being. The one process is ever available to
illustrate the other.
Thus, for the point in question. Should we not
be sorry if, in learning that the stars constitute a
boundless universe instead of a limited sphere as they
are to us, we lost our old familiar heavens, and no
more saw the accustomed constellations? that is, if
the appearance were altered by our- true apprehension
of the phenomenoon. And why, in gaining a true apprehension of the fact, should the familiar phenomenon
be taken from us? Is it not enough for us to conceive
the stars aright? Do we wish them to look different?
So, would it not be enough for us to feel and know
the universe as it is; why should the phenomenon be
altered? Only let it be but phenomenon to our experience. Let our Life be in the Fact, even as our thought
is of the genuine stars, and not of globelets rolling
round on wheels.
As for the different phenomenal universes perceived by different Beings, this will illustrate what I
mean. Is there not a different apparent universe to
the dwellers on every separate star or planet, if there
be any such? Is there not a different appearance of
the heavens to every differently organized eye? And
yet but one phenomenon:-the stars that we conceive.
R. I must ask you one thing more on this subject;
what happens at the death of the body?
W. I do not know; and I avoid expressing any




DIALOGUE Id.               239
opinion on that subject, in order that my argument
may not be embarrassed by any mistake I might
fall into.
R. But you must have some opinion.
W. Certain things I think: for instance, that men
do not pass into the spiritual world thereby, because
they are in it now: that they do not come at death to
the end of a probation for eternity, because I find that
idea of probation to be a human doctrine, and as it
seems to me a mistaken one: that there is nothing in
that change to remove the defect under which men
are, and which causes them to feel inertness without
them. I see in it nothing to make men good, nothing
to make them worse. In fine, I am perfectly content
to wait for better ground of judging, which I believe
will hereafter be found. Why should I be in haste?
Do not I know that Man is redeemed, that ALL MEN
shall be brought to Christ? I have, however, certain
individual impressions, which are of purely private
interest, and I gather also, from the New Testament,
intimations of an anticipation on the part of Christian
men of being present with the Lord on the occurrence
of that event.
But I cannot cease to be astonished, when I think
that the entire religious opinions of so many men are
based upon their supposition of what happens at the
death of the body. Of course I feel how prone we
are to this; but if we ask ourselves whether we really
do know, surely we must at once admit that we do
not. We have in fact adopted ancient heathen speculations, and grafted them upon the Bible.




240     MIAN AND HIiS DWELLING PLACE.   [B. Iv.
R. Do you think then that the Bible is silent on
the subject?
W. I do not. I think much may be gathered
from its words, and if there were any practical
necessity for deciding, we might enter into the discussion. But I do not feel it an urgent question. For
all practical ends I know enough: I know the redemption. That I believe, not because I understand how
it is to take place, but because it is expressly revealed;
and because, reading nature by the light of the
Gospel, I see it there also.
R. Then in order to believe that man is to be
saved, we need not know what happens at death?
W. Clearly not..And further, I believe that we
cannot rightly, or wisely, attempt to unravel that
problem, until we can feel thus calmly respecting it.
The first condition for any true knowledge on that
question seems to me that we should be content to
wait for it, and be patient.
R. When we reflect, what is there in bodily dying
which should have made us think it so great and
decisive a change?  Surely we have been carried
away by the undue influence of the senses, in thinking
of it as we have done.
W. I believe that is the secret of it. To sense,
bodily death seems a consummation, an ending, a
great and terrible catastrophe. It is no wonder that
men should have associated religious ideas with it, as
they have done.
R. We have distinguished dying from the rest of
our experience, as if it had some special connection




DIALOGUE II.                241
with, and determination of, our spiritual destiny. Can
that be a mistake?
W. Think of the New Testament. Are there, in
any part of it, any such exhortations to secure salvation while life lasts, as are so abundant in our discourses and books of religion? Is there not an utter
dissimilarity of tone between the scriptural writers
and those who, in these days, urge men to repent on
the score of the nearness of death? I know no greater
contrast anywhere.
R. We need not pursue the subject. I perceive
that this is but part of the general idea. If we have
been mistaken, as you affirm, respecting man's present
deadness, it is easy to understand that we have been
mistaken respecting the spiritual bearing of bodily
death. Whether there be any passages of Scripture
which imply the ordinary conception of the results of
dying, I will reserve for thought.
W. There is one that will readily occur to you:
the parable of Dives and Lazarus.
R. How do you understand that?
W. It is a passage I do not profess perfectly to
understand. But I think you will see that it does not
decide anything in the present question. The expressions which dwell in our minds do not contain the
ideas we associate with them.
R. The rich man is tormented after death.
Wt. I do not deny that evil-doers have this
destiny.
R. But between him and Lazarus there is a great
gulf fixed, which neither can pass.




242     AIANI AND IlS DWELLING PLACE.   [B. IV.
TV. There is. Is not this the doctrine of the New
Testament throughout, and of the Old also? "Can
the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his
spots? " Does the bad man ever become good by his
own self-act, is he not always renewed by God? And
do not we ourselves speak in the same way? Is
there not an impassable gulf fixed by God between
the good and the evil? In short, I think the ideas
we connect with this passage are not in the words
themselves, but are attached to them by us because
they are previously in our minds. For what can have
made us subordinate the explicit statements which
assert the redemption of all to phrases which form
part of the machinery of a parable? Is this in conformity with our own established principles? Is there
not proof here that we have brought ideas of our own
to the New Testament?




DIALOGUE III.
R. LET us pass to another subject. In respect to
Matter, you set aside any authority of our supposed
intuitions and ask: What has made it necessary for
men to infer it? And you answer, that it is a defectiveness of their own being which has made them feel
as reality that which is but phenomenal.  Hence,
inasmuch as a phenomenon of course cannot act,
they have been compelled to infer an unacting substratum. It is a false inference necessitated by man's
own condition, and only to be escaped from through
better knowledge: in this respect being like all the
other false, inferences men have been compelled to
make. And this is why the question of matter has
been so contended. It has been an inference at once
necessary and false. However easy to disprove, still
while the necessity of inferring it remains, through
overlooking man's defect, it holds its ground. Thus
comes the state of things which has been so often
noticed, that men continue to believe in matter though
they admit the arguments against it. That result
is involved in the nature of the case. And the supposition of an authority in our perceptions, to vouci1
without investigation for the true nature ot that which




244     iL~AN AND HIS DWELLLVCG PLACE.   [B. IV.
causes them, follows as an attempt to bridge over
this difficulty, until the solution of it be found in
man's defective apprehension.  But this supposition
is opposed to experience, which shows that our direct
perceptions are not, in the case of individual phenomena, authoritative as to the nature of that which
causes them:-opposed to reason, which shows that
what we are immediately conscious of must depend
in part on what we are, and how we are related to
the object which acts on us:-opposed to the emotions, which reject with indignant scorn the idea that
nature can truly be what the matter and motion
hypothesis represents it:-opposed, in fine, to every
sound method of judging of the relation of causes
and effects; for if we grant nature to be matter and
force, how can it possibly make us perceive what we
do, or indeed perceive anything at all? That beautiful problem, of the relation between the percipient
consciousness and the world, has changed itself, under
this method of taking our impressions for granted,
into the blackest, dreariest, most impassable of gulfs.
We come to a sudden halt. Between matter out there
and my sight of a flower, let no rash mortal presume
to indicate the least dream of a rational connection.
W. Yet.I thought matter had been inferred in
order to account for our perceptions. Why then does
it fail exactly when we come to the whole final cause
of its supposition?  Why not, in any other case,
argue in the same way, and in respect to anything
which we naturally suppose, but the existence of
which could not account for our impressions, maintain




DIALOGUE l11.               245
their truth, and say: it is a mystery. For example,
why not so meet the argument that the stars cannot
be little white flames? Why not say: they are so,
but we must not ask how we can perceive them so far
off? Were not that as reasonable as to say, that
nature is an inert existence, as it is to our impression;
and when it is argued that an inert existence could
not cause us to perceive, reply: we must not ask such
questions; that is sacred? Plainly we are on the
wrong path here. Whatever may be the truth, this
idea of a matter-substratum has had its day. Notheory of the world, a candid confession that we cannot account for our experience at all, would at least be
better than that.  Better positively: it would be
truthful, genuine, manful; the attitude which a
genuine man naturally takes towards that which he
does not understand: -infinitely better negatively,
for it would leave the path open for a more humble
and more hopeful way of attempting the solution. I
see no one purpose that the matter hypothesis
answers, but that of puffing us up with a vain conceit
of knowing all about the world, and preventing us
from  investigating.  That matter-world has just
solidity enough to block up our way, and no more.
Suppose we had to eat " matter " instead of meat, or
sit on "matter" instead of chairs, we should find it
unsolid enough then I fear.
R. That were Berkeley's theory realized:-men
living in a world that is an idea. The very thought of
such an entertainment gives a foretaste of emptiness,
and a feeling that recalls Satan's fall through chaos.




246     MIAN AND HIS PDWELLING PLACE.   [B. Iv.
In such case we should be thankful even for the cloud
whose presence there we have so much cause to rue.
In truth, there always was something ludicrous to an
imagination not duly broken in to reverence, in that
substratum which was, and was not, what we see and
touch, and had to be at once distinguished from, and
identified with, all things; in which all that we properly perceive inheres, " stuck in it," as Coleridge
says, "like pins in a pincushion." In fact it is on
an emptiness that the notion of matter is based;
reminding us of the man who pored in vain over the
cane-bottomed chair to think, " who could have taken
all those holes and put the cane around them?" But
are we not acting rather like the savage, who begins
to kick his idol when he has discovered that it is not
a god after all? If matter play little part in nature,
it has played a great part in human thought.
[XV. True. That necessary inference, or belief, of
matter brings home to man a proof, from which he
cannot escape, of what he is. Be the truth of nature
what it may, it has been necessary to him to infer an
inert, a dead substratum; he has necessarily ascribed
to it a being which is itself a denial, an essence which
insists on being defined by negatives.  To him there
is defect in the universe, a void and darkness. He
cannot deny that that which he consciously perceives
is inert. "Matter" witnesses against him.
R. So you would meet any one who should deny
that what we are conscious of perceiving is inert, and
thus avoid the conclusion of man's deadness.
IV. I should point him to the matter-hypothesis,




DIALOGUE IlI.               247
and ask: what does it mean that man should have
been compelled to infer an universal not-action, and
therewith a not-acting substance, in nature?
R. That a man should have been compelled to
infer an universal not-light in nature would mean that
he was blind.
W. Does it alter the case that all men are included
in it?
R. You deny an inert world.  Very good.  You
do not deny that there is a world, but that it is inert.
Show us then a reason why we feel it as inert when
it is not. It is simple enough.
W. So also is the question whether there is
matter: it is simply whether man has been mistaken
in thinking the world inert; whether he has erred in
interpreting his impressions?  We have given up, as
not pertaining to that which exists, every property
that we are conscious of perceiving, except shape. Yet
what reason is there for retaining that, or what advantage in doing so? Something different from colour,
sound, temperature, odour, causes us to perceive all
these things; then why not something different from
shape cause us to perceive shape? or something
different from hardness cause us to perceive hardness? Why should not our thoughts be raised to a
consistency among themselves?  Why inharmonious
laws to regulate our perception? especially when we
know so well that shape is not always perceived as it
is, but varies continually. If we are caused to perceive
a certain shape by that which is different in shape,
why may we not be caused to perceive shape alto



