Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN
 
 Presumably, therefore, the present copy would be 
 the only other one available.
 
 * *. 

 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 FROM 
 
 MANIJSCKIPTS, 
 
 JAMES HINTON, 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 (1856.) 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR. 
 BY THEO: JOHNSON, BISHOPSGATE ST. WITHOUT.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE volumes, of which this is designed to be the first, con- 
 tain a transcript, unaltered, except by omissions and by 
 verbal corrections of papers written at various intervals, 
 simply as a private record of my thoughts. They embrace 
 subjects of many kinds, often having no special connection, 
 save that they were regarded from a common point of view, 
 and were felt to throw on each other a mutual light. To 
 render them intelligible a few things should be stated : 
 
 I. These papers are not to be assumed to represent my 
 present opinions. They are not a statement of my thoughts, 
 but a history of them ; and present not the results, but the 
 process. Necessarily,, therefore, they contain that which I 
 now think erroneous or partial. Here and there I have 
 indicated this by a brief remark, but on the whole I have 
 treated the papers as documents merely, and not as subjects 
 for criticism or statements for revision. I have, indeed, 
 specially sought not to exclude my errors, wherever they 
 seemed to me to have any vital connection with the pro- 
 gress of my ideas, because the chief value which I attach to 
 the papers is that of being an exact transcript of a process 
 that has taken place quite independently of any volition of 
 mine ; and the record of which may perhaps have the same 
 interest that Science finds in every natural event, quite apart 
 from its intrinsic importance. 
 
 II. Although very unconnected, there is in them a 
 certain order; the order, namely, of Time. I have printed 
 them, as nearly as I could without too great an intermixture 
 
 ,3
 
 iv. 
 
 of subjects, in the order in which the thoughts appear to 
 have arisen ; this being the plan by which I felt I could 
 most naturally present them, and best enable another to 
 trace the ground of my conclusions. 
 
 One of my best friends has famished an Index sufficiently 
 full, I believe, to enable any particular subject to be referred 
 to ; and if it should be desired to peruse continuously the 
 passages relating to any special topic, this can be done by 
 means of the Table of Contents, in which the pages at 
 which each topic is resumed are indicated. Except in the 
 first few sheets, also each change of subject is denoted at 
 the bottom of the page. The words used for this purpose 
 (such as Life, Metaphtjsics, &c.) refer to the headings of 
 my MSS. 
 
 The reader will perceive that the book is printed in a 
 somewhat peculiar way. I have adopted a few contractions, 
 a list of the chief of which is subjoined. The lines also, as 
 will be perceived, are not of a perfectly uniform length. 
 These changes T adopted chiefly because they ensured a 
 considerable saving of time. 
 
 The persons to whom I am indebted for assistance, ren- 
 dered at considerable sacrifice, without which what I have 
 here done could not have been accomplished, will thank me 
 most to say little of the thanks I owe to them. I have but 
 to add that the volumes are designed for private circulation 
 only. 
 
 London, 1870.
 
 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. 
 
 Approx . . 
 
 . Approximative. 
 
 Neg . . 
 
 Negative. 
 
 Approxn 
 
 Approximation. 
 
 Opp . . 
 
 . . Opposite. 
 
 Chem . . 
 
 . Chemical. 
 
 Pos . . 
 
 . . Positive. 
 
 Crystaln 
 
 Crystalization. 
 
 Phn . . 
 
 . . Phenomenon. 
 
 Centrip . . 
 
 . Crentripetal. 
 
 Phna 
 
 . . Phenomena. 
 
 Centrif . . 
 
 . Centrifugal. 
 
 Reprodn 
 
 . . Reproduction. 
 
 Cd . . . 
 
 . Could. 
 
 R. a. . 
 
 . . Right Angles. 
 
 Dimn 
 
 Diminution. 
 
 Subs 
 
 . . Substance. 
 
 Diverg . . 
 
 . Divergent. 
 
 Stim . . 
 
 . . Stimulus. 
 
 Decomp . 
 
 . Decomposition. 
 
 Shd . . 
 
 . . Should. 
 
 Decompg 
 
 Decomposing. 
 
 V . . 
 
 . . Vital. 
 
 Diff . . . 
 
 . Different. 
 
 Wd . ." 
 
 .- . Would. 
 
 Equilib . . 
 
 . Equilibrium. 
 
 Wh . . 
 
 ' . . Which. 
 
 Galv . . . 
 
 . Galvanic. 
 
 . . 
 
 . . Therefore. 
 
 Hypoth . . 
 
 . Hypothesis. 
 
 
 
 The capital letters, C, H, 0, &c., of course refer to the chemical 
 substances so denoted.
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PHYSICS AND ORGANIC LIFE . . 1 85. 539598. 
 CHEMICITY . . . .17. 47. 7885. 590598. 
 DEVELOPMENT AND MORPHOLOGY 25 44. 54. 539. 555 568. 
 ART 6078. 239257. 
 
 METAPHYSICS .... 85214. 263276. 301317. 
 
 342357. 477502. 626646. 
 
 MATTEK 158173. 393410. 
 
 MOTION 114, &c. 576 590. 
 
 MENTAL PHYSIOLOGY . . 174214. 250400. 619 626 
 
 GENIUS AND INSTINCT . . 182. 318 338. 556. 
 
 SPIEIT 216230. 411465. 473477. 
 
 502539. 598608. 699737. 
 
 SCIENCE 276, &c. 351399. 
 
 MISCELLANEA .... 230238. 465471. 616619. 
 
 MATHEMATICS .... 354. 608612. 
 
 CREATION .... 612616. 
 
 SOCIOLOGY .... 647 652. 
 
 BIBLE . 652 698.
 
 PHYSICS. 
 
 THE entire question of action and force deserves investigation. For 
 does it not appear that Force operates while action is taking place, and 
 is then available for producing other kinds of action ; is latent while 
 action is suspended ; ceases to exist in relation to any given matter, or 
 becomes passive when action is completed. Thus Gravity is a Force : 
 (1) When it has ' completed its action/ (is fully ' satisfied/) cohesion 
 is the result : cohesion is the action of gravity : and the force has become 
 passive. (2) While this action is suspended, as when a stone is main- 
 tained above the ground, force is latent ; viz. the force of gravity ; and 
 will produce action of some kind as soon as it is permitted to come into 
 play ; i.e. on a ' stimulus,' wh is only the allowing not the producing the 
 action. (3) When the action of gravity is brought into play, force is in 
 operation the stone falls, and in doing so it may produce some other 
 action ; move something else, or produce heat, or so on. 
 
 Thus also in chem. affinity : while the action to wh. it leads is taking 
 place force is operative, generates electricity, produces explosion, heat, 
 &c. While the action is suspended force is latent, as in gunpowder. 
 The stimulus wh. calls it then into play, may more properly be said to 
 permit than to excite it. When the action is completed force no longer 
 exists, in ref. to that portion of matter (except of course as related to 
 other matter.) 
 
 Thus surely the idea of force always implies two portions of matter 
 between wh it is exercised, either large masses (as for gravity) or atoms 
 as for chem. affinity. But tho' force is latent while action is suspended, 
 it is only in one sense latent, for it is acting all the while on that wh. 
 prevents the action. Thus if a mass be suspended, the force of gravity 
 is acting on that wh. suspends it, and produces action somewhere ; i. e., 
 requires a counterbalancing amount of force, wh. can only be the result 
 of action. So when chem. affinity is suspended, the force is acting on 
 that wh. suspends it. This' may be the action of gravity, or cohesion ; 
 or again in the solution of a salt, that wh. suspends the crystallizing 
 action may be ' chemical ' action of the water on the salt ; and the heat 
 stimulates the crystallization only by removing this obstacle. This idea 
 of removing obstruction will apply to organic matter very well. We can 
 suppose a touch to debilitate the vital power and let the ordinary chemical 
 action come more into play. 
 
 In one sense it seems correct to say that the force wh is exerted during 
 action is the same as that wh. suspended the action : take a suspended 
 weight, the force developed during its fall is but another application of 
 the force wh suspended it. So the force developed during chem. action, 
 as electricity, is but another form of force which before suspended it, 
 cohesion e. g. A completed action suspends other action : when this 
 other action takes place the force is available, but in both it is one and 
 the same. But this does not apply to all cases, as when chem action ensues 
 on contact of two substances ; tb^en the action has not been suspended. 
 
 B
 
 But now comes the puz/le. These forces wh. excite chem. and other 
 action also suspend or prevent. Thus electricity makes two elements 
 unite. It will also cause the disunion of two united elements ; i. e. it 
 will cause their action to be suspended, make force latent. Heat will do 
 the same. Heat moreover will prevent the action of attraction, i. e. will 
 prevent cohesion ; make the force of gravity latent. But then the force 
 wh. produced the beat or electricity must have involved an amount of 
 action equivalent to that wh. it suspends. (What if the heat of the sun 
 be the force which prevents the planets from approaching nearer to it : 
 might it be or might it not ?) 
 
 This power of one and the same agent both to excite and suspend the 
 action of certain forces is interesting : it tends towards an explanation 
 of the mode in wh. this double process is carried on in living bodies, and 
 by the same ' forces.' And after all both the suspending and exciting of 
 such action is but the same influence differently exerted. For the sus- 
 pending power is but the result of another action, and whether electricity, 
 heat, &c., shall excite or prevent a given action depends on the mode of 
 its acting ; to wh. of two sets of forces it shall give the ascendancy. 
 And this seems to depend in great measure on the ' state ' of the matter 
 to wh. it is applied: if it be in one state it will produce a certain action ; 
 if it be in the contrary, a different one. Thus why should not a stimulus 
 (or force) transmitted thro' a nerve excite at one time functional, at 
 another nutritive action ? Opposed as the two processes are to each 
 other, they are but the result of different forces, either of wh the same 
 force may call into action. But this does not account for different actions 
 in the brain producing or preventing functional actions. 
 
 I do not wonder at the ancients thinking heat to be the vital force, 
 for there is this analogy, that the vital force suspends chem. action, and 
 heat suspends gravity, or cohesion. Wherever susceptibility to stimulus 
 exists, there is latent force, i. e. suspended action ; and in order for this 
 there must be two sets of forces, or tendencies to action, one of wh. pre- 
 vente or counteracts the other, so that latent force must always coexist 
 with passive or active force. So when a stone lies on the ground, the 
 force between it and the earth is 'passive,' but hetween it and the sun 
 there is a latent ' force ; the gravity of the earth prevents the stone 
 passing to the sun wh it wd do if the earth were absent. In truth the 
 qualities or properties of matter are that condition of the matter or its 
 particles wh. gives it its capacity for acting on the application of any 
 force or stimulus ; and they always imply either latent or passive force, 
 i. e. suspended or completed action. In fact, these latent, passive, and 
 operating forces may be said to make up the sum of the < properties ' of 
 matter; wh. seems to open up a new view of a large question. 
 
 An idea has occurred to me in ref. to the accumulation of force by 
 nutrition : in all such cases there is the prevention or rather absence of 
 action, i. e. of any specified mode of action, altho' the forces are in ex- 
 istence wh. wd. excite it. When a weight is suspended by a rope, the 
 
 iionof falling to the ground is prevented; i. e. the force is kept in 
 ibeyance ; and a very little force of the proper kind may cut the rope 
 and originate this act of falling in the weight, and so produce great 
 cts. So with gunpowder : the force wh. is in it is a chem. force 
 implying absence of chem. action ; it needs only the spark to set that 
 onem. force in operation.
 
 So with living parts : certain chem. affinities are quiescent ; the action 
 wh. the various elements wd. otherwise exercise on each other is not 
 exercised, owing to their condition as parts of a living organism. There- 
 fore this chemicnl force exists in them as it does in gunpowder, and just 
 as the force of gravity exists in a suspended weight. Now it is most 
 interesting to note that all action of living bodies is attended with chem. 
 action, not the vital but the ordinary chem. action. May it not there- 
 fore, as the explosion in the case of gunpowder, consist in the taking 
 place of this chem. action ; be the result of it ? Thus when a muscle 
 contracts chem. action has taken place in it ; may not this chem. action 
 be the cause of the contraction of the muscle, just as chem. action is the 
 cause of the explosion, when it takes place among the elements of that 
 compound ? Now just as fire is the proper stimulus for gunpowder, so 
 is the nervous action the proper stimulus for animal organs. But in some 
 compounds chem. action may be excited merely by a touch or by other 
 chem. action, and in a rast number by electricity. This is also the case 
 with living matter: pricking, chem. action, electricity, -will all excite 
 those chem. actions on wh. we suppose muscular action to depend. This 
 may explain the production of electricity in animals : the nervous action 
 excites in them chem. affinities of the elements of the electric organs, and 
 the consequent chem. action produces the electricity. 
 
 Life however does not 'consist in the calling into play of such chem. 
 actions, but in the production and maintenance of matter in which they 
 they are kept in abeyance. What is that force by which ordinary chem. 
 effects are prevented ? what is the rope that suspends the beam ? it must 
 be as strong as the action wh. it prevents, and as all the actions wh. result 
 from that prevention. If we take this view we shall see how well adapted 
 the nerves are for regulating these actions ; for all external agencies 
 excite in them, first, action wh. partakes of a chem. nature, or at least 
 is attended with chem. changes ; what can be better adapted than such 
 action to stimulate the chem. action wh is necessary for the functions of 
 the organs, e. g. the Brain ? and its ohem. action re-excites the same in 
 nerve, and this again in muscle or gland. 
 
 And by this double arrangement of organs and ganglia the forces 
 generated within the animal body are kept within it, and used over and 
 over again. But how can nerve- influence prevent such action, of muscle 
 or gland, as well as .cause it ? Those poisons which cause delirium excite 
 action of brain as of those organs by wh. they are excreted. Is it not 
 the same thing to cause thinking in brain and to cause formation of 
 secretive cells in kidney or liver ? But then how does opium act, wh. 
 seems to put a stop to secretion and to cerebral action also ? It is as 
 much an action to stop vital processes as to excite them. All action of 
 matter is merely passive. We must include under the same term the 
 motion imparted to a ball and the thinking or willing of a brain. The 
 very point Berkeley puts, of spirit alone beginning motion, may be used 
 to show that mental phenomena are not spiritual acts, inasmuch as they 
 are passive, like all other phna. of matter, and are produced without any 
 such origination by spirit as he speaks of. He comes to the point that 
 not thinking but the originating and controling of thought is the spiritual 
 action. 
 
 Life therefore is that ' power ' by wh. the particles of matter are 
 placed and maintained in a condition in wh. their natural chem. affinities
 
 are suspended. This power of course is a mystery, and yet it is sus- 
 ceptible of some elucidation from analogy. Matters that have chem. 
 affinities are often brought into relation without chem. action taking place. 
 Thus oxygen and hydrogen may be mixed but will not form water until 
 electricity be applied. May not this illustrate secretion ? All the 
 elements are there, but will not form the peculiar substance until the 
 nervous stimulus is applied- So with those substances wh. collect in the 
 atmosphere, but only form new compounds from electricity. What pre- 
 vents gunpowder from exploding until a spark is applied ? The affinity 
 exists but it is held in abeyance ; so with substances that crystallize upon 
 a touch. In animals is not even nutrition itself a permitting the play of 
 chem. affinity ? for the substances nourished are simpler than the subs, 
 used for nourishing, at least in great measure. Are not the tissues lower 
 than the blood ? L e. coagulated blood than fluid ? are not affinities 
 gratified in the former states which are held in abeyance in the latter ? 
 
 The two kinds of force or stimulus resulting from explosion of gun- 
 powder may illustrate the two kinds of force resulting from functional 
 action. There is 1st the explosive force, like the motion produced by 
 muscular contraction : 2nd, there is the fire, wh. will cause other powder 
 to explode, or burn paper, &c., wh. is like the force imparted to nerve by 
 every vital act. We can imagine the force produced by the explosion of 
 gunpowder to be used to grind materials for more, and by means of a 
 train a second mass to be fired, and so, supposing materials present and 
 time given, this process might go on indefinitely. 
 
 The problem is how can the nervous or other stimuli cause nutrition as 
 well as function ? i. e. how cause chem. affinity to be suspended as well 
 as brought into action. And yet we see the tame continually : heat and 
 electricity are alike powerful in causing the union of substances having 
 affinity and in resolving combinations. Why should not nerve stimuli 
 and others do the same : resolve sometimes, at others unite ? so the fall 
 of rain promotes rise of vapor. Still it is a mystery on what it depends, 
 because the force wh. makes it is always acting ; and especially how the 
 function and death of parts, should promote and indeed be a condition of 
 nutrition. May not the nervous force be polar, and promote function or 
 prevent it owing to a character resembling positive and negative ; the 
 attraction and repulsion of a magnet ? 
 
 This view agrees much better with those actions wh. are constant, as 
 of the heart, than with those wh. are only occasional. With respect to 
 the latter the question arises, how do they leave off? Is a distinct nerve 
 action necessary to stop them ? Is the force wh. they generate conveyed 
 not back to themselves, but to other parts ? converted into nutritive 
 force ? or sent to intestines, heart, &c., exciting their action ? 
 
 That little portion of nature wh. we can understand those few of her 
 operations wh. we can control and imitate, and wh. we are so fond of 
 calling the laws of nature, are not distinguished from the rest that we do 
 not understand ; it is only that portion of matter with wh. our organs of 
 sense ace capable of dealing. The very same principles and laws are 
 probably at work thro' all creation, and produce all those phna. wh. we 
 call gravity, life, &c., only from bulk, minuteness, or some other cause, 
 we cannot trace their action. 
 
 Should not cold be called 'negative heat,' and are not gravity and 
 centrifugal force positive and negative gravity ? and attraction and
 
 repulsion must be pos. and neg. attraction ? and has not each substance 
 its natural state of equilibrium in regard to these wh. may be disturbed 
 bj other forces ? 
 
 With regard to all the polar forces there must be supposed to be a 
 state of equilibrium natural to each substance. . This equilibrium can 
 only be destroyed by force, and when destroyed a force arises from the 
 tendency to its restoration. Thus while equilib. is preserved force is 
 passive, and can only be rendered active by another force. When equilib. 
 is disturbed force is latent, i. e. while it is prevented from equalizing 
 itself (suspended' action) ; when the equilib. is being restored force is 
 active. Thus in water force is passive. When heat is applied, under 
 pressure, force is latent, i. e. action is suspended. When the pressure is 
 removed, and the steam expands, force is aetivS, producing motion. And 
 thus equilib. is restored so long as the heat remains the same : when it 
 is withdrawn negative heat becomes the force wh. causes the several 
 series of actions. 
 
 May not the same idea be applied to Life and to all physics ? there 
 is a 'force,' tending to produce in every form of matter every possible 
 state in wh. it can exist : whenever it exists in any other state, this force 
 is rendered latent by some other force, and the action by wh. the former 
 state wd. be attained is prevented. Prevent the operation of this pre- 
 venting force, and action ensues. But in order to the existence of any 
 of these states each form of matter requires a certain definite relation to 
 certain of the forces, as heat, light, &c., and perhaps to many others, wh. 
 thus become the suspending forces ; and these forces themselves are sus- 
 pended by others, as gravity, affinity, cohesion. Now applied to Life, 
 we perceive that in order for the action of this force of organic affinity, 
 certain definite relations to the forces are required, to heat, &c., any great 
 extreme in wh. seems to suspend its action, or as in magnetism to destroy 
 it. Thus life is active only at certain temperatures ; so is magnetism, 
 so is chem. affinity also. 
 
 Is not the primary action excited by the nerves always chemical, and 
 the other forms of action due to the nature of the different parts ? 
 
 What becomes of the nerve-force generated by emotion or will, when 
 it does not produce its natural effect, owing e.g. to section of nerve ; into 
 what is it converted ? 
 
 Emotion in sleep either producing somnambulism or waking : effect 
 must be proportionate to force or some other effect ensues ; as a con- 
 ducting wire grows hot or not in proportion to its facility for imparting 
 heat. 
 
 Our senses bring our nervous system into relation with all (?) the forms 
 of physical force ; each of which the nervous matter converts into its 
 own peculiar form. Whenever any of these forces operate thro' the brain 
 they act under the form of Instinct, Emotion, Thought. 
 
 May we not advance a step towards Life by reflecting that different 
 arrangements of particles of matter cause such matter to ' act ' differently 
 on a given stimulus ? The stimulus of heat applied to a metal excites 
 heat, applied to two metals joined together, excites electricity ; applied 
 to certain compounds, chem. action. Now living matter consists of par- 
 ticles connected in a peculiar manner; what wonder that a common 
 stimulus, as heat, applied to it should excite in it peculiar actions ? The 
 mystery of Life is the common mystery of the capacity of matter for
 
 being excited to action, or perhaps rather of the ' action ' originally im- 
 pressed on matter by the Creator. It is not peculiar to itself. And if 
 the union of four or fire elements in the way we see in animals and 
 vegetables produces all the phna, wh. we call life [under stimuli] What 
 infinite variety of kinds of life [if it may be called so] must be possible 
 to the Creator. For assuredly every new combination or relationship 
 of the particles of matter must give rise to the capacity for new actions. 
 I doubt not that in God's universe all the capacities of matter are de- 
 veloped, and that there do exist forms of matter by which are produced 
 phna. of infinite variety and excellence; and of wh. .those wh. are 
 designated Life convey but a faint impression. Is it not even likely that 
 every spiritual being has some form of matter to act upon ? Consider 
 what we see of the capacity of matter for thinking, how adapted it must 
 be in its highest forms to receive and respond to the impulse of a 
 spiritual will. 
 
 Yet once more I infer that as brain-matter possesses the property of 
 thinking, &c., therefore Intelligence in some form is a property of all 
 matter ; and very probably is in some way connected with the order and 
 harmony wh matter presents. Is this the reality of the old idea of the 
 Anima mundi, that all matter, like brain, can only respond to stimuli, 
 but that when it does respond it responds, like brain also but in different 
 kind, intelligently ? Because on any and every theory the relation and 
 adaptation of matter to thought must be admitted ; that is the grand 
 difficulty, and that is demonstrated : if matter can be so organized as that 
 spirit can think by it, then there must be inherent in matter a suscepti- 
 bility for being made the vehicle of thought. 
 
 We must remember that Thought, Emotion, &c., are analogous 
 not to the simple contraction of a muscle, but to the result of the combined 
 action of many muscles. It is so to speak the concrete result of cerebral 
 action, not the primary action itself. Thus reasoning is like working 
 with the hands : Emotion like talking, &c. : even sensation probably is 
 complex. They are carried on by transmitted action from one part of 
 the brain to the other The fibres connecting one part of the brain with 
 another ar 3 truly nerves ; and thus, except when acted on by the spirit, 
 the brain is invariably stimulated to action thro' nerves. Thus we may 
 suppose our mental acts, like our muscular acts, to consist of the com- 
 bined action of several organs, having a distinct function ; but the action 
 of each organ is the stimulus to the activity of another. In perception 
 c. g. there is a two-fold action in the brain, viz. an action produced by the 
 sensitive nerve and a propagated action wh is a conception, and the 
 first action may exist and influence the body without producing the 2nd ; 
 i. e. an impression not felt. 
 
 Nervous Force. 1. All mental operations, thought, sensation, &c., are 
 attended with a certain change in the matter of the brain ; or briefly, 
 Thought is action of the Brain. 2. No change, or action can take place 
 in any matter without the production of Force. Force is the power to 
 excite action or change in other matter ; an idea better expressed by the 
 term ' stimulus,' which may be used as synonymous with Force. There- 
 fore whenever action or change exists in matter, such action will excite 
 action in other matter with which it is in relation. 
 
 Thus the correlation or conversion of the physical forces is regarded 
 as the excitement or propagation of action. For example : a body moving
 
 comes into contact with one at rest ; it excites it to action, or propagates 
 its action to it, viz. its motion. But if the state of this body be such 
 that it cannot move, another form of action is excited, viz. heat. So a 
 body possessing heat being applied to another body propagates to it the 
 action of heat. But if this body consist of two metals, instead of heat 
 they may be excited to the action of electricity. So again, a body in a 
 state of chem. action will excite in a wire the action of electricity ; and 
 this wire, thus acting, will excite in another body either chem. action or 
 the action of heat, or of motion, according to the nature or condition of 
 the matter. The word ' action ' is here applied uniformly to all material 
 changes. Thus every change in matter may be regarded in two ways ; 
 (1) with regard to the matter in which it takes place, and (2) in regard 
 to other matter with wh. it is in relation : in respect to the first it is an 
 action, in respect to the latter it is a force or stimulus. 
 
 The nervous force then is simply a stimulus, or force however originated, 
 transmitted thro' a nerve : it is the action of a nerve however excited, 
 and its production is not dependent on any ' secretion ' of the brain or 
 spinal cord. So long as a nerve is healthy nothing is required for its 
 action but the application to it of an appropriate stimulus. When a 
 nerve in connection with the brain is excited the peculiar action of the 
 brain is induced ; this action of the brain however is sensation. But all 
 action produces force ; the sensation in the brain has given rise to a force, 
 wh. must excite further action. It may be held certain therefore that if 
 there be any other nerve in relation with that portion of the brain it will 
 also be excited to action, just as it would have been by any other kind 
 of irritation. Suppose a sensitive nerve going to a portion of the brain, 
 and a motor nerve coming off from the same : now if the sensitive nerve 
 be irritated, action ensues in that portion of the brain. If that action 
 were chem action, the motor nerve would be excited and the muscle wh 
 it supplied would contract. Can the action wh. takes place in the brain 
 in sensation be less adaped to excite a nerve in relation with it, than mere 
 chem. action would be ? The muscular action is merely the cerebral 
 action propagated along the nerve ; or more truly is excited by the stim. 
 imparted by the sensation, considered as a change in the brain; and if 
 this be true of sensation, must it not be true of Thought and Emotion ? 
 If a prick of a nerve shall excite the organs to which it is distributed, 
 how much more shall such action as that of Thinking or Feeling. Thus 
 the nervous force is ' a stimulus conveyed thro' a nerve.' Is it not 
 evident that the excitement of the brain to action thro' a nerve indicates 
 as much nervous force as the excitemeut to action of any other bodily 
 organ ? and would there not be equally good ground foi attributing the 
 secretion of the nervous force to the muscles as to the brain ? For the 
 actions of all the other organs of the body excite the nerves to action 
 in the same way as the action of the brain does, only in the latter case 
 the stimulus is conveyed to external organs, in the former it is conveyed 
 to the nerve centres themselves, the actions of wh. we have been accus- 
 tomed to consider self-originated tho' they are in truth as much dependent 
 on nervous stimuli as those of any other organs. Again if the brain forms 
 or produces the nervous force, it must itself exist and act independently 
 of it. Can this be supposed ? 
 
 This is the office of the brain, the reason why our mental processes are 
 connected with a material organ, viz. to bring them into relation with our
 
 bodies ; to cause them to generate a force wh. shall have the power of 
 causing actions, shall give the soul the command of the body. The brain 
 is not the originator of any emotional or intellectual process, but simply 
 the organ by wh. these are brought into relation with the body. 
 
 In converting force, all kinds of matter must undergo some internal 
 change but Brain is so made that the internal change is in its case 
 attended with consciousness, and constitutes Thought. Now in all matter, 
 organized and unorganized alike, is not the process by'wh. force is con- 
 verted of some value in and for itself, like thought and feeling, altho' only 
 manifest to us in the case of the cerebrum. Is there not, e. g. a certain 
 kind of consciousness, or enjoyment even, or something of wh. we cannot 
 conceive, wh. is yet worthy of the regard of Omniscience ? 
 
 Is not some of the puzzle 'about the mode of vision how two objects 
 and different ones produce a single sensation, &c. explained by the fact 
 that mental processes, including perception, consist in action in the brain, 
 not mere passive ' impressions ' ? and memory too, so, less mysterious ? 
 How strong an argument against Berkeley may be drawn from hence : the 
 existence of external objects is necessary to produce the action of the brain. 
 The idea has been that an image is impressed on the brain and then the 
 spirit perceives ; but in truth a stimulus is given to the brain, and per- 
 ception is the result of the consequent action. 
 
 The forces wh contribute to the life of the higher animals wd not act 
 in them sufficiently if applied to the mass of the body, as in vegetables, 
 BO a portion of their body has been organized so as to be peculiarly sus- 
 ceptible to these forces, and to have the power of converting them into a 
 kind of force wh acts directly and powerfully on the body. This nervous 
 matter is superadded to animal bodies to act as a medium by wh external 
 forces are brought into action on the organized matter of limbs, glands, 
 vessels, &c. Thus nervous matter is explained by the analogy of vegetable 
 tissues, which are susceptible in a similar way, but in a less degree, and 
 produce by their action a different kind of force. The eye e. g. is like 
 the leaf. The brain thus influenced by matter at a distance increases the 
 total amount of force wh bears upon the body. 
 
 Is not the pain produced by disease of a part of the body analogous to 
 a convulsion produced in the body by disease of the brain ? The pain is 
 action produced in the brain from the body, and does not this natural 
 action always exist, whether perceived or not ? and may not the frequent 
 clearing up of the mind before death be due to the ceasing of the abnormal 
 action excited in the brain by the diseased action in the body : the morbid 
 process relaxing, the disturbing stimulus ceases also ? 
 
 Is not the special excitability of the brain connected with the lowness 
 of its structure, presenting so much of the cell-form ? and must we not, 
 also, think less highly of Thought ; is it not dependent simply on con- 
 sciousness or sensitiveness of the action of any kind of matter ? All the 
 forms of human thought and action are due to the nature of the brain, 
 just as the forms of human motions are determined by that of the muscles. 
 The spirit can only manifest such qualities, actions, &c., as the brain is 
 adapted to exhibit. Hence the forms of human wickedness are determined 
 by the physiological properties of brain. The goodness or badness of our 
 spirits may be the same as that of other spirits ; but in order to a good 
 or bad act or thought, our spirits must produce a certain operation on our 
 brains a spirit can no more think a good or bad thought than he can
 
 9 
 
 preach a sermon or utter an oath or build a ship. And these actions on 
 brain wh spirit can produce may also be produced independently of spirit 
 by other stimuli ; just as emotions and other stimuli influence alike 
 secretions, motion, nutrition. Hence in intoxication, madness, disease, 
 thoughts and feelings arise from physical stimuli wh have the form of 
 moral actions but not the reality ; just as reflex actions have, the form of 
 voluntary ones. It wd appear that it is not necessary for the performance 
 of all the vital and animal functions that any cerobral influence shd be 
 called into operation, as we see in lower animals, many of wh have no 
 brain, and also in brainless foetuses, in wh all vital functions are perfmd. 
 Note the absence of spleen in them : may it be that the spleen, as common 
 language intimates, has some special ref to emotions, designed to render 
 their action more tolerable when excessive, and thence assuming also a 
 particular part in ague and such diseases ? But these functions are made 
 to depend on cerebral, i. e. on emotional and intellectual influence, and 
 subordinated to them, just in proportion as the body is meant to be sub- 
 servient to mind : hence most in man. And hence also, this law being 
 established in any animal, its natural functions cannot be performed without 
 this cerebral influence : it is the law of its nature. Hence we 
 might argue that to be highly suscep to emotional disease and emotional 
 cure indicates the highest state of the human being : only it depends on 
 what kind of influences excite the emotions. Some are affected chiefly 
 by emotion, others by intellect. Were not K^vton's and Sydenham's 
 bodies easily- affected by intellect ? e. g. gout and loss of appetite from 
 study. 
 
 Oct. 1851. May not the vital phna be accounted for on the hypoth of 
 two opposed ' sets ' of chem affinities constantly acting and checking each 
 other ? Thus secretion will appear to be at once analogous and opposed to 
 nutrition. They are the same processes taking place under influence of 
 opposed powers the vital and the chem ' affinities.' Nutrition attended 
 with increase of life (generation of cells ?) secretion with loss of life and 
 destruction of cells. It is not hard to conceive how certain matters cir- 
 culating in blood may act as stim to certain chem actions in particular 
 parts of the body, especially so in nutrition and secretion, only the forces 
 called into action resptively are the chem and the vital. Now as heat is 
 a stim to chem and vital action, why shd not the nervous force act in the 
 same way ? different in form according to the nature of the matter on wh 
 it acts. Perhaps also it is not difficult to see how the increased action of 
 one process may lead to increase in the other. A gland secretes in 
 prop to the amount of its nutrition, and an excess in its secretion leads to 
 increased nutrition ; so with muscular action. The one chem action leads 
 to the other, how or why is this ? Is there not some mutual dependence, 
 so that the one is necessary to the other, at least after a certain time ? Is 
 this not connected with the tendency of life to lead to decay ? as if when 
 the max. of passive development is reached it is only action, by undoing 
 what has been done, that can make room (as it were) for further vital 
 activity. Is not the presence of the one chem form of action essential to 
 the continued exercise of the other [vital] ? Death causes life. Why 
 slid an organ not used waste, and much used grow ? It is less difficult to 
 understand how the nervous force (result of chem. action) shd stimulate 
 vital action, from considering that other stimuli also the result of chem 
 action, e. g. heat, &c., also promote vital action, but the kind of nervous 
 force determines it in measure.
 
 10 
 
 So inflammation will appear to be a mixed action between nutrition and 
 secretion, determined by calling into play, by means of an * irritant,' the 
 suspended chem force. Thus all irritants act. This agrees well with the 
 idea of inflam being a new secretion, wh is the same thing ; and shows 
 how a poison in the blood may excite inflam, viz. by calling chem affinity 
 into play. Also how inflam will affect an injured or weakened part i. e. a 
 part where these chem affinities are properly most powerful ; and how all 
 secretions, and poisons among the rest, tend to particular parts, viz. those 
 parts in which they most readily excite chem action. 
 
 Suspended action always gives force, as we see in a suspended weight, 
 so susp chem action always gives vital force, wh of course can be turned 
 to any other kind of force ; can give heat or motion as in muscle (and in 
 some other animal and vegetable tissues) indeed it may give any form of 
 force. 
 
 In this way is not the bearing fruit the functional action of a vegetable, 
 and arising like secretion from an action of chem affinity ? Fruit con- 
 tains the elements in simpler combinations, as sugar, acids, &c. The 
 two-fold process is well seen in the formation of sap and blood ; conversion 
 into tissues and restoration in form of secretion. The sap becomes vitalized 
 into tissues, degenerates into fruit ; blood vitalized into tissues degenerated 
 (or chemicalized) into secretions. Does the brain sooner obey the ordinary 
 chem laws than other parts because it is farther from ordinary chem com- 
 position ? does this account for its more speedy death ? 
 
 Now is not the seed also the result of chem affinity being allowed to 
 act ? The faculty of taking on vital action does not depend on the degree 
 of vitality appertaining to any substance, but on some unknown law. It 
 is only the embryo that grows. This is a mystery, and must remain such 
 at present. Everything that will form a fresh plant or animal has the 
 power of having the vital chemistry called into action by stimuli ; that 
 is all we can say. The same heat and moisture that rot one veget fibre, 
 make another develop life. So one nervous force produces only chem. 
 affinity in one part of the body and in another develops vital affinity. 
 
 The analogy between Life and the centrifugal force becomes more and 
 more perfect while we look at it. Thus the centrif force is not a mere 
 passive force wh prevents the action of gravity, many passive forces 
 prevent chem action, &c., but an action a motion constantly maintained, 
 wh not only prevents the natural effect of graviiy, but produces with it 
 another modified result. Just such is life in relation to chem. force ; not 
 a mere passive prevention of action, but a continually renewed action or 
 succession of actions. ( ? "Whether the life of a seed, &c., be not a merely 
 passive suspension of chem. affinity, made active by appropriate stimuli ?) 
 So centrif. and centrip. force act at once on the planets, as vital and chem 
 forces act at once on living matter ; only the actions resulting from the 
 two in planets are constant and uniform ; in living matter are alternating 
 and variously proportioned. Perhaps the reason why injury to a part 
 excites'cAm action (modified) is that such chem action precedes increased 
 vital ( ? necessarily) just as increased secretion precedes increased nutrition. 
 So inflam precedes repair. Surely the difference between seeds, &c., and 
 other living matter is only this : not that the ordinary vital stimuli will 
 not prod on all living matter similar effects to those on seeds, but these 
 have the power of performing those vital acts wh are necessary for the 
 maintenance of life wh other forms have not. This the diff between seed
 
 11 
 
 and bud ; both will grow and expand from heat and moisture, but the flower 
 then fades because it is not organized to perform the acts by wh the vital 
 force is maintained and increased. And it would not appear that the seed 
 need be highly vitalized ; a low amount of vitality with an adapted or- 
 ganization will suffice, and its capacity for resisting decay seems to indicate 
 that it has low vitality. This is passive life chem. affinity merely sus- 
 pended in a certain way but this not like centrif force, both that and life 
 [in the ordinary sense] are an active interference with the chem laws ; 
 the carrying on f a constant action (or series of actions) wh keep chem. 
 force and gravity in abeyance, and only produce the results they do by 
 acting on matter subjected to the influence of the chem and gravitation 
 forces. 
 
 The vital force is made active by stimuli, and are not these stimuli 
 the result often of functional action ? Surely there is no difficulty in 
 supposing that the chem action in wh functional action consists does really 
 constitute a stimulus to the vital action : heat results from it wh we know 
 is one ; in many other ways wh we do not appreciate such chem action 
 may have the supposed stimulating effect. There is no difficulty in sup- 
 posing this, and it surely agrees well with facts : chem. action excites 
 vital action ; functional activity excites nutritive activity. Would not 
 similar action to that of living function have a tendency to stimulate a 
 seed into growth ? May we not arrive with Paget at the idea that the 
 presence of certain matters in the blood causes the production of the 
 organs by wh it is excreted ? For the form assumed by the vital processes 
 depends much upon the kind of chem. action: the presence of certain 
 matters in blood excites a particular chem action wh leads to its excretion ; 
 that produces a peculiar form of action of vital force, the result of wh two 
 is the formation of a gland. "We see it in every eruptive disease. May 
 we not understand better how the same chem influence should excite both 
 nutritive and functional activity, by looking at the effect of light on plants ; 
 how it will cause some to open and others to shut ; how some sleep by 
 night and others by day. A clock gives a good analogy to vital processes. 
 The weight is analogous to the chem affinity of particles of living matter, 
 and the power wh upholds it analogous to the vital or centrif force. The 
 union of the two powers or the modified influence of gravity produces all 
 the ' actions ' of the clock. Is not this ' life,' except that the power of 
 renewal and development of the suspending force is wanting? The 
 maintenance or renewal is found in the solar system, the development is 
 found in living beings. May not the search after perpetual motion be 
 regarded as a search after ' Life ? ' The ' life ' wh makes matter living, 
 must be distinguished from that ' animal ' life wh is the * sum of the 
 functions.' 
 