248     AMAN AND HIS DWLLLING PLACE.    [B. IV.
gether by something different? And as for resistance,
the feeling of hardness is evidently dependent upon
conditions of ourselves.
R. Few things would be hard to us, if our fingers
were of sharpened steel, and our muscles iron and
steam. And again, it has been well remarked that
if our fingers were magnetic, and a central point
between them were of like magnetic character so as
to repel them, our feeling must be the same as in
grasping an elastic body.
W. In short, we ought to have outgrown the
assumption that the cause of our impressions is something corresponding to them. It could not be so,
and ought not: if it were, how could we obtain a
knowledge of ourselves?  We deprive our consciousness of more than half its value by maintaining the
existence of that which corresponds to it.  We rob it
of its power to indicate, by its modifications, our own
condition.  God gives us in our consciousness an
opportunity of learning two things:-that which
exists, and our own state: we would indolently assume
the former, and ignore the latter. But in repudiating
the one, we fail also of the other. For, not caring to
inquire what in our own condition modifies our consciousness, we merely delude ourselves with the
persuasion that we know what caztses it.
R. But physical things have a certain reality.
You must not deny this. You must reconcile your idea
with the feelings of mankind, or it is not yet perfect.
ZV. I agree with you. But I think the reconciliation is already effected. I affirm, in the true sense,




DIAL OGUE SI.                249
the reality of these things that we perceive: for how
does it make a thing less real to us, to know that the
cause of our perceiving it is something not corresponding to that which we are.conscious of? Is fire
less hot, or are leaves less gree;z, because we hold that
we are caused to perceive heat and colour by something wholly unlike them?  Are heat and  light
therefore less real?  Why then should fire or leaves
be less real, if we are caused to perceive them by
something different? We are made to perceive
physical things by a true actual Existence apart
from us, of which they give us sure demonstration.
This is what men affirm: there is some true existence
acting upon me to make me perceive, and through my
perceiving I can be sure it Is.
R. Since that which truly acts upon us, to make
us perceive, is by common consent above our comprehension, evidently it follows that what we are
conscious of, or do comprehend, is not that very
existence itself, but is a phenomenon. Now, if we
ask respecting a phenomenon whether it exists, in the
sense of truly and absolutely existing, evidently it
does not: such existence is not an appropriate idea
to apply to it. It exists as a phenomenon; it has all
the existence which belongs to its nature, but its
nature is such that true existence could only be
absurdly spoken of in relation to it: that would
contradict our own definition.  But that which we
thus know  to be but phenomenal is real to our
experience, thus proving defect in man: a defect to
recognize which, and trace its effects, is the key to




250     ALAN AND HIS DWELLING PLACE.   [B. IV.
human life. Our error has been of the kind called,
by writers on logic, that of mnal-observationt.  All the
circumstances belonging to the case have not been
taken into account; regard not having been paid to
man's own condition in interpreting his consciousness.
This is your view.
W. And what do you say to it?
R. I accept it. It is but applying to the whole
experience of man.the same rules that we apply to
our own experience as individuals; so giving consistency to our thoughts, and introducing unity into
our mental life. The only thing that appears to make
it difficult is the novelty. One is apt to imagine, on
the first hearing, that the existence of things is called
in question; or that you d-eny the reality of that
which makes us perceive. When it becomes clear
that our perception, and the certain existence of a
reality which is its cause and object, is the basis of
the entire argument as it is in the ordinary view, only
with a reference to our owp condition which that
view ignores or omits; then there is no more difficulty.
We ask ourselves as before: Why do we perceive
these things? and we answer-not, as before, the
action on us of things corresponding to the impressions we are immediately conscious of-but the action
of things more excellent than they, which impress us
as they do by virtue of man's condition. We do herein
only what we have only all our lives been learning
to do, and are accustomed to do in every single case.
We are no more at a loss to think how any particular
object which we perceive should not truly exist as




DIALOGUES 1.                25I
such an object, than we are to remember that the
bright spot we see as Venus does not exist as such a
spot. That which exists is different: but these objects
are to man's perception.  Their relative existence
remains the same: it is not as if we left all the other
specks in the heavens as existing, and denied one of
them; but we affirm of each one that, in truth, it is
part of a whole which is different from that of which
we have the impression. When a person looks at the
stars at night, he would not deny that there are
specks in the heavens.  Those specks have the
existence which belongs to them.  They exist to our
sense. But if we ask what is the true existence
indicated by them, that is another question: we must
take into consideration man's condition, his present
mode of being.
W. Exactly so. Thus "matter" is not the unknown existence of nature, but the known phenomenon.  It is that which is to us; having the
subjective element in it, as the metaphysicians say;
which is, simply enough, defect. Not that we have
truly added anything, but that we have not adequately
apprehended.
R. You mean that the idea of matter is the attempt
to conceive an existence, or substance, corresponding
to a defective apprehension of that which exists:
necessarily, therefore, a defective substance; necessarily, therefore, a cause of perplexity, to be escaped
from only by remembering that our apprehension is
defective and that there is not anything corresponding
to it, but only something excelling it. For matter,




252    MlIAN AND HIS DWELLING PLA CE.   [B. IV.
being a substance answering to our inadequate apprehension, necessarily is insufficient, not equal to that
which nature is. Thus we have had to suppose also
those marvellous powers in ourselves, which convert
mere material and mechanical processes into our
exquisite sensations. We have had to supplement
the palpable insufficiency of the substance we have
supposed for nature, by gifts of our own. And the
whole is a mystery not to be inquired into. I begin
to share your impatience with that plan, not of
cutting, but of tying knots.  For who is to judge
what mysteries are to be allowed, and what are not?
What scheme of false assumption might not shelter
itself under the same claim?
W. We need never take this position, of predicting
the future direction of human thought, if we will
allow that our way of regarding its problems may not
be perfect. We may safely say of certain questions
that they cannot be answered; but we can never.say
that they may not be found to be mistaken questions,
and the true problems at issue solved another way.
To take this very case of our sensations as an instance: doubtless, no man will ever be able to say
how matter and motion can make us perceive light;
but it may be possible for -men, hereafter, to say why
our perceiving light made us necessarily infer matter
and motion; and also to discover what is the true
cause of our perceiving light. The recognition of a
defective feeling on man's part already gives a partial
answer to the former question; the latter waits. We
find an insoluble mystery here, only because we




DIALOGUE Il.                 253
assume as certain that the operation of matter is the
cause of our perceiving light. We put an inference,
necessary to us in ignorance, as if it were a thing
ascertained and known. In a word, we deal by the
phenomenal as if it were the absolute.
R. Let me continue.  We know as a fact that
men sometimes feel that to be which is not. We do
so in dreams. Nay, in every case of insufficient
knowledge, in which we are deceived by appearances,
the same thing may be said. Every one who has an
inaccurate impression respecting things around him
may be said, in some sense, to feel that to be which
is not. Defect on our part has a false feeling for its
necessary consequence. Not mere absence of right
apprehension, but positive wrong apprehension, is the
necessary result of want of a true appreciation of that
with which we have to do. Feeling that to be which
is not, is a familiar and well known fact in human
experience. It is natural to the present state of man;
a normal part of his present training. What more
reasonable than that it should afford the explanation
of this larger experience, which we call the perception
of the material world? Man feels that to be which is
not: necessarily and rightly feels so, by reason of
defect. It is his work to learn and to escape from
the error.  All his work in gaining knowledge is
this same process. A familiar fact of our experience gives the key to man's feelings in respect to the
physical world; a known and natural circumstance,
proved in ordinary life, applied to a larger problem.
So weight, the familiar heaviness of bodies on the
13




254     MIAN AND HI$S D WELLING PLACE.   [B. Iv.
earth, gives the solution of the gravitation of the
spheres. And the known defect of man gives evidence
that it must be so. - A defective being ozught to feel
that to be which is not; else were all the intellectual
laws confounded.
Admitting then that in his feeling of this physical
(phenomenal) world, man feels that to be which is
not, are net many things made clear?  Are not
those intricate questions respecting the absolute and
the phenomenal, the temporal and eternal, the
realities of the spiritual and the shows and forms of
earth, stripped of their darkness? The difference is
between that which is felt by man to be, and that
which IS.
TIV. Have we not continually to deal with children
on this same principle, teaching them to distinguish
between the truth of things, and that which they feel
to be? My little boy said to me the other day:
"Papa, the lamp jumps when I jump." To him there
was a jumping lamp, as to us there is a material
world.  Jumping-ness in the lamp was as much a
necessary inference to him, as materialness in.the
world has been to us. He had not learnt to understand that the mode in which we are impressed by
things depends upon our own condition.  Nor have
we yet applied this dearly bought knowledge to the
aggregate of man's experience. We puzzle ourselves
about the izmaterial world:-how it can be, what it is,
how we can perceive it, how we can harmonize it with
our belief respecting God and spiritual things, how we
can reconcile its existence, and the things that take




DIALOGUE I~I.              255
place in it, with that which is known in the conscience
and the heart:-rwe strive over this problem just as
a child might do, who should strive to reconcile a
jumping lamp with the little he might know of physics.
We should say to him: 0 child, the lamp is not
jumping as it is to you; think of yourself. So we
should say to man: 0 man, the world is not material,
not dead, as it is to you; think of yourself.
R. Applying one law to the individual and to the
race; not thinking that there is a sudden break and
disharmony between our experience as individuals and
that of man as man.  The universality of human
experience-that all men perceive in the same wayshows that a common cause is acting upon them, and
that they are partakers of a common nature and condition. But what it is that acts on them they must
learn by the joint study at once of what they perceive,
and what their own nature and condition are.
W. And think of those anomalies in our philosophy; dreams and illusions of the sense. If man's
experience be as we have said, then dreams are
natural, and might have been foretold; they are aids
to our thought. Consider how utterly they overthrow
the argument from our consciousness or unavoidable
conviction, for true existence in the objects of sense.
For at any given moment we have this firm conviction
of the reality of perceived things, which is supposed
to prove their existence. But let us imagine that the
next minute we have the sensation of waking up from
sleep, followed by a consciousness as of different
things around us. Should we then think of affirming




256      1ANIA ANTD tIlS D HWELLING PIACE.    [B. IV.
the reality of those things which we before felt ourselves as perceiving? Should we not say at once and
unhesitatingly: I had a dream? There is no possible
evidence of a sense which would not, under these
circumstances, be set down to dreaming. But how
can that be valid evidence which can thus become
invalid? Does not the existence of dreams utterly
overthrow the pretence of such authority in our convictions?  There are the convictions without the
authority; and occurring in such a way that we must
own our convictions might at any moment be shown
to be unathoritative by a change in our sensations.
But again: think how beautifully dreams and
illusions illustrate the problem of physical perception.
What are they but states of feeling in us, which we
irresistibly refer at first to objects which exist only to
our feeling, and attribute to causes which have not
being enough to cause them? We learn afterwards to
look for the true cause in other things. Why cannot
we interpret man's experience in physical perception,
as we have learnt to interpret dreams? Are we any
losers, any the less prepared to act wisely and truly,
because we understand  that the things we are
conscious of in dreams do not truly, but only to our
feeling, cause our consciousness? This perception of
a dead world, of a world that cannot BE, that lands us
in utter doubt when we investigate it, what should it
mean but that man has consciousness produced by
some true causes, but which he feels as if produced by
others, and refers to others which have not being
enough to cause it? The feeling these physical things




DIA LOGU  II.                257
to be realities is not the true waking life of Man, even
as feeling dreams realities is not the individual's true
waking life. Man walketh in a vain show. All are
included in it; having a consciousness truly produced
by one cause, and referring it to others which are
unreal. It is a known case, and no hypothesis.
But we may go farther. Only in dreanms and
illusions have we any means of getting behind our
consciousness, as it were, of testing it, and ascertaining
its true nature and relation to the things consciously
perceived. And in this case we find that something
different from the objects of our conscious perception
is the cause of our perceiving them. Should we not
think that the law of our perception is given us in this?
especially since it is confirmed by an analogous
experience so wide, and a necessity in the nature of
things so demonstrable. In dreams, or other illusions,
our conscious perception of inert things, being transient and limited to the individual, can be analyzed
and its nature demonstrated.  But that great consciousness which includes all men cannot be so treated,
whatever its cause may be, it does not, in our present
experience, cease its operation; and it is not limited
to one or a few, so as to be tested by others. Of its
nature we must judge in a different way: not by
direct experience, but by evidence and proof. Dreams
are, in relation to the universal conscious perception,
as the perception of motion in particular objects,
through our own individual motion, is to the universal
perception of motion in the heavens. In respect to
the latter, men have no means of experimentally




258      M~ANV AND IlLS DWELLING PLACE.   [B. Iv.
testing their consciousness; it is the same for all and
at all times; but the particular and transient motions
of individuals give them the means of interpreting
it as due to a state affecting all men. So do our
particular and transient preceptions of physical things
in dreams, wherein we know that the true cause is
different from that which is consciously present to us,
give us the means of interpreting the universal
perception of physical things, as due to a different
cause operative upon all.
Yet farther: in dreams and such illusions, evidence
is given that the workings of man's own structure, so
to speak, may cause him to have conscious feeling of
physical things around him. This is a result to which
the internal mechanism works independently of the
cause which puts it into operation. So the mad or
intoxicated man, by the state of his own body, is
consciously surrounded by, and feels every way as
reality, an entire world of his own. We, looking on,
perceive that his true surroundings are wholly different
from those which he feels, and of the non-reality of
which no reasoning, no demonstration, could persuade
him. How can we be sure Man is not dreaming?
not delirious? Does not every language affirm him
so? Do not his actions bespeak it? Does he not
evidently act by the world not according to its
nature, and fail; though to his own feeling he seems
all right? Above all does not the divine book tell
him in plain words that very thing?
R. Disease, which is in respect to the individual a
defect of life, causes him consciously to perceive, and




DIALOGUE 11.                259
feel as acting upon him, things that do not truly exist.
Here is the exact parallel to that which you assert of
man.
W. Thus dreams and illusions are turned from
casting doubt on our belief, into supports of it; from
being exceptions, into examples of our experience. I
conceive no man ever felt that the world was less real,
because of dreams and their explanation. So can no
one feel that there is less reality in the world that
truly is, because our feeling respecting the world of
phenomena may be likened to a dream on the part of
man.
R. This however is the practical point. Here is
the phenomenon which we perceive, and feel to bethis material world. What then are we to think of
that which truly exists, and of ourselves? These
questions are two halves, mutually dependent: a true
knowledge of that which exists, apart from us, must
be gained through a recognitiofi of our own state; a
knowledge of ourselves must be gained by investigation of that which we perceive. Surely the means of
solving the problem which all man's instincts prompt
him to attempt:-what is the very truth of things?
are thus placed in his hands. And when, on examination, it is found that this which is perceived and felt
by man exhibits a character of defectiveness-a defectiveness recognized at once by the intellect in science,
and by the heart in religion-do we need any other
evidence that such defectiveness must be the appearance due to man's imperfect appreciation? Or, if
other evidence were needed, is it not more than suffi



26o M0AN AzND HLS D WELLING PLA CE.   [B. IV.
ciently supplied by the reasonings which have demonstrated that this defective world, that is felt by us,
cannot be that which truly exists; disproving its
existence, and mocking us either with an idea for a
world, or with the offer of believing in a world as
existing which yet we must grant can be disproved, try
to maintain it as we will? How can we accept either
of these alternatives? Must we not say-is it not
sufficiently proved-that the defective world, which is
felt by us as existing, is not the true world that Is.
Should we not gladly take the defectiveness for our
own, that our Universe may be no more defective;
and that its existence may be made capable of true
demonstration, not resting on the more than doubtful
accuracy of our impressions?
W. But what should you say, if you were met by
the argument that we cannot know anything about
what truly acts on us, but that man can only know
phenomena, and must confine his attention to them:
that all other attempts must be vain?
R. I should say, that was a vain argument, being
an apriori one on a subject which must be studied
experimentally.
W. But if it were replied, that the attempt has
been made, and has failed, and that it is proved that
man can only know phenomena?
R. Then I should say: I will try again upon
another plan. I will take into account man's own
state as influencing his perceptions; I will remember
his proved defect. Acting thus, according to reason
and experience, perhaps the result may be different.




DI1AL OC'UE  IL             26i
W. Suppose you were told that it is merely a
matter of words to say that the absolute is spiritual;
and that, although it is proved not to be inert as the
phenomenon is, it is still unknown as much as before.
R. I should say that it is not so: that true action
combined with unchangingness, true action and yet
necessary, true action yet in absolute fulfilment of
law-that this is as much known to be holiness as
anything can be known at all. I know that if the
necessity in nature only seem to be inertness, then it
is truly rightness. But I cannot believe that any one
will use this argument against you. You are not
opposed to those who have maintained this position
respecting the sphere of human knowledge. To. me
you seem entirely to embrace and affirm their position;
and to carry out to the legitimate conclusion their own
premises.
WX. If I understand them rightly, I do so. The
true positivist doctrine surely is, that man could only
know the Absolute by knowing himself, so as to
exclude the subjective element from that which he
perceives. No one, so far as I am aware, has adduced
any argument to show that this cannot be done. No
one can have any unwillingness that it should be done.
Towards this result I seek to take one step; as it
seems to me the first, and one essential to any farther
advance in that direction. It is very simple. One
part of the subjective, or human, element in the phenomenon is its defectiveness: the phenomenal differs
from  the absolute in its inertness.  Surely it is a
truism?




262     AlN AND ZIlS DWELLING PLACE.    [B. IV.
R. A truism?
W. Yes, a truism.  Do you think  I thereby
diminish its value? I think, on the contrary, that
overlooked or forgotten truisms are among the most
important of all things. What is geometry but
truisms applied? The certainty of knowledge seems
to me to rest upon its being capable of analysis into
truisms.
R. Let us not diverge from the subject. Show me
the application of yours.
W. Thus. The absolute essence of nature, that
which Is, is not inert: the phenomenon, or that which
is to man's consciousness, is inert. Therefore man
introduces inertness into nature.
R. The whole thing is contained in that. If the
true being of nature cannot be inert, then the inertness which characterizes it to man's consciousness
must be due to his own state; and the foundation of
the doctrine of man's deadness seems firmly laid.
To deny nature to be inert is to affirm deadness in
man.  Upon that link the entire chain hangswhether that which is the true being of nature can be
inert, as that which we are conscious of perceiving is.
WV. Can it?
R. It seems to me that it cannot be so. If there
is any certainty at all, these two propositions surely
possess it. First, that the true existence which acts
on us does act: and, secondly, that if we do not know
this true existence, then that which we do know
cannot act, because it is not that which Is.
FV. If then, we know the absolute in nature to be




DIAL 0 G UE II1.           263
not inert, is not that some knowledge respecting'it?
Is it not a beginning of knowledge? And if, in
attempting to learn the absolute from the phenomenal, we have to remember a deadness in man, may
we not begin the investigation with some guidance,
with some hope?
R. I do not think any consistent positivist would
oppose you there. He would feel that you do not
deny his position, but take it as your starting point.
His doctrine is: Let us attend to these phenomenal
things till we have better means of knowing. Not
affirming, or denying, of the future; but waiting
humbly and hopefully for whatever that future may
bring.
TV. In that I would be one with him. And also
in treating all things with regard to the progress of
humanity. The true charm of that system is in its
subordinating all private interests to the welfare of
man, and treating all material things as of no value
in and for themselves, calling them phenomenal. The
world has vast obligations to Auguste Comte, not
the least of which is his scientific demonstration of the
authority of the moral over the merely intellectual.
And has not that man a title to our love, who does
not shrink from ridicule in advocating, according to
his best thought, the claims of the affections?
R. It is evident that to regard physical things a.s
only phenomena and treat the intellect as dealing
only with the relative, enthrones the moral at once in
indisputable supremacy. That doctrine, in whatever
form propounded, must be fundamentally ethical. If




264      MlAN AND HIlS D WL LLITVG PLACE.   [B. IV.
it be not so, it is nothing-a science merely of dreams.
Of necessity it concentrates its regard upon the
spiritual (for positivism does not disown the word),
and upon the spiritual in its bearing on man.
W. Has it not struck you that my practical conclusion is identical, essentially, with that of the
positivist? Regard in all things man's raising up:from his dead state, I say -(feeling the words of the
New Testament to be the exact words I want)-from
his imperfection, says the positivist. I do not shrink
from owning the oneness, I rejoice in it.
R. You should do so.
W. And I have larger grounds for being glad. Is
there any class of thinking men whom I oppose? Do
I not truly agree with all?
R. That has been held impossible. Yet ways of
doing such impossibilities may be found.
W. To believe the felt inertness to be due to man
is one. That shall set you free from all necessity of
contradiction. Once deny that the Universe is truly
dead as man feels it, and you need deny no more.
For what is there that man affirms that you do
not also affirm? to what conviction of his heart, or
intellect, or conscience, to what aspiration of his
nature, need you turn any longer a deaf ear? Is not
the whole course of human thought just that which,
on such premises, it should have been? Are not all
its averments embraced alike; none rejected, none
scorned, but each, with tenderness and reverence,
receiving its due weight and honour?  Does not the
mental life of man point to this issue, claim this




DIALOGUE III.               265
victory? Do not extremes meet here? the most rigid
logic and the largest love, the steadiest grasp upon
experience and the highest raptures of enthusiasm?
Is it not the making one of doubt and faith? the
giving up of all that is not proved, and the holding
fast of all that is to be desired?
R. Do you mean to say it unites opposite doctrines, Positivism for example, and spiritual religion?
VW. It unites them, if to unite is to show that
they must be one. The " unknown absolute" of the
positivist is the " spiritual " of the theologian. There
is no contradiction between them. The assertion on
the one side, and the admission on the other, that
that which is consciously perceived (the physical) is
phenomenon only, breaks down the wall of partition.
These are two halves which wait a predestined union.
If this world be but phenomenon, of what is it the
phenomenon but of that spiritual. world which our
consciences attest? If there be a spiritual world
present to us, operative upon us, what does it make
us consciously perceive? What is the phenomenon of
it, but this physical world, which is known to be the
phenomenon of some existence different from itself?
Who should forbid the consummation upon earth of a
bridal so long prepared in heaven? For what is
needed but the opening, on each side, of a narrowed
heart and niggard hand?  Accept the result of
examination of the.world, which says this known
physical is not a true existence but an appearance of
some other; accept the conscience, which affirms
another existence different from the physical; recog



266     AIAN AND HIS D WELLING PLACE.   [B. IV.
nize the known defect of man, which must cause the
phenomenon of which he is conscious to differ by
defect from that which is: and what remains to do?
R. Here, you would say, is a known phenomenon
(the physical) inertly necessary, which lacks an absolute; and here, a known absolute (the spiritual)
actively necessary, or holy, which lacks a phenomenon. To recognize man's deadness, which makes
the active inert to him, brings them into one.
W. And the theologian, however real he may
assert this physical to be, holds that it has only an
inferior mode of existence to that of the other world
which he affirms. This inferior mode of existence the
positivist defines, showing it to be phenomenal; that
is, an apparent existence only, due to the action -on
us of a true existence which is different. And both
agree that what the common instinct of mankind
affirms is this inferior existence of the physical, and
no more.
R. It is clear that positivism necessarily asserts
the existence of another world than this that we call
the physical. That lies at the basis of its entire
doctrine. If it were not so, whatever the things we
know might be they could not be " phenomena."
W. The strife is at an end. The opposites refuse
any more to be opposed; they have gravitated into
one. The strong attraction of mutual helpfulness and
need has overborne prejudice and caprice. Each in
the other recognizes its second self; the twain have
become one, the unknown want interpreting itself in
its fulfilment. So youth and maiden dwell in solitude,