 How can we account on this chem. theory of vital actions for sup- 
 pression of secretions thro' emotion, or disease as in fevers ? how for 
 compensating suppression of secretion ? where is the ' force ' wh can prevent 
 such action : especially how can it result from any kind of mental action, 
 i. e. from force generated by action in brain ? Can it be looked for in a 
 constringing influence on the vessels ? Can the corresponding increase 
 or diminution of nourishment or growth of parts be accounted for in 
 the same way as increased compensating secretion ? Is it not due to reflex 
 nutritive action and not to ingredients of blood ? increased nutrition of 
 one part so affecting the nervous centres as to lead to increased nutrition
 
 12 
 
 in another, as increased action does : so action of muscles of legs leads to 
 action of those of intestines ; why not nutrition likewise ? Viewed ab- 
 stractly the principle of functional action being a sacrifice of life must be 
 true. Force is expended ; and it must be that force wh life has generated : 
 i. e. it must be by virtue of some action taking place wh life has suspd. 
 
 Also an animal may be said to be as it were only two vegetables brought 
 into relation body and nervous system : the force being reflected from 
 one back to another ; while in the vegetable wh does not act ' of itself,' it 
 dissipates at once. Is it not a law : do anything to diminish the vitality 
 of any organ, and you dispose it to action, i. e. to chem change ; provided 
 of course it be not so much altered as that the right chem change for 
 producing that action cannot take place ; the right chem change being 
 always one modified by, therefore implying, the vital chem force also. 
 Perhaps the explanation of hibernation is here : a peculiar modification 
 of vital influence is necessary in order to cause the right chem changes to 
 take place in this lowly vitalized condition. 
 
 Will this do : that function is the effect of chem affinity acting under 
 definite laws and duly modified by vital power, and disease chem 
 affinity operating in different form and not duly under control of vital 
 power, i. e. under the influence of abnormal stimuli. Must we hold that 
 during the prevalence of the vital power the chem affinities of the 
 elements of the body obey different laws ; so that the same thing will 
 excite chem change during life and prevent it after death. That this 
 chem affinity, if it be the power of function, is modified during life is 
 evident ; witness the different susceptibility of the same organ at different 
 times, as when asleep and when awake, &c. But is not the prevention 
 of function by mental action, &c., irreconcilable ? How can the effect of 
 one chem process be to prevent another ? Is there a positive and a neg 
 nervous force ? or is this effect of nerve force due only to its effect in 
 contracting the vessels ? producing so a ' function ' incompatible with the 
 other? Is this always the mode in wh medicines cure disease : viz. by 
 exciting a functional action wh is incompatible with the morbid state ? 
 
 May we say that action ceases with respect to any stimulus at the point 
 at wh the vital affinity becomes stronger than the chem, even aided by 
 the said stim ? and thus explain how reflex acts do not continuously pro- 
 pagate themselves between the nervous and muscular and other systems, 
 e. g. how we come to cease acting. There must be two modes in which 
 functional action may arise : by diminution of vital affinity allowing chem 
 to come into play ; or, by any force adding intensity to ordinary affinity 
 and enabling i to overpower the vital. Do conscious and volitional 
 actions arise in the second mode, and automatic or vegetative in the first ? 
 or is the first a condition of disease, or of abnormal irritability ? 
 
 But there is a difficulty in supposing irritability to consist merely in 
 disposition to chem. change, or action as the carrying out of such dispo- 
 sition, however modified by the vital force. Thus arsenic produces in- 
 flammation during life, but prevents chem change after animal life has 
 ceased, altho' to all appearance the chem structure remains precisely the 
 same. It wd seem as if the very irritability was due not to any suspd 
 chem. affinity called into play by the arsenic, but to the life itself. 
 And yet this may be further considered thus : of course the continuance 
 and form of the action induced by stimulants depends upon life : inflarn 
 can only exist in living bodies. And may not some very decided change
 
 13 
 
 (ohem) have taken place at least in the state of the tissues after death 
 very long before we can detect it ? And probably the irritability consists 
 in this very state ; this vital suspension of most delicate affinities which 
 come into play immediately the vital force ceases to be perfect. Again, 
 we know that many substances begin to act chemically on the body after 
 death that do not before, e. g. the gastric juice. Here is a contrast in 
 life arsenic destructive, gastric juice innocuous : after death arsenic pre- 
 servative, gastric juice destructive. A peculiar chem condition must be 
 the cause of this. 
 
 Digestion is a bringing of new matter under the influence of the vital 
 chemistry. Life wd seem to be a force communicated by ' contact,' as 
 magnetism, &c., but the matter to wh it can be communicated is peculiar, 
 and must be peculiarly modified. Now the ordinary substances of our 
 food consist partly of matters capable of ' vitalization ' and partly not. 
 All that is not capable of vitalization, including the debris, &c., forms 
 materials for secretion, i.e. excites the ordinary chem affinity of vitalized 
 parts, and various secreting organs are made with peculiar ' affinity ' for 
 each of such substances. All substances not capable of vitalization, 
 or possessing the proper affinity for one of the secreting glands, so as to form 
 the natural elements of the secretion?, are poisons and excite disease ; i. e. 
 they induce new and un-conformable modes of chem. action, either by 
 themselves uniting with the tissues, or by exciting new modes of chem. 
 interchange among their elements. 
 
 A magnet has attached to it fragments of iron [wh also it has rendered 
 magnetic] ; these wd fall to the ground obeying force of gravity : apply 
 heat to the magnet, and they fall. Just so apply nervous force to a 
 muscle, and some of its elements obey chem attraction and motion results. 
 
 Increased nutrition from function may be thus explained : in the normal 
 vital state the organic affinity is passive, the chem affinity latent : in 
 function the chem affinity is active : the result is chem affinity, in part, 
 passive ; organic affinity in part latent : hence the effort to restore normal, 
 or fully vitalized, condition. To effect this, organic affinity becomes 
 active, restoring by increased nutrition the normal condition, and the parts 
 are restored to their original state. But whence the hypertropy, unless 
 from increased supply of blood ? 
 
 In sloughing from unhealthy inflammation have we not an intimation 
 that all inflammation is a sort of mixed process, of chem and vital affinity 
 acting in altered relations and proportions, as it were ; an advance of the 
 chem upon the organic, leading to modified results, and among others to 
 such a condition of the parts as to increase the total amount of action ; 
 e. g. from increased supply of blood ? And is it not too narrow a view 
 that all disease is of the functional order ? The organic affinity also is 
 an active process and disorder of either may be disease. Are tumours 
 derangements of the organic aftnity ? 
 
 May not the special forms of nutrition be due to special forms of de- 
 composition or chem action. (See Med. Ch. Rev. on Function.) 
 
 Since a muscle when contracted hardens but not changes size, the 
 particles of wh it is composed must be increased in volume. An inelastic 
 bag filled with air if heated, grows harder, but does not alter its size. 
 May not the contraction of the heart be the cause of its repeated con- 
 traction so long as its vital cohesion remains : not by producing stimulus, 
 but by causing nutrition ; the decompn producing the vital action wh
 
 14 
 
 necessitates the repeated decomposition ? In reply to Paget's idea that 
 vital force is only a modificatn of general force, and therefore may directly 
 give rise to or assume the form of chew, force, observe that this may be, 
 but not in the same matter : the change of substratum is wanting. As 
 chem action may prod vital action in adjacent matter, so vital action may 
 prod chemical ; as probably is the case with vinegar plant and solution of 
 sugar, or parasitic growths. May it be so in alternate action and repose 
 of heart; adjacent parts influencing others in an opposite direction, 
 so that the sequence is maintained. 
 
 May not vital action while progressing, be converted into other, and even 
 opposite action, as a pendulum while rising may produce action of very 
 different sorts ; itself losing its upward motion. But then we must 
 remember that if so the vital action wh is converted has not existed in 
 any other form : the idea applies to development but not to function, wh 
 latter presupposes the full action of life development supposes the 
 original vital action changed or destroyed. Muscular contraction is a 
 conversion of chem action, due to a resistance of it, and therefore an 
 excessive chem action one not resisted or overcoming the resistance 
 does not produce contraction. But if the chem action is thus 
 converted into motion, how can it be converted into vital action or in- 
 creased nutrition? is part of it converted into each, in resisted con- 
 traction of the heart ? or is the resistance to the motion the source of 
 increased growth ; the motion that is lost ? 
 
 Vital Force. True generation is produced in hydra by diminution of 
 temperature ; just as flowers and fruit [which give heat and are functional] 
 are produced instead of leaves and buds in many trees by cold and dimn 
 of nutriment. Does it not seem as if the chem decomp supplied the 
 place of the heat in the hydra, inducing development ? It is as if 
 there were a real transference of the vital affinity of the decomposing 
 matter to the growing : analogy to transference of heat, one body grows 
 hot as another grows cool. 
 
 If ova are not fertilized, they die ; as muscle atrophies if not used. 
 Muscle grows from exercise by developt of new muscle from existing 
 nuclei : these are made to grow by chem action in others ; they are really 
 new individuals. If this definite change does not take place they do not 
 grow but die like infertile ova. The degeneration wh ensues on non-use 
 has not such vivifying power. This is the nature of inliamn : increased 
 vitality stimulated by increased decompn, &c. (See Med. Ck. Rev., 1858.) 
 The growth of fungi (living cells) on decaying living matter is just what 
 takes place in digestion and assimilation. The food for vegetables is de- 
 composing matter: worms live in decaying bodies. Thus we see 
 the arrangement for effecting repair in the very nature of an injury to 
 the living body : also the nature-like manifold uses of one power ; the 
 chem action at once effecting the function and renewing and increasing 
 life : provision at once for augmented power in proportion to activity, and 
 for restoration of living parts when damaged. Thus the use of countei- 
 irritants and friction in treatment of disease ; exciting chem action 
 they stimulate vital ? The more free fermentation of sugar when vinegar 
 plant is present is analogous to the more vigorous chem action in a galv 
 trough when the electricity has a free course ; or the heat into wh it is 
 converted in a small wire is fully radiated. 
 
 See the adaptation of chem change to promote vital action on Wood's 
 theory of its being simply the closest arrangement of the particles, and
 
 15 
 
 giving rise to heat or separation of particles. It appears that vital com- 
 pounds have the elements comparatively far apart, at least in one sense ; 
 and yet think of carbon and water in sugar : wh wd occupy most space ? 
 
 Surely living organisms might originate from decomp of organized 
 matter without violence to the principle ' omne vivum ex vivo : ' a real 
 transference of the vitality differing only in form ; the amount of life 
 never varying. It appears like a change of chemical complexity into or- 
 ganization or development. Organization will not go on without heat : 
 but not .-. heat directly changed into vital force: crystallization maybe 
 caused by heat, but the heat first evaporates water : so in some cases may 
 not heat stimulate vital by first causing chem change ? "We shd get clearly 
 the idea of force as motion and arrangement. The motion in chem change 
 causes other motion ; e. g. in the inorganic it causes motion of heat ; and 
 in the organic, motion of nutrition. 
 
 Is there anything more than a fancied analogy in the turning round of 
 suffering into happiness ? 
 
 That plants really absorb heat and turn it into growth is shown by 
 their being always cool, even in sunshine ; also does not the green color 
 show that it is red light wh they absorb and convert ? Does the chem 
 action promote vital, not directly, but only thro' medium of the heat it 
 produces ? Heat [separation of particles] produces vital change (also 
 separation) ; decay (approximation of particles) reproduces heat the 
 separation. Or more clearly thus : the absorption of heat the cooling or 
 approximation of particles of air, &c., surrounding plants prod its vital 
 separation of particles ? So decompn again [approxn.] prod heat, or vital 
 separation ; in each case heat or life, according to substratum. Surely 
 one reason why growth of plants absorbs heat is the greater volume of 
 oxygen than of carbonic acid : but then why does explosibn produce heat ? 
 Is it as the result of motion resisted ? The expansion of gas interfered 
 with heats the resisting body : the iron of a gun, or the atmosphere in open 
 air ? Does explosion prod heat in vacuo ? 
 
 Is it not probable there may exist a vital tension, i. e. a tendency to 
 vital action repressed, wh external forces permit to act, and thus produce 
 vital action without the immediate intervention of chem action ? It may 
 very possibly be such a state that is produced in the germ ; but life as a 
 conversion of chem action remains the same in all such cases none the 
 less; the exception is only apparent. If we ask why ova are not 
 developed from natural decay, we refer to parallel case of muscle : the 
 right decomposition necessary for development, not mere degeneration, 
 and this in each depends on external force, like various kinds of fer- 
 mentation. [Here perhaps we get an idea as to the action of poisonous 
 substances : they cause the wrong decomp.] Is spontaneous generation 
 like action of heart ; sexual like that of voluntary muscles ? Necessity 
 for latter after a time even in animals wh generate spontaneously, like 
 action of heart excited by a stim after its spontaneous contraction has 
 ceased ? vitality becomes either too weak or too strong to furnish the 
 conditions for the right decomposing change. 
 
 In decay and growth chem tension, or affinity, ceases to exist in one 
 and exists in the other, like cooling and heating of adjacent bodies. It 
 is like a balance where the falling of one weight raises another. 
 Decomp at once furnishes the force and supplies the food for growth. Is 
 it not as if complexity of chem composition was changed into developmvnt
 
 16 
 
 of simpler forms of life: the two forms of vital action balanced? To 
 this head belongs effect of the emotions upon the vital state that we live 
 by means of them : and perhaps also the fact, that some functional 
 changes seem directly to promote vitality. The elements of decomposing 
 matter of course are in a nascent state, and hence their susceptibility to 
 take on the vital action : or does this ' nascent ' state mean only the fact 
 of force being in operation ; the elements being acted on by chem change ? 
 The diversity of plants and animals arising in circumstances the same 
 in all respects except in the kind of decomposing action wh stimulates 
 them, may help us in conceiving the character impressed on offspring by 
 the father. 
 
 Are not carbonic acid, ammonia, &c., presented to roots of plants in a 
 decomp, i. e. an active chem, state ; and the elements of the blood, by 
 means of the oxygen in it, also thus to the tissues : so that the nutritive 
 matter presents both food and force. 
 
 Is not chem action a form of motion wh being resisted by adjacent 
 particles imparts to them also a motion : a form of friction, causing its 
 secondary effects ? or as causing change of bulk does it necessitate cor- 
 responding change of bulk : either contraction or expansion ? because 
 matter altogether must always occupy the same space. 
 
 The chem action is the force on which life depends, especially animal 
 life. That is the use of the oxygen, to keep up a constant supply of 
 force from chem action. [There are so many unused forces in the living 
 body on the ordinary idea, especially those resulting from chem action]. 
 It may be that there is a constant chem action going on in the tissues 
 besides that on wh function depends : the vital action nickering as it 
 were: strong from stimulus of chem action, and again permitting the 
 same to recur ? 
 
 Some animals eat putrid food, and in others it is probable that the 
 partial decomp causes the perfect building up e. g. vegetable albumen 
 partly decomposed becomes becomes the perfect animal albumen. 
 
 In the effect of oxygen on the blood we have again two results from a 
 single cause : oxygen removes results of decomposition, i. e. of function, 
 &c., and produces at the same time vital action. In spontaneous fission 
 the first process is a contraction of the cell at one point : i. o. function 
 a result of chemical action : first decomposition, then growth. 
 
 The analogy of the solar system shows that the two antagonistic forces 
 need not be absolutely opposed, but only different : e. g. at right angles. 
 
 The Pendulum seems to furnish an excellent analogy. Here gravita- 
 tion not allowed to complete its action causes the upward movement. In 
 the solar system it is the same ; but in the pendulum the resistance is 
 passive, in the solar system an active impulse. Is not the cause of the 
 ultimate cessation of life simply the resistance of surrounding matter to 
 vital motion ; just as is the case with a pendulum ? Is part of the vital 
 impulse expended in overcoming external resistance, &c. : and .-.is it 
 at last brought to an end ? 
 
 The cohesive tendency must be recognized as a force just as much as 
 chemical affinity or gravitation: it produces the action in cooling, in 
 crystallization. It is a tendency or < affinity ' in heated bodies, or solu- 
 tions. In them it exists as cohesive tension. Perhaps heat is rather 
 opposed to cohesive than to chemical affinity. 
 
 Might not a very complete analogue of a living body be thus con- 
 structed : viz. steam heated by combustion as now ; but instead of raising
 
 
 17 
 
 the piston being the function, the action should result from the fall of the 
 raised mass either on cooling of the steam, or from a stimulus as by 
 opening a valve. 
 
 If we could remove matter from the earth's attraction we could 
 construct a little solar system : so if we could remove matter from chem 
 affinity could we not make a sort of life, by opposing an active resistance 
 to some molecular tendency ? 
 
 Heat and the necessary elements for growth will not alone cause 
 development of life ; there must also be a changing state of the elements 
 themselves carb. of ammonia is a poison to plants under any tempera- 
 ture. This is against the direct conversion of heat into vital action. 
 
 The alternation of sleeping and waking is like the oscillation of the 
 pendulum : a momentum from decompn in function wh produces the 
 nutrition of sleep ; thus the pendulum is raised ; then it falls, causing 
 function. The resistance is the point : the affinity not completing its 
 action, causes motion in the opposite direction the motion in the pen- 
 dulum being a substitute for the heat wh wd result from its impact. Is 
 it not even so in the living body : is there not less heat than if there 
 were no growth ? is not part of the heat in the body converted into 
 growth, as in plants ? 
 
 Is it possible that the decomposition of preceding textures is the cause 
 of development of higher animals, and that in the ovum or foetus of mam- 
 malia a process goes on like successive developments of higher plants, 
 from the lichen upwards ? See, e. g. formation of striated muscle, or of 
 the germinal vescicle or the plumula. The hydra gemmating from di- 
 minution of temperature, is proof that heat is not the cause here of in- 
 creased development. 
 
 How probable it is that the resistance to the chem tendency in living 
 structures is only passive, and that all the action is derived from chem 
 action ; and so the pendulum a perfect analogy. Two elements : first, 
 passive resistance to complete gravitation or decomposition ; 2nd, a 
 tendency thereto : the suspension of the pendulum and the lifting of it. 
 So the vital state would be really like cohesion, wh resists motion, and 
 turns it into heat ; and if we suppose such a cohesion as to cause and 
 permit partial motion, we have a perfect analogy. 
 
 Conversion of Force, Is it not true that all conversion of one force 
 into another is due to resistance to the given force ? So are the heat and 
 electricity from chem action due to resistance to that action, e. g. from 
 cohesion ? in all cases so much action as cannot be directly transmitted 
 is converted into another form of action. Thus when more heat is 
 applied to a compound than it can receive, or more rapidly, it decom- 
 poses : here is another form of action chem change and heat ceases. 
 So when heat is abstracted [for change of temperature is a molecular 
 action, or force, in either direction] beyond a certain point, another form 
 of action comes into play : viz. freezing or crystallizing cohesive action ; 
 and abstraction of heat pro tanto ceases. Here we see an explanation 
 of opposing effects of small and great appliances of the same force : can 
 it or can it not be transmitted ? 
 
 In chem union is there not a motion wh the surrounding matter cannot 
 receive ; hence another form of action alteration of temperature ; is it 
 not like function, a momentum of motion not propagated but converted 
 or how is it ? This would account for heat in explosions : violent 
 
 C
 
 18 
 
 motion causing heat, and heat proportioned to intensity of affinity ; like 
 the heat from motion, and question of expansion and contraction not 
 essentially involved. 
 
 Is it not a rule shat all substrata admit a certain amount ot trans- 
 mission of force and convert the remainder ; in this like living matter, 
 wh admits a certain amount of decomp and converts the remainder. 
 The whole doctrine of conversion of forces lies in that of conductors and 
 non-conductors: non-conductors assume other forms of action, varying 
 according to their nature. Action cannot cease to exist, and must 
 always spread: .'. if it cannot be directly continued or transmitted, it is 
 changed into a form that can be continued ; but its primary tendency is 
 to propagation. This wd apply to conversion of heat into vital action 
 by plants ; for leaves may be considered non-conductors, being compound 
 bodies, like two metals or some salts. Hence heat is changed into growth, 
 as into electricity or chem change. 
 
 The resistance afforded by the living state to chem action is not active, 
 but merely passive. Thus while no forces act upon it, it undergoes no 
 change, performs no action, manifests no active resistance ; when forces 
 act upon it (the right ones) it yields at once and either grows or decays ; 
 generally both. Or I should say when chem action i. e. the decomp is 
 applied to it, then it always grows, and never otherwise. So is the 
 motion of the planets entirely due to gravity passively resisted : the 
 circular motion once given itself developes into the elliptic. A body in 
 motion applied to a solid mass wh will not take on a state of motion, not 
 only causes heat in the mass, but itself grows hot. So a body in a state 
 of chem change applied to organized matter wh will not take on a state 
 of chem change, not only causes in it vital action, but assumes a state of 
 vital action itself : thus decomposing food becomes living blood. 
 
 The production of supernumerary limbs from injury in utero, is very 
 instructive. It wd seem e. g. that the formation of a hand was a neces- 
 sary result of chem action in that part of embryo without any immediate 
 reference to final causes. 
 
 The primary tendency of higher as of lower animals is surely to go on 
 multiplying the same forms indefinitely, if force be supplied ; but some 
 cause prevents : what is that cause ? Surely, the development of a 
 higher animal from simple cells in utero, is the same thing as develop- 
 ment of continuously higher plants one after another : a little force acting 
 on a germ producing simple cells ; more force acting on these cells pro- 
 ducing higher forms : more force still acting on these latter forms still 
 producing higher, and so on, [ ? ad infinitum, if not resisted.] In 
 development the force is supplied from without, hence the increase : it is 
 the continual descent of other matter forcing up 'the same matter wh 
 never descends : hence the height to wh it rises. In mere maintenance 
 it is different : here only as much rising as there is descent. In senile 
 decay or inefficient repair the process is reversed. As ferments occasion 
 decomposition of organic solutions not by decomposing themselves but by 
 growing, so do not the living tissues determine by their nutrition the 
 chem changes wh the food and elements in the body undergo, and 
 according to their special living action cause peculiar chem changes ? 
 
 " There is a close analogy between organized and unorganized matter of 
 this kind : both are in a state of cohesion, the one in a manner accordant 
 with chem affinities, the other in a manner contrary to them. Cohesion
 
 19 - 
 
 ig thus a general characteristic of both, and whatever cohesion will do in 
 the one case, it may be supposed to do in the other. Inorganic cohesion 
 resists force, and thus transmutes one kind of force into another : why 
 should not organic cohesion do the same? " J. If. If. 
 
 May we suppose that special kinds of chem action cause special forms 
 of vital action ? If so, this wd go far to account for progressive meta- 
 morphosis. See the effect of different kinds of food, and of soils. But 
 mere downward motion will produce motion in all directions in an 
 adapted mechanism; so that the properties of the germ might be the 
 determining cause of the varieties of vital action. In fact the two 
 elements work together : varieties of germ and of chcm action. 
 Perhaps we should think of a descending body not ascending itself, but 
 by its impetus causing the ascent of other bodies thro' a mechanism or 
 organization. 
 
 All we are compelled to assume as at first existing is not organized 
 matter, but only organic matter ; all development of form comes from the 
 chem action : or must we assume even so much as that ? is it not enough 
 to have the specific resistance however it may exist : a certain kind of 
 resistance to chem action going on around even in unorganized matter wd 
 compel it to assume vital action. All we need to suppose is a certain 
 particle that will yield to chem action only in the vital form. All that 
 is required to account for the entire amount of life is a single particle 
 wh has from any cause this definite resistance : [wh organization docs 
 not give, because matter that decays is as much organized as matter that 
 grows.] The higher animals require germs i. e. mechanisms to produce 
 the amount and variety of their vital action ; but the mechanism is not 
 an essential element of life, only the resistance. To assume organized 
 matter and organic cohesion is to assume too much, when mere definite 
 resistance suffices. 
 
 Plants do not decomp carbonic acid by means of heat. At the origin 
 of the vegetable world there was not an atmosphere loaded with carbonic 
 acid and heat ; but merely carbon, oxygen, and appropriate temperature. 
 As the C and united so did vegetables form, and their growing was a 
 cause of further union It was a process like fermentation ; [as vegetable 
 growth probably always is now]. Then the temperature must either 
 have been low, or the have been much diluted or otherwise prevented 
 from combining rapidly with the C. Whether veget germs were there 
 or not is an open question: a particle of C, &c., having from any cause 
 the special resistance wd be enough. This resistance might be either an 
 immediate endowment or might originate from other causes : from external 
 conditions e. g. from the chem action going on around. As in the solar 
 system ; if a planet be gravitating towards the sun and a definite resist- 
 ance be opposed, such as shall turn its motion into one at right angles, 
 we have the orbit : as a cricket ball turned at right angles by the bat. 
 
 Cannot we suppose two forms of chem action wh should interfere with 
 each other so as to produce the definite vital resistance ? 
 
 In Life chem action is cumulative ; organic matter admits of continual 
 additions of action in the same mass. Each vital act is simple; as 
 simple as crystallization ; but many of them aggregated in the same 
 tnibstance make it very complex, and high. Thus the higher the animal 
 the more complex its structure and derived from more complex action in 
 food : successive stages of decay produce successive stages of life. Thus
 
 20 
 
 by superposition of motions, or actions, we may account for the highest 
 development. It is like a weight raised to an immense height by suc- 
 cessive downward motions of a pendulum ; development and extension 
 of living matter being interchangeable. 
 
 The function developes the organ, just as it increases it : a single con- 
 tractile cell must grow into a muscle if the conditions allow : so of 
 set-re ling and all other organs [as diseases construct their own organs ?] 
 
 Is chem action only a conversion of force arising from a ' chem re- 
 sistance ?' Heat cannot be propagated by mixtures of certain substances 
 wh .-. assume a chem action. There is no tendency of matter, but only 
 specific resistances. .-. in saying that at its origin some matter had 
 chem action excited in it, and other had vital, I am only saying the 
 .same in regard to both : each had a special resistance to the actions 
 affecting it, and converted them. But the vital resistance appears to 
 apply only to chem action ? Is not heat converted into chem action 
 only by means of juxtaposition ? similar to the conversion of motion 
 into heat by cohesion ? Does not the vital resistance arise in some such 
 way ? It is the very life of the food that becomes the life of the 
 animal, often of a higher intensity : as a slight downward motion of a 
 heavy weight may raise a small weight to a great height. In plants, 
 their life is another form of the conditions wh prevented the chem union 
 of the elements on wh they live. 
 
 The simplest vegetable cell may be easily imagined arising from 
 simple chem action ; a certain amount of O and C unite into C O^ ; 
 another amount, with H, unite into cell here the resistance of C and O 
 to chem union re-appear under an altered form, and still as resistance. 
 What were those first resistances ? Is it merely mechanical cohesion 
 changed into vital cohesion ? Take casein decomposing up to a certain 
 point it goes on then meets resistance wh turns decomp into vital 
 action, here the vital resistance of the ' mould ' is the resistance wh chem 
 action has overcome in the casein. So resistances are converted even as 
 forces or actions. Eesistancc of one sort ceases and reappears in another 
 iorui ; the ordinary resistances to chem action reappear as the vital re- 
 sistance. So is life a peculiar form of cohesion ? So with a planet, is the 
 distance of its first starting point turned into the motion at right angles : 
 a passive resistance turned into an active one ; like passive resistance 
 to chem action turned into vital [an active] resistance? 
 
 Or may one portion of O and C uniting into C O 2 , and another 
 portion forming a cell with II be compared to one part of liquid C O 2 , 
 being frozen by expansion of another part? 
 
 Specific resistances seem to arise from the circumstances of matter 
 and not from its inherent nature. Gravity itself is not a property of 
 matter but an effect of propinquity of two portions of matter. So chemicity 
 is not a property of matter, but arises from juxtaposition of two or more 
 particles of matter and application of a force. Apply force to a single 
 atom and no change or action will result ; but if atoms of two different 
 substances are together and force be applied, a specific resistance is 
 manifested, and chem action is seen. So a small plate of matter ur- 
 supported propagates motion simply: if supported on one side only, 
 changes its direction: if loosely supported it vibrates: if perfectly sup- 
 ported changes motion into heat. 
 
 Does not this favor the creation of organized or at least organic matter ?
 
 21 
 
 The relations necessary to give matter the vital resistance may surely be 
 its union into living bodies. 
 
 Complex conversions of action may readily arise from compound 
 resistances [as we may see in a pendulum] so does not organized matter 
 as it developes acquire new resistances ; turn the chem action into new 
 modes of vital ? Hence for varying development of different parts we 
 require only the first slight alteration of chem action or vital resistance 
 of each part. 
 
 Is the liver like the spleen phis the kidney : vitalizing blood, and 
 casting out the devitalized part ? And is not the leaf of a plant 
 analogous ? 
 
 Do the decomposing elements in grape juice, at a certain stage, meet 
 or cause, a resistance wh causes the decomposing action to assume form 
 of composing action ? just as in a wire electricity at a certain stage or 
 amount meets or causes a resistance wh turns it into heat ? It is as if a 
 certain intensity of the action were required, hence fermentation may 
 take place slowly and no conversion of the action' will arise at all just 
 as a weak current of electricity in a wire will cause no heat. 
 
 By seeing chem affinity and all properties of matter as specific 
 resistances, due to relations of particles, the distinction between organic 
 and inorganic matter is removed in the right way. The vital resistance 
 cannot be a property of a single particle of matter, as no specific resist- 
 ance can ; it must like all resistances result from relations between 
 particles of matter: that is organization. But then this is not a 
 peculiarity. 
 
 Are there a few distinct organic forms like the ' Elements,' but the 
 great mass due to modifications of the properties of these elements ? So 
 that plants and animals may develope into very many forms but there 
 are lines wh they cannot pass even as the elements are protean in their 
 forms, but not transmutable. If animal species are by union of two in 
 one, does this give a clue to the relations of the inorganic ' elements ?' 
 See the relation of Ozone to 0. 
 
 The solving of the mystery of life ought to explain the phna of the 
 inorganic world. The apparently exceptional character of vital phna 
 was the proof that the real character of all phna was not understood. 
 What life is, that is every other power in the world. 
 
 Is fibrine decomposing, and .-. nourishing albumen ? 
 
 Surely vital action as such does not tend to continue, and cannot be 
 converted. The action ends with it ; as when descent of pendulum has 
 raised it again there remains no more action to succeed. The two motions 
 have balanced each other. The upward motion has exhausted the mo- 
 mentum and nothing further will take place unless the same action re- 
 commence, and by virtue of the same force, viz. gravity. The upward 
 action only affords the condition for the downward. This applies exactly 
 to life. There has probably been a certain amount of external resistance 
 in each case, the action destroyed by wh exists in other forms ; but the 
 original action has been expended in overcoming chem affinity : it will 
 be reproduced in the decay of the living matter. So in function 
 there is no vital force or action to convert there is merely tendency to 
 decay. 
 
 In living tissues is there not a complex action from compound resist- 
 ance, especially in development ?
 
 22 
 
 The chem action facilitated by vital action is doubtless a very 
 important element in the history of the world : how much change e. g. 
 in the early world was due to the immense vegetation ? 
 
 Does not life then depend on one kind of organization or relation of 
 parts, and cause another kind ; viz. the organic structure ? Every specific 
 resistance depends on an ' organization.' Even the elements must consist 
 of particles peculiarly arranged, as proved by their often having two 
 forms. To this arrangement they owe their specific resistance : and other 
 resistances, as chem affinity, &c., are complex resistances resulting from 
 compound arrangements : the vital resistance is the same. 
 
 Chemical affinity also is a ' tension ' from some action resisted. May 
 not the elements maintain an impulse as a state of tension resulting 
 from previous chem action, wh they have never entirely lost ? So that 
 putting acid and alkali together is really like joining electric wires. See 
 the greater energy of chem affinity in nascent state, wh seems to depend 
 on such impulse ; and can be as it were propagated even thro' one 
 element. [Brodie]. So chem affinity does not consist in a tendency of 
 two elements to unite ; but in adaptation to receive a special kind of 
 action, a specific resistance. Thus the elements, &c., as we know them 
 at least in many eases must be considered to be in a state of tension : 
 hence the vast amount of heat often arising from chem action. 
 
 Is the uterus in a state of vital tension ; the actions wh constitute its 
 development being resisted ? and the presence of embryo [or tumour 
 indeed] furnishing the conditions wh allow it ? 
 
 Adult animal needs more O than foetus, because in the latter all the 
 chem action is turned into vital action : in adult part of the chem action 
 produces heat ? 
 
 It is not hard to conceive that the vital action caused by any particular 
 chem action may occupy some time in its progress. Hence sleep suc- 
 ceeding to function : the tissues are placed in a state of vital tension, wh 
 slowly effects its result in increased nutrition : so causing what might 
 appear to be spontaneous vital action. See the chrysalis after spinning 
 cocoon. So perhaps the influence of liver and ductless glands in the 
 body and of leaves, &c., may last a long time, and have effect in every 
 organ. 
 
 Do plants really give out C Qj during night from their own structure 
 by decomp : cr merely permit its formation like yeast plant, or allow the 
 exhalation of it, already formed ; or does it always go on, but only 
 perceived during night from absence of the vital action thro' want of 
 light, &c. ? 
 
 There is, in living structures, no passive resistance to chem action : 
 They either convert it into vital action, or undergo decomposition, pro- 
 vided the conditions for chem action are present. Does not the action of 
 heart seem precisely like a pendulum action ? The chem action around 
 it first causes the vital action ; the vital action ceasing, the chem action 
 at once returns, and contraction results, but being resisted again becomes 
 vital action, and so on. Thus the beat of the heart causes its own con- 
 tinuance. While living structure is under conditions in wh chem action 
 is possible it is always either growing or decaying : always in a state of 
 vital or chem action. But there may be a condition in wh the vital state 
 is just maintained by a slight chem change or tension balancing it. Does 
 the vigour of the functions answer to the" kind of chem change occurring
 
 23 
 
 in the food ; carnivora and herbivora e. g. ; birds of prey, and carrion 
 birds, &c. ? 
 
 Is not magnetism like chem affinity ? induced, yet its source often 
 unseen ; called out or negatived by heat. When electricity results from 
 chem action, is it not the polar state of the elements transferring itself 
 to other particles ? 
 
 The chemists in getting rid of the resistance and opposition of the vital 
 force to the chemical have been denying the very point in wh the vital 
 force agrees with other forces, and trying to eliminate the very element 
 by wh alone they could hope to ' complete the equation.' Resistance lies 
 at the root of physical science. What makes life seem so peculiar is the 
 varied resistance, but this is from the varied conditions. The true great- 
 ness of chemistry is only seen when it is looked at on its vital side 
 there we may best perceive the proofs of the variety, variability, depth, 
 subtlety, of the changes wh it comprises. Vary the conditions under wh 
 chem force acts, and the results in beauty, excellence, multiplicity, are 
 inconceivable. 
 
 In physiology final causes have practically been regarded as efficient 
 causes wh cannot be. These can be only the present conditions : 
 
 (1) The condition of original cell : materials and mode of 
 combination. 
 
 (2) The food : materials and chem action. 
 
 (3) The conditions external and chiefly physical : pressure, heat, 
 
 presence of oxygen, &c. 
 
 Is this the explanation of hybernation, trance, &c. : if the conditions 
 necessary to decay of body not present, and the vital resistance is not 
 destroyed by cold no necessity for food ? 
 
 Is it not probable that the chem properties of matter have really been 
 gradually developed, from the action of other forces ? [ozone] May not 
 the greater heat of the earlier period have had much to do with producing 
 the chem properties of matter ; may they not be in measure the results 
 and representatives of that heat ? And may not the diiferent [? inferior] 
 chem properties of matter in the earlier world partly account for the 
 different (inferior) life ? If chem force and .-. chem action are developing, 
 vital action must of necessity develope also. And perhaps it was from the 
 simpler [more feeble] chemistry that greater heat was required for pro- 
 duction of life, and that lower forms of life resulted from the larger 
 amount of heat : equal heat now produces much more vital effect. So 
 may the successive gradations and advance of life on earth be result and 
 indication of successive gradations and advance of chem force ? Does 
 Geology indicate a comparative absence of chem action in the earliest 
 (lifeless) -strata, where only simple rocks are found ; and as evidences of 
 complex chem action increase, so are the forms of life more numerous ? 
 But does the absence of chem action indicate non-existence of chem force ? 
 It is probable, surely. Then from heat and other forces chem affinity was 
 developed and began its work, first altering the rocks and then [having 
 attained sufficient intensity ?] producing, or having presented to it, the 
 special resistance, life arose, and increased just as chem affinity had done 
 before it. For do not all the arguments previously used respecting life 
 apply to chem force thus considered ? The prior forces produced it, 
 meeting in some way with the specific chemical resistance : might it not 
 easily arise from heat thro' electricity ? Then it wd go on and multiply,
 
 24 
 
 the original source still continuing to produce it and doubtless operating 
 all the more freely because of its existence [as chcm action is more free 
 when electric circuit is complete] so was not chem action developed? 
 After a certain point it met with the specific vital resistance, and life 
 and its development -were in the same way the result. The advancing 
 chemistry of the world causing advancing life is the same thing as a 
 more complex chemistry of food causing higher life. And are there not 
 specific differences of chem action wh we do not appreciate ? 
 
 Also may not the intense heat of the globe wh previously existed have 
 been itself result of the force, the resistance, wh turned its gravi- 
 tating motion at right angles [a percussion e. g.] ? May we suppose that 
 motion to have been extremely rapid, and a part of it stopped and con- 
 verted into heat ; wh gradually turned partly into chem action ? A time 
 wd surely come when the cosmical heat wd cease to be converted into 
 other force, an equilib reached as it were the specific heat of the globe. 
 Wd not this correspond with the complete development of life ? If heat 
 induced the tension known as chem affinity, union should produce heat ; 
 it is a re-conversion of the affinity ; as wires in electric tension from 
 chem action united by an electrolyte reproduce the chem tension. Thus 
 the conversion of heat prevents its dissipation. Is it not probable that 
 the heat formed the atmosphere : vaporized it from a solid state ? 
 
 Is not the idea of the dissipation of heat into space parallel to the idea 
 of the deconip of the living body as a mere waste ? That heat shd have 
 produced ' affinity,' &c., is it not as decomp produces vital action : waste 
 forces used ? 
 
 Throughout the development of embryo, some of the first formed cells 
 break down and impart their substance and their life to develope other 
 adjacent cells. Vessels and heart, &c., fonned by such deliquescence of 
 interior cells : and this process going on under pressure causes higher 
 development. 
 
 Gold is dissolved in H. C., if it is in contact with another portion 
 dipped in N 5 and divided by porous septum : no action until contact, 
 then solution and electricity. This is like solution of zinc by S Os, when 
 wires are joined. A state of tension induced, wh an opposite action 
 permits to operate. Is it not like effect of yeast in fermentation ? Is 
 there not a similar relation among the bodily organs ? Is not a vital 
 tension given to the blood in the spleen, e. g. by decomp, wh produces 
 vital action in the liver ? and so with leaves and other parts of plants ? 
 