DIALOGUE 111.               267
or meet with jealous pride, until each finds that their
want is the other. For does not positivism lay avowed
constraint on certain tendencies in man, and bid him
hold his longings under rigid check? Does not piety
acknowledge not less restraint; confess too often an
opposedness in earthly things, distraction rather than
help from daily life, a necessity to check the current
of spontaneous thought, and leave some inquiries
unpursued?  Each gives the other liberty.  The
positivist receives a known for his unknown absolute,
on which his pent-up thought may expatiate in freedom; the man of piety casts off the weight of a world
of realities opposed to godliness. This world has
become the very sphere of godliness, the nourisher
and upholder of his piety, the present proof and
evidence of things not seen. To know the physical
to be the phenomenon of the spiritual makes Christianity and science one.
And again, are not the idealist and the asserters
of common sense made one? With the former, we
admit that sensible things, being phenomena, can
exist only in a mind: with the latter, we affirm an
absolute existence (not in a mind), as being that
which is the true cause and object of perception. We
do but carry out and complete that position, excluding
from that of which the existence is affirmed the
qualities which are made to appear in it by the laws
of man's perception. As they exclude colour, for
example, so do we exclude inertness: as they say
that which exists is not itself coloured, but has the
power of causing man to perceive a coloured object,




268     MAN AND HIS D WELL VG PELA CE.   [B. IV.
so do we say that which exists is not itself inert, but
has the power of causing man to perceive an inert
object: we recognise that another perceived quality
does not belong to that which exists. We are wholly
of the school of common sense; yet give our hand to
its ancient foe, and claim him as an ally; for when
we add inertness to the list of subjective qualities,
nature expands and rises so, that we need his aid to
grasp the overwhelming truth. Those also we agree
with, who affirm that the reason we perceive material
things in time and space is, that they are in time.and
space. That is true. The phenomena are in time and
space, and must be so perceived if perceived as they
are. For time and space may well be called conditions
of the phenomenal: they belong to it, characterize it,
are inseparable from it. And he to whom phenomena
are realities must be in time and space. He only can
be not so, to whom phenomena are but phenomena,
and not realities. So we do not oppose those who
have affirmed that space and time belong not to that
which truly IS, but are conditions only of that which
is to us. And with- those also we agree, who maintain
that our faculties must be trustworthy, and that man
"is not a phantom in a world of phantoms." He is
not. He is a defective being, to whose apprehension
and feeling things are not as they truly are; a being
wanting in life amid a living world. And his faculties
are exactly what they should be; they teach him this
very thing in the best and rightest way. And finally,
we must not forget how many. men will tell us that
we might have spared our proofs that the world is




DIALOGUE, III.              269
truly spiritual: how many hold that to be selfevident, and treat with scorn the notion of a dead
substratum.  To these also we tender our allegiance,
and confess them right; yet plead that there is
another rightness too; that a deadness is perceived
by man, and that a dead substance must have been
inferred.
R. You would make me believe, in spite of myself,
that I agree with every one, and that men have not
really gone wrong in thinking so diversely as they
have. One unrectified mistake has necessitated all;
and all contribute their part to the solution. But do
you leave no scope at all for the warlike instincts of
our nature, nothing for us verily to oppose, and to
put down?
W. There is no fear: scope shall not fail for
impulse to strife: nor absence of an enemy baulk the
expectant arm. Our zeal may burn against the self
in us. Against that foe we may wage a warfare
wherein victory will be true victory; a fight that is
verily for LIFE.
R. That is true, if self be our defect; for then to
have self cast out from us is truly to have life
bestowed. But it must be done for us. How can the
self cast out the self? HIow can Satan cast out Satan?
Our willingness and our exertion, these must be the
grace of God within us. We labour, yet not we.
But speaking of our self, it interests me to bring this
view of it into connexion with Professor Ferrier's
admirable book: O;z Being and Knowing, in which
lie argues so powerfully that in all our perception the




2Jo     MfAN AND IllS D WE~~LLrG PLAC E.    NB. IV.
self enters as an element, and that, apart from the
self, the objects we are conscious of cannot exist,
being indeed constituted of the union of self and
object.  Take the self as defect, a negative element,
and this view is the same as yours; a negative
element introduced into nature by man's state of
being. Thus too the phenomenon is reality to the self.
WT. I feel it a great confirmation. If this self be
man's defect of being, and his self-consciousness be
consciousness of defect, how wide a harmony is in the
present, how bright a prospect in the future. All this
life is to cast out self from man; to raise him from a
consciousness of death to a true living consciousness.
To this end all things work, the evil and the good.
Thus working, all things are to God's glory: the glory
of His giving life to man.
R. To accept the self of which we are conscious
as the opposite to being, would make clear many
problems. How simple, then, that this state is one of
deadness; how simple that sin should follow: that
God is leading the world aright through this dark
labyrinth. How simple that we should have been
deceived by a false feeling, and find as it were
opposing lives within; a self-life, which is truly death,
and a true human life, the gift of God. How simple
that our best plans and purposes, based on the self,
should fail; that all contrivances which treat this
self as if it were man's being should come to nought:
that reason should seem to be baffled here, and man's
best judgment leave but a darker mystery, as his best
efforts have so often left but deeper evil.




DIAL OGUE  IlL               271
TV We have taken a self view of the world and of
all things, and it will not do. How could the universe
be truly good and clear to MAN, if it were not dark
and evil to his present self? The mystery and the
misery to man, ah he is now, are pledge and proof of
the goodness which, when there is no more death in
him, he shall know to be, and ever to have been: of
the joy that he shall feel when Life is perfect in him,
and in love alone is joy. If we could but open our
eyes to see all as it truly is, not as it is to self, heaven
were already before us. For is it not a privilege of
heaven to be so utterly given up to God, so filled with
the feeling of His absolute goodness, and His absolute
control, that the gladness of the joy that is in Him
rises ever to the fulness of our power to rejoice:
leaves us no time nor heart to think of self, nor
care for it, because cur soul is wholly filled
with Him?




272     MAiA  AND HIS D WVELLIVNG PLAACE.    iB. IV.
DIALOGUE IV.
R. IN recognizing self as defect, the question of
"existence" ceases to be a mere speculation; it
becomes spiritual, and links itself with our deepest
feelings. To BE is to cast out self. The moral and
spiritual laws are primary: Man's true being and his
sacrifice of self are one. Life can only be affirmed
where there is holiness.  Self-will must be called
death: it is so.
W. It is most true. Being and  holiness are
inseparable, for Being is spiritual. That abstract
conception, which passes in our intellect for "being,"
is not the true being. That is a notion merely, and
has arisen only through our feeling the phenomenal as
real. There is no such inert existence: it can only
seem. BEING is a word of infinite meaning, which
refuses to be thought.  It carries holiness with it.
We are conscious of being evil because we are conscious of death. Perhaps a good thought, for us, is
that being is the opposite of the self of which we are
conscious, and from which the evil comes. But to see
truly what it is to BE, I know of but one object on
which to fix my eye: on Him I look, who reveals to
us God.




DIALOGUE IV.                  273
R. In Him was Life.
W. And the Life is the Light of men: the light
wherein we see what BEING is. It should not seem a
strange thing that when God reveals himself to us it
is as a sacrifice.  If we had had Life within us, we
should have known that it could be only so: that
there is no other way in which Life can be shown to
such a self as ours; even as light can be revealed in
darkness only as its destruction.  To self, BEING
is sacrifice.
R. Because'tis Love.  God is not a substance
with " powers ". inhering in it, such as all the things
we conceive must be.  Surely  that is spiritual
which is Love, in the sense in which God is Love:
unthinkable.
TV. Say rather, that Is.  For that alone is active.
Action and love are one: how can action be except
in giving; in the outflowing of the life and power
within?  To us, who have this consciousness of self,
action must be the giving up of self.
R. So our only true action is in self-sacrifice, in
holiness. That is to be truly man. This might be
your answer, if it should be urged -that man is
not ony, defective, but that there is in him  positive
wickedness.
TV. I affirm that also. The two affirmations are
truly one. We need only to understand that being
is not to be thought; that being is holy; then is
defect, or deadness, also unholiness, the opposite to
love.  When we are speaking of that which truly is,
and not merely of that wvhich is felt by us to be but is




274      MAN AND HiS D  EZ WLLING PA C'E.   [B. IV.
not, "being" is a word of spiritual meaning. And
defect is self: it brings the sin which is in self-assertion.
R. Sin is involved in the affirmation of deadness,
because Life is not a mere passive state, but is
holiness?
W. Even so: only that which is but phenomenal is
passive.
R. The essential point appears to be the admitted
doctrine, that that which IS-or BEING-does not
correspond to that which we conceive: or, in other
words, that being cannot be thought.  We must,
therefore, admit it above thought, and recognize in
our necessary modes of thinking indications of our
own state, not rules by which we may judge of that
which Is.
W. The rule I would suggest is very simple,
That which exists causes man to be intellectually
impressed in certain ways, which depend partly on its
nature, partly on his condition. There is, therefore,
no authority in man's intellectual impressions (his
necessary, or logical, thoughts) in respect to that
which exists: but the problem we have to solve is,
in every case, to show how that which exists should
cause such thought in man, his own condition being
ascertained and allowed for.  One application of this
principle I have argued for, in respect to our necessary
conception of nature as inert: but doubtless it has
many others.  The intellect is subordinate to the
conscience: that which the moral sense affirms, tested
and corrected by the intellect as the intellect is by
sense, is really true for man; is that which we may




DIALCGUE IV,                 275
rely upon, which will not betray and deceive. And I
venture to feel sure, that that which is really true for
Man is also really, and absolutely, true. If man have
his true Being then he is a standard of Being. He
is not so now through his defect, because of the
nature of the self that is in him.
R. Man's instinct that he can judge of Being, can
measure existence by his own standard, is not in
itself a mistaken one; it is vitiated only by his unrecognized defect?
WTV. That is what I mean. His self-a negation
— is mixed with everything he thinks; and thereby
his thoughts are falsified. His feeling, that things
are and must be as they are to him, is a feeling which
rightly pertains to him as man, and will be justified
when his deadness is done away.
R. Then things will be to him as they are; and
the assertion, "this must be as it is to us," or, "this
that is to my consciousness must BE;" will not any
more be false. That it is false now proves this not
the true human life-not the LIFE of man.
W. Thus it is that the assertion of man's immediate knowledge of the spiritual, of his direct intuition
of divine things, fails to gain the assent of men. It
is true of man only in his perfect state.  Like the
assertion of man's freedom, it applies to a manhood
which is yet to be completed.
R. Can this be the heresy of those who said " that
the Resurrection is already past? " affirming that man
has already his true life, is already raised up from his
dead state, while this self is yet in him?