 In development of silkworm into moth : (1) The spinning of coccoon 
 is a chem action, wh is converted into vital : also no doubt the material 
 is altered in requisite mode ; it being an excretion too. It is like the 
 action of the liver. (2) The hard case of the chrysalis compels the vital 
 action to assume form of development and not of extension. Is it not 
 a great functional exertion followed by sleep, causing development ? For 
 it appears that development is due [? altogether] to pressure ; i. e. me- 
 chanical obstruction to multiplication of cells ; wh seems the primary 
 form of vital action. The impossibility of extending offers a a specific 
 resistance to formation of cells, wh converts it into development, i. e. 
 turns it inwards instead of outwards. The vital action instead of mul- 
 tiplying cells externally, intensifies internal vital state. [See B. & F. 
 Aled. Ch. Rev. Physical Morphology. 
 
 Surely the spinning the coecoon of the caterpillar is the analogue of
 
 25 
 
 the absorption [a chem decompn] of parts that are replaced by higher 
 forms in the embryo. Does not the caterpillar develope into moth as 
 leaves into flower ; i. e. when it cannot overcome the resistance. Then 
 what in the flowering answers to the secretion of the cocoon ? 
 
 The embryo and the brain are under ' hydraulic ' pressure ; as also 
 the retina and labyrinth. Is the heart what it is partly for same reason ; 
 is not its action very akin to that of nerve centres ? It is from the 
 first under peculiar pressure. 
 
 Is the natural pressure on the brain the reason that increased pressure 
 so soon stops its function ? 
 
 Is it possible to trace the earliest developt of simplest animals to the 
 arising of such pressure ; a gradual progress upwards from simple cells ? 
 Is vital action simply, i. e. cell growth, the result of simple resistance ; 
 development complex vital action result of compound resistance : i. e. 
 vital resistance plus pressure ? Had the earliest animals all thick skins ? 
 Is not the developt of each part due to the varying pressure : e. g. the 
 muscular system in centre of body because there the greatest pressure ? 
 arms and legs because at their origin there was at one time less Can 
 this have anything to do with sex a greater pressure on male from its 
 greater size ? Does not Repair exhibit the law of primary formation ? 
 in all instances, except subcutaneous, there is, first, formation of cells, 
 wh do not assume a higher form unless they are pressed upon as by 
 skinning over, Are not the contractions of healthy wounds analogous 
 to the contractions wh take place in development ? 
 
 Surely the ductless glands, especially the temporary ones those wh 
 subserve developt strictly are analogous to the immature organs wh are 
 successively absorbed in the embryo : the chem action wh goes on in 
 them becomes the developmental action of other parts. 
 
 Since extension of low structure, and development into higher, are 
 admittedly convertible, does it not follow that resistance to extension 
 must produce development ? 
 
 Are any tissues that perform function fully developed until they have 
 performed that function ? tho' they attain a form that fits them to com- 
 mence the function ; as the heart is at first a contractile cell. Consider 
 the developt of the organs of animal life, and especially the slow growth 
 of intellect the inferior kind of action that precedes the right. 
 
 Spontaneous decompn may take place in a part altho' vital action is 
 going on all around, from alteration of its conditions : wh may very 
 likely arise from the developt itself, and this in many ways ; but one of 
 the most beautiful would be that it should be the result of the increased 
 pressure, wh destroys the lower form and developes higher at the same 
 time. So' the very growth of the new structure might cause that decomp 
 of the old wh furnishes its vital force. In the galvanic trough we have 
 chem decomp, i. e. action according to chem affinities, producing action 
 opposed to them, separation of elements of water chem action in one 
 direction causing chem action in opposite. 
 
 In the marsupials, the lowest mammalia, the pressure of the uterus is 
 earliest withdrawn. They come out undeveloped, and develope no more. 
 The marsupial pouch is part of their incomplete developt, and useful. 
 
 Is not the production of monsters generally this : that the conditions 
 are altered, and chiefly perhaps that the resistance or pressure is with- 
 drawn, as by a division or wound ; the limiting membrane removed ?
 
 26 
 
 So there is a new start under the same conditions as produced the original 
 member e. g. and of necessity another forms. 
 
 Uses of the egg shell. 1. Protection. 2. Pressure, causing develpt, 
 3. Lime, for bones. 4. As the lime is taken up it becomes thinner, and 
 allows exit of chicken. The harder shell from lime causes the higher 
 developt ; the higher developt [from pressure] causes need for lime. 
 
 Animals below mammalia have eggs wh cannot enlarge ; the bird the 
 largest, and the most highly organized food also [the yolk]. In mammalia 
 the egg itself as it were enlarges, maintains pressure but also admits of 
 growth, at same time or alternately ; hence the wider as well as higher 
 developt. The chick turns at close of incubation from transverse to 
 long axis of egg. 
 
 The decay of one organ as higher one arises, wh is so constant in 
 developt, is essentially the same as developt from function. It is most 
 typical in formation of germinal membrane. May not the pressure 
 becoming too great at particular parts be one cause of the local decays 
 wh play so important a part in developt ? 
 
 The frog has no allantois in its egg ; snakes, lizards and turtles have : 
 the frog not developed into a reptile until [?] the skin of the tadpole has 
 acted as an allantois for it. Does not the developt of the allantois 
 between the laminoe press the embryo like contracting skin does the 
 chrysalis in developt of caterpillar ? 
 
 There is little real difference between alternate generation and meta- 
 morphosis : in the former an entire death, in the latter a partial death ; 
 but the essential change is the same. It is parallel to developt from 
 function and by ' replacement.' 
 
 Function and metamorphosis are developt from partial decomposition. 
 
 Emplacement and alternate reproduction are developt from entire 
 decomposition. 
 
 Does not each grade of living matter, as it decomposes, supply force 
 for a somewhat higher life ? So animals devouring one another is a 
 necessity. And do not highly organized plants come within the same 
 law ? In development from function and replacement there is a second 
 momentum of force in addition to the source wh causes the first develpt, 
 and wh continues in operation. Hence the more rapid and higher 
 developt of parts thus formed So in the developt of life on earth, the 
 original momentum of chem action continues, and in addition there is 
 perhaps added the decomp of ever higher forms of life. If decomp of 
 an embryonic part causes developt for a higher one, why not decay of 
 one species cause developt of a higher ? 
 
 In the order of mechanical developt, it appears that first came the 
 longitudinal folds and then the lateral, e. g. the lateral fold of the 
 Articulata the segments of the spinal column succeeding the uniform 
 chorda dorsalis. The transverse striae of muscles, coming after the 
 formation of longitudinal fibrilla. Are not the wings [? and legs] of 
 butterfly, wh are merely folds of skin, partly the new skin vh would 
 have formed on the caterpillar ; assuming that form perhaps because of 
 smaller size of butterfly : as if there were a redundancy of skin used up 
 in these appendages ? 
 
 The design of embryo or seed in plants and animals that can also 
 propagate by gemmation clearly is to continue the life under conditions 
 inwh either generation cannot go on, or the individual cannot exist;
 
 27 
 
 and the circumstances wh cause their production are those wh render 
 propagation by gemmation impossible for want of external force then 
 force of same character is generated. So puberty comes when the 
 formative force has reached its acme. Surely if the value of external forces 
 were increased relatively to the life, gemmation would be possible to 
 higher animals than now. And thus we see how it is that a people are 
 rendered more prolific by hardships and privation. It is failing life 
 causes reproduction. So in higher animals growth is immediate productn 
 of highest form : reproduction gives first the lowest form and higher only 
 by means of growth. 
 
 Surely the hard case of a seed has for one of its uses to exclude the 
 conditions wh produce chem action to suspend all action in fact like a 
 pendulum supported up and not suffered to descend. The entire series of 
 motions recommences when it descends again. So a seed inaugurates a 
 whole life when once the conditions for chem action return. What is 
 the peculiar condition of those animals wh allows chem action nearly 
 to cease and vital resistance to remain ? Cold kills a bud, but not a 
 seed ; also a bud dies if it does not grow, but not a seed ; i. e. in latter 
 the vital resistance ceases, but not in former. So in a muscle, not used, the 
 vital resistance ceases to a certain extent, and the decomposing changes do 
 not excite growth. Do not these facts lead to the idea that the vital 
 resistance like other specific resistances is often the result of some con- 
 dition, quality or amount of the very force wh is resisted ? 
 
 May it not be that chemistry is different in the other planets, and even 
 that other elements are used for life ; and thus the differences in the 
 conditions of other worlds from ours be no reasons against life in them, 
 i. e. such life as exists here; may be exactly the conditions wh are 
 necessary to their life ? Also their internal heat may be much greater ; 
 may it indeed be the result of a greater resistance to their original 
 gravitating motion ? 
 
 Am I not using chem action twice over, in attributing to it both function 
 and vitalization or is the function not a consumption or conversion of 
 the chem action ? e. g. secretion is the chem action itself the secreted 
 fluids the result of it, like the sulphate of zinc in the galvanic trough. 
 Is muscular motion like the explosion from gunpowder ; the force of the 
 molecular change remaining ? 
 
 Is it certain that the elements in living bodies do fully retain their 
 chem affinities ? Do they not need to be renewed by other forces ? and 
 are not the stimuli of function really sometimes converted into chem 
 affinity or action, as light is by acting on chlorine ? "Without stimulus 
 would not the decomp of animal organs be too slow and feeble too much 
 resisted ? to afford vital action ; as a pendulum may fall from a great 
 height with resisted motion and scarcely rise at all ? The intensity of 
 descent is the cause of rise. 
 
 Surely Metamorphosis bears closest analogy to true reproduction. Is 
 it not when growth ceases ; as puberty arises ? Is it not indeed the 
 puberty of the animal ? The male part of the caterpillar spins the 
 female part developes into moth. 
 
 Keproduction is of necessity stationary, if not often retrogressive ; as 
 it must be because it is the result of insufficient force to maintain 
 developt. All real advance is by developt or gemmation ; and by these 
 processes the highest forms having been reached, reprodn ensues, and
 
 28 
 
 generally, if not always, of lowest. If by virtue of increase of the 
 forces wh constitute life those higher forms, wh now ' reproduce,' could 
 themselves gemmate or develope into higher form, we might have still 
 farther advance of animal life, and true reprodn be deferred still longer. 
 When developt can go no farther, in animals that undergo metamorphosis 
 
 i. e . when the vital action can no longer be maintained at its proceeding 
 
 height [either from deficient chem action or from the resistance wh has 
 interfered with its prodn of vital action] then true reprodn ensues, and 
 the lowest form recurs. But if those forces wh produce the vital action 
 [thro' the chem] were in more powerful operation ; or if the vital action 
 were less resisted, there is no reason why developt should not proceed 
 much farther. And probably in the early period of each successive 
 creation, when animal life was much scarcer, and perhaps the chem 
 properties of the world were themselves developing the forces were in 
 this relation to living creatures wh is necessary for development. We 
 do not see this action go on as it did in earlier ages, because this era of 
 the world appears to have arrived at its full developt ; life is as high as 
 the conditions permit, and chem force may have attained its maximum. 
 True reproduction always produces the lowest form, wh then goes thro' 
 its developt to the highest ; wh again reproduces. Is there not here a 
 sort of argument for the real developt of all animals from lowest [or 
 low] forms, for transformations in embryo and an animal are the same : 
 .. higher animals do really pass thro' these lower stages, and they are 
 the same, just as hydra tuba and medusa are. But only the last or 
 highest form reproduces ; because in all the other forms the forces ' wh 
 produce life are in excess and carry it on to higher forms. In high 
 animals is it not only during the embryonic life that the forces are in the 
 excess requisite for causing developt? Metamorphosis .-.is not a form 
 of reproduction [except in so far as it results partly from a decomposition] 
 but rather an opposite process. Thus reprodn well includes the simplest 
 form of union of contents of two ordinary cells of filarise, &c, The union 
 takes place at end of life when they can no longer grow ; and doubtless 
 the cells tho' apparently similar, are really in opposite state, as proved 
 indeed by the very fact of their union. 
 
 If the forms of medusa wh arise from its ova, i. e. the hydra, existed 
 under cover in utero or in ovo its history wd be precisely that of higher 
 animals, all of wh undergo metamorphosis in embrvo state. The identity 
 of embryonic metamorphoses and those of hydra, &c., is recognized ; and 
 if these metamorphoses of hydra took place in an embryo, surely they 
 would be modified .-.as medusa is a developed hydra, surely higher 
 animals are developments of the lowest form wh they present in embryo : 
 the facts are the same in the two series of cases. The ovum in both cases 
 first gives the lowest form, wh developes into the higher ; and all the 
 phna agree the greater reproductive power of young animals, and of 
 low organisms, &c. 
 
 "Whence comes the equilibrium of external and vital action wh causes 
 constancy of species ? 
 
 Consider the high advantages of the two parents of human offspring 
 and yet they exist from that simple necessity, wh we see in the starved 
 hydra, of having action imparted to the ovum by internal decompn 
 the need of supplying deficiency of external force. 
 
 Heat produces development of embryo, &c., by its conversion into con-
 
 29 
 
 tinually more and more complex and powerful chem action ; and was it 
 not so in the early world that it produced dcvclopt of living races in the 
 same way ? and no developt now because these changes are no longer 
 progressive : life has attained its maximum in relation to them. So the 
 successive epochs of the world probably have been the origination from 
 a simple form of force of various others, ending in life : and when the 
 series was complete and the original force thus all converted, or at least 
 brought to equilib, then a destruction of that order and a new commence- 
 ment, and probably always from a higher point to a higher end ? The 
 idea is that the early world was one great embryo: what takes place 
 in one surely may take place in many, and the persistence of lowest 
 forms with higher is as the continued existence of lowest forms the 
 simple cells in highest animals ; while yet the higher tissues are also 
 directly formed ; and especially they are reproduced by function, which 
 is a true reproduction. 
 
 With this view of reprodn as a result of partial or comparative failure 
 of vital state, leading to a decompn wh initiates a new vital action, the 
 the general vital phna well agree. See e. g. the liver : the blood having 
 attained a comparatively high condition, its vital state fails ; that de- 
 compn wh constitutes the secretion of bile ensues, as the result of wh 
 first arises the liver itself, and as its continued result the higher vitali- 
 zation of the blood. 
 
 Why as an animal advances in organization, does it become bisexual ? 
 
 Is not the sympathetic system, the nervous system of the lower organs, 
 the result of their lower life ; as the cerebral system is of the higher 
 life of the serous layer ? 
 
 How is it that nerves are regenerated after division or loss of a portion, 
 and muscles not ? Is is that the action of the tissues at cut ends of the 
 nerves causes their function, wh produces their growth again, as at first ? 
 
 How far are diseases, and especially morbid formations, as tubercle, 
 due to want of the proper functional decompn [wh reproduces vital 
 action] and the substitution of a lower form of decompn wh has uo 
 power to regenerate life, or even so to destroy the tissues as to admit of 
 their removal ? Thus after function probably oxidation takes place of 
 the decomposed tissue, wh removes it and supplies vital action ; but if 
 no function the tissue does not admit of oxidation : effete tissue remains, 
 and no vital action is caused so deficient chem action as well as ex- 
 cessive is the cause of decay. 
 
 Thus animals are dependent npon external stimuli ; they are needed to 
 maintain the requisite chem action, and the effects of them are the 
 functions. So a double adaptation : the animal lives by the stimuli in 
 a double sense, its animal life is evolved by them, and from that results 
 the continued and increased organic life. 
 
 How is it that there is appetite for proper food ? the animal and plant 
 tend to that chem action from wh they arise, as structures that arise 
 from a given function perform that function ? So each animal tends in 
 respect of food to that particular chem action to wh its organization is 
 due. Thus artificial appetites created by use of unnatural food; the 
 nerves of taste, as other nerves, formed by their function. Thus arises 
 education of senses. 
 
 There seems a very close resemblance between function of liver and 
 leaves, because iu case of liver new material is brought for assimilation,
 
 30 
 
 as carbonic acid is to leaves. The nitrogen given off by leaves under 
 light analogous to bile ? 
 
 The various grades of animals indicate that at each such grade the 
 vital action wh is concerned in their formation is exhausted : there is no 
 more external force; the conditions for further vital action are not 
 present ; as indeed we see the less provision for continued growth and 
 development with each descending step. The reproductive character is 
 sign and consequence of the cessation [exhaustion] of the vital action. 
 A fish e. g. is the embryo of a higher animal for the developt of wh 
 force is wanting, and wh .'. instead of gemmating and developing, re- 
 produces. It maintains an undeveloped vitality [wh embryo of higher 
 animal could not do] because the conditions are suitable. Here the dif- 
 ference of embryo of higher from the lower in proportion of force. 
 
 How like the "first formation of cells is to crystallization ! We might 
 almost hold that the formation of the simple cell is the analogue the 
 opposite of crystallization ; and that so far vital action might be pro- 
 duced by mere inorganic chem action : chem change becoming vitalizatn 
 and crystallizatn becoming cell formation ; but that a higher form or 
 manner of vital action can result only from decomp of organic matter. 
 Hence the gradual advance of life, from simplest cells to highest forms : 
 the successive forms providing the possibility of needful chem action for 
 the more advanced. 
 
 Limbs are gemmations, truly distinct individuals ; [and the vertebrate 
 type has been traced in them] but they do not form repetitions of parent 
 they are very inferior the vital action cannot go on so far : i. e. they 
 are between gemmation and ovo-production. In short the highest animal, 
 no less than the lowest plant, consists of an aggregate of individuals 
 produced by gemmation, but in higher animals instead of each gemmation 
 being an individual like parent, they are of various grades of aborti veness, 
 and are bound into a whole, each having special function and structure ; 
 but the structure probably determined by the function and that by the 
 circumstances under wh each is formed. Each successive gemmation 
 becomes less and less complete, until nothing more than ova result ; wh 
 are the very lowest form, and merely decay unless they receive an extra 
 supply of force. But if this be so, the reason for the different forms 
 &c. assumed by each part must be sought for in the conditions under wh 
 each gemmation takes place, and one of the chief surely will be the 
 relation borne by the vital action to the external resistance. And this 
 relation may vary in two modes : either by excessive vital action at a 
 part, or by local diminutions of pressure : probably the latter mostly. 
 So the mammal does in reality consist of many lower animals joined 
 into one, the individuality of each being lost and having imparted to it 
 instead an individual function, just as we see in lower forms of life that 
 animal forms of little complexity are formed by union into one of several 
 distinct animals of cellular form, and the cells so joined acauire more or 
 less specific characters. And may the special qualities of animals depend 
 latently upon the characteristics of these components the stage or mode 
 of their development ? 
 
 Higher animals probably do not undergo fewer gemmations than lower, 
 but these take place in the embryonic state, wh causes the successive 
 gemmae instead of becoming distinct animals to develope into portions of 
 one ; i. e. by virtue of the greater resistance : just as many individuals,
 
 
 31 
 
 in the shape of leaves, go to the formation of a flower, for similar reason. 
 See here the true oneness of many individuals : the many lower animals 
 from gemmation, surely as much one as the one higher, from gemmation 
 also. Here the oneness of humanity ? Think how a man is such many 
 together of lower : but does it indicate the true relations of lower ? 
 
 Are not the lobes of a leaf analogous ; for these little irregularities of 
 form must be referred to same law as production of new individuals. 
 
 The eye and the ear are gemmae produced without function : but then 
 are they not very slightly advanced ? Consider the likeness they present 
 to the lowest forms of animal life. The eye, the first gemma, surely 
 represents a ' monad,' or something very like ; is it a gemmation in 
 monad stage of embryo, retaining its condition ? The ear formed after- 
 wards stereotypes the molluscous stage of the animal? cochlea and 
 canals. The reason eye and ear ' gemmate ' when they do is that there 
 exists at that time and in that place an ' interspace,' or place where 
 resistance is less than elsewhere. The eye appears very low : is it more 
 than a cell greatly enlarged the lens being the nucleus, as it were ; the 
 liquid humors the result of deliquescence. The choroid pigment certainly 
 not indicative of a high grade : the transparent cornea and pupil steps to 
 an aperture ; the pupillary membrane really absorbed. Is it more than 
 a step above the nose and mouth, wh are mere negations in respect to 
 their cavities ; results of deliquescence. In lowest animals the ear is a 
 simple cell ; with a calcareous nucleus in shape of otolith ? Are the 
 canals gemmations from it ? Does not the ear give evidence of having 
 been formed under greater resistance than the eye ? Do rudimentary 
 organs indicate a greater resistance to that particular gemmation, neces- 
 sarily attended with greater development or growth of other part ; unless 
 there is evidence also of a diminished general vital action ? Generally 
 they indicate increased gemmation or growth elsewhere compared with 
 other animals, wh, not being expressions of greater totality of vital action, 
 possess the organs more developed, e. g. rudimentary mammae of male. 
 But their existence indicates that in every animal that possesses them 
 there has been for a short time or to a slight extent a diminution of re- 
 sistance at that part, showing the physical cause of the formation of 
 various organs : the inevitable diminution of resistance, in the process of 
 growth, at those points. Is here a light upon replacement in develop, of 
 embryo ? The temporary organs formed because of the constant dinon of 
 resistance wh arises at those points. But why they decay is not so clear : 
 why does vital action cease in them ? It is the same as the successive 
 fall of leaves, but is it from similar cause ? do they all fulfil a temporary 
 function ? 
 
 In gemmation from axils is there not true relation of veget and animal 
 forms ? and it embraces surely under the formula of least resistance the 
 inorganic ramifications of similar form. In vegetables and animals the 
 process of gemmation is not only similar, it is identical ; as is well seen 
 in lowly developed forms such as simple glands in animals : and in plants, 
 in highly developed parts, as flowers, it is obscured. It embraces the 
 branching of blood-vessels, surely : everything that is truly ' dendritic ' 
 comes within its primary formula ; and in its highest generalizations it 
 includes the most complicated animal form ; of course it is always under- 
 stood that the general vital action is continually increasing. 
 
 The five fingers and toes form a whorl as in flowers, and the lobes of a
 
 32 
 
 loaf arc the same. Here is evidence of the theoretical construction of 
 the animal. Five- toed animals are of a quantupal group ; three- toed of 
 a triplet group : a general distinction between hirds and mammals. A 
 classification here both for animals and plants. But how do the four 
 limbs come ? are they not truly five ? are not the various forms of limbs 
 whorls, presenting some analogy to the vegetable whorls ? 
 
 What is the inference from the external auditory canal compared with 
 the smaller aperture of eye ? It shows that both are lowly organized 
 the highly organized structures stand out, not recede ; the comparative 
 question is not clear, for the eye is manifestly pushed out by cerebral 
 developt, more than ear, and the external orifice tho' shorter is much 
 larger. How exact the homology of auricle and eyelid. The deliques- 
 cence to form canals and organs is a kind of male and female action a 
 feeding, or replacement. How much larger a proportion of lower animals 
 is hollow, and the oesophagus passes thro' the superior nervous ganglion. 
 
 That brain is lower than muscle is surely proved by the abundant 
 gemmation that takes place from artificial axil and also from more perfect 
 reproduction. 
 
 In Doris, part of bile at once excreted, and ink of cuttle fish is 
 probably the same. Note the provision for gaining largest amount of 
 vital action from decompn. In function the resulting compounds are no 
 longer available for nutrition, i. e> of the animal itself, tho' they nourish 
 plants, but the stimulus being also converted into vital action, by inten- 
 sifying the chemical there is an increase of vital action with absence of 
 materials : hence the demand for food, and the increased vital action is 
 ready to include it in its scope. In mere passive decompn the total vital 
 action cannot be increased, but the materials are nutritive. Thus the two 
 forms of decomp are complementary ; the functional withdraws materials 
 from body, but increases total vital action, the passive decomp supplies 
 materials : so from function and passive decomp may result both materials 
 and their vitalization. Therefore when the bile or other secretions that 
 might be nutritive are thrown off from the body the inference is either 
 that there has not been increased vital action enough to vitalize and ' use ' 
 them [perhaps from insufficient function] or else that all the increased 
 vital action is to be concentrated on small bulk and not diffused over 
 largest possible amount of material See the diminished bulk and high 
 developt wh in metamorphosis follow a large excretion, and therapeutically 
 is not this partially the good of a free excretion of bile in disease : it 
 gives a truly increased vital action concentrates it as it were in smaller 
 bulk than if the bile were again absorbed. 
 
 Do not all organs, as well as animals, reproduce in both ways : by 
 gemmation and by decompn, in proportion to relative resistance ? see this 
 in blood-vessels ; they form in part by gemmation like a tree, in part by 
 hollowing out of channels. 
 
 That vital action consists in an upward motion produced by resistance 
 to and consequent turning of a downward motion, may be put as a part 
 of the doctrine of least resistance. Now mere increase of life, as in 
 growth or gemmation, consists in successive uprisings of the growing 
 body from successive descents of other bodies, external to itself, [or we 
 might say ' continuous' for ' successive '] Reproduction is true pendulum 
 motion, where the rise of the body is caused by its own partial descent. 
 Thus between gemmation and sexual reproduction there is no essential
 
 33 
 
 difference ; merely that of wholly external or of partially internal decomp. 
 
 It is glorious that all organic forms are but results of that simple law 
 of least resistance. What an ever increasing multitude of resources : 
 for each new form multiplies by all its own possibilities of combination 
 the possible of all other forms. Thus God created all things by the word 
 of His power no exertion ; it was but a divine permission and it was 
 done. In fact it might truly be said that God did not create the forms 
 at all. The same law must apply to inorganic world ; and gives perhaps 
 some clue to the general oppositeness of form of organic and inorganic 
 matter : to the opposite form of action must not the resistance present 
 itself in opposite ways ? 
 
 The animal world may be regarded as ' an animal,' and has been 
 developed as an animal is developed : i. e. the lowest orders first, but 
 the highest forms of those orders and after, the inferior ones according 
 to their necessity ; i. e. the function they performed. Orders and species 
 are determined by their mutual relation ; the work there is for them to 
 do. As e. g. those wh live on decomposing matter the ' scavenger ' 
 animals, wh are surely a type of the secreting or rather excreting gland. 
 Those animals wh come into existence because as it were the proper food 
 for them exists, bear a manifest analogy to developt of various organs in 
 body. Constancy of species and reprodn of same, do not militate against 
 such a view that is the case with the tissues of the body ; they repro- 
 duce themselves and are constant in character, yet they are none the less 
 one in origin and the result of developt from a common stock. 
 
 Electricity may cause chem union by making little magnets of the 
 particles, but may it not also decompose : thus, a particle of positive O 
 or negative H uniting constitute a neutral mass probably with a direction 
 of greatest length. Electricity applied to it causes it to become polar ; 
 their polar state of course draws them to the opposite terminals : it is 
 chem affinity assuming form of magnetism. Instead of the two particles 
 of and H being drawn together and forming a chem compound, the 
 masses of and H are placed in polar relation to each other being 
 virtually a magnet. And to say that they are attracted by the respective 
 poles is same as saying that they attract bodies in opposite polar state, wh 
 is precisely what the magnet does. Thus take and H mixed, apply 
 electcy and polarity is developed causing chem union, and thus again a 
 neutral state : apply more electcy and an opposite polarity is developed, 
 causing again a separation and restoration to gaseous state. But even 
 when freely passing the electric motion still consists of the two elements 
 the suction and the pressure in wh it originates, and these in magnet 
 separate in opposite directions hence the rectangular direction of the 
 two forces. The effect of a bar of iron across an electric current is to 
 permit a recurrence of the original form of the action but in a diminished 
 intensity or power. 
 
 The electricity becomes magnetism because the length of the iron bar 
 is the direction of least resistance, e. g. it is thicker : or even if itself 
 presented greater resistance it wd offer less to the passage of a part ; and 
 in fact the whole of an electric current never does become magnetism, 
 because the wire at a certain point must again present least resistance. 
 Is it not really like alternate growth and gemmation? 
 
 Was it not marvellous of Coleridge to affirm the correspondence of 
 reprodn with magnetism ? But then shd electcy correspond with growth 
 
 D
 
 34 
 
 and chem action with developt ? [The centrip and centrif motions are 
 at right angles like electricity and magnetism.] 
 
 Is not one cause of a specific form of resistance i. e. of the special 
 direction of least resistance the previous existence of a given kind of 
 action, or tendency to it ? If a body is in any kind of tension almost 
 any force takes the form of the action to wh it tends. So ' stimuli ' 
 become ' functions ' because of the previous tendency ; or may they, in 
 state of vital tension, be directly turned into vital action ? Is electcy, 
 in friction, derived from stopped motion, when one of the resisting par- 
 ticles yields more than another ; a relative pressure and suction arising ? 
 And for heat and electcy produced by chem action, may not both be truly 
 result of friction ; i. e. friction of the particles during the motion in wh 
 chem action consists ? heat from rapid and unhindered chem action ; 
 friction extremely rapid : electricity from chem action when slow and 
 hindered, as acid and alkali uniting thro' a porous medium ; the friction 
 less intense and so a less powerful action results. But this idea, of 
 friction, is not sufficient : the heat of chem union is from a tension, or 
 force stored up ; and may it be that electricity is the primary form, so to 
 speak, and appears unaltered from slow action ; but when- the action is 
 very rapid it is changed into heat, as a strong current is in a thin wire. 
 
 Are chem union and chem disunion the same thing, viz. the making 
 of an a-polar body polar ? thus : chem union results from making neutral 
 separate particles polar, wh unite : chem disunion from making neutral 
 united particles polar, wh .. separate. The neutral separate particles 
 absolutely a-polar, so that when polarity is given to them they have each 
 but a single polarity wh leads to union ; but the neutral united particles 
 have a polarity, altho' mutually neutralized. "When .-. another polarity 
 is imparted to them they have a double polarity wh may be in opposite 
 directions, the second neutralizing the first ; so that they become a-polar, 
 and their bond of union is destroyed. Thus the analysis of a compound 
 by heat is like heat destroying magnetism. Heat acting on ice, first 
 produces water and contraction ; then steam and expansion : is there 
 analogy here to its producing first chem union and then disunion ? Is 
 the ultimate idea of chem affinity not so much a union of two substances 
 as an opposite motion or tendency thereto in the particles of one substance? 
 
 Matter should not be regarded as consisting of atoms at all, but rather 
 as a mere homogeneous [? infinitely divisible] mass with no tendencies 
 or 'belongings ' at all [save perhaps gravitation] except such as result 
 from the operation of force, to wh it yields absolutely, and without as it 
 were making any conditions for itself, save such as result from the 
 operation of other forms of force. Would not this be to make matter 
 spate endowed with gravitation; is not this an approach to the true 
 idea ? 
 
 In truth, gravitation wd seem to be not only the great original force, 
 but in its form of cohesion the great resistance : converter and regulator 
 of force. 
 
 All resistance, and all conversion of force, are the same as life as above 
 defined viz. a turning round of action or motion upon itself and its 
 assuming not only a different but eventually an opposite direction, 
 gravitation being the primary action the resistance of it causes of ne- 
 cessity an action opposed to it ; resistance to approxn of matter must 
 produce divergence : if of masses it produces centrif force [?] : if of
 
 35 
 
 particles, heat, electricity, &c. Thus all forms of action divide them- 
 selves into approximating and diverging, gravitating and centrifugal, 
 chemical or decomposing and vital : and these three pairs are essentially 
 the same. It is easy to see that all the cosrnical forces [excepting for 
 the present the vital] do arrange themselves under one or other of these 
 two heads. They are of the gravitating or centripetal class ; or of the 
 centrifugal or diverging class. And the two tho' in one sense opposed 
 are in another sense the same ; and they are continually converted into 
 each other : the gravitating, resisted, become the diverging ; the diverging 
 perpetually re-constitute furnish the conditions for the gravitating. 
 
 As the total amount of force cannot alter, so neither can the total re- 
 sistance surely : it may change its form but must ever be the same. 
 
 Centrip and centrif forces alternating and mutually producing, i. e. 
 permitting and becoming each other is the law of the world's internal 
 changes as well as of its external relations. 
 
 A magnet beautifully illustrates the centrip and centrif forces in sta- 
 tionary condition, and how the one is but the continuation of the other. 
 The same thing is seen in an aerial vibration, and in addition how the 
 centripetal action becomes centrifugal by resistance ; the pressure 
 becomes the suction : the node being the imaginary centre ; the 
 essential idea of a vibration being the union in one form of matter of the 
 two forces. This is Coleridge's idea. Life (in largest sense) constitutes 
 thus a great Vibration. And again an aerial stationary vibration represnts 
 an individual life the alternate action of the two forms of force the 
 gravitating becoming the divergent, the divergent allowing the gravitating. 
 
 Is not the radiation of heat the effect not of any active tendency of 
 heat itself, but simply of the gravitating or contracting action of the 
 heated body, like the decomp of a living tissue ? It is in that sense a 
 vibration, as it is propagated, viz. that it is an action of divergent class 
 followed by one of gravitating class : the being hot is the former, the 
 radiating is the latter a pressure and a suction. 
 
 The magnet represents the vibration of condensation and rarefaction 
 rendered permanent, unchanging : electric tension is the vibration 
 analysed, divided : the two halves separate as it were. The electric 
 current represents the progressive aerial vibration consisting as it must 
 do of a succession of suctions and pressures succeeding each other as the 
 successive ' particles ' unite. A bar of iron under influence of a to and 
 fro current constantly reversing its direction represents a ' stationary ' 
 vibration ; one oscillating from end to end. Chem action also is a vi- 
 bration : the polar state is of divergent class, the union is of gravitating 
 class : it is a stationary vibration ; but instead of oscillating backwards 
 and forwards it neutralizes itself. It is like a vibration destroyed by 
 another at half distance and remaining so destroyed ; as if when in that 
 position they were fixed together. Have we not an analogue of frictional 
 electricity in the longitudinal vibrations produced by rubbing a bar of 
 glass with the finger, or the sonorous vibrations produced by similar 
 means in a drinking glass ? In this case both forms of action are taken 
 up by the glass ; in electricity one only. Sonorous vibrations also are 
 freely conducted by the glass and by the air also wh electric ones are not. 
 
 May not a cause of the difference be that in producing these vibrations 
 in glass the pressure is intermittent ; in producing the electric tension 
 [the motion all in one direction] the pressure is continued ?
 
 36 
 
 Are not these wide laws of Nature ? 
 
 1. Motion is caused by attraction, or gravitation, and arises whenever 
 
 the approxmn of any portions of matter is not resisted [by 
 cohesion]. 
 
 2. Motion takes direction of least resistance. 
 
 3. Gravitating motion, resisted by cohesion, may be turned into a 
 
 divergent motion. 
 
 4. On the cessation of this divergent motion [wh is equal to the 
 
 gravitating motion resisted] gravitating motion recommences, if 
 the requisite conditions are present. 
 
 All force is gravitation, all action is motion, all resistance is cohesion. 
 The animal body is formed by these laws and all its life illustrates them. 
 All material changes arise from varying form of resistance, to varying 
 form of motion. May not the various elements be the result of one 
 attractive action variously resisted, owing to conditions such as now 
 determine various forms of resistance and of action ? 
 
 May not gravitation itself be an example of motion in direction of 
 least resistance ? the universe being a plenwn it seems possible that the 
 influence passing from one mass to another may be simply a mechanical 
 state of the intervening matter wh removes resistance in that direction ; 
 and then the ultimate property of matter might be only some relation of 
 portions immediately contiguous : even some repulsion ; and so not 
 attraction but repulsion be the primary ' force.' 
 
 But surely if the one gravitating motion with varied resistances can 
 account for all material changes, it may also for all the elements thro' 
 the division of motion by resistance. 
 
 The repulsion of particles in water if it co-exist with or depend upon 
 a drawing of the water towards them is like the spontaneous fission and 
 aggregation of yolk round the various portions into wh nucleus divides. 
 
 The centrip motion of the earth might be turned at right angles not 
 by any special resistance thence arising but because there might be a 
 direction of less retistance ; as electcy turns at right angles and becomes 
 magnetism from less resistance ; or perhaps a repellent power of the sun 
 had to do with it. 
 
 It appears that the changes wh the forces undergo may be arranged as 
 growth, gemmation, and development : viz., growth is continuance ; 
 gemmation, change of direction ; development, change into another form, 
 as heat from stopped motion. 
 
 One may advance a step towards the polar state wh exists in chem 
 action by means of the motion of the nitrogen away from the flame in 
 ordinary combustion : suppose that motion resisted, and a state of polar 
 tension at once arises. Now the fact of chem action instead of mere 
 mixture a stronger cohesion furnishes the resistance. Have we here 
 all the elements we need ? 
 
 Is it not probable also that chem polarity also [like magnetism] is at 
 r angles to the electric current ? thus so long as mixed gases merely 
 convey the electric current, possibly no other change; it may be the 
 turning of the polarity at r angles, its passing into two molecules one on 
 each side in opposite directions as it were, that causes chem action, or 
 the magnetism of mixed, freely moving, particles. Is the mode in wh 
 chem action becomes vital, such as this ? 
 
 The force and the resistance surely are one in this sense : the force is
 
 37 
 
 tendency to come together ; the resistance is reluctance to part, the same, 
 under different relations. And in the case of electric .transformns, the 
 original resistance wh causes it cohesion of metal is the same as the 
 successive resistances wh convert it. 
 
 The term vital cohesion appears right, but [theoretically] it precedes, 
 and does not result from, organization or even vitalization. It is the 
 cohesion by wh chem is made to become vital action the simplest and 
 lowest and .-. must precede all vital action and all its effects. More- 
 over it ceases while the organic constitution and organization continue ; 
 the resistance removed, while its effects for a time remain. But suppose 
 chem action taking place in relation to some matter [possessing vital 
 cohesion] wh does not yield to it : the tendency of the ehem action is to 
 continue, but the matter not yielding an attraction is exerted upon it 
 analogous to that wh is exerted upon the zinc plate in a galvanic trough. 
 Hence arises a state of tension or polarity of a peculiar character ; the 
 opposite polarity being also present. "What then results, but, in mobile 
 matter, a peculiar arrangement of the particles ; for portions of matter, 
 in this opposing polar state are little magnets, and, moving, unite with 
 opposite poles : is not this vital affinity ? What we see .-. in the living 
 body is in principle, what we see in a galvanic battery, when the polarity 
 excited in matter presenting resistance, by cohesion, is the continuance 
 of chem action, disuniting water, causes the and H to pass to opposite 
 poles of the battery ; or [wh wd happen if the conditions were present] 
 to unite with other substances at those poles. The differences are in 
 the kind of polarity, not in the nature of the action. 
 
 Suppose two forms of matter in juxtaposition, in one of wh heat pro- 
 duced union and in the other disunion of elements : then if heat were 
 applied to the first chem union wd result, and the heat from that might 
 cause the disunion of the other : i. e. an action like the vital. And a 
 mere spark might suffice to produce a large and long continued disunion, 
 from a gradual and continued chem union first set up. 
 