276     ML~A  AND) IllS D IWE',LLITG I-'L,1CE.   [B. IV.
TV. Does it not seem natural? What other "Resurrection " could be supposed already past?
R. Can it be that the writers of the New Testament speak of the Resurrection of the dead in this
sense?
W. I wish you would examine. In the meantime,
observe how a defect in man explains the apparent
inconsistency of telling men not to regard that as real
which yet is real to them: it shows, not only that we
may, but that we must, rise above that which has
been called the human point of view: that is the self
point of view, which is emphatically not the human.
That which is to the self, to the Man is not; and for
manhood must be treated so. To say: "This is to
me" does not settle the question; we must analyze
this "me."
R. Thus when the things which are real to the self,
wealth, comfort, honour, all material and intellectual
things, are set aside and disregarded, treated as
nought, for right or love, then we behold manhood.
Then we see men treat things as they are. Those are
the heroes, to whom all eyes turn with love, at whose
name every heart beats higher. They show to man
his manhood, and he recognizes it with reverence and
joy.
W. They bear witness of the life; but the Power
that can make us live must come from a higher than
they. He in whom The Son of Man was revealed,
who shows us God in very deed, and makes clear this
tangled web of earthly life; He who has borne the
world's sins, and taken away its guilt; He only, and




DIALOGUE IV.                277
the Spirit that proceeds from  Him  and from  His
Father, is the Lord and Giver of Life.
R. It is no wonder that the world has clung so to
His memory; that no abuses practised in His name,
nor subtleness of reasoning, could loose the impassioned grasp with which a despairing world holds His
Divinity.
W. Nor that bad arguments have been used to
justify a faith which could not be renounced.
R. It is not a question of argument or proof.
Christ shows us God. The sight eclipses all glories
else, and constrains our dazzled eyes. Many things
we know and love; but when we think of God we
think of Jesus.
IV. Of Jesus the Redeemer,-who makes us know
we have not life, and gives it. And so explains all
things to us, and reveals creation's secret.
R. We find it difficult to admit a state of consciousness to be one of death. Yet it is not quite
natural? What death is. surely depends on what life
is. If life is conscious life, ought not death to be
conscious death? If life involves holiness, ought not
death to involve sinfulness? Why should not the
only possible opposite to life involve such consciousness of self as ours?  Whether things are, or are not,
as man feels them, depends on whether there is something wrong with respect to him.
U.V Each of us may answer that question for
himself.
R. In reference to the ideas now entertained of
nature, are we not in the position of maintaining the
14




278      AAN ANA VD HIS DW ELLING PLA CE.   [B. Iv.
existence of that which is to thought, while yet we
assert that that which exists cannot be thought;
asserting, as it were, an inconceivable in that which
we conceive?
W. I think this is exactly our embarrassment.
We have learnt that the true existence of nature cannot be conceived, yet we cannot give up the existence
of that which we conceive. We are thus involved in
an obvious contradiction, unless we are content to
say that we have not any true knowledge at all, and so
give up religion. But is not the reason evident? We
ought to come to this difficulty; it is the very thing
that compels us to recognize man's deadness:-his
realities are not real. For'tis certain that the things
we think are real to us.
R. Our life is a life in phenomena: admit it not
man's true life-our self as not man's being-and all
is clear.
W. Otherwise only impenetrable confusion, which
all attempts to clear up make only the more manifest.
But how simple the solution is: it is only to remember
that there is defect in man.
R. I have observed the extreme obviousness and
simplicity of that which you lay as the foundation.
It seems strange that so much should come from
merely taking into account, in our thoughts, a fact
which we never think of denying.
W. But it is perfectly natural that it should be so.
What we do, thereby, is to take another point of view,
and all things of course look different.
R. You do but say, also, that there is only one




DIALOGUE IV.                279
UNIVERSE, in which you cannot be held to affirm a
novelty. The word itself proves that some men have
been of your opinion.
W. It is man's native opinion; nor do I know a
stronger presumption in favour of any view, than that
it shows the hidden truthfulness of words, bringing
more clearly to men's thought what they have been
unconsciously affirming. Men are only compelled to
say there is more than one universe, because they
think this universe truly is inert, dead, bad, as they
feel it.
R. You come to the old point again: consider
yourself.
W. How can I leave it, when it gives me such light
and joy, such deliverance from bondage to my own
impressions? But I was about to observe, that in
that which we think, or conceive, man's defect is
especially evident: there his self is brought into clear
relief. So that our plan, of trying to hold, as existing,
that which answers to our conceptions, is in some
respects the worst of all. It would be, in some sense,
better to affirm the existence of that which is to our
sensation; of the light and sound, e.g., which our
senses feel, rather than of the motion which our
thoughts, conceive. And we should surely have as
good ground for the one as for the other; wholly subjective as both are.
R. Motion itself, of course, is merely a matter of
sensuous perception, as much as light or warmth. We
do but substitute an idea derived from one mode of
sensuous impression for other similar impressions




280     MAXN AND HIIS D WELLLNG PLA CE.    B. IV.
We have not anything less subjective in motion than
in music.
PW. I think not. I did not mean to pay you so
ill a compliment as to suppose you unaware of this.
But has it never struck you, how the life and being of
things are turned out of them by our attempts to
grasp them in thought? Take the case of nature, for
example: this glorious world, which fills us with such
emotions, is such a wonderful existence. We try to
think it, to bring it before us in orderly conceptions,
to present it clearly to our minds:-What has happened? what mystery, what inverted miracle, what
miserable abortion is here? Where has NATURE disappeared, leaving nothing in our thoughts but that
capuut morttZumw of matter and motion? But this result
is what should be: we were -trying to think BEING.
Again: take holiness or virtue. Think it: and what
is left? a scheme for the greatest good of the greatest
number, perhaps. Or yet again:. what word fills us
with such a feeling of awe, with such a consciousness
of the presence of unspeakable EXISTENCE, as the
word Eternal? But when we think it, or try to put
it into conceptions, what have we?  Nothing but
duration without limits, time that does not end; no
Existence at all, but a mode only, and one which
must be defined by negatives. —Why should we perplex ourselves so vainly? Do we not know that
we cannot think that which Is?
R. We discover that we cannot, by feeling that it
escapes us when we try.
W. Then by what we are obliged to think we




DIALOGUE' IV.              28I
know ourselves. Our being such as we are makes the
eternal, to our thought, nothing but an everlasting
emptiness. But in truth we know the eternal better,
even as we know nature better, and holiness better.
When love is perfect, and drives away every thought
but of the object loved, all reference to reward, all
regard to anything to be obtained; when the soul is
wholly satisfied in self-surrender, this now of utter and
final loss being enough of time; when in love the
whole life is gathered up into the moment, and in this
present giving, though it be the giving up of all and
leaves no future, Life is found; that reveals to us
Eternity. That makes us know what the Eternal
Life may be, when time is not.
R. But we must think of the future, and ask what
we shall have. It is our nature.
WY. It is. Have we not been told that men are
dead? It belongs to this self that is in us to do so.
R. Then we must also ask that question in
religion. We must look forward to a future, and
consider what our lot shall be.
W. True. And the question is answered for us.
We shall be made alive: freed from the necessity of
asking that question aniy more.
R. But Christ had respect to the reward set before
Him.
iV. And what is it, but that of saving man?
R. That also must be ours. We are to enter into
the joy of our Lord: that which is Christ's joy also to
be ours.
W. Awe and gladness struggle on our tongues.




282      IAN AND HIS DWELLING PLACE.   [B. IV.
How should we speak yet how be silent? Heaven
grows so beautiful, and so near.  It is no more afar
off, but now. Now we have Christ's joy, the joy of
man's redemption, and our part in it.
R. I see heaven; and at the same time see why
earth must be what it is. For if the joy of heaven is
in Love, in giving, in the utter sacrifice of all that is
to self, then it is also now. Then are we in heaven
and know it not, then are we in heaven and turn it
into hell.
W. Because we love the self, which God hates.
R. Because we have not life, and do not know.
Man would not be so foolish if he knew. If he knew,
in very deed, what God is, and what man, and what it
is to BE.
W. Therefore does God reveal Himself.
R. He reveals Himself as the bearer of the sins of
the world, as the sacrifice for transgression, as the
utter giver-up, to be one with whom is wholly to deny
the self; to show us, so, the fact of Being: That is
what He Is.
TV. It is what He Is. All life is revealed to us in
that revelation to us of God. Heaven's light has
broken through earth's darkness. To live is to bear,
to give, to be a willing sacrifice: to be dead-let us
not speak of it, it does not need to be described.. R. Love shall never cease. Only our wrong
feeling makes this difficult to us. If we could think
of ourselves so changed, that what is sacrifice to us
should be perfect joy, that loss should be no loss
because there would be no wish to gain, that giving




DIALOGUE IV.                283
up and sacrificing should be perfect happiness, and
nothing else even seem like happiness to us, than we
might understand it. Is it that you mean by the self
being destroyed?
W. That is it. But remember, we cannot conceive it. Do not try to think it.  These are things
that man conceives not, but God reveals by His
Spirit.
R. So these physical things, which are real to us
now and necessitate our self-regard, the conditions
which make it impossible for us to conceive that
state of absolute self-abnegation, shall be no more
real to us. Then man shall not be any more in a
physical world, but in the spiritual?
IV. I look upon it so. I regard spiritual, and
not merely physical, changes as determining the state
of man.
R. I am glad our conversation has taken this
course; because it has removed, without my expressly
stating them, two feelings which were, perhaps, the
chief obstacles to my acceptance of your views.  The
first of these was, that your representation of the
work of Christ seemed to exclude the idea of expiation. You dwelt so much upon Christ's revealing
God, that it seemed as if you overlooked his sacrificial
work.
W. You see that I do not. It is as a sacrifice for
us that Christ reveals God.
R. Do you leave the views commonly called evangelical quite untouched?
IV. I deny no part of them; but I feel their power




284.MAN AND HIS DWELLIN  G PLACE.   F[. Iv.
and extent increased. And this in two respects: for
while I assert the absolute justice of God, and His
punishment of sin by the infliction of suffering, I
think more of Christ's saving us from damnation, or
from being wicked. And surely this is to make
stronger the ground of our love to Him. For is not
being wicked a worse thing than suffering? and do
we not love a Saviour in proportion to the evil of that
from which He sacrifices Himself to save us? We
must love Christ more for giving Himself to save us
from sin, than from suffering: because it is a worse
evil. To put most prominently forward Christ's
saving us from suffering, as the ground of love to
Him, is to invert the laws of human nature. It is
never done in the New Testament.
And again: if Christ by His sacrifice saves the
whole world, must we not love him more for that than
for saving only a part? It is impossible that our love
should not be greater to Christ for saving all men,
than for saving ourselves alone, or ourselves and some
others only. However much we may love Him as our
own Saviour, how can we help loving Him more as
the Saviour of the whole world?
R. It increases the power of the evangelical
motives to believe the absolute salvation?
TV. Infinitely. It renders them unutterably vast;
leaving nothing more to be desired, or conceived,
of good.
R. But that is only if we see that men are now
dead, are now in hell, and damned.
W. True. It demands that we should not banish




DIALOGUE IV.                285
the eternal into the future, and should admit that to
like sin is worse than to suffer. Surely it is not a
large demand.
R. It is not a large demand if we can give up our
natural impressions, and admit that they may not be
true. But the other feeling, to which I referred as
being removed without my stating it, was this: that
you had constructed a system of philosophy, and
adapted the words of Scripture to it.
W. A jealousy in that respect has ample justification. Try me by the words of Scripture, and see
if it be so.
R. I have said that the impression is already
removed. Yet it seems strange that if this be true it
should be so new.
TW. It is not strange.
R. Not strange, I grant, if we look at the history
of the world, and the progress of human thought
from ignorance to knowledge; but it is strange that
the very Gospel should come to us as something new.
W. It does not come as something new.
R. Do not be captious on my words. These
thoughts are to us both new and strange.
W. I cannot permit you to say so. Look into
your own heart, and tell me again if they be so.
R. If you mean that men have always felt in their
hearts that to be sinful is the worst of all things; that
the redemption they most need is a redemption from
the evil of their own nature; that the eternal things
are the realities with which they have now the true
concern; this of course is not new.




286     AIAN AND HIS DWELLING PLACE.   [B. IV.
W. What else should I mean? what else have I
been saying? Do not you see that I have but translated the everlasting language of the heart into that
of the intellect; that I have only laid aside conceptions of the thought which crushed and overbore the
convictions of the man?
R. That certain intellectual notions, unavoidable
in our imperfect knowledge, have been fighting
against that which we feel to be true, and have made
a struggle in our life which may be put to rest by
taking a truer intellectual point of view?
W. You have said all. I have nothing to add,
except that these intellectual notions have done as
much violence to the words of the New Testament as
to the Nature of man.
R. Can that be the reason there has been so
much difficulty in understanding it, and reconciling
its various passages? that it has been so hard to
gather a uniform and consistent meaning from the
whole?
W. Do not let this question cease to be asked till
you have fairly answered it.  Meanwhile let me suggest my answer: we have had a philosophy which
has prevented us from believing the Gospel.
R. What do you mean by the Gospel?
W. That Christ redeems the world.
R. But men become worse by sinful deeds,
become more and more dead to good, and are not
saved.
VV. I believe the Gospel none the less.
R. But ought we not to see things otherwise, if




DIALOGUE IV.                287
it were true that all men shall be drawn to Christ,
subdued by Him, in that sense?
LV. Ought we to walk by sight or by faith?
R. Do you mean that we must lay aside all
these natural feelings, and rest simply upon those
declarations?
W. If you claim to believe in Christ, surely you
should not find that hard. But if it be, see what
helps are given to a feeble faith. Only understand
that to redeem man is to alter his Nature and Being,
to make him new; and then there is no more any
difficulty. Sin exists to this end. Because man is
wrong, and has to be made right, therefore he sins
and goes from worse to worse. How should he be
brought to self sacrifice in any other way than by
learning how evil his self is?
R. But do all the passages in the New Testament
agree with this view?
W. Do they not? Does not the whole book become
plain and clear?  Does not new light break in upon
every part?
R. These are questions not to be answered now.
If we could see that the saving of the whole world
from a state of death was truly the doctrine of the
New Testament, how gladly we should believe it.
W. It must be believed as soon as the opinions
which make it seem opposed to the conscience are
removed: as soon as we can see that to like sin is
infinitely bad, and that the bliss of heaven is in
sacrifice of self. The heart of man cries out for it,
and refuses to be comforted. And this is the infinite




288      MIAN AND HIS D WELLING PLACE.   [B. IV.
boon science gives us by proving deadness in man.
It is the false opinion of his life, making us think this
state his probation, which alone binds our hands from
grasping the gift of God, our ears from crediting the
glad news of salvation.
R. But if the absolute redemption of man be the
truth, why has it been so long unknown, so long
rejected?
W. It could not have been otherwise. Had not
man to learn nature? had he not to discover the
deadness in himself which makes the Universe dead
to him? What other course could he have gone
through than this that has been?  Does not St. Paul
affirm the necessity of a falling away?
R. I am tempted to say, that can apply only
to times that are past; but I am silenced by the
thought that I should only assert that I could not be
deceived.
TV. Is the world now so good, religion so triumphant, piety so pure and living, that we, of all
ages, alone may say we cannot be mistaken?
R. If it be true that the world is redeemed, there
is no longer such mystery in God permitting error;
even error that might embrace ourselves. It no longer
involves consequences which we cannot face.
W. True. To believe the absolute redemption
gives us patience, not only for ourselves but for the
world. Patience is one of the fruits of faith.
R. God does suffer error, inconceivable, unutterable, long enduring. We cannot shut our eyes to
facts. It is part of God's discipline of the world




DIALOGUE IV.                289
that men should err: should feel sure they have
His truth when they are upholding their own
thoughts.
LE. Is not this, in brief, the history of Christianity:
Christ and the Apostles proclaimed the absolute redemption of the world, conjoining it with that firm
assertion of death, and condemnation, and judgment,
from  which it is inseparable.  But when the first
Christians, who had received this belief mixed with
much ignorance, came in contact with the world, with
philosophy, they lost it. They found men busy with
the question of good and evil; and the Church fell as
Man had done. They gave up the Gospel-the death
of all and the absolute redemption of all; and took
in its stead the natural opinion, the philosophical
doctrine of the future well-being of a part and the
ruin of the rest; accommodating to it the Christian
doctrine of faith in the best way they could. That is
the death of Christianity. The conscience was the
chief agent in it.  The Christians re-adopted the
heathen view of man's life and probation, instead of
the Christian one of his death and- salvation. The
difference between these lies fundamentally in the
conception of humanity. The Christian Manhood is
different from the heathen: the one accepts this; the
other asserts a higher.
R. Then you do not reject the everlasting punishment of men on the ground that it is opposed to
reason?
W. No. I could not. I hold that doctrine to
rest wholly on human opinion: It is a result which




290     MfAN AND IlS DWELLING PLACE.   [B. IV.
flows from our natural impressions, and has been
imposed on the New Testament thereby: we see it
there because it is in our thoughts. How could I
deny it to be a natural opinion of mankind when it is
stated most explicitly in heathen writings anterior to
the New Testament?
R. It is Plato's doctrine. The everlasting misery
of the worst part of mankind is clearly set forth in
the Phcado.
W. Nor do I see any escape from that opinion,
except by accepting the scriptural representation of
man. My hope for the world is in that which is
written, of "God our Saviour, who will have all men
to be saved, and come to a knowledge of the truth."
Does God will that which shall not be? And besides,
I see in Christ a revelation which makes me know
that this is man's death: a state from which he is to
be raised, not an experiment.
R. But why do you lay such stress upon the
saving of all men? You speak as if, supposing that
were not, there were nothing.
W. I feel so. It is that which saves me. The
knowledge of that is the turning point of life and
death, of the possibility of absolute self-abnegation.
R. Is it so great a difference?
W. So great? Does not your heart bound with
exultation at the thought that you might, doing no
violence to any principle you have learnt to revere,
giving up nothing of reverence for justice, of hatred
to sin, of value for the Saviour's sacrifice, believe the
salvation of the world? In knowing that, a burden as




DIALOGUE IV.               29I
great as that of our own sins is taken from our hearts, a
joy-giving and sanctifying power, not less than that
of our own forgiveness, diffuses itself through the soul,
and makes itself felt in the life.
R. Let me put you on your guard against a
misapprehension to which you might be exposed. Do
you mean to imply that the absolute redemption of
men can be believed only on condition of accepting
your opinions respecting the physical world?
W. Emphatically I do not. If I might be so
misunderstood I thank you for remarking it. The
absolute redemption is to be believed on the ground
that the New Testament affirms it, and may equally
be believed by all. But I think that the view I
have suggested of nature is essentially a Christian
one. If science teaches us man's deadness, how can
we but see in Christ a Redeemer from death? I
think that false opinions respecting the world have
prevented us from accepting the plain statements of
the New Testament, therefore I have brought my
attempt to show those opinions to be false into connection with those statements. I seek only to rectify
a connection which already exists, not to establish a
new one. What I affirm is that men do read the New
Testament according to their opinions respecting the
world, and that they misread it because those opinions
are not true. With better theoretical opinions they
would cease to coerce its words.
R. There are innumerable other questions I might
ask you:-What is the exact meaning when you
speak of deadness in man? how, then, are we to con



292     IAN AND ItIS D HWELLiVG I'LA CE.   [B13. Iv.
sider man as existing? what relations does he bear to
the other existence in the universe? why should there
be death in him, and how can it be without infringing
on the perfect goodness of the world?
IV. These questions are most legitimate; but I
cannot enter on them. They belong to another sphere
of discussion. Even if I granted (which I do not) that
no answer could as yet be given to them, I could not
admit that the argument I have carried on would
suffer in the least. I have undertaken to give evidence of a fact-deadness in man; the explanation,
or reason of it is wholly another question. I cannot
consent to mix up the two; nor to make any
thoughts I may entertain respecting the latter a
mere pendant to the discussion of the former. First
let us determine whether it is true that man's deadness (or defect) is the cause of his feeling the universe
to be dead (or defective). If we answer that question
in the affirmative, a new inquiry lies before us:What is the meaning, what is the cause, what are the
relations, of this fact? I should be most happy to
enter upon it.
R. But is not the word death, or deadness, an
undesirable one to use?
W. To me it seems of all terms the best. But the
word is unimportant; if you object to it, dismiss it from
your thoughts, and take up the question without it.
This I say: Man feels that which is apart from him
to be inert, not because it is as he feels it, but because
of his own condition; if his feeling were true, he
would feel himself in presence only of existence that




DIALOGUE  V. -              293
is spiritual; it is through a want in him that his
feeling is caused to be untrue. This is my position.
Let the question of deadness be put aside. If I have
erred in using the term, the issue raised and the arguments have just the same force and value, the same
claim to be weighed and answered.
R. I think you have a right to take this ground.
Perhaps I might as reasonably call on a geometrician
to explain space before I would receive his demonstrations, as insist on your explaining why and how
there is a want of life in man, before I admit
the fact. The question is one of evidence, not of
explanations.
WV. I seek to place it on this ground; but it is
not necessary to avoid the other, if the distinction
between the proof and the explanation of a fact is
borne in mind. I will tell you briefly, what appears
to me a possible view. May not the death of man be
the loss of a lower, for the bestowment of a higher
existence? may it not be a necessary condition of his
life, because of the very nature of life as involving Love
and Sacrifice? May not this deadness be a result
of an act of sacrifice; itself part of the universal life?
-death relatively to man, but absolutely life?  Is
not all the life that we know based on death, and
springing out of it? Is not every life purchased at
the cost of other life? Except a grain of wheat die,
does it not abide alone?   Has not science, also,
taught us this? Life for life, it is the law of nature.
Why is not man's death a mode in which this law of
love appears?  But do not let these speculations




294      MAN AND IHIS D WELLING PLACE.   EB. IV.
influence you; my argument is the same whether
they be true or false.
R. There may be indications of a reasonable
treatment of these subjects, and whatever thought is
true must bring us into the presence of more and
greater unsolved problems than that of which it
gives the solution. If your view left none such, it
were self condemned. But let me ask one more
question. How is it that we see in geology so long a
course of physical existence before man existed at all?
W. Do you really feel that to be a question?
R. I am half ashamed to ask it. You would say,
that is the phenomenon. It is the spiritual that is
physical to us.
W/V. In the same way we see how it is that we think
and feel by physical brains and nerves. I base the
proof of my position on its practical success in solving
problems. This is ever the ultimate proof. Let a
proposed view be put to the test, and see how it will
work.-Surely it is the very redzuctio ad absurdum of
the hypothesis of matter, that we must, on that view,
attribute our consciousness to material changes in
the brain as its true cause, and conceive that there is
some place, or point, at which a mechanical impulse,
or chemical process, becomes a sensation or a
thought. But on the view that the physical is the
mode in which the spiritual is perceived by man,
this strange fact assumes an entirely new aspect. It
ought to be; it might be foretold. For if the true
cause of our consciousness is spiritual action on us,
how should it appear to us? Evidently as physical




DIALOGUE IV.                 295
action. Brain and nerves, or something equivalent,
ought to be the " phenomenal " instruments of consciousness, if this view be right.
R. I must think farther about this.
W. Let it pass. But is it not evident that man
must, naturally, at first take a view of all things
which makes himself the centre, and must he not
afterwards attain a view which includes a recognition
of his own position as subordinate? is it not necessary
that he should first be confident in his own impressions, and afterwards learn to correct them by a consideration of himself? I seek only to take this step.
It must, at some time, be taken.
R. I see that the latter mode of thinking is the
more humble.
W. And is it not also the more rational? Is it possible that we can be right in continuing to set up
ourselves as the standard of existence? No other
course is possible at first, but the delusion exists only
that it may be escaped from.
R. That which it has been right for men to do
formerly, it may be right for them to cease doing
now?
W. Does it cast blame upon the past to say that
it has prepared for a better future? You see what
we do in thus altering our view. All phenomena
remain the same, but we transfer our thought of
existence from them  to something that is more and
worthier than they. They are as they were before to
our impressions and our use, but their relation to our
thought is altered. We think of them  not as the




296       2iAN AND HIS D WELLI~NG PLACE.   [e. IV.
cause of man's experience, but as being present to his
consciousness through the operation of a true cause,
more real, more certain, more adapted to produce the
known effects, than they.
R. This also I understand. Might you not express
your conception thus:-Physical things are to our
touch but are not to our thought, as apfpearances are
to our sight, but are not to our touch? Our thought
should be of one thing, while our sensuous impression is of another. That which is to our sense is less
than that which Is, and, considered in and by itself,
must, therefore, be unreal.
TV. So we constantly associate all our consciousness with the operation of existence above that which
our impressions represent. Our thought and regard
are ever directed to the spiritual, which alone we
recognize as Cause. We live now in the spiritual
world, and find it perfectly simple that the physical
is but the phenomenon, and not the fact. The difficulty would be to think otherwise.  To do so we
should have to ignore the convictions that are most
certain to us. To forget that we are in a world that
is spiritual, surrounded by BEING that is Holy, we
must put away the feeling of our own defectiveness
the assurance of God's infinitude, the consciousness
that there is ACTION around us; we must silence the
reason, stifle the conscience, crush the heart, enslave
ourselves to sense against our better knowledge.
R. We act by appearances as existing to sight;
may we not act by physical things as existing to
touch, remembering, in each case, that that which