 The formation of ammoniuret of mercury by an electric current is as 
 much like vital action as anything we can find. Does it not show too 
 how other substances beside those wh enter here into living bodies might 
 constitute them elsewhere ? 
 
 May not matches be regarded as ova produced from heat, and waiting 
 for external ' stimuli ' to produce the ehem action wh causes its re- 
 development ? 
 
 For originating vital action the essential elements surely are (1) the 
 organic elements, viz. C H at least, and probably N. (2) a peculiar 
 [mechanical] cohesion. (3) chem action resisted by this special cohesion. 
 Hence wd result a special, vital, polarity of the elements wh wd cause 
 them to assume the organic composition. 
 
 Is not the motion that results from polarity a form of gravitating action 
 the polar state alone truly divergent action ? and thus do the two 
 together constitute a vibration ? Thus e. g. in crystallization the prodn 
 of the polarity is a divergent action ; the assuming the polar relation of 
 parts, i. e. the form, is a gravitating action. And so is it in life : the 
 vital polarity [affinity] is a truly divergent action ; but the organized 
 form is a result of gravitating action ; it is a ' crystallization ' truly, in 
 that sense, and so the organic material without organized form would be 
 rather more than less vital than the formed structures. Thus resistance
 
 38 
 
 to extension cr growth causes devclopt, or assumption of organized form ; 
 rather a dimn than an increase of vital action : and probably because a 
 part of the vital action itself has been spent upon the resistance. 
 
 A part of the idea of vital action is a direct union of all the 
 elements with each other and not a union of secondary compounds. 
 Organic chemistry goes ' radically ' wrong when it seeks to elicit organic 
 ' radicals ' as illustrative of a truly vital constitution : the vital compo- 
 sition consists in the opposite. The formation of radicals are steps in 
 decompn ; the higher the vital compn the more elements and the larger 
 amount of each are directly combined into one. 
 
 The animal world is one whole : has not each race its use as an organ ? 
 and was not the great determining cause of the status of each the use, 
 the function, it performed ? Even as the function causes the organs of 
 the body ? 
 
 Life does not necessarily consist in a constant concurrence of decompn 
 and building up. It may be a continuance of vital action from external 
 chera action, like that wh we derive from food : from a decompn accel- 
 erated and intensified by action of secretions, &c. 
 
 The origin of life appears more simple : what is needed is not 
 a 'vital state,' still less organization, but merely a peculiar relation of 
 forms of matter to each other ; and probably only a peculiar form of 
 ordinary cohesion. For the chem action that is converted is only a 
 peculiar form of motion, and .-. susceptible only of such resistance : 
 vital powers, properties, &c., are not to the point The resistance wanted 
 is merely a peculiar mechanical relation of particles. 
 
 By help of the pendulum we may come near to an exact conception of 
 this first vital action. The approximating action of C O H &c. to form 
 CO 2 and water, e. g. one can almost see, mentally, stopped, or passing by 
 the poirt of union carried as it were beyond it and becoming a diver- 
 gent action to equal extent. One sees the adaptation of such a condition 
 to give the result ; the motion being normal exact and proportional 
 motion, the divergent is the same, and gives a definite opposite polarity. 
 So may we infer the details of the upward motion from those of the 
 downward ? The two hands held apart and brought palm to palm 
 together is chem action the two hands held in same way and carried to 
 equal distance past each other is vital action : opposite polarities, with 
 a common centre of union. 
 
 Is not the life of each individual one great vibration, and hence its 
 definite duration ? As also the life of whole creation, and of each particle 
 of each living body ; and the nature and direction of the vital action, 
 the curve ' as it were be calculable, like 'the terms of other 
 vibrations ? 
 
 An abstract or general definition of Life would be that it is the 
 'upward' or divergent portion of the vibration. All action being 
 essentially vibration, life is the produced portion of such action. [This 
 is of course a misconception : Life is both]. 
 
 Replacement not development strictly so called is the law of progress 
 of the animal world as of the embryo. The extinct species produced 
 the succeeding ones not by growing into them but by dying and decom- 
 posing. The analogy with Embryology holds very good. The conditions 
 of their existence were withdrawn. 
 
 The function of an animal, or tissue, or race, consists not in its life but
 
 39 
 
 in its decomp : it is in entire or partial decay that the functn of animality, 
 in every sense, must be sought. Thus at least the extinct races prepared 
 food for the following. Whether the transient embryonic structures 
 also perform a distinct function as well as thus prepare food, I do not 
 know, but no doubt the same law exists in both. The ' excretive ' order 
 of animals, that remove decaying lost substances are well marked : this 
 is a kind of nucleus for a classification. Do not vegetables come in this 
 class ? And the law of replacement must be the true one ; for without 
 such increase of decompg action how can there be increase of vital ? or 
 what would be use of higher developt of life, if the higher, the more 
 intense, source of vital action were not provided ? Have the germinal 
 vescicle, and other primary structures wh altogether disappear in the 
 ovum, their analogue in the ' creation ? 
 
 "What relation do the structures that have only the sympathetic nerve 
 bear to the animals that have only a ganglionic nervous system ? 
 
 Is there parallel between the involuntary motions the instincts of 
 organs, and of animals ? 
 
 Might not instinct have had something to do with the successive 
 replacements in geological history ? 
 
 The successive races must have budded out, as the successive organs 
 do, as it were in direction of least resistance. ' Gemmation from axils ' 
 must have been law of creation as of embryonic developt. As vital 
 action increased, the various races budded out, as it were ; and in some 
 sense because there was a comparatively greater resistance to extension 
 of vital action in its previous directions or forms than to gemmation of 
 a new form. Has each race a limit of extension as each organ or indi- 
 vidual, and when that reached, the vital action takes another direction ? 
 But this limit not an inherent tendency. Might it not be some exhaustn 
 of the conditions necessary for them? What is the analogue in their 
 case to the external resistance existing in embryonic condition ? Have 
 we not a similar result before our eyes in a larva growing until it cannot 
 grow any longer, and then becoming a moth ; or better in hydra when 
 it cannot gemmate becoming a medusa, and yet the hydra continuing as 
 before ? Better still is the successive gemmation of embryo ; partly by 
 addition of organs, partly by replacement; as in the animal series. 
 First came, on the whole, the lowest forms, as in embryo, but in the 
 successive gemmations of new races there came not the lowest, but the 
 highest, or a high, form of each first ; and the interspaces afterwards 
 filled up, each new gemmation making other axils. This wd lead us 
 rather to hold that the first of each order wd be the highest degeneratn 
 rather than developt but then replacement comes in. As in embryo 
 and throughout life so in creation there are the two forms of vital action, 
 primary and secondary ; the pure gemmations and the replacements 
 the gemmations from absolute increase of vital action are new forms [the 
 conditions differing] and /these gemmations begin high. The replace- 
 ments are when certain races become extinct and higher ones take their 
 place ; but it is not from the development but from the decay of the pre- 
 vious lower that the higher arises. 
 
 May it not be the case with man the highest form first, and lower 
 ones arising afterwards ? 
 
 Is it correct to think that each gemmation of embryo, and .. each 
 gemmation in the organic series represents the animal the individual
 
 40 
 
 at that stage ? each gemmation a summary or repetition of all that 
 went before : different, but embracing all and .-. different not a possible 
 modification or developt of any one, but a repetition of the whole. This 
 surely is the gemmative reproduction : the idea of gemmation. 
 
 Has the world been an embryo, a larva, and the atmosphere, with its 
 pressure, its uterus ? And how probably the atmosphc pressure has varied 
 more than once, the cooling of the earth has caused its increase ; and 
 organic life itself also, by absorbing heat, and otherwise, affects it. 
 Thus has the heat, arising from resistance to gravitating action, been the 
 cause of all the forces, becoming also life, while its diminution, in the 
 production of life, brings increased pressure wh causes the developt of 
 living world ? 
 
 And did the resistance to the multiplication of separate animal forms 
 cause many to coalesce into one ; the vital action being as it were 
 condensed. This is what we see in the ' development ' of a flower, as 
 compared with leaves. Probably this was the case in the production of 
 new orders, as it were, that could not change into one another by mere 
 replacement. Thus the first individual is a cell : these multiply until 
 the conditions are such that they cannot go on multiplying. Then they 
 coalesce and the vital action is turned inwards : there is a developt of 
 many cells into one [higher] animal ; and thus the process goes on 
 each lower form of animal multiplies until its multiplication is resisted, 
 then two or more coalesce and develope and a higher animal is the result. 
 Thus an equal amount of vital action, i. e. of vitalized matter, is made 
 to occupy less space ; resistance diminishes, comparatively, and growth 
 and multiplication again ensue. Thus there is alternate greater or less 
 resistance, as of uterus, or in animals that cast their skin. The first polyp 
 is a cluster of cells, the first radiate a cluster of polyps : &c. ? The ver- 
 tebrate is exactly the mollusc and articulate in one. Or is it rather that 
 all previous forms are united into one, and that the higher form ? Is it 
 not the joint growth of all the parts that becomes the gemmation wh .-. 
 is or represents all ? One might almost say a priori that if < resistance ' 
 \rere the cause of the developt of the individual animal, it must be so 
 also of the developt of the race. 
 
 The lighter weight of the egg when hatched shows the essentially 
 divergent character of vital action; the yolk would have expanded 
 enormously in cell formation if no pressure : so in wound of brain. 
 
 In relation to developt of orders by super-position or ' clustering ' of 
 lower individuals the quintuple type of mammals, and triple type of 
 birds, acquire a new significance ; and the similar facts in plants. The 
 flower is many in one. Could the reproductive higher orders have arisen 
 from diminished force in gemmating lower ones ? I doubt it, for then 
 should we not have had what we have now in metamorphing animals ; a 
 continual recurrence of the same series of changes ? 
 
 Suppose the successive gemmations from terminal segment of Nereis 
 superposed and forming a whorl an individual what but a new Family 
 or order wd result : not gemmating but sexual. 
 
 Does the vertebrate contain in itself the polyp as well as consist of 
 the simple cell ; is the radiate to be seen in the appendages ? 
 
 Is not the atmosphere the uterus of the organic world in the sense of 
 being the resistance wh causes its developt ? One use of the mixture of 
 nitrogen may be in its pressure.
 
 41 
 
 Must there not have been a causal relation between the varying stages 
 of life and the varying resistance of the atmosphere, as well as in the 
 opposite direction ? for the inorganic and organic worlds are a whole ; 
 have developed together, and neither could be what it is without the 
 other. The progressive cooling, from heat changing into life, is only 
 one of the series of changes. 
 
 With regard to the pressure of the atmosphere Mr. T. observed on high 
 mountains in Switzerland, tadpoles undeveloped in September, some of 
 them very large. 
 
 Is the compound heart in higher animals an instance of the growing 
 or multiplying process wh alternates in developt with condensation? 
 The dimn of resistance intermediately leads to multiplication of lower 
 intermediate forms : there is always the two-fold tendency ; to condensn 
 (with developt) from multiplicatn and to multiplicatn (with degradation) 
 from condensation : the alternating growth of uterus and embryo. So 
 the high developt of necessity precedes the multiplication of relatively 
 lower forms : the developt wh makes them necessary also causes the 
 conditions wh bring the lower into being : at first few species ; soon 
 forming high ones; condensing into high forms of succeeding order; 
 and then arising a multiplicity of (lower) intermediate forms. 
 
 Is not this the right division of the Natural Kingdoms : the points 
 at wh many animals coalesce to form one : the points of ' condensation.' 
 May one say the low forms of life are to the higher as chem affinity or 
 polarity is to magnetism there is the aggregation or many into one ? 
 
 It is only in a sort of potential sense, of course, that the various 
 growths arise from a coalescence. The individuals must as it were 
 coalesce before they are formed. Man e. g. may be ideally a coalescence 
 of two or more other animals, but yet not the less a * creation ; ' no 
 gradual transformations but distinct origination. This view harmonizes 
 the two facts ; constancy of types and progressive metamorphosis 
 must not repetitions of various forms of condensation be sought for in 
 each higher animal ? 
 
 Surely the animal -world is [or was] an embryo, and the vegetable 
 world its Placenta : the two worlds physically correlated in relation to 
 their first existence, as well as in relation to their continued existence and 
 growth. The animal performs the ' function ' of the plant, and thereby 
 maintains and developes it. 
 
 See how mere mechanical laws are one with mental phna, from 
 instincts up to passions and pure intellect ; how these obey one lav with 
 physical nature, serve one end, substitute one another. Not only are 
 the convolutions of brain the result of increase of size of grey matter 
 within limited space, but the pressure thus evidenced doubtless causes a 
 higher developt. So the animals with most convoluted brain have not 
 only largest mass but highest quality. The mass probably bears primary 
 relation to the physical relations of cerebrum to body ; the higher 
 quality more relation to psychical. In man most the highly convoluted 
 state more characteristic than mass ? The infant's skull at birth partly 
 open and gradually ossifying, is it not like the growing uterus ? The 
 growth of grey matter doubtless due to function ; to the action ' of the 
 nerves upon it. Consider the replacement of instinct by intelligence. Is 
 instinct the function of a lower form of nervous matter ? Can grades of 
 mental developt be traced in any way as unions of lower ?
 
 42 
 
 Surely granulations feel without nerves ; they are sensitive as soon as 
 they are formed, yet it is not probable nerves are formed so soon. 
 Is not the nervous function performed by the original cells of granulatns 
 as in first formation of embryo and from this function results the new 
 structure ? The cells transmit the force from their chem change to the 
 immediately adjacent nervous fibres ; the process the same as first form- 
 ation of nerves in tissues. Why are some tissues naturally insensitive, 
 and yet in inflamn become acutely sensitive ? Is it that the perfect 
 structure prevents nervous function wh is otherwise natural to cells, and 
 that during inflamn the condition so altered that it can take place ? 
 
 The phna of headless foetuses go strongly in favor of higher forms of 
 life being ' subdivisions ' or developments of lower : the harmonic sub- 
 division as it were has not taken place ; but the lower [larger] vital 
 actions are perfect, the spinal did not go on to develope cerebral. 
 
 In the contraction of yolk a sort of interspace is left ; into this inter- 
 space the primitive trace rises up. Doubtless brain is a spiral as heart. 
 
 Is not nervous force the same thing as electcy from chem action ; a 
 pulling on the nerve, transmitting a vibration to the centre ? and this 
 idea wd help us to understand how nerve structure results from such 
 function. 
 
 What could better describe the gemmation of the female from the male 
 than the account of the creation of the woman in Genesis ? 
 
 The lower tribes being analogues essentially of the digestive organs 
 or generally of those organs which subserve organic life, surely there is 
 not one of them too many or wh has not its distinct use just as there 
 is not and cannot be a tree or plant too many, for the higher are the 
 cause of the lower : the relation of cause and effect is reciprocal. So as 
 there cannot be too many or useless lower tribes [if there are they are 
 soon destroyed by replacement ?] we may see the use of those wh are 
 destructive, even venomous. The digestive juices are the same; 
 destructive, poisonous. So by producing decay they both alike serve in 
 preparing maintenance for higher. We must not look askance on the 
 destructive races : who is a greater destroyer than man himself ? 
 
 As the present animal world seems smaller in bulk than the ancient, 
 and this indicates its development, so man being not smaller, but on 
 average larger, than the monkey tribe, cannot be developed monkey ? 
 The monkeys probably are a condensation of lower quadrupeds, and man 
 of higher? 
 
 The lung is a tree, condensed, with the interspaces between branches, 
 leaves, &c., filled up ? and are not gills the filling up ' part ; i. e. the 
 interspaces in the gills represent a plant ? The heart is a spiral (mollusc ) 
 and is five : the appendix auriculi being a separate cavity. It consists 
 of two centrip and two centrif cavities, two complete ' orbits ' and just the 
 commencement of another : two pairs and one. And are not the two 
 openings into each cardiac cavity the mouth and arms of mollusc ? then 
 surely the valves are the teeth and lips, The spiral may certainly be 
 traced in the hand ; the thumb is the large base of the spiral, the little 
 finger the odd fifth. Is not the direction of the spiral opposite on the two 
 halves of the body ? .-. is there not a sort of < polarity ' between the two 
 sides ; the direction of action opposite, and yet so that it might become 
 continuous : the two sides of body having a kind of chemical or polar 
 affinity for union with each other ?
 
 43 . 
 
 Oan there be any relation between the aggregation of lower animals 
 into higher and the supposed ancient practice of aggregating several 
 books into one ? 
 
 Was it not Light acting on the earth in a state of heat that first pro- 
 duced Life ? the heat being the life of the earth the sun the father, the 
 earth the mother? Imagine the heat about to radiate into space, 
 leaving the matter to undergo chem change an approximating action ; 
 But the light entering intensifies this action ; while the heat the vital 
 state of earth still resists it : the approxg motion is given but cannot 
 be carried fully out ; is turned, because of the heated or vital state, into 
 an upward motion ; and instead of a chem union comes vital union : 
 instead of chem compound an organic compound : instead of crystal a 
 cell just such a process as we see now in multiplication of life. Thus 
 it is function produced by Light wh originated Life as it maintains it 
 one law ever, for origination and maintenance and development. 
 
 Chemical affinity is a ' polarity ' wh results from other forces, 
 i. e. from resistance to other forms of action, and two opposite affinities 
 represent the two halves of a vibration. An acid and an alkali like two 
 poles of a magnet are the halves of a ' permanent ' vibration ; and they 
 neutralize each other as the halves of a magnet do, or would do if 
 brought into close relation, and moveable. Is not a vibration essentially 
 a male and female action united, and the ' reproduction ' of itself the 
 same ; viz. the approxg turned by resistance into divergent and so ever 
 recurring. Surely all vibrations when traced to their origin begin in the 
 same way as life ; an approxg action resisted ; and when it is considered, 
 all divergent actions must be vibratile, because they must reproduce 
 the conditions under wh the approxg action occurs. In fact, all action 
 must be vibratile ; as I saw before that all approxg action must produce 
 divergent. All action is of necessity vibration. The question arises 
 whether the elements really exist as such in chem compounds, or whether 
 it is merely a question of different cohesion : when elements are reprod 
 from compounds is it not a peculiar ' cohesion ' restored ? Chem affinity 
 is the universal pressure and suction ; as is well seen in its production by 
 electricity, where we suppose two particles of O and H each to be in 
 such condition; the pressure and suction affecting a particle of each 
 respectively on each side the line of electric action. Then when these 
 two particles have united and formed water, the water is surely just as 
 simple as either of them ; but when it is decomposed again by being 
 made ' polar ' the two separate forms of cohesion O and H ar reproduced 
 from it quite afresh : they are then truly ' originated,' and represent the 
 one the suction and the other the pressure ; and may not their relations 
 in this respect be determined by their atomic numbers ? May not 
 allotropism be sometimes an element chemically combining with itself? 
 
 A body radiating heat is surely like a vibrating string, and the 
 source of the action the same. The approxg tendency the cause the 
 approxg action the first. Thus a body does not grow cool because it 
 radiates heat, but it radiates heat because it grows cool or contracts ; the 
 progressive contraction [? successive contractions] produce the heat that 
 is given off, as chem union produces electric current. So by thus 
 hurrying on a chem action by Light faster than it could go, from the 
 peculiar cohesion arising from heat, life originated : that is, it originated 
 as it is maintained, from ' function.' Might we not in this view almost
 
 44 
 
 affirm that the first created form of life was an Eye ? Thus in the 
 abstract light is the male heat the resistance, the vital quality of the 
 germ, the female. Light : synonym for intellect ; male ; active ; Head : 
 
 Heat synonym for affection ; female ; receptive ; Heart. Is there 
 
 any parallel between the segmentation of the yelk in the egg, and its 
 aggregation around centres, the gathering of the primary matter into 
 stars ? for surely the first created matter was made ' living ' even as the 
 ovum. Did the first formation of stars and systems result from quick- 
 ening of a ' germ ' and gravitation the function wh produced and maintains 
 the solar-siderial ' life ? ' An illustration of vital forms in smoke : a 
 divergent action in direction of least resistance ; turned constantly at r 
 angles, growing out in curved masses in the axils thus formed : gem- 
 mating in fact when growth resisted and its density has reached a certain 
 amount. It is an inverted ' divergent' crystallization. Do the triple and 
 quinary types arise thus : in vertebrate embryo there are two layers ; 
 and the vascular system gemmates into the axil between ; thus the 
 ternary type : If gemmation went further the gemma wd come in the 
 two new axils between the vascular and the others. Here the basis of 
 quinary type. In hand and foot may it not be seen ? first extension is 
 checked, then gemmation; and again gemmation in axil, giving three 
 again gemmation in the two axils, giving five. Here the law of gem- 
 mation : surely the motion turns at right angles when it cannot continue 
 longer in a straight line, and is carried into axil in mean of the two 
 directions just as a body moving rapidly thro' water is. 
 
 The universe is a chord vibrating beneath the touch of the Creator, who 
 as it were drew His hand over creation and caused the great divergent 
 action of wh gravitation is the approximating sequence- In music man 
 is most truly a creator ; most like the Creator. Music is the 'act of 
 worship. The entire order is one ' note,' a vibration of a great sym- 
 phony who knows what has preceeded, what will succeed ? How came 
 the stars at those immense distances, was this itself not the result of a 
 prior, or of many prior, vibrations or harmonies ? The view expands 
 to a music long proceeding, yet long to succeed the utmost stretch of our 
 imaginations ; each orb performing its own vibration, its own note the 
 whole together make up the full harmony. We are the music of the 
 spheres. Thus music is the great law the soul the representative of the 
 universal life. Hence periodicity : it is only ' time ' ; the law of 
 vibration. Are there analogies in nature to harmonic subdivisions of 
 musical chords? and its numbers the musical numbers : e. g. are not the 
 twelve dorsal vertabrae really a five and eight, just as the twelfth note 
 is the fifth of the octave. 
 
 Is this the two-fold act of creation: the first formation of the ap- 
 proximating tendency, and the imparting the divergent force ? "We 
 know nothing of gravitation except as a tendency to return -i. e. 
 in relation to this earth, things tend to it. but they first come from 
 thence : it is a form of cohesion, or rather of elasticity. Is it not 
 possible that this is the true idea of gravity that it is a tendency to 
 return ? the distances make no difference, especially if space be full: 
 Matter that tends together was together. Thus the idea of a vibrating 
 chord becomes peculiarly applicable. Therefore we need assume nothing 
 inherent in matter, but only that masses wh were in equilibrium have
 
 45 
 
 been drawn apart and tend to return. Is not the suitable idea that of 
 elasticity ; gravity being akin to cohesion and implying a plenum ? The 
 planets and stars are swinging around a position of cohesive equilibm, 
 just as the particles of a vibrating metallic rod do. And thus would a 
 plenum constitute a resistance ? Thus the first divine act after creating 
 matter was this of ' extending ' it. How could matter so < extend ' itself? 
 The idea of a vibrating mass of air would apply equally. It might be 
 said God breathed into the universe the breath of life. As music denotes 
 a musician, so do the vibrations of universe denote God ? With 
 regard to the question of ' Creation ' producing matter originally we 
 cannot know, because we know nothing of matter itself, not even whether 
 there be matter. Of God's agency we clearly know all that science can 
 teach us when science refers to Him as the originator of all that we 
 ' know.' That the Being who thus uses the universe also created it is 
 an obvious deduction, but it is beyond the range of scientific proof. 
 
 The formation of ice from water is an expansion ; a divergent action : 
 but a new divergent action only arises from an approximg one stopped or 
 resisted .. the expansion of water into ice arises from approxg motion 
 resisted : i. e. turned at r angles. But the formation of ice is crystal- 
 ization, wh is .. approxg action resisted and turned at r angles, and in 
 this sense an expansion. Is not every crystal lighter than the same 
 substance in fluid form ? Solid films float on melted mag. sulph. 
 Clearly the formation of solar and sidereal systems is a process of 
 crystalization. How do we know indeed that the particles of crystals 
 are not to some extent in a state oscillation as stars and planets are. 
 Consider the almost crystalline form of some galaxies. Is not our galaxy 
 an irregular prism? And do the solar systems, galaxies, &c., float in 
 space, because, being crystals, they are lighter ? And the heat of the 
 crystalizn is the other forces and life. This view agrees with that of 
 the universe as a solid caused to vibrate ; the heat represents the original 
 divergent force Then the various globes are particles wh go to constitute 
 a crystal ; and these themselves crystalline, just as larger crystals are 
 made up of smaller ones arranged in crystalline forms. Those inorganic 
 arborescent forms may in one sense be called truly vital : in abstract 
 theory they are ; they are mechanical ' life,' as ' life ' is chemical life. 
 
 As approxg chem action resisted becomes divergent chem action, 
 i. e. -chem action vital action, 
 
 so approxg mechanl action divergt mechanl action, 
 
 i e. contraction of fluids ,, ,, expansion into crystals : 
 
 this expansion resisted alike in organic and inorganic worlds produces 
 arborescent form. 
 
 To allow an approximating action must there not be matter to \vh 
 the divergence may be transferred ? but there is nothing thus external to 
 the universe. Must we consider it as being as it were two halves, in 
 opposite states ? or wd not two kinds of matter suffice to institute the 
 series : e. g. a solid diffused thro' a liquid wh then might ' crystallize ' 
 out, the force resulting being imparted to the fluid : is this the tther ? 
 And the difference between the ' elements,' &c., is it not merely the dif- 
 ferent forms of crystallizatn the varying closeness of aggregation from 
 varying relations of resistance ; or proportion of approxn and divergence : 
 like ice and snow wh are water crystallized under different conditions. 
 Then chem affinity is another thing : a polar state induced in particles of
 
 46 
 
 matter either the same or different ; does not pertain to the different 
 ' elements ' but is a property derived from vibration passing at r angles 
 in any matter. Thus all matter is ' (Crystalline ' ? wh if have been 
 grouped by approxg action under resistance, it must be. The elements 
 themselves made up of minute crystals [the atoms] : these elements 
 together or singly may aggregate into other groups and form what we 
 call crystals. Lastly our crystals may aggregate into larger spheres wh 
 we call 'worlds,' and crystallize into solar systems, galaxies, &c. Thus 
 all affinity is the affinity of the two great forms of action, the divergent 
 and the approxg. The different elements are persistent for same reason 
 as species are ; because the conditions are so. It is as true of them as of 
 animals ' omne ex ovo.' "We are such sense-bound creatures, because 
 the fact of the approxn of masses of matter is a very prominent one in 
 our experience we set it down as an ultimate fact. That is what we 
 have done thro' all Science. Gravitation like other phna is but an effect 
 or expression of a previous fact or action [wh as usual we with difficulty 
 discover and when we have found it regard as an effect] ; viz. a divergt 
 action, wh when we go far enough back leads us to God. Must not a 
 divergent action, under resistance, be followed by an opposite ? It may 
 be that we live in a sort of approximative era, and hence our conception ; 
 under other conditions of the universe might we have been more apt to 
 think ' repulsion ' or divergence the inherent property or primary fact of 
 matter. May it be thus : that in the divergent era there is no divergent 
 action save that one great divergence of universal diffusion [of the solid 
 matter] ; no Heat, Light, Life, &c. ; absolute cold, dark, dead : the 
 ether only approximating ? in the approximating era, the ether and .-. 
 the surface of the solids is filled with the most varied divergent actions. 
 It is the era of life and light. Is this why approximation seems to us a 
 primary fact ? Heat comes in truth to be the original action ; and see 
 its figurative meaning : heat, warmth, a/ection, is of course the original 
 active power : it is love. God's first action was the imparting life to the 
 universe, and that life was heat. But not in form of heat as we under- 
 stand it, but of diffusion expansion wh to us wd be cold. Heat as 
 we feel it and observe its effects is result of approxn. Must not the 
 various inorganic forces divergent and approximative have their 
 analogues in the nutrition and function of the animal organs ? i. e. the 
 universe being organic : heat the life, and approxn or gravity the 
 function Are not, in bodily structure, lower animals female as compared 
 with higher ; i. e. the form determined by less resistance, and the gem- 
 mating power greater ? And woman's more powerful instincts are re- 
 markable also : but then is not genius the same. Genius is instinct : and 
 perhaps one may say that genius is intellectual femality ; the men of 
 genius are the females of the male sex ; and they are not physically the 
 highest developed. Possessors of genius are the women of humanity. 
 The spiral is the basis of all forms, because it is but motion turned 
 at r angles [or a mean between its continuance and such turning] and to 
 alternate sides; in organic nature and all divergent action the spiral 
 expands ; in approxg action in inorganic nature it contracts. Is not 
 this spiral form everywhere throughout the organic world : wrist, ancle, 
 spine, pelvis, shoulder ? Is it not marked also in animal progression 
 a movement from side to side. Will not the muscles be found to be 
 grouped spirally ; the nerves and vessels to take a spiral course ? It is
 
 47 
 
 marked in the core of an apple. The head and face too result from a 
 succession of turns at r angles ; it is bent on itself just like a crystal of 
 iodide of potas. The mammalian Head is a spiral, and the cerebellum 
 a gemmation at the first turn of it ; for that also is the idea of an axil ; 
 it is the interspace left by the turning inwards of the spiral. So limbs 
 come at those points. The ' facial angle ' measures the resistance ; and 
 the erect posture and square head are two results of same cause. N.B. 
 The apex of the ice crystal of dew is larger than the rest. 
 
 Can the law of resistance be traced in formation of a cell : are not 
 its walls raised up in same way as the starfish is turned up into echinus ? 
 And is not fission gemmation ? Teeth are fingers : the skeleton 
 remaining external and being greatly developed. There are no external 
 gemmations from the teeth, or if there are they are completely ossified. 
 Is this [in final cause] why the teeth come after birth : if they came 
 before would they not be apt to gemmate and be covered with soft parts ? 
 How strange that after a few months' ' growth ' the teeth should be in 
 direction of least resistance. Does not this arise partly from increase in 
 size of jaw, as well as from increased resistance to growth, just as hairs 
 come at puberty ? And for same reason the five teeth are succeeded by 
 eight : the growth has made three more axils. But with how much 
 resistance the tooth presses thro' the gum there must be some special 
 cause of growth at those spots, or contractile power forcing them there : 
 And yet surely not the unchanged cellular character of the pulp 
 demonstrates that this is a place of less resistance ; doubtless the gums 
 yield from very little pressure. The tooth destroying the gum is a 
 replacement wh effects its purpose and yet is result of the law of motion. 
 Probably irritation from teething is from want of due proportion between 
 pressure and resistance there, and .. not unlikely the mischief is more 
 than merely from irritation, it is misdirected vital action : the teeth 
 being too much resisted do not grow. Teeth too come earlier in ill-fed, 
 ill nourished children, often : is not this because, from the bad nutrition, 
 the tooth pulps sooner become directions of least resistance [as flowers]. 
 Just as tumors occasionally form apparently for same reason whatever 
 relatively diminishes the resistance produces them. Three systems of 
 vertebrate embryo : nervous, mucous, and vascular is each a distinct 
 spiral by itself; and spirally interfolded with the others? The spiral 
 tendril is like the spiral artery, both are really the arborescent leaf or 
 vessel in another form. Will not light be found to have spiral course, 
 and polarization to be spiral ? How much of animal and sidereal form 
 may be due to such polar repulsion as we see in fission ; giving the 
 divergence, in some measure, wh, resisted, gives the form ? As the heart 
 is a spiral mollusc, so surely the kidney is an echinus : it is, in the cat, 
 eight similar elements turned up to meet at an apex ; where are placed 
 the anus and mouth [ureter and vessels] and the eight appears to be 
 two fives. The liver probably bears to kidney somewhat relation of star 
 fish to echinus. 
 
 CHEMICAL AFFINITY. 
 
 How the tithonization of chlorine by light resembles a bar of iron 
 rendered magnetic by being struck repeatedly or by being placed upright 
 on the ground : the polar state or tendency to move in one direction, 
 being produced in minute particles by the light, and in the mass by the
 
 48 
 
 percus8ion or gravitation. Surely light produces chem action as electcy 
 does, viz. by turning at r angles and producing opposite polarity a vast 
 number of little magnets. For all radiant forces are vibratile. Probably 
 chem affinity does not consist in two particles being in opposite polar 
 state, but in each particle being polar. Is crystallization the effect of a 
 kind of chem affinity the particles aggregating because the heat, &c., 
 has rendered them polar ; a kind of magnetism. Is it so light makes 
 metals crystalline, by making particles polar, and .. attracting one 
 another. Crystaln is a form of magnetic action, it is chem affinity 
 between similar particles, only exists where vibrations have been. 
 
 Is the action of light on chlorine a double process ; first rendering 
 polar the particles, wh thus unite and again become neutral, aud then 
 imparting a polarity to the mass. Light and heavy bodies exemplify 
 the two forms of action ; they are virtually ' polar ' and arrange 
 themselves definitely a kind of crystalization. In crystalization I 
 think we must recognize a polar state of the particles as causing the 
 attraction to each other, arising doubtless from the vibratilt act of cooling. 
 
 Then the elements also are result of chem i. e. polar affinity, as all 
 crystals. And, in relation to its actions and properties, Nature consists 
 in an infinite number and variety of vibrations, of every magnitude from 
 the one universal divergence and approxn to the minutest vibrations of 
 light or odour The universe, as we know it, i. e. after first divergent 
 [female] action is in male state ; i. e. tendency to approximation : hence 
 we have put down attraction, gravity [or whatever the approxg tendency 
 is called] wh is in truth function as a primary quality or inherent 
 property. Gravity is the function of the universe : divergence the 
 nutrition. What we first see in universe is what we first see in animal ; 
 its functional activity. The universe is thus an animal : first divergence 
 its nutrition : approxn its function : and the two continually interwoven 
 as in a living body mutually cause and effect. But life is for function ; 
 not function for life. The question is, "Why do polar particles tend to 
 approx ? this no inherent tendency, only motion in direction of least re- 
 sistance. Polar particles must move towards each other because of 
 motion, not in them but without, assuming that direction from mechanical 
 cause what is it ? Now the polar states are : tendency to expand , 
 and tendency to contract. Clearly the body with tendency to expand 
 will expand most readily in a direction in wh there exists tendency to 
 contraction; there the density is least, .. there it expands; i. e. some 
 of the particles go and the rest follow, and the nearer it arrives at the 
 opposite or contracting pole the more it tends to move in that direction. 
 
 Chem affinity is a peculiar alteration of the ordinary vibratile action 
 wh stops it as it were and renders it permanent locks the respective 
 motions up and gives the key to the other. Is it not by polar state 
 that water, &c., absorb air ? if not otherwise polar they are polar in 
 respect of temperature ; water e. g. being always cooler than the air, the 
 air is relatively contracting, the water expanding [male and female] ; 
 hence the air penetrates the water, the water enfolds the air. Con- 
 traction in chem union results from the loss of the divergence wh 
 constitutes the crystalline character of all matter, the elements included. 
 A chem compound does not consist of its component elements ; the 
 arrangement of the particles wh constituted the elements no longer 
 exists .-. no longer the elements. Take three magnets, arrange them in
 
 49 
 
 order with similar ends in same direction, but with large interspaces ; 
 apply between these the opposite poles of three other magnet* : now the 
 result of this mutual attraction will bo not only to bring the opp poles 
 into union, but to diminish the interspaces between the similar poles 
 the five magnets will occupy less space than the three did before. Is 
 not this contraction from chem union ? The crystalline structure, i. e. the 
 interspaces within the elements themselves, is destroyed hence is there 
 another source of heat or divergent action ? Is not all motion essentlly 
 a motion of particles ; the first moved particles moving the next, and so 
 on : motion of a mass is only a motion of all its particles, and heat has 
 no special relation to expansion all divergent forces are the same. 
 
 The original divergent motion is like white light one, but compre- 
 hending all others in itself. 
 
 Ice and steam are truly polar : have the divergent and approxg ten- 
 dencies, representing the rising and falling positions of pendulum ; they 
 unite and form water, and from water we can exactly reproduce them : 
 but water does not .*. consist of them : so neither does it of and H. 
 The difference in our thought of the two cases arises merely from our 
 relative power of dealing with them. In both cases there is contraction 
 into water. 
 
 When two bodies of different heatt are brought together the one tends 
 to expand, the other to contract : and hence they are oppositely polar to 
 each other, and, apart from external temperature tend to unite unless 
 there be counteracting influences. Is not this partly the explanation of 
 solution and of the influence of heat in promoting it ? And ia not such 
 contact analogous to induction magnetic induction e. g. ? 
 
 Vital and chem action are the two polar forms of one action, the 
 positive and negative. Action is one, whereof the two great divisions 
 are simply polar forms. This is the same as saying it is vibratile. A 
 machine with resisted action, and tendency to action, therefore, is simply 
 polar ; opposite polarities are only the ' actions ' infuturo, in a potential 
 state as it were. 
 
 The vital resistance surely turns the chem motion at r angles, and the 
 vital action is the curve in the mean of these directions : hence the dif- 
 ferent forms of vital action from different relations of chem action and 
 resistance as in crystallizn wh bears strong analogy to life. The same 
 chem action under different resistances gives varying vital action, and 
 same resistance with different chem action likewise. 
 
 In chemistry and in astronomy composition is due to one kind of affinity, 
 form to another ; why not also in life ? and vital forms be due to polarity 
 of particles like crystallizatn, distinct from the vital action or polarity. 
 
 Living bodies are but unstable chem compounds, and all compounds 
 all states are unstable except under certain conditions. We fancy that 
 the conditions suitable to ourselves are in a special sense ' natural ' or 
 ordinary, wh is in no sense true ; we exist because these conditions are 
 now and here present. 
 
 The nucleus draws the cell around it, as the sun does the solar system : 
 are the planets cell around the sun the nucleus ? 
 
 May not the varying influence of heat on chem affinity be thus in part 
 explained that it destroys the divergent [or female] polarity, by pro- 
 ducing the divergence it gives tendency to approx. Thus heat may 
 always destroy the double polarity ; may destroy an alh'nity or union
 
 50 
 
 that depends upon the divergent polarity, may cause union by producing 
 approxg polarity. Because doubtless for chem union or polar action in 
 general only one polarity is necessary : one may produce the opposite 
 by induction. 
 
 It wd be glorious if all approxg action should be really polar, and .-. 
 all divergent action truly Life. If all action must be vibration, and all 
 vibration is polar polarity being only the two forms of the one vibratn 
 
 then attraction must be always polar, and .-. gravity. Also where 
 
 vibratn is the law i. e. polarity attractn must be a constant phenomn 
 
 If gravity towards sun be polar, the bodies having the same polarity 
 shd surely not attract but repel: the planets shd repel one another^ but 
 may not the planets be in state of induced polarity, and /. of opposite 
 polarities on the side towards and that turned from the sun ? If so, 
 altho' attracted polarly by sun they might also by their opposite poles 
 attract each other. And in the induced polar state of earth arising 
 from sun's action, may -we not see a cause for the periodicity of vital 
 phna ? The day is period of function, the night of nutrition may not 
 this be due in part to the opposite polar states of the earth, with and 
 without direct influence of sun ? the surface of earth in apposition with 
 sun being oppositely polar i. e. divergnt, so the earth being divergent by 
 day, approxg by night, the life on her surface becomes oppositely polar 
 during these periods i. e. approxg by day, divergent by night [though 
 with exceptions]. This polar condition of the two surfaces of the 
 planets is not a theory : the tides prove it. The matter is attracted to 
 sun and cannot go the globe is in condition of a bar of iron fixed in 
 the ground wh becomes magnetic. The particles of earth next the sun 
 must be tending to it as particles of zinc to point of chem action, and 
 those opposite in same direction ; wh must give an opposite tension to 
 the two surfaces, analogous to an electric tension, and the influence of 
 this on life must surely be considerable. 
 