DIALOGUE IV.                 297
exists is different from  that of which we have the
impression? And as we rationally explain our impressions of sight by our relation to that which is to
our touch, so may we not seek a rational explanation
of our impressions of touch in our relation tothat true
existence which we know  must BE?  If we find
it so simple that we consciously see that which does
not exist, may we not find it equally simple that we
consciously toutch that which does not exist?
WV. Here you approach, again, the true secret of
the difficulty that is felt in giving up the existence
of the physical; our consciousness of action in it, and
upon it. This it is that makes it real to us. Merely
passive impressions, such as those of sight, we have
no difficulty in understanding to have no existence
corresponding to them. But if our active impressions,
or those of touch, have truly no existence corresponding to them, then we must recognize defect in
ourselves; we must regard our self in a different
light. This is the very point of the argument. If
physical things are demonstrated not to have true
existence, then an unsuspected defect is demonstrated
in man.
R. So your argument has been, to prove that that
which is inert cannot be that which exists.
W. Yes. Keep that question fairly before you.
If that which EXISTS cannot be inert, then it is defect
in man which. makes him feel himself in a physical
world; he is not truly so. And all the practical
inferences which follow claim a practical regard.
R. But there is one point more. In our action on




298    MJAN AND HIS D fTRLIArG PLA CE.   [B. IV.
the physical, all men alike perceive the results of that
which each individual does. If I move anything,
it is moved to all men's perceptions, not only to
my own.
W. You do right to make this remark. The
individual action has relation to man's universal conscious perception.  Not merely an individual but an
universal relation is involved. Deeper bonds unite
men to their fellows, than upon our ideas we should
have suspected.
R. Is not this another question which needs
future investigation?  Can you explain how  this
community of perception takes place, according to
your view?
-IV. Only theoretically. And I especially wish to
avoid weakening my argument by having recourse to
theoretical explanations. - I prefer to leave that question, altogether, as a nratter for inquiry. I need not
again remind you that unexplained circumstances do
not weaken the force of a sound argument.  One
chief advantage of a truer mode of thinking is that it
opens new channels to our thought. Nor need I point
out to you that there are easy ways of reconciling
this particular circumstance with that which I affirm,
if we demanded plausibility alone.
R. Rather than give an explanation unsupported
by proof, you prefer that it should stand as a circumstance not accounted for?
W. I do. The more unexplained facts we clearly
apprehend, the more hopeful is our prospect of increasing knowledge. But think whether our entire




lIALOGUE 1V.                299
experience is not such as it should be, if the inertness
is due to man; not one or two things, but all that we
are conscious of or perceive. Must there not. be an
unvarying phenomenon, under cause and effect, felt
by us as real? must not' this impress us with the
feeling of force, correspondent to the inertness within?
and could " force " be other than such as it is in this
phenomenon, which we call the physical? Does it
not obey " necessary" laws, laws conforming to the
reasonable faculties in man? Must not force, indeed,
be conformed to, and determined in its operation by,
the resistance it implies? And is not this uniformity,
of passive force controlled by force-force as it were
self-controlled-the very mode under which holiness
should appear to a being to whose apprehension the
actiou is wanting?  Does it not speak to us of the
control of passion in ourselves?
R. That is a striking fact. In nature no force,
no passion, is uncontrolled.
W. An absolute rightness greets us there. Therefore we love it so, and trust it: the Manhood in us
claims brotherhood with the Life around. Our uncontrolled enslaving passions, only, separate us from
nature. And how well and naturally we understand
that a holy action, an act of Love and Rightness, is
the sole cause of all that is. No accident to baulk,
no passive law to crush, no deadness abhorrent to our
souls, mocks us or constrains. One cause for all, alike
for all. The hairs of our head are numbered, nor falls
a sparrow  to the ground without our Father. All
is God's act and deed: weighted with the infinite




30oo    AMAMN  AND HIS D WELLING PLACE.   [n. IV.
Necessity which is His sole prerogative; constrained,
but by His love alone; inevitable, but because He is
Holy.
R. Should we say of each thing that affects us,
each operation of which we are conscious on ourselves:
This God does; His act is the cause of my feeling
thus? and if we ask, why it is, answer ourselves: "it
must be by His Nature?" and in tracing physical
necessities, remember that we are tracing the evidence
of his unchangingness?
VW. Long ago was the question asked: Shall not
the Judge of all the earth do right? Science has
answered it; He does.
R. That is not enough.
W. It is not. HE is not only holy. If righteousness looks down from heaven, truth springs up from
the earth. Righteousness and peace have kissed each
other. God gives life to man, His life for man. He
has shown us what He does, and why. So we can
rest and trust in Him. The reason of all things is
that man must be redeemed. If in all our sorrows, all
our joys, we could but think of that!
R.'Tis time there came some change in our
present thoughts. The world is tired of its endless
round. Who is content?
TV. I do not know. There are many who try to
make themselves content, who think it a religious
duty. But who will fairly look upon the world and
say: I amn content?
R. I would not be the man. Unless, indeed, it is
true that God is redeeming man, and that all this




DIALOGUE IV.              301
history is the destroying of the death within him. If
I could believe that, I should be happy.
W. You would be. You could not help it. The
power of an overwhelming joy would carry you along,
compelling you to throw all your heart and soul into
God's work. It would save you to believe; to believe
in Christ, TIIE REDEEMER OF THE WORLD.
THE END.
15








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Professor Huxley is undoubtedly the representative scientific man of
the age. His reverence for the right and devotion to truth have estab.
lished his leadership of modern scientific thought. He leads the beliefs
and aspirations of the increasingly powerful body of the younger men of
science. His ability for research is marvellous. There is possible no more
equipoise of judgment than that to which he brings the phenomena of
Nature. Besides, he is not a mere scientist. His is a popularized phil
losophy; social questions have been treated by his pen in a manner most
masterly. In his popular addresses, embracing the widest range of topics, he treads on ground with which he seems thoroughly familiar.
There are those who hold the name of Professor Huxley as synony.
mous with irreverence and atheism. Plato's was so held, and Galileo'.,
and Descartes's, and Newton's, and Faraday's. There can be no greater
mistake. No man has greater reverence for the Bible than Huxley. Nc
one more acquaintance with the text of Scripture. He balieves there is
definite government of the universe; that pleasures and pains are distribuatcd in accordance with law; and that the certain proportion of evil
woven up in the life even of worms will help the man -.ho thinks to bear
his own share with courage.
In the estimate of Professor Huxley's future influence upon science,
his youth and health form a large element. He has just passed his forty.
fftlh year. If God spare his life, truth can hardly fail to be the gainer
from a mind that is stored with knowledge of the laws of the Creator'a
operations, and that has learned to love all beauty and hate at Vileness of.ature and art.




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A TEXT-BOOK OF PRACTICAL MIEDICINE,
with Particular Reference to Physiology and Pathological Anatomy.
By Dr. FELIX VON NIEMEYER.  Translated from  the eighth German
edition, by special permission of the Author, by GEORGE HE. HUMPHREYS, M. D., and CHARLES E. HACKLEY, M. D.  2 vols., 8vo, 1,528
pages. Cloth. Price, $9.00.
The translators are pleased to find that the medical public sustain their own opinion
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The translators also take great pleasure in noticing the favorable reception of this
work in England, showing the interest felt there as well as here in the ideas of the modern German School of Medicine.
VERA; OR THE ENGLISH EARL AND THE
RUSSIAN PRINCESS. By the Author of " The Hotel du Petit St.
Jean." 1 vol., 8vo, forming No. 25 of Library of Choice Novels.
Price, 40 cents.
"Vera " has been praised by the English press in the highest terms. There is a
freshness of style, of method and material, and the world of English novel-readers have
found in them a new sensation. The London Saturday Review, speaking of " Vera,"
says that "' it heartily recommends to the public a book which cannot fail to please every
one who reads it."
LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE HOURS. A
Series of Familiar Essays on Scientific Subjects, Natural Phenomena,
etc. By R. A. PROCTOR, B. A., F. R. A. S., author of " Saturn and
its System," " Other Worlds than Ours," " The Sun," etc.  1 vol.
Cloth. 12mo. Price, $2.00.
COcTENTS.-Strange Discoveries respecting the Aurora; The Earth's Magnetism;
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The Usefulness of Earthquakes; The Forcing Power of Rain; A Shower of Snow Crystals; Long Shots; Influence of Marriage on the Death-Rate; The Topographical Survey ot India; A Ship attacked by a Swordfish; The Safety-Lamp; The Dust we have
to Breathe; Photographic Ghosts; The Oxford and Cambridge Rowing Styles: Betting
on Horse-Races, or the State of the Odds; Squaring the Circle; A New Theory of
Achilles's Shield.
HEREDITARY  GENIUS; an Inquiry into its
Laws and Consequences.  By FRANcIs GALTON, F. R. S.  1 vol., 8e-o.
Cloth. 390 pages. Price, $2.00.
The author of this book endeavors to show that man's natural abilities are derived
from inheritance, under exactly the same limitations as are the form and physical features of the whole organic world. Consequently, as it is easy, notwithstanding the limitations, to obtain by careful selection a permanent breed of dogs or horses, gifted with
peculiar powers of reasoning, or of doing any thing else, so it would be quite practicable
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APPLETONS' EUROPEAN GUIDE-BOOK, Illustrated, including England, Scotland, and Ireland, France, Belgium,
Holland, Northern and Southern Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain
and Portugal, Russia, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden; containing
a Map of Europe, and Nine other Maps, with Plans of Twenty of the
Principal Cities, and 120 Engravings. 1 vol., 12mo. Second Edition, brought down to May, 1871.  720 pages.  Red French ihorocco, with a tuck.  Price, $6.00.
"In the preparation of this Guide-book, the author has sought to give, within the
limits of a single volume, all the information necessary to enable the tourist to find his
way, without difficulty, from place to place, and to see the objects best worth seeing,
throughout such parts of Europe as are generally visited by American and English travellers."-L-ctract from Preface.
THE ART OF BEAUTIFYING SUBURBAN
HOME GROUNDS OF SMALL EXTENT, and the best Modes of
Laying out, Planting, and Keeping Decorated Grounds.  Illlustrated
by upward of Two Hundred Plates and Engravings of Plans for
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This elegant work is the only book published on the especial subject indicated by
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that are yet to be.
LIFE OF MAJOR JOHN ANDRe. By WINTHROP
SARGENT. A new and revised edition. 1 vol., 12mo, with Portraits
of the Author and Editor. Price, $2.50.
This work is an important contribution to our historical literature —" a volume," says
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THE TWO GUARDIANS; OR HOME IN
"THIS WORLD.  By the author of " The Heir of Redclyffe."  1 vol.,
12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00. Forming one of the volumes of the
new illustrated edition of Miss Yonge's popular novels. Volumes
already published: "The Heir of Redclyffe," 2 vols.; "Heartsease," 2 vols.; "Daisy Chain," 2 vols.; "Beechcroft," 1 vol.