 We only need a polarity in the sun, propagated thro' the intervening 
 matter. Surely it is not difficult to conceive the light and heat of the 
 sun to arise in some way [? by resistance] from these polar tendencies. 
 Is not the weight of a thing merely the sign of a polar state ? 
 
 The similarly polar surfaces of the planets should repel each other 
 the oppositely polar attract ; but always when the planets are in con- 
 junction i. e. on same side of the sun their opp polar surfaces are 
 towards each other hence they mutually attract : when their similarly 
 polar surfaces are towards each other and might repel, i. e. when in 
 opposition, from distance and the interposition of the sun, is their mutual 
 action inappreciable? But may there be some facts indicating the 
 existence of this repulsive power. May it contribute to the stability of 
 the system ; virtually diminishing the force of gravity and deferring the 
 period of absorption, if that can ever come ? Is there not something 
 polar in the motions of small particles in water ? Elsewhere may not 
 repulsion from similar polarity play a greater part than it does here ? 
 
 Gravity cannot be throughout towards the centre, else how great the 
 density : the lightness of the globe testifies to the contrary : is not the 
 central heat the divergent polarity itself? the globe consisting of two 
 oppositely polar spheres an internal one with tendency outwards : an 
 external with tendency inwards. Thus an analogue of nucleus and cell. 
 
 The universe has a true life in this sense also ; it is result of is
 
 
 51 
 
 itself a divergent action constantly giving place to, and again arising 
 from approxg action. Life is not different but the same as inorganic 
 nature : all is in a state of constant flux and interchange alike the living 
 and ' life ' less what appears to us stable is so merely because we are 
 not able to grasp the elements of change ; they being either too large or 
 too small, too speedy or too slow. 
 
 Is it not by polar conditions that the living body is formed and main- 
 tained : e. g. attraction of divergent polar blood to seat of the oppositely 
 polar inflamn : nutrition from function, &c. ; are they not instances of 
 polar attraction ? and the very structure of body and all its elements is 
 the same. 
 
 May not the peculiar alteration of form of a muscle in the act of con- 
 traction be due to some [polar] attraction between the decomposing and 
 ' living ' elements in it ? In truth, polarity is precisely the state of 
 functional capacity ; thus in chem union, the presence of the body having 
 affinity is the stimulus to the function of the ' polar ' body, and permits 
 it by its opposite polarity each removes the impediment to the action to 
 wh the other tended. All polar action is vital function. 
 
 The forms of the stellar universe are those of living tissues has it as 
 a whole the form of a living being, e. g. of a man ? 
 
 The double origin of polarity, either from the performance of either 
 kind of action [wh gives opposite polarity] ; or from the non-effect of any 
 force applied [resistance to action], renders its presence everywhere, and 
 operation in everything, easily conceivable : it must continually arise ; 
 action or non action alike give rise to it. 
 
 It is manifest that neither form of action has any necessary priority ; 
 neither divergent nor approx is first by nature, but either may precede 
 or succeed the other. The raised pendulum or weight has tendency to 
 fall not by inherent or essential gravity, but only because of pre-existent 
 polarity, the very existence of wh depends on previous divergent action, 
 and this divergent on approx : and so on in endless chain : the only 
 beginning of wh is God's act. 
 
 Here is demonstration of possibility of life arising from inorganic 
 conditions nothing but inorganic conditions are required : i. e. a 
 mechanical resistance to motion arising from chemical polarity. Polar 
 particles approxg thro' a resisting medium, if they come into direct 
 union, form crystals ; if they pass by one another, and come into a di- 
 vergent relation, such as planets hare [falling past the sun] form organic 
 matter. In organic matter, that portion wh begins first to decompose 
 becomes a nucleus ; and by such approxg polarity collects around it the 
 divergent particles, forming thus a cell ; wh, resisting the decomposing 
 action of nucleus, becomes thereby more vitalized. This cell again may 
 undergo same process, and so vital structures rise up ; receiving their 
 forms and development by means of the resistance of the media in wh 
 they exist, to their extension. Thus the first nuclei [or male elements] 
 are the first and smallest particles of matter wh attain full vital devlpt, 
 and begin to decay. 
 
 Is not the ' appetite ' of animal for vegetable the polar attraction ? 
 
 The chem properties of matter are merely tendencies to action imparted 
 o them in the two ways before mentioned : chem properties are of two 
 opposite kinds, because action is of such two-fold character. Hence at 
 once the constancy and the inconstancy of chem properties ; chemicity
 
 is a tiling not inherent in matter but imparted to it ; sometimes by forces 
 or actions long past wh we cannot trace, sometimes by our own manipula- 
 tions. And chem actions are merely the result of ordinary polar 
 attractions; as are all. The mixing of two portions of^the same [fluid] 
 matter at different temperatures is same thing as chem union of two polar 
 elements. The only thing that distinguishes chem union from mere 
 mixture (as of two portions of water) is that in the former case the 
 peculiar * crystalline ' structure of the elements is at same time destroyed 
 [as illustrated by the magnets] But this also is the case in union of ice 
 and steam, wh therefore is true chem union (?) and only arbitrarily se- 
 parated from it by our happening to know more about it. A substance 
 in a state of chem polarity .. is virtually a machine, i. e. matter with 
 one of its tendencies to change restrained ; to bring it into relation to a 
 body for wh it has affinity is to remove the resistance [to apply a ' stim '] 
 The world is chemical because it is full of action, and .-. whenever such 
 action is impeded, of tendency to action. Accordingly by a dexterous 
 use of the various forms of action wh nature presents to us, we may ob- 
 tain matter endowed with tendencies in endless variety of direction and 
 amount, in organic acids, alkaloids, &c., but if we wish to know how nature 
 has arranged and endowed with tendency to action the materials she uses, 
 we must cautiously abstain from interfering by such artificial violence 
 with her delicate adjustments. Above all things we must avoid classi- 
 fying our results under her categories, and cease to insist forcing on her 
 simplicity the products of our complicated clumsiness. In truth, the 
 search after the vital principle or ' organic arrangement ' by chemistry 
 furnishes a very fair parallel to the search by similar means for the elixir 
 vitse ; nor has it surely been more fruitful in accidentally useful results. 
 
 In chemistry, as in life, are the two opposite polarities stages of the 
 same : does the expanding polarity become after it has expanded the 
 contracting ? Would not this be for the elements really to change into 
 one another ? 
 
 Every portion of matter of course becomes polar whenever its con- 
 ditions are altered ; it then tends to change its state ; thus tending it may 
 either undergo the change, or, the change being resisted, it may 
 continue polar and with tendency to act. Even two neutral bodies, 
 having no tendency to change, if they be in different conditions, become 
 oppositely polar merely by being brought into relation. Take two 
 portions of air, one expanded, the other less so. Both these at their own 
 temperature, are still and passive ; but bring them into contact, at once 
 the former tends to contract, the latter to expand, and polar union im- 
 mediately commences. So in organic life, will not the mere relation of 
 differently developed portions of matter induce a polar action between 
 them wh will cause the more highly developed to decompose, the less 
 developed to take on the vital action ; [contract and expand] ? Growing 
 cells and decompg cells are oppositely polar : but besides, there must be 
 some tendency or attraction [ ? polar] wh causes cells, nuclei, or masses 
 of living matter, to be grouped or clustered into tissues. The same thing 
 there must be in the universe, causing solar systems, &c., to be grouped 
 into galaxies, the galaxies into < the universe.' [Are there not e. g. opp 
 polar solar systems ?] And as the law of < least resistance ' must regu- 
 late all such groupings or formations, the universe must have definite 
 form; surely living form ; dependent upon the proportion of vital action
 
 53 
 
 and resistance. May not, must not, all the heavenly bodies form one 
 living body ; why not strictly an animate body, and endowed with soul ? 
 The very same laws exist in it as in living bodies : in every sense in wh 
 the word can be defined it is a living body ' The universe an animal ' ! 
 And what if endowed with soul with spirit or intellect ? Is all matter 
 sensitive as our bodies are ? This Soul wd not be God : unless indeed 
 God had made the universe as it were a body for himself; because our 
 souls do not make our bodies ; these arise by natural laws and uiir spinis 
 are superadded as it were. Theology remains unaffected. What seems 
 really possible is that there may exist many, even innumerable, multi- 
 tudes of such beings ; for whose spirits, created by God, various portions 
 of the universe constitute the bodies. What else is taught us by the 
 Law of Entozoa ? what else by the fact that the laws of living bodies 
 and those of the starry heavens are absolutely identical ? Thus ' the 
 universe ' would be a vast family of spirits, each one inhabiting and (?) 
 using a universe as his body. The various clusters, galaxies, &c., wd 
 then be various organs ; a solar system a simple cell one cell in the 
 vast aggregate. This idea wd impart a double value and beauty to our 
 knowledge of nature : there wd then be no dead matter ; all wd be glo- 
 rified by union with a spiritual nature. The vast expanse of space wd 
 teem with intellect and feeling, all nature be endowed with sensibility, 
 and constitute the possible seat of enjoyment. More still, these vast 
 and mighty orbs wd not roll passively thro' space merely to be the seat 
 of other and higher existence, they would be themselves the obedient 
 instruments of a spiritual will, and be subordinated, in spite of their 
 endless motion in obedience to unvarying laws, to the effecting of pur- 
 poses in themselves good and useful. Consider too the vastness of that 
 universe wh consists of a family of animated beings of wh we probably 
 with all our powers cannot yet attain to the limits of even one. 
 
 This view of the universe disposes of the question as to its bounds ; 
 viewed as inorganic how or why can it be either boundless or limited ? 
 but viewed as a living body, or many, of course it has natural and in- 
 telligible bounds. And these bounds, arising from similar laws, have 
 they not similar shapes to those of the ' organic ' world ? Thus the al- 
 ternate centrip and centrif motions of planets do really represent the 
 alternating decompn and nutrition in a living body. In truth there does 
 not appear to be a real difference between the organic and inorganic worlds, 
 except that of size. The inorganic parts of wh ' living bodies ' consist 
 are too small for bur perception ; we perceive merely their vital union 
 and relationship to us even the smallest portions are living. But with 
 regard to the universal living bodies, what we most easily perceive, and 
 are most conversant with, are the inorganic elementary parts ; and it is 
 only by an effort of the reason that we gain a perception that these 
 parts are united into truly living wholes. To mites inhabiting living cells 
 doubtless these cells seem quite inorganic : they perceive, not the vital 
 union of the parts, but the non- vital parts themselves ; it could only be 
 by inference that they could perceive that these parts were ' organized.' 
 
 That matter thus should be endowed with mind is not .;. an exception, 
 a peculiarity of organized beings, of man, but a law of matter itself. 
 And organization indeed pertains to all matter ; Life is a universal pro- 
 perty : once given by God, and never ceasing till by him recalled. Is 
 there not some sort of natural connection between matter, life, and mind ;
 
 54 
 
 they go together ; God has made them so ; there are no exceptions in 
 His Creation, In fact, surely God's creative act was not first making 
 dead matter and then imparting life or divergent action ; not so ; God's 
 creation was the production of Life. He created, not dead matter from 
 vh living developed itself by Law ; how can life come from death ? 
 He created a living body, from wh within wh the one life developed 
 itself into endless forms of beauty, utility and excellence. Is not this 
 the true doctrine of the creation of life ? doubtless God did directly 
 create life. 
 
 That first divergent act the Creation of Life is Creation. The idea 
 of matter embarasses the question : Life is God's act. We know nothing 
 more of nature than these sequences of action the two vh are one in 
 essence, tho' opposite in direction, and perpetually assuming new and 
 ever varying forms. Thus our life is but a part of a true life of the same 
 sort as that first given to all nature by God. 
 
 May not the distances between stars and suns and systems be in some 
 measure due to such polar repulsion as occurs \nfission ? Can any evi- 
 dences be found of present polar repulsion between planets or stars ? 
 
 Thus the animal life is but the universal or stellar life subdivided. 
 Truly it is < mother earth ' ; it is her life that we possess, not altered, 
 or modified, or raised ; differing in no respect but that of size. 
 
 May it be that the sun does not attract by its bulk but by its polarity^ ? 
 That gravitation is polar wd introduce the law of definite proportion in 
 to the heavens. Stars and planets and systems no longer mere 
 aggregations of matter wh happened by a sort of accident to be near 
 enough to attract, but definite polar unions formed by the action of 
 fixed laws wh demand that they shd be just such as they are. 
 
 If the solar system be a blood globule, then the ' ether ' must surely 
 be the blood of our universal Being ; and stars and systems formed there- 
 from as ' tissues ' are. And how is that is it not a kind of crystalizatn ? 
 This is one of the next questions. Also the ether being thus the blood 
 plasma, doubtless the solar system moves with it. And in respect to the 
 stellar distances, the spaces between are not vacua, they are filled as it 
 were with serum.' So also will the earth really pass into sun at last 
 will it not rather pass away from it ; becoming a fully developed globe 
 itself; or some such result ; as in blood. 
 
 Is not organic life but a ' replacement ' of the ' heat-life ' of earth ? 
 and by influence of sun : as embryo is replacement of ovum Not only 
 does the pressure or weight of atmosphere develope i. e. carry up vital 
 action to its highest forms, but by resisting expansion and thus causing 
 heat it produces the life itself. 
 
 Is not the function of the solar system that of a blood globule, viz. to 
 develop* the circulating fluid ; the sun developes the vitality of the 
 planets imparting to them its own vitality, i. e. its heat and light. With 
 regard to blood globule itself it is easy to see how the less developed and 
 .-. more strongly polar plasma should perpetually replace the more highly 
 developed matter wh has circulated around the nucleus, and thus the 
 whole plasma be developed by its means ; it perpetually drawing to 
 itself that wh is most polar to it, and .-. most needing its influence a 
 constant series of polar attractions and repulsions thus going on. Is not 
 
 cold air revolving around a warmer portion a spiral storm similar ? 
 
 the particles continually changing. And the lower the grade of life the
 
 55 
 
 larger and more elliptic is the blood globule, i. e. surely the less intense 
 is the polar attractn i. e. the vital action. In the advance of nutrition 
 are the particles attracted more intensely, more closely ; i. e. into more 
 condensed forms ? The condensed life and the small blood discs go 
 together. 
 
 Is the polar attraction of developing for decomposing matter the secret 
 of elective absorption ? And is not this the change that passes on blood 
 in lungs, not that it so much absorbs 0, as that the decomposing part 
 being oxidised and removed it is more highly vitalized, and then under- 
 goes polar interchange with decomp matter in the tissues ? and the heat 
 in tissues not due to strict oxidation but to such chem or polar union ? 
 
 So the decompg food is absorbed by the developg blood. And all the 
 secretions are re-absorbed, except the kidney's. 
 
 As an approxg action resisted must be divergent, so equally must a 
 divergent be approxg, if it be resisted in all directions : conceive a cube 
 expanding and its motion stopped on every side ; if it continue it must 
 take direction inward Repeated partial resistance causes motion in a 
 form virtually spiral ; thus the type of all continued action (unless re- 
 sistance have been entirely absent) is the spiral, and this whether the 
 action be organic or inorganic. Is it thus that decomp in ' replacement ' 
 is caused by the very pressure wh ensures the higher developt of the 
 succeeding organ the entire resistance turns the action into opposite. 
 Also in respect to fission, new ' nuclei ' arise : the relation is in fact only 
 one of degree, like hot and cold, wh are truly only hotter and less hot. 
 Fission can .. never be terminated by exhaustion of nuclei they are 
 perpetually renewed. 
 
 Greater pressure on any organ causes its decomp ; this decomp causes 
 its higher developt ; thus greatest developt takes place in direction of 
 greatest resistance, the decomp causing the vital action there. This is 
 why there is so little action in abdomen, &c. ; where resistance least there 
 is least decomp and .-. least replacement. Thus pressure during early 
 period acts part of functional activity afterwards, in causing the greatest 
 amount of vital action to take direction of most highly developed parts. 
 Can this be applied to formation of head in embryo ? Thermometer 
 and barometer really measure the same thing so far as air is concerned, 
 i. e. its pressure the resistance to its expansion : but when thermr is 
 applied to solids of course it measures also the resistance to expansion 
 arising from the particular cohesion, &c., of that substance. [Thus 
 specific heats ?] ' And do not organic bodies act towards heat as a thermr ? 
 the heat of atmosphere, i. e. the resistance to its expansion, becoming 
 real expansion in them. Light falling on black cloth makes it hot; i. e. 
 the motion ceasing there arises a tendency to expansive motion divergt 
 polarity. Light falling on chlorine and the motion ceasing there arises 
 in same way a tendency to divergnt action wh is the affinity [the chl the 
 female, the H the male] : do the heat and chem affinity differ as motion 
 of masses differs from heat ? 
 
 Polarity is simply an abstraction used to designate the mutual relation 
 of the two forms of wh all action is made up : it is not .-. matter wh is 
 polar, but only motion. Heat bears same relation to expansion that 
 weight does to falling : as weight is tendency to fall, and disappears 
 when the body has fallen, so heat is tendency to expand, and disappears 
 when the [hot] body has expanded.
 
 56 
 
 The varying forms of a gas flame under different degrees of pressure 
 present a curious parallel to organic changes; and the colors are signifi- 
 cant. Do bodies with divergent [female] polarity refract less than the 
 opposite ? Are not the various forces harmonic subdivisions of each 
 other ; as electcy in a wire goes on to heat and light the universe being 
 music. Thus structural developt from pressure is not only subdivision 
 of form, but real subdivision of the action ; the intenser vital action is a 
 ' subdivided ' or harmonic one. Chem and vital vibration run into one 
 another as heat and light do. 
 
 There is a two-fold relation between the forces, or forms of action ; 
 one of relative magnitude and one of kind, or direction ; each force is a 
 vibration, having a divergent and approxg form : the different forces are 
 the same vibratile action of different magnitude. 
 
 We may look upon the organs that have been formed under pressure, 
 and .-. highly developed, as answering to earth or atmosphere in wh life 
 has been formed; the organic life being a ' replacement ' of the elementary 
 life or heat ; precisely like the successive replacements by wh higher 
 structures are formed from low ones. Organic creatures are replacemnts 
 of the heated earth and air ; Life is a replacement of heat and a subdi- 
 vision of it. The heated air and earth may be taken to be the lowest 
 undeveloped living being ; the first living creatures only a replacement 
 of them, as the higher creatures are of the lower. 
 
 Does not pressure cause decomp by preventing that ' vital ' action on 
 wh alone existence of life depends, as any obstructn to upward motion 
 of pendulum causes it not to remain stationary, but to descend ? 
 
 May this tabulate the relations of the Forces : 1. All action is vibra- 
 tile : an approx half and a divergent half : the divergent form always 
 precedes, but in our observation either may come first. 2. Action of each 
 order produces an equal amount of the opp order, but this succession 
 may be either immediate or deferred. When deferred it is owing to 
 resistance. 3. Action thus deferred by resistance constitutes tendency, 
 tension, or polarity ; it is the same thing as the source of power in ma- 
 chines. Taking .-. motion and tendency to motion to be identical, 
 vibratile action may be of three sorts. 
 
 1st. It may be what we understand by a vibration, i. e. a succession 
 of approxg and divergt actions of the same kind, i. e. of the same 
 size, or rapidity. 
 
 2nd. The one action may be succeeded by an opp action of different 
 size ; either smaller [subdivision] as when a falling body produces 
 heat ; or vice versa. 
 
 3rd. Motion of each order may be propagated or continued as motion 
 of the same order but of different size ; as when heat becomes light, 
 or electricity. 
 
 Thus all the forces of the universe, from stellar motions to every form 
 of life, are harmonic subdivisions of the first great vibration in wh the 
 creative act consisted. Are not the laws of music the laws of all ma- 
 terial action ? Are the times or rapidities of the various forces to each 
 other iu harmonic ratio, i. e. the result of such subdivision of particles ? 
 
 In light is not Refraction like organic convolution ? the division into 
 colored rays like the branched or arborescent division ? polarization like 
 a whorl? Thus: white light refracted . . . = a tendril. 
 White light becoming colored by unequal refraction = a leaf. 
 White light polarized = a whorl or flower.
 
 57 ::;: 
 
 Does not each separate force, as we call it, or series of vibrations, consist 
 of what is known in music as ' the scale,' the range i. e. of audible 
 sounds ; not only light, heat, electcy, &c., but also chem affinity and the 
 various forms of life, vegetable, animal, cerebral, instinctive, &c. And 
 is it not prob also that all may be found to consist of successive octaves ; 
 each force including a range of sizes of motion ? 
 
 Is not magnetism larger than electricity ? yet it has a curious relation 
 to chem affinity wh is smaller : indeed it seems as if the various forms 
 or sizes of action were thus linked together, distant ones presenting 
 analogies. Thus what magnetism is to chem affinity, such surely is 
 sound to light ; electcy to nervous action ; heat (?) to cerebral or mental 
 action ; motion to heat. Is this the order of connection ? Motion and 
 heat ; sound and light [music and painting] ; magnetism and chemistry ; 
 electricity and vital action vegetable life. 
 
 Again: Heat and animal [organic] life ; light and ganglionic, 
 instinctive, life [a connection noted by Mr. Newport] : Chemistry and 
 cerebral, mental, life. 
 
 Chemistry is like mental action, if only in this respect, that it, as it 
 were, produces, is the origin of, matter : mental action produces matter, 
 is the origin of it, without it matter is not. The other forces are motions 
 in matter conditions of it but chem action determines the nature of the 
 matter itself ; makes it what it is : as also ' mind ' does. How the old 
 alchemists too personified chemistry ; spoke of affinities as loves and hates ; 
 made it in truth rather a psychical than a material thing. 
 
 Is this the ' octave ' of the Forces : Motion, Sound, Magnetism, 
 Electricity, Heat, Light, Chemicity, Life ? a fixed polarity in the third 
 and seventh. 
 
 The two modes of conversion of action from intensification and change 
 of substratum must be essentially the same, viz. a resistance to con- 
 tinuance. Now how and what is harmonic subdivision : in what way 
 does the turning of the previous motion at r angles cause the division ? 
 How do the nodal lines arise ? are they like rectangular folds ? 
 
 May it not be that light arises from heat, and life from chem action, 
 both in same way ; truly by an intensification or harmonic subdivision ? 
 
 In chemistry the approxg half seems seldom to produce a directly 
 similar divergent half ; but one of a lower form, viz. heat. Heat is the 
 divergent action resulting generally from chem approxn, just as it is so 
 often the divergent half of approx motion. Thus surely heat is well 
 placed as the fifth or dominant ; its peculiar relation to tonic both above 
 and below ; both to motion and life. But chemistry is full also of direct 
 vibratile action ; elective affinity e. g. and double decomp presents same 
 thing, but with an after approx action obscuring it. Elective affinity 
 appears a very good analogue of secretion ; it is like decomp producing 
 life, wh is function of glands. 
 
 In crystallization (as in falling) the apparent action is entirely approx, 
 but the divergent half is the heat : if the particles wh so approximate 
 passed by each other, and so kept up the vibratile action, (as in life) 
 there wd be less heat. Is it not prob that in gases the particles are os- 
 cillating in relation to each other, and therefore less heat in their 
 formation because the approx motion is not stopped. 
 
 Chemistry is like magnetism half vibrations fixed, or rendered per- 
 manent, bearing same relation to light as magnetism to electricity ?
 
 58 
 
 Look at a kite maintained motionless in the air by a string and aerial 
 current : the two opposing forces producing quiescence and yet a polarity ; 
 for it has a tendency towards earth : let the wind cease, and it falls 
 straight; let the string break, and it falls in the mean of wind's directn 
 and gravity: an active force and a resistance producing rest a stable 
 state in opposition to gravity, while they last, and yet at same time 
 polar. This illustrates many things both in chemistry and life. . The 
 gyroscope is similar. 
 
 As leaves produce the oppositely polar roots, so do not the male parts 
 of body the animal organs bring into existence the glandular or se- 
 cretive, the female ? Is it a law that the female form of everything 
 arises from and is produced by the male ? Are not the opposite sides 
 of leaves oppositely polar ? Why are the few elements wh we term 
 ' organic ' so solely the basis of living structures ? Is it that they are 
 those of wh the particles are smallest and .-. most fit for being the sub- 
 jects of the minute vibrations wh constitute life ? this smallness being 
 indicated by their atomic number ; and must not these organic elements 
 be oppositely polar : H e. g. male or approx and divergent or female ? 
 H and uniting into v compounds undergo motions smaller and involvg 
 smaller portions than when they form water. All bodies apparently may 
 partake of the v action but it has peculiar relation to 0, H, C and If. 
 So all may partake of magnetic action but it has peculiar relation to iron : 
 electricity to metals, &c. Is it a question of proportionate size ? Why 
 for every v compound are three elements necessary ? 
 
 The ' semitone ' interval between magnetism and electricity, and be- 
 tween chemistry and life, is striking taking the forces as one ' octave.' 
 In magnetm the polarities are separate, and stationary, &c. ; so in chem ; 
 and forming in both stable neutral bodies. In electricity, the same polar 
 force smaller is active, moving, constantly fluctuating, producing its 
 own modes of action, passing over distances : so in life, especly instinct. 
 
 "We do not understand chemistry because we have no organ of sense 
 adapted to the chem rays, and .*. judge of them by secondary effects alone. 
 
 Metaphysically considered, the doctrine of chem union is very unsatis- 
 factory. Thus if a ' compound body ' is homogeneous, consisting 
 throughout of same matter if every particle of sulphate of lime e. g. 
 be sulphate of lime, i. e. S, and Ca, then chem union involves all the 
 difficulties of the Trinity ; and more, for to the latter the ideas do not 
 apply. But if the compound body be not thus homogeneous, but each 
 particle different ; viz. 0, Ca. S over again, wherein does chem union 
 consist ; in what does it differ from mere admixture ? And how can that 
 be S or or Ca wh has not their properties, nor any of them, save such 
 as are common to all matter ? Is it a new species of isomorphism that 
 befalls these substances when they come into contact, or how ? The 
 common sense view of the phna is surely that the various substances wh 
 thus unite are but representatives of certain amount and kinds of action 
 and tendency to action, and that when they unite another amount and 
 kind of action and tendency thereto succeeds. The heat and the light 
 1 of the sun ' as we say, are truly a divergent polarity or tendency (of 
 more than one size) induced in the earth, or rather perhaps in its atmos- 
 phere, by the approx polarity of the sun. They are in fact parts of its 
 attraction ; and life also may be classed as indirectly such an effect. And 
 the withholding of the planets from the sun surely has the effect of 
 [Chemistry, 218.]
 
 59 
 
 maintaining his approx or male polarity. May not Nerve-force arise in 
 same mode as electricity, viz. by resistance to the motion of the particles 
 towards the seat of chem action ? The electric spark is accompanied 
 by sound, as if the electcy divided into two portions ; a smaller light ; 
 a larger sound. Is it not the same thing when light in the spectrum 
 is converted partly into heat and partly into chemicity ? Is it in any 
 sense a rule that force on being converted tends to be converted at once 
 into a larger and a smaller form ? 
 
 The production of any form of action from any polarity or tendency is 
 merely the removing of a resistance. Seeds and living structures are 
 mechanical arrangements for permitting the tendency to expansion, wh 
 wd otherwise constitute heat, to become vital divergent motion. A hot 
 portion of iron may be used as a machine, not by expanding but by con- 
 tracting, as when employed to bring together the walls of a building : 
 the process is the same, for the iron as it cools acquires a ' contracting 
 tendency.' There is here however a difference of form from the action of 
 heated steam : does nature ever employ machines of this kind also ? 
 
 Polarity is simply statics (as opposed to dynamics). And surely 
 statics can only be conceived as arising from dynamics ; the first resist- 
 ance must have been an opposite movement. Two opposite movements 
 neutralizing each other are mutually both force and resistance. Thus 
 resistance is clearly derived from motion, and the chief or sole basis of 
 the hypothesis of matter is taken away. So instead of obscure ideas of 
 force or forces, &c., the conception of the universe resolves itself into 
 action God's action. Force is a secondary and derived idea ; it is one 
 of the consequences or results of action, correlative with resistance. 
 
 The two kinds of conversion of force by opposite motion and by co- 
 hesion are the two kinds of resistance, dynamical and static. Thus 
 interference and absorption are the same ; they are only dynamical and 
 static resistance and conversion. 
 
 The number three and the rectangular relation have their basis in the 
 laws of our mind. Space [our conception] is of three divisions at r. a. 
 Hence the number three and the right angle lie for us as the foundation of 
 nature : because they are the foundation of our mental action [with regard 
 to matter]. Three is the basic number of nature ; five is two threes ; 
 the octave five and three ; or perhaps better, four threes. Also three 
 turns at r a constitute the spiral and are essential to it ; i. e. to a com- 
 plete spiral ; less may be of a spiral form or tendency, but does not 
 constitute a spiral. Thus a spiral [consisting of three turns at r a] is 
 only another form of our fundamental idea of space, and .. not only in 
 fact but of necessity, in a metaphysical point of view, constitutes the 
 basic form of nature : viz. by virtue of the laws of our own mind. A 
 spiral is only a flowing cube ; i. e. a curved line described within a cube 
 is a spiral. A spiral is a cube formed by constant motion in rectangular 
 directions ; a cube is a spiral formed by alternate action in rectangular 
 directions ; and so of all other angular and curved figures : they are 
 respectively formed of two rectangular motions operating together or 
 alternately, in various proportions. But the cube and the spiral are the 
 universal bases. Are not organic and inorganic forms the cube and 
 spiral as above defined ? the various forms arising from the proportions 
 of the two directions as above described ; wh are indeed only other words 
 for the force and resistance. May it not be that life repeats in its various
 
 60 
 
 forms all the inorganic forms and forces the same under organic aspect V 
 But altho' in inorganic forms these two motions appear to have been 
 altn-nate in their operation, they have not been really so. The crystal- 
 line forms result equally with the organic from the union of the two 
 directions in one action. We have a perfect ear because these three 
 directions at r a are embodied in it ; and in both the forms the inorganic 
 and organic the cube and the spiral, the canals and the cochlea. The 
 canals and the cochlea do but repeat each other under the two different 
 forms or modes of space. Why and how are these two forms, and why 
 the canals first, the cochlea later in developt ? Bearing of this upon the 
 functions of the ear and eye AVe can distinguish many sounds separately 
 wh fall conjointly upon the ear : but rays of light, or colors, that fall 
 conjointly upon the eye, we cannot distinguish : the impression appears 
 simple. Is it not the divided structure of the ear that gives it this 
 power of perceiving at once numerous impression ? when in a concert we 
 distinguish several notes, different portions of the labyrinth are used. 
 This faculty is wanting in the eye, because it is but an uniform expanse. 
 In the ear too it is limited, by its structure. Are not the harmonic 
 sounds in some sense at at r angles to each other ? 
 
 If all force is motion, all science must be mechanics : and for mechanics 
 are not these three principles sufficient ? (1) Motion does not increase 
 or diminish. (2) Unless resisted its form and direction are unchanged. 
 (3) If resisted, it takes the direction of least resistance, [and are not 
 these as independent of experience as any can be ?] In each form dy- 
 namics shd come before statics, because resistance is an opposing motion ; 
 and has not the whole attitude of science been more or less perverted by 
 the contrary ? the idea of resistance being made a primary one. So it 
 has had to be invented, instead of being derived from motion ; and this 
 is the invention of matter. Are not matter and motion, resistance and 
 force ? and is matter necessary to the conception of motion as resistance 
 is to that of force ? and force and resistance are not two things but one. 
 Motion produces force by becoming resistance the error is to attribute 
 motion to force as its cause, instead of tracing force [and resistance] as 
 effects of motion. 
 
 In truth, force arises from resistance ; the idea of force springs out of 
 that of resistance. But the primary fact of the universe was unresisted 
 action action embracing, and resolving itself into, force and resistance. 
 God's action includes force, resistance, and result [or develop t] wh is as 
 I have said, God's action is motion in direction of least resistance. Force, 
 resistance and developt bear same relation to God's action, as it were, 
 that time (as past, present and future) bears to eternity. To us different 
 threefold in reality one. How come the opposite motions wh consti- 
 tute the first resistance ? 
 
 Does not one look at attraction wrongly by virtue of this idea of 
 substance ? seeing that it is force only of wh we speak it is much clearer : 
 not substances attract ; but force becomes. Are polars at right angles ? 
 observe, the momentum of a pendulum that has just completed its fall is 
 at r a precisely to its downward movement. So the gravitating and 
 tangential forces in earth's orbit are strictly polar. Must not the tan- 
 gential be produced from gravity, as polar (breadth) ever is from length ? 
 Is not Newton's doctrine of limit for mathematics a kind of evidence of 
 the origin of tangential force from gravity ?
 
 61 
 
 It is well that the nutritive action is at r a to the decompg, vegetable 
 life to chem action, &c., I have seen before that it slid be so : -the 
 two forces of earth's orbit the type of polarity, and the two motions at 
 r a wh produce a curve are polar. The arch is so pleasant to the eye 
 surely because it gives the impression of being motion turned at r a. It 
 looks as if it grew up to the weight it supports and turned beneath it, 
 and this is beautiful ; not as if it were first formed and the weight super- 
 imposed this wd be ugly. The law of r a is well seen in architecture : 
 not only in the beauty of the arch, but in columns, wh must expand at 
 the top. What more painful to the eye than a bare unmoulded column ? 
 But why the demand for expanded base also, or pedestal ? Is it the 
 same law, wh demands that the base shall be expanded by resistance, 
 and the column a ' gemmation ' ? I do believe that the Law of Beauty 
 will be found to be motion turned turned at right angles, wh is in fact 
 the meaning of Hogarth's ' Line.' And thus Beauty and Use become 
 identical, wh is essential to the true conception of beauty. The beautiful 
 is the useful, because both are one : both the result of the operation of 
 the great law of motion. But this is hardly a theory of beauty, because 
 all form whatever (i. e. natural form) depends on this law : what makes 
 some more beautiful than others ? It is not absolute development : the 
 more developed structures in nature are by no means always the most 
 beautiful, tho' higher development is as a rule attended with increase of 
 beauty. There must be something in the proportion of motion and re- 
 sistance, determining the degree of turning at r a, that must determine 
 beauty. May not the idea of beauty in architecture be thus traced out ? 
 The edifice is to represent to the mind the laws of natural formation, i. e. 
 of motion under resistance, and turned at r a, i. e. taking direction of 
 least resistance. Is not architecture in principle the same as painting, 
 regarded as an art ? Its object must be to represent artificially the 
 working of natural laws. To suggest that wh does not really exist, to 
 present to the mind a result as of natural growth, tho' accomplished by 
 means quite independent of the laws of growth therefore it must con- 
 form to those laws, by art, wh if it were a natural production wd deter- 
 mine its form, &c. A building to be good must be such as it wd have 
 been if it had grown i. e. if had been formed under the law of motion 
 in direction of least resistance : it must have such form and such pro- 
 portions as it might have assumed under that law. But this law does 
 does not limit the actual form, any more than it does the infinite variety 
 of forms in nature. It only forbids disproportion and deformity ; the 
 actual form may vary within all possible limits of relation between 
 force and resistance ; but a certain relation being adopted as fundamental 
 the parts and proportions must all conform to this relation. Not that 
 they must be all alike : they may vary much just as leaves and flowers 
 of a plant represent different relations between force and resistance, but 
 the relations are definite, and have their origin in the construction of 
 the plant itself. The varieties of proportion do not arise arbitrarily ; 
 there is in nature, and must be in art, a cause showable for them. The 
 object of art must be to conform to these laws and causes and necessities, 
 as we may call them, of variation in the proportion of force and resist- 
 ance ; and the type of those variations slid be those seen in living forms ; 
 must be indeed, for they arise only by the necessary working of this 
 law. Neither should all artistic forms be similar, or involving an equal
 
 62 
 
 proportion, or anything hke it, between these two elements : the variety 
 of nature, wh art slid likewise embrace, depends upon an absolutely 
 limitless variation in this proportion. 
 
 Have the force and resistance some sort of harmonic relation to each 
 other ; the most perfectly musical proportions affording the most beau- 
 tiful forms ? How the musical-harmonic numbers are most beautiful to 
 the eye : is not here another principle fcr architecture ? 
 
 In gothic architecture the force is greater in proportion to the resist- 
 ance than in Saxon ; and in Grecian the resistance is probably still 
 greater. Surely the higher developed most turned or ' resisted ' 
 portions of architecture, shd occupy such portions as flower and head 
 occupy. Buildings shd have head most developed, and less developed 
 ends, &c. Appropriateness of dame as summit (head) ; and yet not 
 unless the other developt has been proportionate ; not appropriate e. g. 
 to sharp gothic, that shd rather end as a tree does. Remember also 
 that the rising up from ground, in highest forms, should be a process of 
 erecting, as in human frame ; not of pulling out, but of carrying back ; 
 and involves higher developt, more rectangular turning. Also the process 
 of developt is process of subdivision and coalescence. 
 
 "With regard to the proportion between the force and the resistance, 
 and the law respecting it wh determines beauty, remember the difference 
 of the forces themselves, those even wh constitute the various forms of 
 life : that vegetable life is only the same force, or vibratile motion, wh 
 constitutes animal life ; and that the various kinds of animal life differ 
 also. Do the various kinds of vegetable and animal life differ as sounds 
 or colors among themselves : vegetable is to animal life as heat is to 
 light ? So the relation between force and resistance wh constitutes 
 beauty may be absolutely one for all forms of force, giving for same 
 proportion always the same relative degree of beauty. Js one curve ab- 
 solutely the most beautiful ? if so, is not that curve always the most 
 beautiful (i. e. that proportion of force and resistance) for every kind 
 and degree of force ? or is there for each form of action a peculiar 
 resistance wh causes its greatest beauty ? seen e. g. in woman ; and in 
 man that wh produces greatest strength : or if beauty be merely our 
 sensation, will not our standard of it be the proportion of force and re- 
 sistance wh answers to that in our nervous system ? And conversely 
 the standard of beauty will indicate the proportion of the two existing 
 in the cerebrum and regulating mental action. And may this be a reason 
 why tastes differ ? for tho' there must be a general conformity in this 
 proportion in every human cerebrum, and .-. the general laws of beauty 
 are quite fixed, yet are there not slight variations, and thus might di- 
 versities of taste give indications of cerebral conformation ? [Do the 
 same laws apply to beauty in dress also : head-dress e. g.] This view 
 of beauty as being the same relation of force and resistance as in our 
 own cerebra, reconciles the two views of beauty: that it is an absolute 
 quality, always and necessarily the same, and truly expressive of a 
 divine meaning ; and that it arises merely from conformity between the 
 object and ourselves, has its seat only in the perception. Both are true, 
 for doubtless the relation of force and resistance in the construction of 
 human brain i. e. the laws of the human mind are absolutely beau- 
 tiful ; of all material things the most beautiful, most expressive of the 
 divine meaning.
 
 63 
 
 Beauty in color is more obscure than beauty in form : should the color 
 correspond to the developt, i. e. be such as may coexist with or result 
 from such subdivision and turning of motion as is embodied in the object ? 
 
 All that is right obeys the law of least resistance : all instinctive 
 works, all good music, all right and beautiful thinking. Men have 
 thought wrongly, because they have thought too actively, their ' spirits ' 
 have misled them ; they have not been content to let their brains work 
 normally, in direction of least resistance ; they have interfered with the 
 process and spoilt it. What is it to let a man ' follow his bent,' but to 
 allow his mind to act in direction of least resistance ? In instinctive 
 works the structure of the animal may be traced the relation of force 
 and resistance ; the instinct does but repeat the internal action under 
 the same law that takes place in its brain. 
 
 Nature does not overcome obstacles, but yields to them,, and by 
 yielding overcomes ; and gains even from that resistance and that 
 yielding, beauty in form and elevation in structure. Man on the other 
 hand makes himself act, not in direction of least resistance, but of 
 greatest, and by so doing gains nothing but distortion. But with regard 
 to nature this must be taken in its true sense : the yielding is not abso- 
 lute but comparative ; she acts in right direction, tho' at same time in 
 that of least resistance : the direction being right. Here also is the 
 difference between improving ourselves by curing our faults, and exer- 
 cising our good qualities : the latter is to act as nature does, in direction 
 of least resistance, the former is the human notion of acting dead against 
 the resistance itself. 
 
 That deformity is due to the non-existence of a form wh might have 
 been produced by the natural law i. e. by possible proportion or pro- 
 portions of force and resistance receives great support from the painful 
 impression produced by portions of two objects, both beautiful in them- 
 selves, being put together as one. Thus each tree, while bare of leaves, 
 is beautiful ; but each has an appropriate and correspondent character 
 throughout, and each of its parts with the whole : as are the parts such 
 is the whole, indeed. But now if part or one of these be made part of 
 the other, deformity is instantly produced ; and vhy ? simply because 
 impossibility. Is not everything that is possible in nature, beautiful ? it 
 must obey the Law of Beauty [tho not all equally.] So in other things, 
 deformity arises when two forms, however beautiful, are made to appear 
 as one, i. e. as a unity, wh cd not have arisen from a possible proportion, 
 or variation in the proportion, of force and resistance : e. g. a cat's pa-w- 
 on a monkey's arm. This is surely the perpetual cause of deformity in 
 human works. 
 
 The leaves of each tree correspond (with no exceptions impairing the 
 law) to the form of the tree itself : willow, oak, poplar, &c. ; and must 
 do so, indeed, if we remember the morphology of the tree. Grafting 
 surely gives the resistance of one to the force or action of another ? 
 
 Arguing abstractly is not this valid : What determines all forms is 
 the proportion between the force and resistance : .-. What determines 
 beauty must be some such proportion, there is absolutely nothing else to 
 determine it. The architect in his work should obey the laws of vital 
 forms, because all action is primarily Life.' 
 
 Can these principles be applied to the beautiful in sound and color ? 
 e. g. vibrations consist in curves ; all vibrations in one mode of regarding
 
 64 
 
 them do so ; to those curves /. the same laws of proportion apply, as to 
 architecture ; and the curves of architecture, analysed, might be reduced 
 as it were, to mu.sical vibrations and laws. Of course this law, if it be 
 the law of beauty in architecture, must be the law of beauty of form 
 absolutely. Every form to be beautiful, or even tolerable, free from true 
 deformity, must be such as it could have become by the law of motion in 
 direction of least resistance. And this not only absolutely, but relatively, 
 i. e. in conformity with the proportions of force and resistance wh have 
 regulated the form of other parts of same thing, or have acted upon it 
 from without during period of its formation. And with regard to re- 
 lations of different forms, what in art might be called grouping, must not 
 the same law have a certain bearing ? Of course as a law it cannot apply, 
 the grouping being an artificial relation having nothing to do with any 
 workings of force and resistance in or between the things grouped. But 
 surely the object in grouping shd be not to do too much violence to this 
 instinct, wh demands that all form should be possible result of force and 
 resistance. 
 
 Upon this fact that every part of each whole is result of same pro- 
 portion, or a connected and necessarily arising proportion, of force and 
 resistance, is based the mutual adaptation of the parts. And carrying 
 the same, idea a little deeper, here also is reason of correspondence of 
 habits and instincts to structure; reason why each creature is made 
 exactly right for its work, and place in the world : wh is indeed nothing 
 but a ' mutual adaptation of parts ' of world as a whole. 
 
 Men of genius work in direction of least resistance, and /. their works 
 are part of nature. They are not men of strong wills, but of strong 
 4 tendencies.' 
 
 Are not the discords and their necessary resolutions in music like a 
 curving at r a ; the flat seventh e. g. like expansion of a column ; the 
 fourth and seventh like the parting of a gotliic arch I Are not discordant 
 notes two curves that could not naturally come or remain in apposition ? 
 
 Is not every vibration either a curve, or a condensation and rarefaction, 
 according to the point of view from wh it is regarded : and thus is not 
 music in relation with the arts of form ? also it gives a more than ideal 
 truth to the view of the universe as music. The curves of other forces, 
 and the fixed curves wh constitute form, are the curves of music ; and 
 form is music petrified. And in architecture, lines and curves must be as 
 harmonies, discords, and resolutions in music ; straight lines or lines that 
 have no special relation to each other [as arising from force and resistce] 
 are as the discords in music, and like musical discords must be resolved, 
 by forming appropriate curves or turnings at r a ; they must be brought 
 into some ' simple relation ' to each other. 
 
 We shd have crystalline or angular forms in those parts wh naturally 
 indicate that form of action. May not architecture be divided into two 
 primary styles ; the inorganic and organic ; crystalline and vital. The 
 arched, and eminently the gothic, being the vital ; the grecian, and es- 
 pecially the doric, (?) being the crystalline : the crystalline made up of 
 straight lines ; the vital of curves. To the former naturally belongs the 
 angular pediment, wh may be regarded as half a prism. To this style 
 are appropriate the angular lines at top of column, and the square column 
 itself. To the gothic, or vital style, belongs a curve in every line. The
 
 65 
 
 art is in the mixing of the.se two styles. Thus the round column with 
 Ionic spiral, or Corinthian leaves, is an introduction of the vital or curved 
 style into the crystalline or straight, and demands a corresponding modi- 
 fication in all the other lines here the true artist is tested. Herein ap- 
 pears genius, or the spirit one with nature ; to conjoin these two general 
 ideas in such a way as not to be repugnant to the possibilities of natural 
 laws. We do see them actually united in nature sometimes, though not 
 often. Is not this purity of style? Architecture in these later days has 
 developed from the inorganic into the organic form. And I doubt 
 whether the more ornate forms of Grecian architecture, the Corinthian 
 and Ionic, are not unsound, i. e. mixed in an impossible way. How can 
 a great solid inorganic mass, like a pediment, rest upon spirals, still less 
 upon flowers and leaves? These styles are a tendency towards the 
 organic, but inconsistent, abortive attempts. Wd not the men who in- 
 vented the pure Grecian style, if they had invented a Corinthian column, 
 also have invented an appropriate crown to it ? The Ionic or Corinthian 
 columns are beautiful in themselve, but crushed with a heavy pediment 
 they pain the eye it is like a stem on a flower. Gothic architecture 
 acknowledges that as its pillars represent stems of trees [organic forms] 
 so the roof shd represent organic form also shd represent the foliage ; 
 an idea on the more or less perfect realization of wh depends the greater 
 or less perfection of the building : not an imitation of either stems or 
 foliage, but consistency of form. Perhaps Gothic architecture is more 
 pleasing than any other, because it, more than any other, suggests to the 
 mind the idea of a living growth. And /. its existence is, as it were, 
 better accounted for. A mass of crystals, how beautiful soever, is less 
 satisfying to our eyes than a simple plant or flower, because we under- 
 stand and feel, as it were, how the latter came ; we sympathize, with ita 
 life. With the process wh forms the crystal we have nothing in common, 
 and seem not to understand it or appreciate it. So an angular crystalline 
 building seems to have been formed we know not how, we admire it but 
 have no sympathy with it. A true Gothic building we not only admire, 
 but claim a fellowship, and hold intercourse with, for it seems to have a 
 life as we have, to obey a common law with ourselves. Thus too, 
 4 Truth shall spring out of the earth.' 
 
 The law of beauty being simply the law of motion in direction of least 
 resistance, Beauty is at once absolute law and absolute freedom. It is 
 the very law of liberty. Nay, this is the universe also, absolute law aud 
 absolute freedom : this also is the moral law. 
 
 The truth of all natural things is their presentation of the spiritual. 
 Was not the Newtonian philosophy a pure, perfectly beautiful, Greek 
 building an inorganic philosophy ; those who have since recognized the 
 doctrine of the forces, like those who introduced spirals and flowers into 
 Greek architecture, an introduction of the organic or vital element, but 
 imperfectly and unsuitably ; what is to come is the vital philosophy ; a 
 true natural Gothic building ; a living creature ; not a monument of tile 
 power of man, but a temple of God. 
 
 Has not the course of the human mind been similar in other things 
 also in all things ? e. g. in art : sculpture crystalline ; painting mixed ; 
 music purely organic, and music alone proper to worship. 
 
 The idea that all things wh result from, or are in accordance with, the
 
 66 
 
 law of motion in direction of least resistance, are beautiful, becomes 
 increasingly satisfactory. There are two ideas wh attach themselves to 
 it, viz. Nature being the result, or rather the fact, of motion in direction 
 of least resistance, it includes all possible things. Being such as it is, it 
 embraces all possibilities. Whatsoever can be under that law i. e. 
 whatsoever can possibly be exists. Nature is 4 all possible things,' and 
 so soon as ever other things become possible, nature will embrace them 
 also ; possibility and actuality are not two things but one. And again, 
 therefore all possible things are beautiful. Beauty belongs to the essence 
 of things, i. e. of all natural things. In God's works beauty is the only 
 possibility. He secures an absolute beauty by the very mode he has 
 chosen of working. But man's works are not so. They are only beau- 
 tiful in so far as they conform to the law of God's works. That should 
 be his aim ever, in physical production and moral deeds to realize God's 
 Law ; then whatsoever fie does also will be beautiful. To a man so 
 acting, as to God, the beautiful and the possible are one. But again, in 
 nature there exists deformity, i. e. apparent failure to achieve the object 
 designed distortion ; and this is the only thing in nature wh can be 
 truly called not beautiful. From a human point of view there is in these 
 things a real want of beauty, an ugliness, a want of conformity to the 
 law wh constitutes the beautiful. But this is only from a human point 
 of view. We see the result but not the conditions ; in a higher view the 
 deformities also are the result of the same law, and .'. must possess the 
 same attribute of beauty. To a being who sees all the conditions, de- 
 formities and distortions must be not less beautiful, i. e. conformable to 
 the universal law, than the most perfect and adapted forms. And 
 recognizing God's present action in all things, all things must beautiful ; 
 and moreover if we have faith, and believe that he will let no real harm 
 befall any of his creatures, that he compensates and makes up for priva- 
 tions and calamities, then the moral painfulness of physical deformity is 
 removed also, and we feel willing to believe in the higher and deeper 
 beauty that we cannot see. No real loss or detriment is there. To us 
 who see so little, there is error ; to God who sees and does the whole, 
 there is the right alone. And so even with regard to the defective or 
 ugly works of man, it is probable that the deeper law of beauty embraces 
 them also, for tho' wrong in themselves, and regarded in relation to that 
 wh the human eye can see, even they are the result of the universal law 
 and .-. beautiful in relation to their total conditions. A larger sphere, as 
 it were, absorbs them, a grander design fills them with the radiance of 
 its own beauty. Defective regarded alone and as the works of man, as 
 a part^of creation they fulfil the most rigorous conditions of perfection. 
 THE LAW as embodied in the human brain, presided over every step of 
 their production : they are essential parts of the perfect order from wh 
 the universe cannot deviate. Thus beauty alone is possible to genius, as 
 to nature. 
 
 But not thus can we rightly speak of moral deformity ; not thus of sin. 
 No law of God is manifested there : sin is the breaking of the law. The 
 human spirit wh owns no law save a voluntary obedience, marrs the 
 face of nature with blots no art can hide, no philosophy resolve. 
 There and there alone are to be found scars and blemishes wh do but 
 appal the more the brighter the light wh shines upon them : wh God in 
 His mercy forgive and take away.
 
 67 
 
 How consistent this view of physical ugliness and defect is with the 
 idea that God designs them for~a moral end. To Him they are not ex- 
 ceptions to the law of universal beauty, but to us they are, and they are 
 so to us because He chooses, and because it is well for us that they shd 
 be so. They are as much designed by Him, and shd speak to us as much 
 of Him, as the light of the sun or the beauty of flowers. What is their 
 language, what the signification of their speech ? Are they like discords 
 in music, bad in themselves, good as parts of the whole, but our ears too 
 limited to appreciate their bearing on the whole : thus they effect two 
 purposes, a moral one by their ugliness ; a happy one to higher beings, 
 by their beauty ? 
 
 Is low development of form more beautiful to us than the high, 
 because the brain has low development of form ? This appears 
 in many things ; and is surely founded not in structure of our brains 
 alone, but has its root in the nature of things. Are not all organic forms 
 expressible by vibrations variously modified, as if by interference ? And 
 are not these perhaps the colors, various forms of vibration produced 
 sometimes by interference. 
 
 That all possible things exist, implies that God does not arbitrarily 
 choose what things he will make, but that any other wd involve a con- 
 tradiction of His mode of acting : wh we call the laws of nature. 
 
 The charm of trees is their perfect irregularity and freedom from 
 restraint, or anything of a fixed character. They are such as they might 
 have happened to become. The word ' natural ' implies especially this 
 very freedom from restraint. Have we not been inventing all sorts of 
 fixed and unyielding laws for nature, and when we find her true law it 
 consists in the absence of all fixity and limit. The law of nature is that 
 she shd go and be wherever and whatever she can. We have bound 
 nature in chains, and therein ourselves also, and we have discovered that 
 she is absolutely unbound and free : shall not we rejoice in her freedom 
 and in our own ? Here is the ' Law of Liberty.' 
 
 I am persuaded that this law of motion in direction of least resistance 
 wh constitutes the beauty of the natural universe [beauty of form], may 
 be traced without violence to nature in music also : that good music 
 obeys it, as it rises and falls, swells and sinks, alike in melody and har- 
 mony the law must be at work. In what a succession of waves, or vi- 
 brations, true music comes over us ; up and down as it were, describing 
 a true line of grace and beauty : and the successive curves following by 
 that law : all possible ones ; not forced and arbitrary, such as could not 
 under the law arise. From this description I feel that Mendelssohn must 
 in great part be excluded. His music is not nature's but man's ; he 
 forces the ear to take up his meaning ; puts many beautiful things 
 together, but not always things that could have grown into one whole 
 witness symphony of Lobgesang, consisting so largely of a succession of 
 arbitrary interruptions, linked not by sound, but only by sense, i. e. 
 meaning. Not but that such violent interruptions and changes do occur 
 in nature, but then the eye shd be able to trace the origin and progress 
 of them, by the law, and so shd the ear in music, or they are not 
 beautiful; save in that higher sense in wh ugliness in nature is beauty. 
 But it is not for man to create this beauty : the deformity of nature is not 
 deformity but beauty to God. It is true that a man of larger scope of
 
 power and conception may perceive the beauty of that wh appears ugly 
 or deformed to those of more limited view or less capacity ; so far re- 
 sembling God's relation to the deformities of nature. But then to the 
 lower natures theae things appear ugly ; not as having a peculiar beauty 
 or meaning, but deformed and bad. Such e. g. may be various incom- 
 prehensible works, but not Mendelssohn's. That has its own beauty and 
 meaning perceptible, and .-. does not belong to the class of ' divine ' 
 mysteries. One can see it in Mendelssohn's busts : he is not a genius, 
 but a powerful, highly developed man ; large faculties and powers, not 
 overmastering instincts ; as may be observed in many othercases. 
 
 The idea that all nature must be as it is, that it is one whole, not 
 variable save by a miracle, and that defects and distortions are equally 
 results of the one law, has for us a beautiful moral bearing : it intro- 
 duces legitimately into our view of the human race the idea of vicarious 
 suffering. "Without the defective members the human race could not be 
 as it is. They are necessary ; their suffering an essential condition of 
 the well being of the whole. Each of us may say that they are afflicted 
 for us, our well being involves and rests upon their defectiveness. It 
 gives them a touching claim to our sympathy and tenderness ; in caring 
 for them we care for ourselves ; in tending them we do but pity our own 
 infirmity. I have applied this first to that to wh perhaps it seems most 
 strictly to apply, viz. congenital defects ; but doubtless it applies also in 
 large measure to diseases ; to all sufferings probably wh are not the in- 
 dividual effects of sin. So also to the lower races of men ; [and indeed 
 to the lower animals also]. And each highly endowed man or woman 
 shd feel also that his happiness and privileges rest upon are involved 
 in the less advantage of his fellows. He owes them a debt. Here in 
 truth is the deep basis in nature of philanthropy, kindness and humanity. 
 It is not giving, it is only paying. Nature is a whole. The human race 
 is a lesser whole not many but one. And even an illustration of 
 Christ's vicarious sufferings may be drawn hence. Change the ideas 
 corresponding to the physical for those appropriate to the moral law, and 
 the same conception avails. The Atonement is but a carrying out, a 
 further application, of God's universal law of action. The various parts 
 of a tree give a good illustration of the idea : thus the bracts are abortive 
 in order that other leaves may be, because other leaves are, developed 
 into a flower. 
 
 Apply this theory of the absolute beauty of nature, to the particular 
 case of childlessness. To the parties concerned this is a grief, and to all 
 of us it seems a pity and a want. But in the great scheme of nature 
 children there wd be a deformity. Our crying out for pleasant and 
 agreeable things everywhere, is like a child's love for ornament irrespective 
 of propriety : we only need a larger sense, a more expanded view, not 
 only to acquiesce but to rejoice in simplicity, privation, painfulness. 
 
 Perhaps the Corinthian column may be regarded as the trunk of a 
 tree [living] used as a pillar, and putting out branches and leaves, as it 
 naturally wd do beneath the weight, and so concealing the trunk wh 
 really supported the roofand this might be good if this were really 
 the impression produced by the Corinthian column. 
 
 The three forms of life the triplet of life [length, breadth and 
 depth J are vegetable, animal, and human : the human as much different 
 from as animal, animal from vegetable ; as much distinguished by reason, 
 Beauty 254.
 
 69 
 
 power of self-motion, &c., apart from moral nature, above animal, a 
 animal from vegetable. Is man two animal, as animal two vegetable ? 
 Do these correspond in mental life to perception, thought, emotion : con- 
 structive (artistic), intellectual, emotional ? The idea of vegetable world 
 is beauty ; of animal, truth ; of human, right [moral right]. The 
 vegetable world constitutes the beauty of earth ; in animal the great 
 idea is not beauty, but adaptation correctness, proper performance of 
 function. In man, the idea required is not either beauty or mere correct- 
 ness of result, but holiness. The three worlds of life correspond with 
 the three ' senses ' aesthetic, natural, moral. And woman as repre- 
 senting the emotional world [?] emphatically the human : which agrees 
 with 's idea of the woman indicating the holy portion of humanity. 
 
 Cousin defines beauty ' unity in variety,' and this is good in measure : 
 it embraces all nature, wh is unity in variety. But it gives no account 
 of the different decrees of beauty : has the view of proportion of resistce 
 better application ? Cousin's idea involves that all natural objects are 
 beautiful, wh I doubt if he meant. Nay more, there may even in evil 
 actions, wh are emphatically contrary to beauty, be a unity and A r ariety, 
 quite possible surely to have unity in variety in wickedness. 
 
 The view of all nature, physical and mental, as a moral act of God, 
 gives a real explanation and standard of beauty viz. that of moral 
 Tightness, a due control of passion. This what we everywhere perceive 
 as beauty in physical world ; in intellect, as truth ; in morals, as holiness. 
 In all it is one thing Q-od's holiness : this is the fountain and source : 
 nature is not beautiful because informed with holiness and expressing it, 
 but because it is holy action. Due control of passion : ever and every- 
 where is Beauty ; and ever aud everywhere is Holiness it is beauty, 
 truth, or holiness, according as it is perceived. Physical beauty, in- 
 tellectual truth, are effects in us produced by holy deed. The standard 
 of absolute beauty is absolute right, but what that is I do not see that 
 we can presume to know as yet. Of one thing however we may be sure, 
 that whatever it is, it is not something else, e. g. wise self interest, or 
 that wh produces greatest aggregate of happiness, &c. 
 
 How the various theories of beauty wh make it something else, e. g. 
 the agreeable, the suitable, &c., exemplify the false unifying the 
 identity without variety : the uniting without discriminating ; the 
 attempt at function without nutrition. Yet these false unifyings are 
 also right ; they have been failing functions producing the nutrition 
 they have led to the vital discrimination wh has afforded conditions for 
 the better, larger unifying. 
 
 True theory is unity in variety ; false theory unity without variety. 
 The variety is the nutrition, the vital resistance: the identification 
 without difference, without discrimination, is passion uncontrolled ; it is 
 inorganic, without the vital resistance : it is wrong like self-indulgence. 
 But the resistance is supplied by its being felt to be wrong, aud leads 
 then to discrimination and observation. 
 
 I do not agree with that view of ' ideal * beauty wh represents it as 
 more perfect than the true beauty. Nature is really perfectly beautiful ; 
 infinitely above any ideal of beauty we can form : it is blasphemy to 
 Bay or think the contrary. Is it not God's act can He not conceive 
 better than we ? or does He wantonly let His act fall short of His con- 
 ception ? The imperfections and ugliness of natnre are relative to us
 
 70 
 
 only. The real beauty of nature as it is, is absolute, infinite, God's 
 act being so ; but we see it under limit of own nature, partially and in 
 time ; .-. to us is defect, and want or loss of beauty. I object to this in 
 Plato, that he finds the real world not even beautiful enough for him \ 
 and it was a false direction (i. e. tho' right then) that he gave to thought 
 in sending it to the region of the ideal for its highest conceptions. But 
 this, observe, it was emphatically right to do ; it was the separation for 
 
 Man's thought cannot surpass, nay for ever shall fall infinitely short 
 of God's act. Higher thoughts, more glorious conceptions, a more perfect 
 beauty, a diviner truth, a purer and profounder holiness exist here in the 
 facts of actual nature than our most elevated imaginations could ever 
 approach. Nature is perfect and infinite in beauty and in every form of 
 rightness. That we find her not so is because we see her wrongly ; in 
 parts and not in whole, in time and not in eternity. Yet is this right 
 also ; our proper mental discipline consists in not seeing all things beau- 
 tiful ; it is needful for us this perception of the beautiful mingled with 
 ihe ugly. But to accomplish this good for us it was not needful that 
 God should deform His work and really mingle bad with good ; it was 
 enough to place us with our littleness in a world of perfect good too 
 large for us. That is all : what makes our evil apart from sin is only 
 too large a good ; our ugly a beauty on too grand a scale for us. The 
 senses delude us here as everywhere : we perceive an ugly and we think 
 .-. that the thing is really so. Here as everywhere the first step towards 
 true knowledge is to learn to emancipate ourselves from sense. 
 
 Now I know what the ' ideal ' is. It is to us what nature is to God : 
 that is, a fact perfectly beautiful. "We cannot see the true and perfect 
 beauty of nature, because it is too large : everything that we perceive in 
 it is incomplete ; because it is only a part, it has innumerable connexions 
 with other things wh we do not perceive, .. it appears to us defective. 
 Therefore we conceive for ourselves something smaller, something that 
 shall be a whole and yet not too large far us ; a single fact that shall 
 represent to us the universe, isolated, and without any connection with 
 any other fact ; and that we conceive of as perfect and complete in beauty, 
 in itself. We endeavour to realize this ; and this is creative art : the 
 work is the work of genius but this to us is just what creation is to 
 God. The universe is God's Ideal acted out, perfectly acted out. Our 
 effort to attain the ideal is an attempt to do what God did in creation. 
 To Him the conception of the universe- His infinite deed stands com- 
 plete and perfect in absolute beauty as our ideal does to us, and in His 
 work there is no falling short. The universe is the perfect execution of 
 God's ideal. This is the meaning when it is said that an artist creates ; 
 this carrying out of the ideal conception comes nearest in man to the 
 actual creative deed of God. Our ideal is as it were the universe made 
 small enough for us : something wh we can see as one a whole complete 
 even as the universe, His infinite act, is to God. 
 
 This is the meaning also of creation being a work of Genius of Nature 
 expressing God's passion. It is God carrying out His ideal. Little 
 sympathy have they with God who deem that HE did anything worse 
 than He could have done it : even an artist worthy of the name will not 
 do that. No man who can legitimately claim the title of ' Poet ' will do 
 less than his best : shall the Great Poet be the only one to link shame
 
 71 
 
 with the word ? " The heavens and the earth, and all that is between 
 them, think ye that I have created them in jest " ? Does not the Koran 
 rebuke the Christian ? Did not the Great Heart glow, the Almighty 
 Hand thrill with joy, when the Ideal of the Universe was realized in 
 act ? Nature is God's ideal wrought out with no shortcoming. We 
 have the gift of conceiving an ideal in order that we may know what 
 Nature really is, if we could see her rightly : and that we may share 
 with God the joy of creation ; share in the joy, tho' not in the achieve- 
 ment. God will not keep even that joy to Himself : all He has He 
 gives to His dear loved child : the joy of holiness, the joy of love, the 
 joy of making others happy, and even that joy we might have thought 
 truly incommunicable, the joy of creating. But it is a poor return for 
 this great gift, yea rather a most melancholy abuse of the gift itself, to 
 claim for this petty ideal of ours a superiority over God's own ideal-: to 
 call His creation poor and mean, defective, marred, and incomplete, and 
 our conceptions perfect and surpassing : they are but toys. 
 
 The absolute and perfect beauty of creation is involved in its holiness ; 
 if nature be really partly ugly, it is partly unholy ; this is no strained 
 analogy, it is mere certainty. In nature we perceive a mixture with the 
 beautiful of that wh is ugly, and we conceive a perfect beauty : but this is 
 only to teach us that in nature as God sees it there is nothing ugly. For sin 
 is not in nature, not in God's act ; it is man's act, and corrupt as it may be 
 it cannot pollute nature's purity. And in our ideal beauty we add more 
 beauties than exist together in nature, and conceive an ideal crammed 
 full of beauties. So also is nature, so replete with beauty that no more 
 could be added. Our ideal is like this : we may suppose ourselves to 
 see one limb of an animal. Now altho' we see beauty in this isolated 
 limb, yet looking at it by itself we conceive of a more perfectly beautiful 
 one, we see defects in it. We form an ideal ' of a limb, perfectly 
 beautiful taken by itself, but the animal taken as a whole is perfectly 
 beautiful ; more perfect than our ideal limb ; wh as a limb wd be de- 
 formity : the actual limb with all that we call defect in it is much more 
 perfect than our ideal limb. 
 
 This view of the ideal gives us another clue to the deep reality of 
 nature : for the very best and purest ideal represents to us best what 
 nature really is. Nature is an ideal God's ideal : it possesses .-. the 
 characters of an ideal. As our ideal becomes purer, and more nearly 
 approaches perfection, we shall be more and more able to comprehend 
 nature. As our sympathy with God increases, we shall understand 
 more what His ideal is ; i. e. as we grow holier : for sympathy with 
 God is holiness. Therefore it is as I have said : the source of a true 
 knowledge of nature lies in rectitude of heart, in love of right. When 
 we have a perfect sympathy with God, so that our ideal corresponds 
 with His, (save only as respects our poor capacity), then we know 
 nature to her inmost heart, she is our ideal also. There have been men 
 who have attained near to this in all ages, I believe ; for it does not 
 depend on great knowledge. The true poets have come near it ; martyrs 
 have seen it who have beheld in dark and loathsome dungeons the path 
 that leads beside the still waters, strewn with sweet flowers, and over- 
 shone by the sun and thousand stars : who have seen in burning piles 
 the altar of a glad and grateful sacrifice, in chains and cruel stripes the 
 gems wh glitter in the crown of life. Yea even we, unworthy to be
 
 martyrs, may see it too, if we can learn to see in care and want and 
 toil, in self control and sacrifice for right, a bright and joyous life. 
 
 Ts not this God's ideal of nature, that is of Life Love duly regulated ? 
 If we ask, What is nature ? the reply shd be, what is your ideal ? that 
 may not be, nay certainly is not the very truth but it is the nearest 
 you can come to it. 
 
 But practically, even in physical science, this view is of use: our 
 ideal affords the truest conception of nature as a whole. For this ' ideal ' 
 is not confined to beauty ; it applies also to truth and to holiness : but 
 with regard to the two latter we know God's act is perfect, is that wh 
 our ideal strives after; .-. it is so also of beauty. Just as God's act 
 (Nature) is ideally or perfectly holy, so is it ideally, perfectly, beautiful. 
 
 This then is the object of Art, the idea of it : to express or represent 
 to us nature as God sees it the whole. 'Tis at that we aim at once a 
 confession of and a protest against our finitude. We feel the reality, 
 tho' we cannot perceive it ; and Art is our confession of faith in it, i. e. 
 in perfect beauty. A prophetic instinct, as all instincts are here is the 
 true instinct of art : it is an affirmation of the soul, that in spite of the 
 miseries of defect and ugliness that surround us, the ideal including of 
 course God's ideal, i. e. the actual is perfect and absolute in beauty. 
 
 But this idea of Art suggests to me something respecting instinct, the 
 artistic tendencies being in almost a special sense instincts. What is 
 true of artistic creations is true of instinct in its very widest application. 
 Every instinct has in some sense its ideal, wh it expresses or strives to 
 express ; every instinctive ' passion ' represents in some sense the great 
 creative art. Here is a bearing on the perfection of instincts i and 
 further life is instinctive passion, failing, resisted. Do not we see how 
 this applies to Creation, wh is Life. The divine act controlled is the 
 Life, like instinctive passion resisted. Thus I am justified in saying 
 that nature is God's self control, being life : so the creation is the same 
 as the government of the world Divine passion controlled. 
 
 This idea of instinctive passion wh is all passion, entire nature 
 representing God's creative act, may help us towards a conception of 
 God's ever present creation. Is not the universe God's ever present 
 ' passion ' directed aright, i. e. His passion under self control ? 
 
 Are there not three arts corresponding to the three mental functions ? 
 
 PERCEPTIVE. I INTELLECTIVE. I EMOTIONAL. 
 
 Painting and Sculpture. Poetry. Music. 
 
 I have an impression that this is the real order of the origin of the 
 arts : first sculpture and painting, then melody, subordinate in poetry, 
 emancipated in music. Now also I perceive how music represents the 
 universe. It is an ideal as above defined, and it is emphatically a 
 representative of the universe because it especially embraces discords 
 things evil in themselves yet making an essential part of the perfection 
 of the whole. From music best we may learn how nature may contain 
 so many evils and yet be a true ideal, perfect. Music is the highest 
 mode of the soul's affirmation that the universe, as a whole, is absolutely 
 beautiful. Perhaps it is in the emotional world that we best perceive 
 how partials evils contribute to a perfect result. In the intellectual 
 world next ; we better see the use and good of an error than of an ugly 
 thing. Our view expands as we rise from the merely perceptive thro' 
 the intellectual, to the emotional.
 
 73 
 
 Now our ideal is to nature thus : as if some being unable to compre- 
 hend or appreciate a musical strain as a whole, should take the single 
 chords, and seek to make each one complete and perfectly beautiful. He 
 wd add more notes, or alter their arrangement, or leave out the discordant 
 ones, or cause the chord to be played by more instruments. He would 
 make each chord an ' ideal,' but this could not really be done without 
 spoiling the music, and we shd say to him The whole strain just as it 
 is, with what you call these imperfections, is to us just so perfect, just 
 such an ' ideal ' as you seek to realize in the separate parts. The 
 ordinary view of the ideal, regarding it as above nature, has inflicted on 
 us woeful injury. It has misrepresented to us alike God and nature. 
 It has made nature teach us false lessons lessons of imperfection instead 
 of perfectness ; it has closed our eyes to the Holiness that is in Nature, 
 so that we have not in truth really seen Her. And, pitiful loss indeed, 
 it has taught us to look for our ' Best ' not to God's Conception, but to 
 our own. How could we ever rise, when our own ideal was our standard ? 
 What can our own ideal express or contain, but ourselves ? That was 
 not what we were endowed with the ideal faculty for not to make an 
 idol of our own projected image and worship it, but that we might by 
 its means be emancipated from the tyranny of our senses, and see Nature 
 with our hearts as she really is. So knowing in our inmost soul, taught 
 by our hearts that Nature is really perfect, we shall be led to explore 
 and study her, we shall seek how we may see mortality swallowed up in 
 life, pain, evil, and defect absorbed and lost in perfect rectitude : and 
 thus studying Nature our heart and thought will be itself expanded. 
 The ' ideal ' is given us as a stepping stone to understand Nature. 
 
 There is a parallel between ideal beauty and ideal truth. Our per- 
 ception of defective beauty or of ugliness is like our other false percep- 
 tions by our senses, but our erroneous perception by our senses arises . 
 manifestly from our limited capacity and our relations. So with regard 
 to beauty, we see things ugly partly because we are too small to see their 
 true relations, partly because of our special relation in respect to them. 
 Our seeing things ugly, or things false, and our seeing things wrong 
 i. e. as if morally wrong in nature, are the same thing in respect to our 
 three capacities, the moral, rational, and aesthetic sense. Now in respect 
 to the first we have in one sense rectified this wrong perception. "We 
 believe that everything that God does in the world is right, altho' we 
 cannot see it ; altho' to us it may be absolutely unjust or cruel we 
 know by faith that it is absolutely right : our moral life is largest and 
 farthest developed. With respect to the intellectual world, also, we 
 have in part set ourselves right. We know that absolute truth is in 
 Nature, altho' we see her wrongly, and we have set ourselves to the task 
 of rectifying our wrong impressions and discovering the absolutely true 
 reality : this indeed is our Science. We have an ideal of Holiness and 
 of truth as we have of beauty : but we do not set up these ideals of ours 
 as above Nature and above God's government of the world ; we recognize 
 that our ideals are not only not above but fall infinitely short of the 
 perfectly true and holy reality. We recognize indeed especially in regard 
 to morals that our ideals serve only partially to represent the absolute 
 justice and holiness that shall be seen to characterize the entire ad- 
 ministration of God. ' Poetic justice ' is not a justice superior to God's, 
 but is a faint image we draw for ourselves of the absolute justice which
 
 74 
 
 shall be consummated at last. We have our ideal of holiness in its right 
 position : God has not left our moral to the slow development wh belongs 
 to our intellectual and esthetic being. We have learnt also not to set 
 our ideal of truth above nature, but to try and make it conform to nature ; 
 indeed to rectify and enlarge it by nature. Is not that what Bacon 
 taught us to do ? Before his time were not men doing in respect to 
 truth what they are now doing in respect of beauty ? They derived 
 from nature a few general conceptions or impressions, and then sought to 
 work out their own ideal, an abstract ideal truth of wh nature was an 
 imperfect expression. Is not that Plato's doctrine of ideas and the in- 
 telligible world ? and much good came of it ; they were caged in a re- 
 volving trap. So are men now in respect to beauty, with their abstract 
 perfect beauty of wh nature is an imperfect expression. Must we not 
 have the very same reform in respect to art that took place in Bacon's 
 time in respect to science. Art must have also her inductive epoch ; ia 
 the pre-Raphaelite school this ? The perfect, the absolute beauty is in 
 the world as is the perfect, the absolute truth, and the perfect and abso- 
 lute holiness : the esthetic as the intellectual faculty must sit at the feet 
 of Nature and learn of her. It is given us not to supersede but to 
 interpret nature. 
 
 When our senses perceive a thing wrongly in nature, we do not say 
 Nature is wrong, we set about rectifying our perception and finding out 
 the real fact ; we bring into use our sense of ideal 'or perfect truth 
 to help us to the truth of nature ; knowing that nature is ' ideal ' truth, 
 and that it is our business to see it so : and in respect to the moral 
 aspects of nature and God's government of men, faith comes to our aid 
 where knowledge fails. So when we see an ugly thing we may no more 
 say, Nature is ugly or imperfect, than we may say, Nature is false or 
 wicked. It blasphemes God not less. 
 
 Were not the ideas entertained of old with regard to truth and 
 the present with regard to beauty very analogous. In old times it was 
 thought that nature was not perfectly good ; and there were supposed two 
 Gods, &c. But to our idea of perfect holiness is given to us not that we 
 may conceive something more holy than God does, but to help us to 
 conceive as nearly as we may of what it is that God does : and not of 
 part of what He does, or what He will do hereafter ; but of all that He 
 does, of what He does now and ever. If an innocent man suffering be 
 really unjust now, it can never be made up for ; that God makes up for 
 evil is a human mode of apprehension : God's justice is ever and always 
 perfect. The advantage of taking this view of ideal beauty is that it 
 sends us reverently to nature to learn what beauty is ; it prevents us 
 from abusing our ideal power, as the schoolmen did their speculative 
 power. 
 
 As for those passages of scripture wh speak of the present as evil and 
 imperfect, it is clear from the introduction of the element of time, that 
 
 altering relatic 
 
 eternal present. "Now we see thro' a glass darkly," a refracting 
 medium, a prism ? I should add also the doctrine of the universe being 
 not matter but God's action ; the ugly things are things at all only by 
 their relation to us.
 
 75 
 
 But there is the actual evil and ugliness to its, and is the existence of 
 such relations as cause things to be evil or ugly to us itself a real evil ? 
 I think not, fairly so termed : this arises from our limit, and here is a 
 bearing of the subject upon another, viz. our perception of God's action 
 as things \ the origin of our idea of ' matter.' This is a wrong perception ; 
 as of the physically ugly, intellectually false, morally wrong in nature, 
 and also arises perhaps from our limit and special relation. We disbelieve 
 in real matter in nature, as in real ugly, real wrong, real untrue. There 
 is a close connection here ; and with the emancipation of ourselves from 
 the belief in a real matter comes also the rejection of all real evil. The 
 one thing needful is to see God in His action in Nature. The belief in 
 a real ugly rests on the belief in a real matter. 
 