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THE RECOVERY OF JERUSALEM.  An Account of the Recent Excavations and Discoveries in the Holy City.
By CAPTAIN WILSON, R. E., and CAPTAIN WARREN, R. E.  With all
Introductory Chapter by Dean Stanley.   Cloth, 8vo.  With fifty
Illustrations. Price, $3.50.
"That this volume may bring home to the English public a more definite knowledge
of what the Palestine Exploration Fund has been doing, and hopes to do, than can be
gathered from partial and isolated reports, or from popular lectures, must be the desire
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throw light upon its meaning, and to remove the obscurities which time and distance
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THE PHYSICAL- CAUSE OF THE DEATH OF
CHRIST, and its Relations to the Principles and Practice of Christianity.   By WMa. STROUD, M. D.  With a Letter on the Subject
by SIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON, Bart., M. D. 1 vol., 12mo.   Cloth.
Price, $2.00.
Dr. William Stroud's treatise on " The Physical Cause of the Death of Christ, and its
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demonstrate an important phy sical fact connected with the death of Christ-namely,
that it was caused by rupture of the heart-and to point out its relation to the principles and practice of Christianity.
WESTWARD BY RAIL: THE NEW ROUTE
TO  THE  EAST. By WV. F. RAE. 1 vol., 12mo. Cloth. 390 pages.
Price, $2.00.
The author of this work, one of the editors of the London Daily News, was a stanch
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"There is a quiet and subtle charm, as well as a deep and true romantic interest, in
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"He has written a most readable, interesting and attractive account of a journey
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THE REVELATION OF JOHN, with Notes, Critical, Explanatory, and Practical. Designed for both Pastors and
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D. Appleton & Co. also publish by the same Author: " Minor Prophets."  12mo, cloth.  Price, $2.00; "Ezekiel and Daniel." 12mo, cloth.
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A TREATISE ON DISEASES OF TIlE NERVOUS SYSTEM.  By WILLIAM A. HAMMOND, M. D., Professor of
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With  Forty-five  Illustrations.   1 vol., 8vo, 750 pages.  Price,
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Over fifty diseases of the nervous system, including insanity, are considered in this
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ON THE PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF SEVERE AND PROTRACTED MUSCULAR EXERCISE, with Special Reference to its Influence upon the Excretion of Nitrogen.  By
AUSTIN FLINT, Jr., M. D., Professor of Physiology in the Bcllcvue
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APPLETONS' fIAN-D-BOOK OFU AMiERICAN
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JAMES GORDON'S WIFE. A Novel. Svo. Paper.
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"An interesting novel, pleasantly written, refined in tone. and easy in style."London Globe.
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THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY. By.HERBERT SPENCER. 1 VOl., 8vo. Cloth. Price, $2.50.
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George Ripley says " Spencer is as keen an analysist as is known in the history of Philosophy. I do not except either Aristotle or Kant, whom he greatly resembles."
NIGEL BARTRAM'S IDEAL. A Novel. By FLORENCE WILFORD. 1 vol., Svo. Paper covers. Price, 50 cents.
This is a novel of marked originality and high literary merit. The heroine is one of
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GOOD FOR NOTHING. A Novel. By WHYTE
MELVILLE.  Author of "Digby Grand," "The Interpreter," etc.  1
vol., 8vo, 210 pages. Price, 60 cents.
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In preparing it, the aim has been to set forth, IN PLAIN LANGUAGE, the rules
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NEW YORK ILLUSTRATED; with Fifty-nine Illustrations. A Descriptive Text and a Map of the City. An entirely
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THIE NOVELS AND NOVELISTS OF THE
EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY.   In Illustration of the Manners and
Morals of the Age.  By WILLIAM  FORSYTH, M. A., Q. C.  1 vol.,
12mo. Cloth. Price, $1.50.
Mr. Forsyth, in his instructive and entertaining volume, has succeeded in showing
that much real information concerning the morals as well as the manners of our ancestors may be gathered from the novelists of the last century. With judicial impartiality
he examines and cross-examines the witnesses, laying all the evidence before the reader.
Essayists as well as novelists are called up. The Spectator, The Tatler, The World,
The Connoisseur, add confirmation strong to the testimony of Parson Adams, Trulliber,
Trunnion, Squire Western, the " Fool of Quality,"' "Betsey Thoughtless," and the like.
A chapter on dress is suggestive of comparison. Costume is a subject on which novelists, like careful artists, are studiously precise.
REMINISCENCES OF FIFTY YEARS. By MARI
BoYD.  1 vol., 12mo, 390 pp.  Price, $1.*75.
Mr. Boyd has seen much of life at home and abroad. Hlie has enjoyed the acquaintance or friendship of many illustrious men, and he has the additional advantage of reinembering a number of anecdotes told by his father, who possessed a retentive memory
and a wide circle of distinguished friends. The book, as the writer acknowledges, is a
perfect olla podrila. There is considerable variety in the anecdotes. Some relate to
great generals, like the Duke of Welling ton and Lord Clyde; some to artists and men
of letters, and these include the names of Campbell, Rogers, Thackeray, and David
Roberts; some to statesmen, and, among others, to Pitt, who was a friend of Mr. Boyd's
father, to Lords Palmerston, Brou(rham, and Derby; some to discoverers, like Sir John
Franklin and Sir John Ross: and others-among which may be reckoned, perhaps, the
most amusing in the volume-to persons wholly unknown to fame, or to manners and
customs now happily obsolete.
FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE FOR UNSCIENTIFIC PEOPLE. A Series of Detached Essays, Lectures, and Reviews.  By JOHIN TYNDALL, LL. D., F. R. S.  1 vol., 12mo.  Cloth.
422 pages.  Price, $2.00.
PROF. TYNDALL IS THE POET OF MODERN SCIENCE.
This is a book of genius-one of those rare productions that come but once in a
generation. Prof. Tyndall is not only a bold, broad, and original thinker, but one of the
most eloquent and attractive of writers. In this volume he goes over a large range of
scientific questions, giving us the latest views in the most lucid and graphic language,
so that the subtlest order of invisible changes stand out with all the vividness of stereoscopic perspective. Though a disciplined scientific thinker, Prof. Tyndall is also a poet,
alive to all beauty, and kindles into a glow of enthusiasm at the harmonies and wonders
of Nature which he sees on every side. To him science is no mere dry inventory of
prosaic facts, but a disclosure of the Divine order of the world, and fitted to stir the
highest feelings of our nature.
GABRIELLE ANDRe. An Historical Novel. By
S. BARING-GOULD, author of "Myths of the Middle Ages."  1 vol.,
8vo. Paper covers. Price, 60 cents.
Those -who take an interest in comparing the effects of the present French Revolution on the Church with that of 1789 will find in this work a great deal of information
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MiUSINGS OVER THE CHRISTIAN YEAR AND
LYRA  INNOCENTIUM.   By CHARLOTTE MARY YONGE, together
with a few Gleanings of Recollection, gathered by Several Friends.
1 vol. Thick 12mo, 431 pages.  Price, $2.00.
Miss Yonge has here produced a volume which will possess great interest in the
eyes of Churchmen, who have for so many years enjoyed the privilege of reading the
exquisite poetry of the " Christian Year" by Rev. John Keble. Miss Yonge gives her
own experience of the uninterrupted intercourse of thirty years; then there are the
" Recollections," by Francis M. Wilbraham; a few words of " Personal Description," by
Rev. T. Simpson Evans; then follow the "Musings," one each of the poems illustrative
of the " Christian Year and Lyra Innocentium."
THE HIEIR OF REDCLYFFE. By CHARLOTTE M.
YONGE.  A New Illustrated Edition.  2 vols., 12mo.  Cloth. Price,
$2.00.
To be followed by HEARTSEASE.
" The first of her writings which made a sensation here was the'Heir, and what a
sensation it was I Referring to the remains of the tear-washed covers of the copy aforesaid, we find it belonged to the'eighth thousand.' How many thousands have been
issued since by the publishers, to supply the demand for new, and the places of drowned,
dissolved, or swept away old copies, we do not attempt to conjecture. Not individuals
merely, but households-consisting in great part of tender-hearted young damsels-were
plunged into mourning. With a tolerable acquaintance with fictitious heroes (not to
speak of real ones), from Sir Charles Grandison down to the nursery idol, Carlton, we
have little hesitation in pronouncing Sir Guy Morville, or Redelyffe, Baronet, the most
admirable one we ever met with, in story or out. The glorious, joyous boy, the brilliant,
ardent child of genius and of fortune, crowned with the beauty of his early holiness, and
overshadowed with the darkness of his hereditary gloom, and the soft and touching sadness of his early death-what a caution is there I What a vision I "-Extract from a review of "The Heir of Redelyffe," and "Heartsease," in the ENorti American Review
for April,
A COMPREHENSIVE DICTIONARY OF THE
BIBLE; mainly abridged from Dr. William  Smith's "Dictionary of
the Bible," but comprising important Additions and Improvements
from the Works of Robinson, Gesenius, Furst, Pape, Pott, Winer,
Keil, Lange, Kitto, Fairbairn, Alexander, Barnes, Bush, Thomson,
Stanley, Porter, Tristram, King, Ayre, and many other eminent
scholars, commentators, travellers, and authors in various departments. Designed to be a Complete Guide in regard to the Pronunciation and Signification of Scriptural Names; the Solution of Difficulties respecting the Interpretation, Authority, and Harmony of
the Old and New Testaments; the History and Description of Biblical Customs, Events, Places, Persons, Animals, Plants, Minerals,
and other things concerning which information is needed for an intelligent and thorough study of the Holy Scriptures, and of the
Books of the Apocrypha. Illustrated with Five Hundred Maps and
Engravings.  Edited by Rev. SAMUEL W. BARNIUM.  Complete in
one large royal octavo volume of 1,234 pages. Price, in cloth binding, $5.00; in library sheep, $6.00; in half.norocco, $7.50.




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LIGHT AND ELECTRICITY. Notes of Two
Courses of Lectures before the Royal Institution of Great Britain.
By JOHN TYNDALL, LL. D., F. R. S.   1 vol., 12mo.  Cloth.  Price,
$1.25.
"For the benefit of those who attended his Lectures on Light and Electricity at the
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students and teachers, and Prof. Tyndall had them reprinted in two small books. Under
the conviction that they will be equally appreciated by instructors and learners in this
country, they are here combined and republished in a single volume."-Elixtract fros
Preface.
THE DESCENT OF IMAN AND SELECTION
IN  RELATION  TO  SEX.  By CHARLES DARWIN, M. A.  With
Illustrations.  2 vols., 12mo.  Cloth.  Price, $4.00.
" We can find no fault with Mr. Darwin's hfcts, or the application of tlhem."- ttica
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" The theory is now indorsed by many eminent scientists, who at first combated it
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BEtletin.
OfN THE  GENESIS  OF SPECIES.  By3 ST.
GErORGE AMIVART, F. R. S.  1 vol., 1 2mo.  Cloth, with Illustrations.
Price, $1.75.
"Mr. Mivart has succeeded in producing a work which will clear the ideas of biolo
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throws light upon most of them, and tears away the barriers of intolerance on each
side."-British Aedical Jomrnact
MARQUIS AND MIERCHANT. A Novel. By
3ORTIMER COLLINS.  1 vol., 8vo.  Paper covers.  Price, 50 cents.
"We will not compare Mr. Collins, as a novelist, with Mr. Disraeli, but, nevertheless,
the qualities which have made Mr. Disraeli's fictions so widely popular are to be foundl
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IIEARTSEASE. A Novel. Bv the author of the
" Heir of Redelyffe." An Illustrated Edition.  2 vols., 12mo.  Price,
$2.00.
This is the second of the series of Miss Yonge's novels, now being issued in a new
and beautiful style wi'h illustrations. Since this novel was first published a new generation of readers have appeared. Nothing in the English language can equal the d3lineation of character which she so beautifully portrays.
WHAT TO READ, AND HOW TO READ,
being Classified Lists of Choice Reading, with appropriate hints
and remarks, adapted to the general reader, to subscribers, to libraries, and to persons intending to form collections of books.
Brought down to September, 1870.  By CHARLES H. MOORE, M. D.
1 vol., 12mo.  Paper Covers, 50 cents.  Cloth.  Price, 75 cents.