 Can I even now get farther ? we see things as evil, imperfect, false, 
 wrong, because we see only part. Is that why we see God's act as 
 things or matter because it is too large for us? 
 
 What is that instinct or art by wh we affirm the universe not to be 
 material but to be action ? as by art we affirm it to be absolute beauty, 
 by science absolute truth, by religion absolute holiness. I do not see ; 
 but this I see, that the idea of imperfection is inseparably linked with 
 that of matter, and that to affirm the universe to be perfect is to deny 
 its materiality. Art, therefore, science and religion, all implicitly deny 
 a real matter; for they all affirm perfection wh cannot be with it. 
 Therefore matter originates with ourselves : it is our mode of perception ; 
 just as we may say of ugly, false, evil, [except sin wh is not in nature]. 
 
 Our faculty of the ideal .'.is our protest against the illusion of matter. 
 It is our inarticulate assertion that the universe is not matter, but is 
 God's act. This is onr instinct : we feel after God if haply we may find 
 Him. As on the other hand the perception of matter is itself an instinct. 
 Are these three ideal ' senses ' a triplet length, breadth, and depth 
 with all their parallels ? 
 
 The only imperfection Nature has is the stamp of man's imperfection ; 
 wh is really none, man being like all nature, a perfect work, and this 
 wh we call imperfection being itself the very fact of his perfection, as 
 seen from eternity. Man's perfection consists in his being surrounded 
 by an imperfect world ; i. e. man's perfection as God's work. Surely 
 art shall have a new life when we recognize that our Ideal beauty is 
 given us to interpret and help us to understand Nature, and not to set 
 her aside. What new depth, intensity, expansiveness, when it embraces 
 all that is in nature, instead of excluding all but a little. Just as our 
 science is greater for embracing all, and abandoning the idea that nature 
 was an imperfect carrying out of certain abstract principles of truth wh 
 it was the object of science to ascertain. There is the same new infinite 
 field before us now that was before science then. 
 
 In the days of Ideal Science (the scholastic science), there was the 
 the same talk about abstract, absolute, ideal truth ; and it also took men 
 straight to God, &c. Doubtless the nutritive period of science and art 
 alike, in our depraved state, tends to be undevout in comparison. 
 
 The ideal periods of both were right, useful, necessary, as the 
 cultivation of the ideal faculty : there was nothing wrong or even ex- 
 cessive about them seen aright, tho' to Bacon and others in their zeal it 
 seemed so [wh also was right.] These periods are the preparation of 
 the instrument by wh nature is to be interpreted. For the ideal is the.
 
 76 
 
 standard as it were by wh we interpret Nature, the instrument by wh 
 her real signification is to be unfolded, the lexicon by wh her language 
 is to be read. Our interpretation of nature, morally, intellectually, 
 esthetically, must depend upon the elevation, exactitude, brightness of 
 our ideal of holiness, truth, beauty. But we prepare instruments, not 
 for their own sake, but to use. This was the use of the scholastic period 
 in science, it was not time and labor misspent. The ideal of truth was 
 formed and perfected so far as it could be then, by all that discussion, 
 and an instrument, a standard, provided for the work of interpreting 
 and unfolding nature. 
 
 A new view of the relation of the mental functional and nutritive 
 periods opens to me. The functional period is the formation and deve- 
 lopment of the ideal : the nutritive period is its application to nature. 
 Theory is the formation of an ideal, and the use of it is again to apply 
 it to the unfolding of nature ; this is evident in the ordinary use of 
 theory and observation. The ideal that is formed in each successive 
 functional period is higher and larger ; the larger higher nutrition pre- 
 paring the way for it. Theory in relation to science is the Ideal, and 
 as science is now beginning to tend again towards theory, is not art 
 tending towards observation, towards a nutritive period ? the alternation 
 is in nature, as between the vegetable and animal world. 
 
 I like this idea of function being formation of ideal, and nutrition the 
 applying it to nature. Each leads to, induces, and is necessarily suc- 
 ceeded by the other. Thus I see that function is for nutrition, as well 
 as nutrition for function. The man is not without the woman. The use, 
 the purpose of the ideal is for the unfolding of nature ; the use, the 
 purpose of the unfolding of nature is for the production of the ideal. 
 Thus it goes on in a never ending chain : it is life. For this conception 
 of function as ideal, and nutrition as interpretation of nature, must apply 
 to physical function and nutrition. Development is result of function, 
 and there will be the three forms of mental advance ; gemmation, sexual 
 reproduction, and development. 
 
 What dull work is the eternal discovery of more and more in God's 
 works as it is represented an infinite prosecution of experimental 
 science, and gathering of mere facts ! No, I thank you ; I eat when I 
 am hungry. The truth is that God's works shall ever grow upon us as 
 of altogether new and higher significance ; not only more facts but new 
 ideals. 
 
 Our actual perception of the solar system ourselves at rest and all 
 revolving round us is intensely ugly, monstrously deformed and dis- 
 torted, and yet say what we will, we do see it so. Even the most pro- 
 found astronomer as truly sees an ugly, distorted, monstrous solar 
 system, as he sees any ugly thing that can be put before his eyes. Yet 
 by having discovered the reality of the solar system, he sees it beautiful. 
 The sight of the sun falsely seen revolving around the world brings to 
 his mind conceptions of the truest and grandest character : where the 
 eye sees deformity, the soul discerns absolute beauty. So may it be 
 also with the uglinesses seen on earth as well as with the ugliness seen 
 in the heavens. But we must labor for it : with patient industry like 
 that of the astronomer we must apply our ideal of beauty to the world 
 as he has applied his ideal of truth to the universe. Then shall the 
 Bight of deformity. and evil not sicken our heart with disgust but fill it 
 vith rapt and holy reverence.
 
 77 -. 
 
 Esthetics like science, like all life, grows by polar union : embracing 
 of real by the ideal, It grows and developes, like science, from ova, 
 i. e. new facts, ugly i. e. seen as ugly, or wrongly brought into union 
 with ideal of beauty, constituting an esthetic life : just as new facts, 
 false i. e. falsely seen brought into union with true theory constitute 
 new intellectual life. At first it wd seem that we see all new things 
 wrongly as ugly, or untrue, or unholy ; this false perception fs the 
 ovum, by union of wh with ideal new life is generated. Now this idea 
 must apply also to the physical life, if we can trace it : our first or 
 wrong perception is the ovum ; .-. the ovum, in its widest sense, is the 
 parallel of the first or wrong perception. So the vrongnesses of the 
 human mind are not wrongnesses, but the very being of its life ; so also 
 surely in nature. 
 
 Thus in mental life the formation cf the ideal is the function, the 
 investigation of nature is the nutrition ; the former becoming the latter. 
 The union of the ideal and the observed and discriminated facts is 
 marriage, the source of new life ; of more extended and higher life, and 
 consequently of larger and higher function, i. e. of larger and higher 
 ideal. This then is the meaning and tendency of the development of 
 life ; to produce larger and higher ideals. The development of the ideal 
 tends to the absolute ideal, God's ideal ; so life tends to an absolute 
 ideal, an ideal wh shall truly represent the whole. But the ultimate 
 attainment of physical life probably is the fully developed man ; man 
 therefore being the ' absolute ideal ' ; the microcosm, embracing and 
 representing the whole, as they used to say. The lower forms of life 
 represent lower ideals. The living world in its various grades represents 
 the various grades of the ideal of beauty, of the ' theory ' of truth. 
 Thus in its external form the world of physical life represents the mental 
 life. The various developments of thought correspond to the various 
 developments of animal life, as I saw before ; each order of the animal 
 world corresponds with some ' order ' of thought. 
 
 And here see the relation of time to the other triplets : the various 
 orders or grades of thought succeed each other in time ; they are past, 
 present, and future : the various grades of life, tho' also succeeding in 
 time, yet still in fact co-exist. They are in relation of past, present, 
 and future ; yet are all here together. [As past, present, and future 
 co-exist in everything that we perceive as things ; viz. length, breadth, 
 and depth. And each lower or ' past ' has relation of male to each 
 higher or succeeding, as I have seen ; showing how male and female and 
 offspring correspond to the three divisions of time]. But in mind also 
 the various grades, altho' in reality successive, yet in part co-exist, and 
 doubtless must ; as the existence of all the grades of physical life is 
 necessary for the existence of the higher grades. Is here the true idea 
 of the diversity of men's minds ? They are, as in the animal world, 
 many grades, species, &c., and male and female in each. Thus the 
 entire work of the world is carried on. Men of genius advance a part 
 of the world, but do not carry their own age with them ; their type 
 succeeds them. 
 
 We see an (apparent) ugliness in nature, just as as we see (apparent) 
 death to teach us the reality of sin The design is to show us what 
 sin is, to warn us from wrong-doing. The illusion of evil things sur- 
 rounds us in this world, to be a figure to us of moral evil. If we saw
 
 78 
 
 things as they really are, we should start from sin with fear and terror, 
 as if a serpent stung us. What a serpent reeking with deadly venom 
 seems to us, sin is. 
 
 Imperfection in all its forms originates in us, and in us is good and 
 not evil, just as life is good and not evil. This imperfection is our life. 
 
 We are wrong in respect to beauty as we are in respect to chemistry, 
 because there the idea of substance or matter of real matter 
 conies in. Esthetics, like chemistry, must be dynamicized In morals 
 and science our ideal is the real because they are dynamic, refer to 
 action alone ; esthetics is wrong because supposed to refer to matter ? 
 
 What wd our ideal of holiness have taught us of the real depth and 
 grandeur of the holiness of God ? We have been taught what little we 
 do know of it by expanding our conception to embrace all the facts of 
 the moral world : not happiness alone, but misery, not bountiful supply 
 alone, but want aud poverty permitted, not only prosperity following 
 uprightness, but rectitude leading to sorrow and to death we have 
 learnt to include in the vast compass of God's holiness. Absolute 
 holiness we have found is a much larger thing than we should have 
 thought, if we had not been compelled to trace it in all iha world's dark 
 mysteries. And so is absolute beauty : our thought of it is low and 
 dwarfed until we know and feel that it is fulfilled equally in the 
 disgusting and deformed as in that wh charms the eye : and includes in 
 the equal embrace of faith all that God has made. [Emerson sees this : 
 Ruskin denies it.] But not .. shd we tolerate and submit to them 
 or try to like them. It is just as in science, wh consists in an abhor- 
 rence of the false and a putting it right ; yet altho' nature contains so 
 much to our perception \vh is false, science affirms it to be all true, and 
 makes it her business to see the truth of it. 
 
 Does not the feeling for beauty in a high form imply a true theoretical 
 feeling of science ? The esthetic taste of the Greeks, was it not a result 
 of their science, true in its conception altho' so largely false in its details ? 
 
 Every true Book is a work of art ; it must be written from an internal 
 necessity, and must express the author's thought or feeling just as a 
 picture or a statue does the artist's ; just as as nature does God's. A 
 book written to please or to instruct may be a very wise and excellent 
 thing, but it is no part of literature. 
 
 That Weight and other ' properties ' of matter are sill forces results of 
 action and resistance implies that in treating of chem elements and 
 changes we are really dealing with compositions of forces : viz. a certain 
 chem force compounded with a certain gravitating force (or weight) 
 make the element. The elements .-. are compositions of forces and .-.of 
 course the compounds they form are only compositions of forces. And 
 it is easy to understand that thus what we call the compound may better 
 deserve the name of simple. Do not light and the colors afford a satis- 
 factory and rightful analogy ? rightful, because the line between light 
 and chem force can hardly be drawn, and satisfactory because the two 
 series of phna seem so well to correspond : chemistry appears to be light 
 and color, with gravitatg force superadded ; making indeed a distinction, 
 but hardly a difference. It is easy to understand that different chemical 
 properties represent are indeed different forms or portions of vibration, 
 but static instead of dynamic : opposite chem properties are the opposite 
 [Chemistry 278.
 
 79 
 
 halves of the vibration, approx and divergent (male and female) ; as in 
 color there is every possible intermediate form and union of forms an 
 infinite variety indeed compounded in all sorts of ways with gravitating 
 force or tension, and these again with each other. Now is the nentral 
 body the regular vibration ? answering to colorless light. The elements, 
 or any bodies with chem tension, represent irregular vibrations, with 
 more or less excess of one or other half. They are .'. complementary to 
 each other, and by uniting make up a neutral body or regular vibratile 
 form. Now the terms simple and compound no more apply to these 
 bodies than to resolved or compounded motions or surely to light and 
 colors. Yet if either be compound must they not be the irregular forms 
 of vibratile tension (as we may consider chem properties) rather than 
 the regular ones ? just^es the colors are often formed by composition. 
 But is the idea of simple and compound strictly applicable in nature at 
 all ? There being nothing but action, compounded action or force is just 
 as simple as the forces wh compose it. Now how do chemical tensions, 
 or irregular forms arise ? must there not be the two modes wh we find 
 in all conversion of force, the dynamical and static ; interference and 
 absorption ? Thus may not a chemical tension arise from a partial inter- 
 ference of two regular vibrations ? "We see it arise constantly from 
 absorption. Colorless light a regular vibration acting on certain 
 bodies, partly continues as a color vibration and the complementary 
 part of it [an irregular vibration ?] becomes chem force or tension. Is 
 not the chem force produced by light thus irregular vibratile action ; viz. 
 the complement of the color of the body. Chlorine e. g. regular light 
 falling on it is transmitted as green light .-. the chem tension imparted 
 to the chlorine represents the red light : the chlorine has absorbed and 
 converted into chem force or tension the red [? divergent] portion of the 
 luminous vibration. Chlorine .-. derives from light a red [ ? female ] 
 polarity : here another evidence that colors represent different polarities, 
 i. e. different portions of vibration ; viz. that they are converted into 
 such polar forces in their chem action. But this is not uniform. 
 
 When light arises from heat is it not likely that it may be sometimes 
 from interference of heat, as perhaps chem rays arise from interference 
 of light. And are there not perceptible differences of kind of heat, 
 suitable to such differences of form and not of the same kind as those 
 tested by the thermometer? 
 
 May we not see in the various forms of action or ' forces ' branching 
 off from one another : all of them vibrations, and whenever two motions 
 of one kind interfere there arises another kind of motion ; a new force 
 when first it arises, and when once formed perpetually interchanging. 
 Look at the upward series of such forces i. e. development or smaller 
 actions more action in the same space [wh ia higher structure] : they 
 arise by dynamical resistance or interference ; thus sound from two opp 
 ' movements ' ; light from two opp heats ; chem action from two opp lights. 
 Then is not Life from two opp chemistries or chem actions ? is there 
 here an idea of the origination of life ? Thus a chem vibration is a 
 double decom, union and separation, as when carbonate of lime is acted 
 on by SOa. Now is life two such vibratile actions interfering and a new 
 kind of vibratile action arising ? And so of successive kinds of life : do 
 two vital actions, or vibrations, interfere and produce the new one ? 
 Here a reason for increasing complexity of composition in the higher
 
 80 
 
 grades, and for the complex vital structure as compared with chemical. 
 So in advancing grades of life it is not only the form wh advances but 
 structure, or kind of vital action. 
 
 Each new force arises from the coalescence of two preceding ones. 
 The division of a vibrating string into two portions is the very type of 
 the progress of nature ; not only of the successive production of higher 
 (or smaller) forces but of the very origin of nature and resistance itself. 
 The primordial motion is turned back and becomes two opposite motions 
 and .-.a force and a resistance by the limit of the universe in the one 
 case, of the vibrating chord in the other. Thus the universe is a vibrating 
 chord, and the whole order of nature music. The idea of one particle 
 made to receive two equal and opposite motions (interference] is the 
 idea of development in every way. Thus as a chord subdivides by the 
 reflection from its limit of its fundamental note, so the forms of life 
 succeed each other because each preceecing one attains its limit ; as the 
 first turning of motion arises from the limits of the universe, so each 
 sTicceeding one ; as the first resistance so each specific resistance each 
 thing goes as far as it can, then turns, resists itself, becomes another 
 and higher or smaller grade by interference and subdivision. This idea 
 agrees with my first idea of development from pressure, that it consists 
 in a turning in or implication ; more action in the same space : instead 
 of two cells twice the vital action in one cell of half size and double 
 intensity. 
 
 It seems reasonable that the difference between chemistry and life shd 
 be one of size. The distinction of an inorganic and a vegetable body of 
 simplest kind is that two actions being brought into one, an aggregate 
 of results, wh being scattered in the inorganic world appear unconnected, 
 in the vegetable appear as one, and are termed life ; for the inorganic 
 world also has its life : taken in large relations it is seen to undergo 
 definite and connected changes, it is in a state of constant activity, de- 
 velopes, grows, decays, in a word lives. But these connected processes 
 being scattered, as it were, we do not recognize their unity ; we do not 
 see the individual as we do when these processes by interference or co- 
 alescence are brought into one : then perceiving the chain of actions 
 close together we perceive a determinate process, an action of definite 
 tendency, and we call it life. And such is the relation of the vegetable 
 to the animal. The animal unites into one, actions wh in vegetables are 
 disconnected ; it is functionally active as compared with the vegetable, 
 as the vegetable is vitally active as compared with the soil, &c. But its 
 peculiarities are only a concentration of that wh in the vegetable was 
 scattered or separate. And does this hold of sensation, instinct, &c. ? 
 Does the vegetable tendency become by development, as defined, the 
 animal instinct ; and so the instinct become thought and reasoning ? 
 [See hereafter Instinct]. 
 
 Heat becoming light in a wire is the origin of a new action or force ; 
 if we could trace that we should have a standard of such change : but 
 not better than producing the higher octave in a flute by blowing harder ; 
 if we can certainly trace that, have we not traced in principle the origin 
 of every new octave ? and is it not merely interference by reflection, 
 i. e. the effect of the limit ? So one specific life reaching its limit and 
 turned, interferes and produces a new specific life, wh is the octave in 
 every case alike.
 
 81 
 
 In relation to action there is the same threefold character we have seen 
 in other ideas. Intensity, form, size, are surely length, breadth, depth ; 
 i. e. also Past, present, future ; male, female, child ; law, liberty, 
 development ; force, resistance, issue. Is the touch the sense of the 
 past, the eye of the present, the ear of the future ? Touch is, anatomi- 
 cally, in points length : the eye extended length and breadth ; the 
 ear a cube, all three directions or relations of space depth. 
 
 Whenever there is any force unused it only wants a suitable organiza- 
 tion to produce any function we want ; and force arises from restrained 
 tendencies, of wh nature furnishes us an abundanc ; these are her life, 
 her nutrition ; we must make it perform our functions. We use her 
 life. We cannot produce the restraint, or we expend as much power as 
 we gain : all our original stock of force, including that of our own 
 bodies, consists in tendencies already resisted in the external world ; and 
 all these are at our service, they only wait for an ' organization.' And 
 this is a boundless stock, and is perpetually renewed, even by our own 
 processes ; each function, or fulfilment of tendency, is also a nutrition 
 or opposition to another tendency. The animal body is but an organiza- 
 tion in wh the restrained affinity of for its elements produces function 
 just like Bessemer's use of air for melting iron : this a respiration. 
 
 Surely light and all radiant forces are elliptic, and pass in corkscrew 
 form thro' space ; as we use the screw for penetrating : an instance 
 here of the perfect adaptation in nature being the result of Tightness or 
 necessity. This form, the best adapted for progression, being involved 
 in motion. 
 
 If life is two chemistries, must not the spiral be in some sense two 
 potential cubes ? I think I see that, looking at cube as chem form and 
 curve or spiral as vital form, the curved line (or spiral) does arise from two 
 rectangular lines (or cubes) being formed at once in the same place. The 
 coexistence of the two motions at right angles produces the curve and .*. 
 the spiral. The first resistance to chem action, wh causes it to become 
 life, is a turning of it upon itself, but afterwards it exists as a vital 
 resistance as vital cohesion like the rectangular motion in the planet 
 maintaining and reproducing itself. In astronomy the planets' life 
 reproduces itself year by year. Thus however it wd appear that the 
 two chem motions wh unite to form the first vital motion may be rather 
 at right angles to each other than directly opposing, and so strictly 
 interfering. 
 
 The centrifugal or rectangular motion of the planet, supposing it to 
 arise from resistance, is only a gravitating action turned', the curved 
 orbit results from two gravitating movements co-existing ; in different 
 but not strictly opposite directions. And so does life, wh is essentially 
 a curve, consist in two chem motions (rectilnear) co-existing ? And the 
 two rectangular motions, wh, co-existing, produce the curve, represent 
 the octaval notes wh coexist in the chord wh has subdivided itself : those 
 two notes are the two motions wh constitute the curve : so life is two 
 chemistries, i. e. the octave of the chemistry ? If we conceive those 
 motions wh cause union of elements in chem compounds, and these into 
 crystals, to be going on, as doubtless they do, at once, and then conceive 
 two of these processes to be coexisting in the same space, or, wh is the 
 same, one partly turned it does not seem hard to see how they may 
 interfere, mutually resist, and result in a curved motion, wh is life. It 
 
 G
 
 82 
 
 is not harder to conceive than that heat shd in a similar way become 
 light, or indeed than any first interference and subdivision of motion. 
 
 If a ' higher ' animal be two of a lower order potentially, it must be 
 the octave of that : two vital actions in place of one ; and does this ^ 
 idea apply not only to successive grades of life, but also to each in 
 relation to some form of chem action, to wh .-.it bears a special relation ? 
 So again, man wd not be two potential monkeys. Might this serve for 
 classification ? Is is likely there is only one or many octaves of 
 chemistry ? 
 
 How force when resisted tends to be converted at once into larger and 
 smaller motions, is seen in the throwing off of particles from the metallic 
 points with the electric spark. 
 
 All the forces must be vibrations, being all motions in matter, and yet 
 not motions of the mass. All such motions must be in two directions, 
 equal and opposite. 
 
 If the heat of the sun be its attraction resisted causing tendency to 
 expansion, how is summer hotter than winter, the earth being then 
 farther from the sun, and .-. less attracted ? Does it arise from the 
 conversion of the light of the sun into heat ; his direct rays in summer 
 being more than the indirect in winter, more heat may result from their 
 conversion : the sun's heat being its attraction, or its light, resisted. 
 Motion is to God's infinite action what time is to His infinite duration : 
 not anything that truly exists, but a form imparted to an infinite thing 
 by a finite and bounded mind. Are not all these categories or forms of 
 thought a finite creature's view of infinity ? and they are mutually 
 related and make up the whole, because they comprehend our different 
 views of God. These perceived under a limit by us make up our 
 world. 
 
 That law of least resistance all resolves itself into the composition 
 and resolution of motions. For the resistances are also motions (or 
 tendencies thereto). And is not all .-. motions composed and resolved, 
 in one (ideal) substratum : is there anything else in science ? Life ap- 
 pears to us different from inorganic nature only or chiefly because the 
 smaller size of the actions wh constitute it enables us to see them in wider 
 relations to see truly a whole, where in relation to other forms pf action, 
 we see only fragments : all action in the universe being equally vital, 
 and, to a being capable of larger view, presenting a vital aspect. The 
 simplest form of life is as one single and .-. simple or uniform vibration. 
 But when, from resistance or pressure, many such are made to coincide 
 more in same space what happens but that they partially interfere, and 
 ' colored ' or irregular vibrations appear ; that wh was uniform becomes 
 diverse, and ' polar ' in various ways and degrees. Hence surely the 
 diversities of structure and function ; and so thro each successive grade. 
 The universe is as one living being one organization of wh the various 
 forces are the functions or forms of vital action. Is man the brain ; or 
 the animal creation the brain, and man the highest part thereof ? 
 
 Chemistry is befooled by matter : dealing with an idea as if it were a 
 real existenoe. It cannot be a science till it also is dynamical, and 
 recognizes that its only objects are actions ; that matter is to her as it is 
 to all the other sciences merely an indifferent substratum with wh she 
 has no concern in itself. All that the chemist works upon or regards 
 must be to him only so much and such kinds of motion. Chemistry in
 
 83 
 
 truth, like all the other science, is a science of vibrations. It must be 
 so ( 1 ) from its relation to light ; the luminous vibrations being so clearly 
 chemical vibrations. (2) Polarity wh is the great fact of chemistry 
 consists in the opposite actions wh constitute vibration. 
 
 Physiology tho' considered behind chemistry, I think has been decidedly 
 in advance of it. It has ever been dynamical ; and at least it has been 
 conscious of its deficiency. Physiologists had found out that they needed 
 to find out something. That idea of the necessity of a vital force, and 
 of its nature as opposed to chem force, was itself a great discovery : 
 equal in essence to the discovery of the two forces in astronomy, and 
 indeed remarkably similar, even in its false aspects. That feeling of the 
 peculiar difficulty of life arose not from our knowing less but from our 
 knowing more ; and indeed what so natural for us to know as that 
 wh is nearest to ourselves ? To have chemistry a science of action 
 instead of substance, will make the chain of nature complete. 
 
 Is there anything in this : As animal life is two of the vegetable life, 
 and animals live upon or convert into themselves vegetables ; so veget- 
 able life being two chemistries, vegetables live upon chemical bodies Is 
 not this the same as when one force generates a higher heat becoming 
 light e. g. the higher may be said to live upon or convert into itself 
 the preceding ? and vice versa. One form of action pervading nature ; 
 the relation of the vegetable to the inorganic world and of the animal 
 to the vegetable, is the same as that of all the forces to each other. 
 
 Chemistry must err in supposing itself to relate to substance ; for the 
 idea of substance is parallel to that of cause and effect or of space ; but 
 we see that these latter ideas are perfectly simple, not capable of variety. 
 There can be no science of cause based upon the idea of various kinds of 
 causation ; causation is one and absolute. So of space, or time : so also 
 necessarily of substance. Chemistry cannot have to do with varieties of 
 substance, but varieties of action only in one absolute and ideal 
 substance ; here is the solution of such questions as the original identity 
 of all forms of matter, and whether chemical qualities are inherent in 
 matter, or secondary. For a true idea of chemistry, the one necessary 
 step, is simply to refuse to recognize in ' matter ' anything but what it 
 is, viz. an idea or conception of the mind. Any science that has matter 
 for its subject is a science of ideas ; and tries to make an idea act the 
 part of a reality. 
 
 Already the facts of chemistry range themselves in the mass under the 
 idea of motion. All bodies are in two classes, acids and alkalies, i. e. more 
 or less decidedly : are these the polar forms the opposite halves of the 
 vibration ? But is there not a third form intermediate between the two, 
 as yellow is between red and and blue ? There is an unbounded variety 
 or chain of these forms as there is of colors. Surely the idea of com- 
 plementary forms applies. Thus all the peculiar ideas of chemistry dis- 
 appear of themselves : composition and analysis are composition and re- 
 solution of motions, as elsewhere : the specific properties of matter are 
 various forms of motion in an artificial substratum wh is used as it really 
 is, viz. as a ' supposition ' merely marking ignorance. That matter is a 
 substratum supplied by the mind is the key to nature ; it is and can be 
 no object of science. Oh that I could see ivhy it is that the mind supplies 
 this substratum ! 
 
 With regard to the various kinds of bodies must there be not only the
 
 84 
 
 variety of shapes or forms of a motion of one size, but also different 
 sizes of motion analogous to octaves each of wh has its various forms, 
 constituting thus parallel series ; as not only the successive octaves in 
 music are parallel to each other, but each note has its series of tones, 
 parallel to those of every other note : is this a key to the parallel series 
 wh so abound in chemistry ? 
 
 Surely the series of vital forms are parallel to those of chemistry : 
 they may be classified such chemical series ; such vegetable ; such 
 animal : and this by a real necessity ; chem motion of each size having 
 its representative in the grade above it ; just as in sound, each note of 
 the lowest audible octave has its representative below in a motion of 
 double the size, wh is not sound to us but motion ; and so also above 
 the highest octave, are motions wh also are not sound but what ? 
 
 "We get thus at one sort of reason or necessity for the unity of nature, 
 viz. the unity of the substance : the substratum being necessarily one, 
 all must be one. Also here is a view of the dependence of nature on 
 the mind. The substance, or substratum, being supplied by the mind, the 
 material universe is, in its very substance, an efflux from ourselves. To 
 speak of ' matter ' as consisting in any sense of forces and resistance, 
 &c., as some have done, is to go astray from the fundamental idea. 
 Matter does not resist, it is a substratum for resistance. 
 
 That chemicity consists in undulations is like the undulatory theory of 
 light : it is the battle of motion against matter. Is there not much that 
 is similar in reference to composition and analysis ? And how many 
 arbitrary hypotheses it dispenses with. Specific ' chemical afiinity ' 
 indeed being merely the mutual tendency to approx of opposite polar 
 motions, wh is also only motion in direction of least resistance. Does it 
 not also rescue from contempt much of the old chemical views, as of the 
 union of electricity or heat with substances : the substances regarded as 
 chemical being also forces. Heat, &c., are surely ' absorbed ' and con- 
 verted into chemicity. Is not this sound : If chem action be motion, 
 chem properties must be tendencies to motion ; and these tendencies to 
 motion being in opposite directions, the theoretical motion must be vibra- 
 tile ; chemicity .-. in abstract sense, is undulation. Here the idea of a 
 luminous tension corresponds : light tho' essentially (as all action is) a 
 vibration, yet dees not always exist in actual form of a vibration. 
 Where then are to be seen the two-fold character of chemicity its two 
 equal and opposite directions, wh are seen so plainly in life ? 
 
 How well some allotropic forms of sulphur illustrate life : sponta- 
 neously or on stimulus changing and giving off heat (Brodie : R. Soc., 
 Mar. 1854) in their formation contraction being hastened, and so 
 resisted ? Is not crystallization similar ? 
 
 Electricity from friction is a larger motion converted into a smaller 
 one ; galvanism from chem action is a smaller motion converted into a 
 larger one. Why does mild chem action produce galvanism, and active 
 or rapid produce light ? The forces ' fall curiously into groups : there 
 are three wh present approx as their chief aspect : gravity, electricity 
 and magnetism, and chemicity. Two present divergent motion : heat 
 and vital force. Sound and light are merely motions propagated. 
 
 Certain properties (so called) are common to all matter, and these in 
 every case constitute our idea of matter. Matter .-. being in every case 
 defined by such unvarying ideas is always one, and the idea of different
 
 85 
 
 forms of matter ' is inadmissible ; if we have different forms of matter 
 we require another substratum, viz. space, and matter .-. ceases to be a 
 substratum at all, wh is however the only definition of it. 
 
 The idea of chem affinity .is not an ' idea ' at all ; it is absolutely un- 
 meaning and expresses nothing. It is a form of words used to express 
 the fact of two chem substances tending to unite, but any collection of 
 letters might be used for that purpose and wd have just as much 
 meaning. And ' universal gravitation ' is the same. ' Polarity ' how- 
 ever, as equal and opposite action, has a meaning. Otherwise Whewell's 
 plan of arriving at a fundamental conception wd seem to be the invention 
 of an unmeaning formula. 
 
 Chemics rightly consist in the science of the peculiar chem properties 
 in their nature and origin ; not the mere mechanical facts of union and 
 separation : this ' chem affinity ' wh has hitherto passed for chemics, 
 and occupied its place, has really no peculiar connection with it : that is 
 a property common to all polarity, but the point to be studied is the 
 polarity or vibratile action itself. It is as if our science of electrics 
 were a mere classified knowledge of the attractions of oppositely electric 
 bodies. The polar attraction is in itself surely rather a branch of 
 mechanics than anything else. 
 
 Have the diamond and such unproducible bodies been formed at an 
 earlier and less developed stage of chemics ? at at a time when chem 
 properties were not such as they are now, but simpler. Are they fossils, 
 the relics of a former age of chem action ? For chemicity has de- 
 veloped as life has ; it is involved in the very idea of chemicity : and is 
 the diamond carbon on its development? may we have a history of 
 chemicity ? 
 
 And are the comets fossils in astronomy, showing the mode of action 
 by wh the solar system was formed ? were the planets such diffused 
 bodies vibrating in such prolonged orbits originally, but in conditions 
 somewhat different to the present ? So in Geology : has the earth 
 developed ? the very same actions taking place now, but under different 
 forms. Perhaps time is not the only element needed to bring the past 
 into a common category with the present : a different grade of action 
 also, wherein the very same [theoretical] action produced different 
 results, just as * life ' was one in the age of fishes and now, but not the 
 sequence of events. The same causes have different effects : the con- 
 ditions having changed the ' conditions ' being the * grade ' or state of 
 development : just as the very same motion is movement of masses, 
 electricity, heat, light, chemicity, life, according to conditions or ' grade.' 
 And are the grades of life identical essentially with the grades of 
 geology, of chemistry, &c. ? And is it not the same in Thought ? Are 
 there not also fossil thoughts: systems of ideas of lower grade, remaining 
 mixed up with the developed thought ? 
 
 No one objects to our saying that Spirit does not see, because to sight 
 a physical organ is necessary. No one supposes that because a spirit 
 does not see with eyes it is .. wanting in powers of perception. Then 
 why not the same with regard to thought, consciousness, moral agency, 
 and feeling ? 
 
 The materialists in thinking they have gained their point if they could 
 prove thought to be action of brain, have overlooked the main question : 
 [Metaphysics, 1.
 
 86 
 
 true, thought is physical, but then like all physical action/ it cannot be 
 self-produced. "Where does the force come from ? not all from material 
 world. Wd it be reasonable to say, because muscle has power of motion 
 in itself, and it can be produced by any force applied to it, .. it never 
 acts by virtue of nervous influence from brain ? It does sometimes, 
 sometimes not. So brain has power of thought ; any stimulus (appro- 
 priate) will make it think; but does it .-. follow that it never thinks in 
 obedience to the spirit ? Surely an idea that living matter has the power 
 within itself and can originate action, has misled men here. It is ne- 
 cessary to get rid of the idea that brain and spirit act together, wh is 
 involved in saying spirit thinks : it materializes spirit, and attributes to 
 brain a quality incompatible with matter, viz. that of acting. "We see 
 its ill effects in language wh assigns activity to brain, even to speaking 
 of material seat of volition. The brain has idea of volition, thinks of 
 volition, but in volition itself it has no part. 
 
 Since an emotion of anger may be excited and rage in a man's mind, 
 even while he is trying his utmost to control it, it cannot be held that 
 the anger is an action of his spirit : it is the action physically excited 
 in his brain that constitutes the anger. 
 
 The relation of muscles to brain seems to present a good analogy to 
 that of brain to spirit. If the brain were imperceptible to sense we 
 might have inferred its existence (i. e. existence of something originating 
 and controlling motion) so may we from phna of Thought infer exist- 
 ence of spirit ; a controller. Surely thought does not consist in any 
 peculiar action of matter, but all material action wd be thought (in some 
 form) if such matter had been made conscious. 
 
 If thought is not in the brain, then the right expression for it will be, 
 not the Organ by wh the Spirit thinks, but the organ by ich the spirit is 
 made to think the organ by wh the stimulus is applied to the spirit, so 
 to speak; and probablv by some mode of connection to wh the nerves 
 furnish au analogy. And an argument that the brain does not think is 
 this that the changes in the brain with wh thought is most intimately 
 connected may take place without any conscious thought ; the reaction 
 may be effected on the body showing the operation of the cerebral 
 function without any mental act accompanying it. Dreams furnish light 
 on cerebral action ; for in them any slight impression, such as a sound, 
 will set up long trains of thought. Hence if they owe their origin and 
 character to cerebral action alone we get a clue to the laws of this action. 
 The brain is so constructed that a slight impression thro' one nerve shall 
 set up a long train of actions multiplying as they grow, wh shall at last 
 come to have even an overpowering influence on the body. Does not 
 this explain much of ' sensuous impressions,' antipathies, instincts, and 
 the like ; and indicate that action in one part of the brain must be pro- 
 pagated to some other part of the body, and if not to some other organ, 
 then to another portion of the brain itself. 
 
 says, Evil is the consequence of God's committ^ of nature to 
 
 the operation of secondary laws, and withdrawal of His ow.i immediate 
 working : and human evil arises from man's free age icy being thus 
 united and chained down as it were into a scries of passive sequences 
 with wh it is itself in opposition. There is a radi al want of accord 
 between the chain of second causes of wh man forms a part and his 
 voluntary power. He is as a bird encaged, a life bound up with death ;
 
 87 
 
 and the remedy the thing to be desired and prayed for is that God 
 would directly govern. 
 
 I had made up my mind to go and see Howard at Camden Town, but 
 by unanimous statement of all parties no one had told Howard of it. 
 
 Only Mrs. H knew it, and she did not get home until he was asleep 
 
 on Saturday night but he woke up saying, ' Papa will come to see 
 Howard,' or words to that effect, and being asked when, he said, 'this 
 afternoon.' How did this happen ? The driver of a locomotive engine 
 appears to afford a good illustration of the relation of soul to body. 
 Relatively to the functions of the engine he is not without the engine, he 
 perishes with it yet he is not it nor any part of it, nor has other than 
 arbitrary connection with it. The engine may perform all its functions 
 without him under influence of external conditions. The driver's only 
 action is to regulate it. An animal is an engine without a driver and acting 
 according to external circumstances and internal conditions. A man is 
 an engine with a driver, performing same actions in very same way, and 
 yet by virtue of an altogether different regulating and determining 
 power. 
 
 How the action of the mind proceeds in direction of least resistance ; 
 how thought grows, gemmates, and developes alternately ! A wise plan 
 in the cultivation of the mind is to let it act in direction of least resist- 
 ance ; accept the efficiencies of our nature and act out natural tendencies ; 
 not spend the vital action in overcoming a greater resistance, but spread 
 out where least resisted. Thus animals have their perfection their 
 wonderful instincts man by his will alters his natural development, and 
 how often spoils himself. 
 
 The largeness and simplicity of this idea of the universe becomes 
 more striking when looked at with other views, e. g. Knox's in ' Lancet,' 
 1855 ; and besides it is most strictly an induction. How God's 
 general laws are also special laws How each little creature (and all 
 creatures are little) works out its own work in creation exactly as it 
 should and finds everything exactly contrived for it [its own sphere is 
 everything to it] ; and if human it is full of trembling hope and fear, 
 joy, sorrow and trust, and all is exactly right, for it is as if it alone 
 were the one tenant of the universe, the one favorite child of God : and 
 yet all the while, ickat, under God, has formed and ruled it with unde- 
 viating sway ? These simple, unswerving mechanical laws ; these are 
 God's providences these the modes and methods of His care and 
 love. 
 
 It is the marvellous, the well-nigh awful, simplicity of Nature, that 
 baffles us: the complexity and wonder of the phna astound and perplex 
 us we cannot see thro' them, nor trace the threads, the simple inter- 
 weavings of wh accomplish in one way all the details ; hence we fall 
 back upon specific and various causes, inherent tendencies, peculiar pro- 
 perties, mystical laws we invent many causes where there is only one. 
 Thus it is that too great a familiarity with the phna blinds us, and 
 necessary tho' it be to have a large induction, to take in all the facts in 
 seeking for the law, it is hardly less necessary, when we wd come to a 
 right view of the law, to exclude a very large portion of the phna. We 
 cannot deal with more than one or two at once, to know them rightly is 
 the the thing, and to have a mind in harmony with nature. The problem 
 Newton proposed to himself was not the motions of the universe, but
 
 88 
 
 the motions of the moon. One fact rightly interpreted gives the inter- 
 pretation of many more, and a wrong interpretation will not really suit 
 a single fact. 
 
 How God's general laws are also special : how gloriously this is seen 
 in motion in least resistance producing all the adaptations in each living 
 creature ; and not less does this apply to the spiritual and providential 
 world. God is not a man that He should be able to accomplish only 
 one thing at a time. It is the universal law of His working that is of 
 Nature to produce many effects, each equally designed, by one simple 
 means. That is not an atheistic doctrine wh sees in all natural phna 
 the result of a few primary laws impressed on matter at first by God 
 and ever by Him maintained -that is to see God in everything, and to 
 feel Him to be the doer of all ; that brings Him close to each one of us, 
 and to each of us in each event. That is truly atheistic wh speaks of 
 ' special qualities,' ' inherent tendencies,' ' distinct creations ' : this 
 makes second causes really independent, and excludes God from His 
 own dominion. There is no mean in a truly religious view of nature 
 between referring all things to a direct working of God and referring 
 them all to a not less truly direct working of God by secondary laws : 
 anything between these is so far a step towards atheism : always ad- 
 mitting the possibility and the fact of miracles wh however are impos- 
 sible in any definable sense, if God is always thus directly working. If 
 God made me as He made Adam, by working of secondary causes, God 
 is not thereby farther off from Adam, but only brought nearer to me. 
 
 How did God form Adam from dust of earth ? not surely by making 
 a clay model, nor did He form him ex nihilo. He formed him from the 
 dust of earth thro' the preceding forms of life, of course : a perfect 
 human body first formed from the dust of earth by God, by condensation 
 of former life, and a human spirit a man formed by God in His own 
 image, 'breathed into his nostrils.' And in what sense did God 'create 
 every herb before it grew ' ? (if that is the right translation.) Surely 
 by so framing the constitution of the world that the plant did grow in 
 its season ' God truly did create the plant before it grew ; but most 
 likely this wants a better rendering. It appears to me that the Bible 
 uses the word ' create ' in a true and noble sense, wh we have not yet 
 learnt. It means by creating, the bringing into existence a chain of 
 causes wh result in the production of the ' creature.' That is true, 
 scriptural creation the letter and the spirit : the facts of nature and the 
 inductions of philosophy concur in it, and the reverent spirit rejoices. 
 It brings God home to us by individualizing the general laws beneath 
 the dominion of wh we find ourselves, and puts us close to Him with no 
 man or chain of men between us except the One Mediator. Did God 
 create Adam, and cause or suffer me, by secondary causes, to be born ? 
 Surely, No, The living spirit cries out, not, Where is God the creator 
 of Adam, my father removed by innumerable generations, but, Where is 
 God, my Maker ? Where is that all-seeing, all-performing God, who 
 by the laws He made and still makes, by the forces He instituted, and 
 still every moment institutes afresh, made and upholds me, as He made 
 and maintained the first of human race ; in whose vast eye and equal 
 heart my being from the first was present, was created from the first, 
 not as a secondary event, casual altho' foreknown and provided for, but 
 a deed of equal rank, of equal directness with the first origination of 
 [Metaphysics, 3.
 
 89 
 
 the human race, the breathing into Adam's nostrils of the breath of life. 
 
 It is man's infirmity of vision, his imprisonment in time, that draws, 
 in his brain-bound intellect, this distinction between direct creation and 
 ' the operation ' of secondary laws. He says in words that to God there 
 is no time to Him the present and the future are one ; but though he 
 rises to the expression of the fact, how hard it still is for him to raise 
 His heart to the perception of it. What difference could there be to 
 God, to whom all things are present, between the creation of Adam and 
 the creation of me. To Him Adam's birth was not ' now ' and all suc- 
 ceeding ages ' the future.' The fact, the deed, of the creation of all the 
 human race was one. Was one, did I say ? applying again the language 
 of human infirmity to works of divine omnipotence ! Is one. The work, 
 the joy, of creation, is not past, but present: ' God my Maker.' 
 
 I do not argue that God could not have created Adam by special in- 
 tervention. I argue on the basis that science shows a ' secondary ' cre- 
 ation of man, and affirm that scripture, reason, and piety conform thereto. 
 And this is not inconsistent with God's < resting,' viewed in any way wh 
 does not render Him truly passive. 
 
 The present view of life is precisely as if some one were to examine 
 a large manufactory worked by steam power, and to each special form 
 of the machinery were to ascribe a special power of converting a force 
 the ' vital ' force of the machine that being a form of the external 
 forces of nature. And further if he were to hold that the expansion of 
 the steam in the boiler were the result of the motions of the engine, or 
 an ' essential condition ' of them, and not the cause : that the expansion 
 of the steam resulted from a conversion of the vital force of the ma- 
 chinery into each peculiar form of ' force ' or motion. 
 
 I first see the facts and then perceive that the laws involve them. 
 That is how we learn all things. The facts of nature ordinary facts 
 of sense might be inferred in great measure from what was previously 
 known of natural laws, but it is not and practically cannot be done : we 
 see the facts and then discover that they embody the old laws and are 
 precisely what they should be. I see these things one after another, 
 not by inference and carrying out of admitted data, but as things that 
 are, and then I find that the laws are embodied in them. 
 
 A motto : ' Science is common sense common sense is piety.' The 
 human intellect appears now to be less powerful than it was, because it 
 is so encumbered with the excess of unarranged and incongruous material 
 it has to carry. Science is as it were an immense number of odd chairs 
 and tables, wh if a man choose to retain he is so loaded that he can 
 hardly move, and certainly has no hands to grasp or strength to carry 
 anything more. It should be will be like a series of boxes fitting 
 exactly into one another and all comprehended in one, wh a man may 
 put into his pocket, or at least beneath his arm, and run and seize new 
 things unimpeded. 
 
 How in this view of the entire order of things as one great vibration, 
 the mystical imaginings of necessary relations between opposite things 
 find their interpretation and their proof. Long ago I was convinced that 
 the chemical properties and vital capacities of the organic elements 
 were equally essential to life, that without their chem tendencies they 
 could not form living bodies, now I see it. 
 
 We are the music of the spheres ; our physical and moral ' being ' is 
 the harmony God waits to hear.
 
 90 
 
 The radical error wh pervades science so widely is that of putting the 
 phenomenon ' first effect before cause. And the reason is obvious : 
 the effect or result is that wh first appears, wh seems most important, 
 and to be the real thing. The very name ' phenomenon ' implies that it 
 is that wh is first and best perceived : it fills the senses ; the causes 
 afterwards discovered naturally retain the order of discovery, and come 
 as a matter of course to be reckoned as effects. The phn is familiar as 
 an ultimate property, or direct act of God, before the cause is discovered, 
 wh .-. naturally is put as an effect. The doctrine of inherent gravita- 
 tion is an instance of effects (because prominent to the senses) being 
 deemed primary properties : it is precisely like muscular contractility 
 being cause of the decomposition. 
 
 Science thus undergoes the same development that Theology does, in 
 rising from idolatry to monotheism : a vast number of inherent tenden- 
 cies and personalities giving way to a conception of unity. Nothing 
 will astonish posterity more than the imagination wh has invented the 
 innumerable and fanciful array of inherent properties and ' isms.' 
 
 Instead of its being the least perfect of the sciences, Physiology has 
 been really the truest and most advanced : and this by virtue of the very 
 doctrine that was supposed to be the great source of its obscurity, that 
 viz. of the ' vital force.' Physiology was the only science that recog- 
 nized, atlho' blindly and imperfectly, the twofold nature of all material 
 action : under the idea of Life it vaguely symbolized the great divergent 
 first action on wh all the phna with wh science deals ultimately depend. 
 Chemistry on the other hand is the very worst and lowest of all sciences 
 no science at all in truth, but a mere series of semblances : with its 
 doctrines of 'inherent affinities,' of the ' matter of heat,' electric and 
 other ' fluids ' a most grotesque construction, overlooking the real and 
 ruling facts, ignoring large and even obvious laws, dignifying with the 
 name of entities, and regarding as the great objects of its labors, a 
 series of trivial and evanescent appearances. And not even content 
 with this, but with a fancifulness more gross, and in its place not less 
 injurious than that of idolaters of old, personifying, or rather (for that 
 wd have been too poetic) in its own dull way materializing, the powers 
 of nature. 
 
 Almost the entire difference between things is a difference of size, wh 
 is truly none ; thus between living body and star-cluster that is the dif- 
 ference ; and between cell with its nucleus and solar system ; so it is 
 almost throughout. 
 
 Has there not been a bad influence from the almost exclusively 
 mathematical method of studying science wh has been pursued of late, 
 since Newton especially ; it has confined attention to form and relations 
 with wh alone it has to do, and abjures causes wh are the true objects of 
 science. 
 
 ^ All successful thought is spiral ; taking alternately opposite directions, 
 like overcoming of physical resistance by worming or screwing motion. 
 The wedge is the same : motion partly turned at right angles. 
 
 How unconsciously true thoughts are effected : i. e. with regard to 
 their results without foreknowledge of use or purpose. They are truly 
 instinctive : the result of an action according to the laws of the being, 
 like other instincts and material actions. This is Genius : as such 
 tendency to natural action it is inherent in all animals, and in man
 
 91 
 
 universally [?] The difference is this : in those in whom these instinctive 
 impulses are comparatively weak, they are over-ruled and kept in 
 abeyance by education and circumstances ; in those in whom they are 
 very strong they cannot be thus coerced and overlaid : they force their 
 way and will regulate the actions. These are Geniuses. A great sim- 
 plification to call Instinct Genius ; thus it is by genius that a bee builds 
 its cell, a bird its nest, &c., and it does it right. 
 
 "When we perceive that the love of men and women is the very same 
 thing as ordinary polar attraction, i. e. as all attraction, it ceases to be 
 wonderful that God has made the existence of the world to depend upon 
 it. All life depends upon it ; there is nothing else for it to depend on. 
 It is the very same thing as that sidereal life depends on gravitation ; 
 the two are one. All instincts, surely, animal and human, are material 
 laws ; and surely always this same law of polar attraction ; disguised as 
 it were and beautified by being connected with consciousness and pleasure 
 in the lower animals, and with moral emotion, design and happiness in 
 the human being. All is one law endlessly appearing. Thus there is 
 truly no great and little, no high and low, in nature : all is one one 
 law, one action, one work. The difference is only of size ; of space and 
 mass, as it were, not of kind. All matter is engaged in the same work, 
 part of the same life, performing the same work in the same way. And 
 this true, surely, in moral and spiritual world as in material. The ex- 
 ternal differences among men differences of position, of occupation, &c. 
 are nothing ; the work and the manner of its performance in all is one. 
 As in nature so in spiritual world, the great fact is unity. The only 
 point is, in spiritual action, to attain what is always secured in material 
 action viz. to do the right. 
 
 A law for thinking : when you are at a loss, and things will not be 
 as they should be, try the process of inversion, i. e. put the last idea 
 
 first ; invert the relation of cause and effect. Thus 's difficulty 
 
 about God acting by laws, and laws of His own nature, as preventing 
 any feeling of gratitude, is easily removed by putting God first and law 
 last ; instead of the law first, and ' God acting according to it.' 
 
 It is not easy to take a satisfactory view of the question as to the 
 existence of matter. "We of necessity at present use language wh implies 
 that matter exists, but this affords no evidence : the more we analyse 
 what we mean by it, the more does all meaning escape us. "What can 
 that be wh has no properties whatever, but only a capacity for receiving 
 and propagating motion and tendency thereto ? For even the resistance 
 to motion is not a property of matter : in its simplest and most compli- 
 cated forms as simple cohesion and the most refined and complex 
 ' affinity ' the resistance is result of polar attraction (the cause of all 
 cohesion and affinity), wh is itself but a consequence and form of motion. 
 
 The simplest idea seems to be that the universe is not a. substance, but 
 an act of God : that no substance exists but the Divine Being ; no phna 
 but His action. Thus that mysterious problem respecting mind and 
 matter wd find at once its repose. God's act requires nothing external 
 to act upon or in ; He acts surely as we do, or may do, upon and within 
 ourselves. Is not the universe a thought of God more nearly ap- 
 proaching to our conception of an Idea than anything else perhaps ? 
 
 Is it not glorious that there is nothing in the universe but motion 
 nothing but the act of the Divine Being ? And motion is this act in a
 
 92 
 
 material and phenomenal aspect. The act of God is not truly motion, 
 primarily, but Life if that be distinguishable from it : Life is God's 
 act, His Creation. 
 
 The question as to the existence of matter rests just as the question as 
 to the materiality of light did of old, and the solution will probably be 
 the same. Nothing can be fixed upon or shown in either case but 
 motion. And this argument applies to both ; motion we must have 
 whether there be matter or not ; but if we have motion that is all we 
 want : why then assume matter also ? 
 
 How sad an injustice we do ourselves, degrade our own capacity for 
 knowing and reverencing God, by the modes of action we have attributed 
 to Him in His creative work ; such as we ourselves should disdain if we 
 had the power to create. Were it not more glorious by far if the mere 
 weight or pressure of the atmosphere (itself the simple consequence of 
 an almost axiomatic law) were the cause at once of the existence and the 
 development of life ? 
 
 God's laws are invariable, not from any material necessity, ' because 
 once ordained,' not because they must be but because He chooses them 
 to be, and for that reason only. The consequences of action are not 
 certain because of the nature of things, but by His will that they should 
 be so. The punishment for sin He inflicts, the happiness from right 
 doing He bestows. The laws of nature are His constant election. 
 ' Direct retribution ' is true ; there is nothing but God's direct action : 
 but it errs by drawing a distinction wh does not exist. 
 
 Does this view of all things and all laws as being God's direct action 
 clear up any of the difficulties connected with miracles, special provi- 
 dences, and prayer, wh science introduces ? I have not thought much of 
 it, but it seems to me as if it must : for it disposes altogether of the 
 idea of ' interference with the course of nature,' and such crude notions. 
 God continually acting, and acting as He chooses, being all that exists, 
 a miracle a providence is no interference ; in truth it is no alteration. 
 What was before is then God's action as He chooses : and why on this 
 view should we not pray ? There is no chain of causes and effects : 
 there can be no ' laws ' if there is no matter for them to ' belong to.' 
 
 The doctrine that man can never know the essences of things, and that 
 laws or sequences, i. e. details, are the only objects of human knowledge, 
 has just now attained its height and it has even been organized into a 
 philosophy and a strangely dark one. But this was by no means the 
 human instinct. Naturally man believes that essences are the very things 
 he can and must discover. The first philosophy is always a search after 
 absolute truth ; and see how true the instinct is. Just as the sceptical 
 philosophy has completed itself and laid down its laws as of final 
 authority, comes its death-blow. The very thing that it has pronounced 
 impossible, is done. 
 
 There is a peculiar appropriateness in Music, as an illustration of the 
 universe, in the simplicity of the means, and the variety, multitude, and 
 wonder of the effects. And musical genius, wh is eminently displayed 
 in the production of great effects by simple means, well illustrates genius 
 as a part of nature. 
 
 Do we not see the universe under the dominion of our own laws of 
 action and of thought, see it human, wh in truth is only showing the 
 laws of matter to be laws of mind ? Thus, that a living body is a machine ;
 
 93 
 
 that polarity is the same as we use in a machine ; that conversion of 
 forces is only a law of mechanics : Proving what ? not that we take 
 our inventions and ideas from nature, for we had these ideas long before 
 we saw them in nature ; but that the action of our minds and the action 
 of nature are the same : that mind is part of the universe. 
 
 Eemember not only the fact, so clear on reflection, that thought is 
 phenomenally a truly material process, obeying natural laws, i. e. the 
 laws of the rest of the universe ; but also the moral advantage that 
 results from recognizing this : the reason it affords for our inability to 
 grapple with spiritual truths ; the authority the supreme authority 
 over ' logic ' wh it gives to the moral sense : in short, our imprisonment 
 in 'matter.' The first chapter of Genesis appears to give the best pos- 
 sible account of creation upon the hypothesis, or rather using the 
 language, of matter ; of course it was not possible to do otherwise. But 
 is not another view implied in its language ? 
 
 The constancy of the laws of nature is but the result of God's un- 
 wavering purpose : He not only inflicts directly the consequences of sin, 
 but when suffering or loss follows good, He also inflicts that. When a 
 man jumping into water to save life is drowned, God drowns the man, 
 and He will give account of it. There are no general laws of nature, 
 generally good but sometimes working for evil, God leaving them so : is 
 not the idea abhorrent and unendurable discord ? 
 
 What is the meaning of the expressiveness of nature ; especially note 
 the ludicrous forms sometimes assumed ; what cause, what indication ? 
 
 The infinite variety of nature arises from the one law of liberty. 
 Nature is non-control ; but all right. May not the English nation have 
 its place partly because it is not so educated ? not so much of man's 
 marring about it ; it works more naturally, more by genius. 
 
 One great moral duty seems to be the regulating polar -attractions : 
 putting check upon them, not suffering excess : that is morality in re- 
 lation to the body ; here is surely an insight into the relation between 
 body and spirit. Why is it thus ? what oppositeness of relation in the 
 two renders it necessary to limit and control the physical polar tendencies, 
 i. e. the sensuous appetites ? what non-conformity of spirit and matter 
 that renders the unchecked self-indulgence, wh is right in the animal, 
 abhorrent and destructive in man ? The spirit has its polar tendencies, 
 surely, the love of virtue and of God. The flesh lustesh against the 
 spirit there must be some such native opposition of tendencies. 
 
 Nature is gentle and ' easy to be entreated ' ; all her secrets may be 
 gained by sympathy, by self-devotion. The way to comprehend her is 
 not to put her to the torture, and attempt to wring out her laws by 
 crucial experiments. She gives deceitful answers in her agony, or in- 
 dignantly refuses to respond. Confide in her, love her, talk with her as 
 a friend, woo her by secret, silent, reverential dwelling of the mind and 
 heart upon her beauties ; be a lover to her, and she replies with love, 
 and makes the heart that thus with self abnegation devotes itself to her, 
 the participator of her most cherished secrets. There is no limit to such 
 a man's insight into nature but his own power of comprehending what 
 what she tells him. All this artists and poets have long known. They 
 have wooed nature, and not in vain. In their verses, on their canvas, 
 her inmost heart stands revealed. But men of science have done other- 
 wise. With brutal violence they have sought to wrest from her those
 
 94 
 
 pledges of affection wh are due to love alone, and they have rightly 
 failed. Science and poetry and art are truly one, and must be cultivated 
 in one spirit. When men of science are reverential lovers and worship- 
 pers of nature as artists and poets are, then shall they also, as artiste and 
 poets do, comprehend her. The study of nature is a study of physi- 
 ognomy, needing for ite successful presentation not the scalpel of the 
 anatomist, but sympathy. 
 
 It is so far from being the fact that our knowledge of the laws of 
 nature is founded on microscopic and telescopic observations or indeed on 
 minute examinations of any sort, that in truth our knowledge of the 
 laws of these remote facts is based upon their analogy with those facts 
 wh are obvious. It is only in so far as we can reduce the former to a 
 sameness with the latter that we know anything about their laws. Hence 
 e. g. it is right to call the two forms of polarity male and female. 
 Herein also lies an idea full of joy : as the external and obvious in nature 
 is full of artistic and poetic beauty, so also must that be wh is remote 
 and concealed. The excessively minute, the overwhelmingly large, are 
 one with those exquisite forms of wh our eyes can realize the beauty and 
 our art idealize. As the external superficial world has a moral meaning, 
 a sympathizing heart, as it speaks to us of our own joys and sorrows, 
 and raises within us tender emotions and lofty aspirations, so is that 
 world wh is hidden from us bound to us also by ties as close. The stars 
 that roll thro space, the minutest particles of wh millions constitute an 
 atom, are our brethren also, even as trees and flowers are, share our 
 emotions, reciprocate our love. This noble work the men of science 
 have, to extend the artistic and poetic appreciation of nature beyond the 
 scope of the senses, to show that she is the same in the vast and in the 
 minute as she is in the forms wh we speak of as forms of beauty. I feel 
 within myself the spirit of those old Greeks who symbolized nature and 
 man's relation to it under so many legends and in so many statues. 
 Science is the ' loves of man and nature ' : Cupid and Psyche speak to 
 me of it ; but it is love fraught with no disaster. Tearful, painful, full 
 of doubt it has been indeed, unconscious of ite divine and joyful nature, 
 a blind yearning, torturing and harassing the soul of man all these long 
 ages-, while he knew not what it was : his soul passionately smitten with 
 the beauty of nature, yet knowing it not, nor how to express his vague 
 yearnings, knowing only that he was miserable. Such is ever the dawn 
 of love. Inconceivably removed and unapproachable appears to us the 
 object of our passion wh yet cannot be controlled. Enough for us it 
 seems to kiss the hem of her gannent, to adore her at a distance : we 
 shrink into utter insignificance before her. Thus appears to each man's 
 heart his destined bride, thus to the universal heart of man has nature 
 yet appeared. Oh miserable days and nights of tears prophetic of un- 
 utterable joy ! Loved even as he loves, altho' he knows it not, one soft 
 reply to stammering, half -uttered words, raises him to bliss he had not 
 dared to dream : gives him the empire the dearest to his soul : his rightful 
 empire too, for there enthroned he has his home. Does man love nature, 
 and nature not love man ? It is not so ; she is his bride, his wife ; bone 
 of his bone, flesh of his flesh, soul of his soul. Oh union made in 
 heaven and yet to be accomplished on earth, has not thy day come even 
 now?
 
 95 
 
 The beauty and spiritual meaning of nature is the fact to wh all others 
 are subordinate : its elucidation is the great object of science not less 
 than of art. The discovery of her laws is the revelation of this higher 
 moral significance the two things are inseparable ' the laws of nature 
 are the laws of our nature, and preach to us in their mere enunciation. 
 The facts of the universe are not the passive motions of material things, 
 they are the acts of a living spirit, informed and radiant with thought, 
 emotion, will ; each one of them a presentation of the mind and heart of 
 God, with wh our hearts, if they be true to God, must beat in harmony. 
 Nature is beautiful as the actions of a loving and noble man are beautiful, 
 and cannot but be so. The moral beauty that is in him speaks in his 
 smallest deeds ; the tenderness and truth that constitute his being flow 
 forth irrepressibly in every glance and movement. We feel as soon as we 
 behold him that we are in the presence of a ' Great Spirit.' Thus should 
 we feel in nature's presence, for nature is the act of God. And the 
 beauty we do see in nature is that moral beauty, wh reveals to us a Spirit, 
 holy, just, and good. There is one key to to the secrets of nature, and 
 that is the human soul : not chemical or mathematical analysis, not 
 disruption by electricity, not diffusion by heat. All these are utterly in 
 vain they do but change the form. As hopeless wd it be to seek to 
 discover the thinking acting MAN by digesting his body in acids or burning 
 it in retorts. They do not touch the point at issue. The laws, the active 
 powers, of nature are the will of God, a constant spiritual Deed ; what 
 can that have in common with passive mechanical forces ? But it has 
 everything in common with the human spirit, wh is the image of God. 
 The laws of nature must be graven deep on our souls : as we are like to 
 God so God's work must be like to ours. One thing alone will give us 
 to know nature, and that is to bring our minds and hearts into relation 
 with God's mind as manifested therein ; but that will do it at once and 
 perfectly. It is a delightful privilege, an easy task. We, in acting, do 
 continually what God does ; our action is part of His work. All science 
 lies in this maxim, ' Know thyself.' We, we are nature. [So the living 
 body is a machine, a work identical with our own works ; &c.] Here is 
 another basis of our love of nature : we see ourselves in it ; how dimly 
 and obscurely hitherto, indeed, but still ourselves, however dimly. At 
 once ourselves and our maker. For what is nature, but a standing proof 
 and pledge of God's oneness with us, and our likeness to Him ; a point 
 of common action, a pledge of sympathy. God and man doing this one 
 work, how can they do otherwise than sympathize together ? if we love 
 God's work because it it like ours, so assuredly God loves ours because it 
 is like His. 
 
 The universe, as music, is full of infinite meaning, yea of infinite 
 passion. Reverently let us ever speak, but may we not gain a conception 
 of God's emotional nature by picturing to ourselves the throbbing heart 
 of a great musician as he first conceives and executes the strains which 
 shall awaken to devout and rapturous emotion all the generations of the 
 future. 
 
 ' God's works are as our works.' That is why nature, like works of 
 genius, is not obtrusively and ostentatiously moral. Not only are the 
 highest human works like nature, but conversely nature is like the highest 
 human works. The two are one. Not only were apostles and prophets
 
 96 
 
 fellow-workers with God, God is the fellow-worker with every man who 
 truly and genuinely works with Him. 
 
 A miracle cannot be an interference with the general course of nature, 
 because there is no general course of nature to interfere with. How can 
 a being interfere with his own action I How many cases there are in 
 nature of mischievous result as well as of good : e. g. bees are destroyed 
 sometimes by adhesion of pollen wh they are conveying to stigma. Thus 
 natural theologians have never been able to look nature fairly in the face. 
 In truth the idea of nature is not that of use and design, it has a deeper 
 basis. Nature is made right, and results shift for themselves : there being 
 the innate compensation in it, because it is right, that every evil, every 
 failure or loss, becomes tributary to a greater good. The true idea of 
 nature is that of a work of art ; what it expresses is not primarily con- 
 trivance but passion ; its end is not use but self-expression ; its spring 
 not benevolence but the necessity of producing ; its law not adaptation, 
 but lightness. This is the truth that God's object in creation was not 
 the good of His creatures, but His own glory, ' For Thy glory they are 
 and were created.' Creation sprang from God as pictures grow out of 
 an artist, or melody flows from a musician : because it was in Him and 
 must come forth. Thus the universe is music. It is an impassioned act ; 
 full of a meaning deeper than thought. Man cannot know nature, 
 starting with the idea of design : alter the conception to that of passion, 
 and it is clear. 
 
 The idea that the universe is music was with me the result of a purely 
 scientific induction ; the studying of material laws alone developed the 
 conception, and simply in reference to material phna : yet it contains the 
 moral secret of the universe as well. 
 
 I rejoice to think of the future Science. How our children instead of 
 being overwhelmed with the vastness and multiplicity of nature, will 
 delight in her simplicity, will play with her as with a child, and take 
 sweet counsel with her as with a friend whose whole heart is open to 
 them. And what a friend ! one who is pure and fresh ever from the 
 hand of God, holding before us constantly a pattern of the right, answering 
 to our unceasing enquiry, What would God have us to do I ' God does 
 this.' 
 
 The secret of error in science seems to be the invention, by a most in- 
 veterate tendency, of unnecessary ideas. Thus altho' all things must 
 consist in motion in direction of least resistance, specific laws have been 
 invented. So altho' we must have God's constant action, matter has been 
 invented. As if God's action was not enough, was not adapted. How 
 can a spirit perceive matter ? that is an old paradox ; but that a spirit 
 should perceive the action of a spirit is the most evident of things. So 
 again in Astronomy : an abstract gravitation was invented instead of 
 what was known, viz. a tendency of things to return ; a vacuum invented, 
 tho' no such thing was known ; thus filling astronomy with assumptions. 
 Truly it seems as if the great art in science were to believe that all things 
 are the same as that wh we know best : as in truth they are. 
 
 Clearly, to suppose motion to take any other direction than that of 
 least resistance is to attribute to it a spiritual power : that of directing 
 iteelf. Indeed the more this idea is investigated the more manifest does 
 it become that motion can obey no other law, exist under no other
 
 97 -. 
 
 conditions. But now another thought comes into view, brought more 
 forcibly before me by my perception that this law of motion is a law of 
 our own mind : viz. that this law is in truth only a human conception 
 and not a fact. It follows from the very nature of motion ; but motion 
 has and can have no existence save as a conception. Motion cannot exist 
 without matter, and .-. does not exist, and to talk of the law of motion 
 in direction of least resistance as being the one law of nature, is really 
 to talk nonsense. It is the law of nature viewed as matter^ but nature 
 being the act of a spirit, the entire conception is inapplicable to it. The 
 question comes imperatively, "What is the fact wh we call motion? how 
 can that be traced to its essence ? and when we find the real thing, what 
 laws will that obey : will it not be the absolutely free act of the one 
 spirit ? 
 
 But altho' nature cannot really be motion in direction of least resist- 
 ance, there must be something in this law truly conformable to that wh 
 really is. See its moral analogies. A whole new world opens here. 
 Probably this is the reason men conceive the world to be matter, because 
 the law of motion in least resistance embraces it : and that is a material 
 law. The real intellectual process is not that we infer the law from 
 the properties of matter, but that we infer matter and its properties 
 from the law. "Why is God's creation representable under the form of 
 motion in direction of least resistance ? I know this is a problem that 
 may be solved. 
 
 All those paradoxes wh we have disregarded so much are really of 
 great weight. They are just and legitimate arguments against matter ; 
 that is the true bearing of them : e. g. the objection to the law of motion, 
 that a moving body can neither be where it is nor where it is not, is not 
 to be scoffed at ; it is a just reason why we shd hold our idea of motion 
 to be a false idea. For it is to be observed that altho' these paradoxes 
 are certainly based only on our mode of conception, it is also only to our 
 modes of conception that they are applied. The very points in question 
 are the justness and consistency of our conceptions it is our ideas only 
 with wh we have to do. Motion is certainly resolvable : the fact that 
 it takes direction of least resistance the fact that all motion is and 
 must be vibration these and such are the inductions wh point to the 
 true conception. 
 
 How clear it is that all wh we call the laws of nature are only the 
 laws of our minds, when we see that they are all included in motion in 
 direction of least resistance, wh is in truth only the definition of a 
 conception. 
 
 Let me come nearer to Thee, oh God ; know more truly what it is 
 Thou doest. How sad a disappointment it is to me to find that these 
 principles of Thy acting, as I have thought, are but shadows projected 
 from myself ! I wd know, not more of myself, but more of Thee. I 
 beseech Thee, show me Thy glory. Hide not Thyself from my desiring 
 eyes. What is nature to me, of what value are beauty, delight and use, 
 of what satisfaction the simplest and the grandest laws, if Thou be not 
 in them. May I never know what Thou doest ? Wilt Thou be recog- 
 nized alone by faith and love ? Dost Thou say to me, in these earnest 
 but futile strivings, ' Who by searching can find out God : but with that 
 man will I dwell who is of an humble and a contrite spirit, and who 
 trembleth at my word' ? Oh give me, if in majesty unapproachable by
 
 98 
 
 intellect Tliou dwellest, with my heart to be united unto Thee ! 
 
 I think surely Mendelssohn shd hare written n hook : he had so much 
 to say ; and then he wd have been content to have put less meaning into 
 his music. "What a perversion of thought it is that music is to express 
 all or many ideas and emotions : music is not a subsidiary but a primary 
 fact, exists in and for itself; and the special business of a musician 
 surely shd be practically to affirm and exemplify this truth. It is his 
 business to make music right ; that right music shd be full of meaning 
 and adequately express our moral nature, is God's business. How 
 wearisome nature wd be if the trees had been made to express a moral 
 meaning. It is our own meaning we see in nature, and ought to see in 
 art. 
 
 "What a strange thing it is that people imagine they decide on doubtful 
 points by their intellects, and not by their feelings ; and they are even 
 angry if the contrary is suggested. What a. putting of the inferior 
 above the higher nature : but how beautifully even herein does God attain 
 His higher ends even by human error. What is really done when a 
 person with sincere and earnest heart undertakes to weigh the evidence 
 on a doubtful religious point such as future punishment, personal reign, 
 &c. is that under the idea of letting his reason judge, he listens calmly 
 and intently to the voice of his inner nature. Painfully and with 
 prayerful resolve he lap aside prejudice and passion, he puts off indo- 
 lence, and judges as fie feels. Herein is a deep beauty. To what good 
 all this toilsome process ? the attainment of truth ? Certainly not, 
 because equally earnest and and capable people arrive by such means at 
 opposite results ; and evidently not, because such a process has in itself 
 no adaptation to lead to truth ; and the less, the more purely intellectual 
 it bo made. To arrive at truth involves many conditions in the person 
 wh in the vast majority are sure to be wanting. What then ? Docs the 
 process fail of its result ? Are the prayers, the tears, the hours of me- 
 ditation, the agonizing renunciation of old tics, all to no avail ? Xot so. 
 They fail not of God's purpose, wh is the discipline and development of 
 the moral nature ; the education of the soul. In this strife the child 
 grows into the man : the end is gained. What he he thinks about future 
 punishment or millenarianism is of no consequence : that he shd bring 
 his soul before God, and struggle earnestly to do the right, that is the 
 point. 
 
 The idea of motion involves the idea of time, .'.as there is no time 
 to God, to God there is no matter ; for matter and motion are correlative. 
 And is not the way to penetrate beyond the conception of motion to 
 eliminate the idea of time : to conceive of all the long succession of 
 things, or of things now occurring in succession, as coincident ? 
 
 The bearings of the law of motion in direction of least resistance shd 
 be reversed. All things in nature are not right and exactly as they shd 
 be because they obey this law ; but because God does all things aright 
 and exactly as they shd be, .-. they appear to exist under that law. The 
 laws of nature, or rather the Law of nature, expresses what God's action 
 is. His perfect will, however it be viewed, has but one attribute : it is 
 right. As the most beautiful tree consists only of common twigs and 
 branches, not at all specially beautiful in themselves, put together 
 rightly as indeed all the most magnificent and lovely objects are but a 
 right putting together of parts in themselves of no striking beauty or 
 [Metaphysics 16 .
 
 99 
 
 grandeur so a true science will be found to consist, not in specially 
 grand or remarkable ideas or conceptions, but only in a right putting 
 together of simple and ordinary ideas. As in every twig there is 
 virtually the entire tree the tree consisting only in a right combination 
 of many such so in each true perception of the connection of natural 
 facts, how simple or ordinary soever, there is virtually the whole of 
 science. ' Science is Common Sense.' The object of science using the 
 term as indicating an arrangement of knowledge into a consistent whole, 
 and not as a mere collecting of facts is not the attainment of the 
 knowledge of the real nature of things, not a knowing things are certainly 
 so, but only an arrangement of the facts in the best and simplest mode, 
 according to our necessary way of regarding them. What are called 
 laws of nature are really laws of mental action, therefore it is that 
 science is common sense. The question that arises in regard to any 
 theoretical scientific point is not, Are things really so ? but, The facts 
 being such, how do they most simply group themselves in our regard ? 
 Even what we call facts, i. e. phna, things perceived by the senses, are 
 merely suppositions ideas formed as near as possible to meet the circum- 
 stances. It is curious that it shd be so commonly thought that science 
 teaches the reality of things, when all our conceptions are so obscure and 
 paradoxical when we press them in the least degree to their bases ; 
 matter, motion, &c. 
 
 "We can at any moment shut out all light or refuse to see any object, 
 but cannot refuse to hear all that is audible : but the ear is of all our 
 senses the most under the control of the emotional state ; are these facts 
 related ? 
 
 Science is in a curious predicament ; it is full of hypotheses, or in- 
 ventions, wh have obtained such a hold of men's minds that they pass 
 almost for facts, and when a person seeks to present a simple view of 
 facts free from these inventions he is supposed to theorize, and is required 
 to prove his position, when in fact he merely endeavours to remove some- 
 thing of wh there is no proof. The mathematicians seem to me to have 
 been the greatest offenders in this respect. They, appear to have been 
 almost reckless, as if they had no perception except for relations of quan- 
 tity : anything wd do for them if it wd,only furnish a basis on wh to 
 erect a calculus or construct an equation. 
 
 Here may be an illustration of the step from the present science to the 
 real one : Now men are as at the bottom of a high cliff composed of 
 various strata, steep and defying progress ; and they dig unconnectedly 
 into the various strata here and there, but make no progress. A man 
 comes who climbs up the cliff ; cuts out laboriously his own steps, and 
 mounts to the top. Then there spreads out before him a smooth and 
 verdant field. The strata are no longer piled up before him and above 
 him ; they are beneath his feet. The same facts but in a new relation. 
 And the path being made, all can follow. 
 
 Man knows only himself, the laws of his own mental action. Whether 
 he throw himself out upon external things, or seek by deep study to 
 penetrate their essence and learn the secret of existence, the sum of all 
 we know is still ourselves. And the same, does it nob hold good of God, 
 than whom and His deeds there is nothing else ? Knowing Himself, 
 He is omniscient. Knowledge is self knowledge no other is or can be. 
 This may reconcile us to the fact that all our discoveries are thus
 
 100 
 
 subjective, all generalizations definitions of our own ideas, all lays the 
 modes of our own mental operations ; no other knowledge is possible to 
 man or angel : it is the only true, the best and perfect knowledge. And 
 it is true because thus internal ; universal because thus limited ; real 
 because thus subjective. For we are nature. To know ourselves is to 
 know all things ; the laws of our minds are the laws of the universe. 
 
 Thus we come to embrace in the bonds of brotherhood all opinions. 
 There is nothing that man has thought that is not in its way true ; 
 nothing he can think that does not by his thinking become true : he may 
 err by defect, by deformity, but he cannot go beyond nature. Thus the 
 law of the world embraces and makes true the doctrine that it exists by 
 necessity, for it does BO that it results from chance, for it does so ; 
 things are as they happen ; things that happen are in direction of least 
 resistance. The Pantheistic doctrine has its truth, for all things are 
 God's acts : and all true thinkings are likewise true things, if we could 
 see them. Nature embraces them and makes them her own they are 
 hers, whatever thinkers may intend. 
 
 It is the spirit only that can truly go wrong : that is its attribute. 
 Intellect is a part of nature, and like nature must ever and in every 
 .particular, be right. To suppose a man capable of thinking falsely ie to 
 suppose his brain [or mind, whatever it is] capable of spiritual or original 
 action. The intellectual operations, like the things of nature, may be 
 distorted, malformed, unadapted, considered by themselves ; but even 
 they, like physical evils or distortions, are right from a higher point of 
 of view. They obey and carry out the law and are right as they are, 
 and where they are ; and are wrong or failures only locally ; from want 
 of exact adaptation to the things with wh they are in relation. To us 
 wrong, to God right physical evil and intellectual error alike. Take 
 all the worst opinions, wh we look upon with such abhorrence : that 
 the world results from necessity or from chance, doctrines wh have been 
 made the bases of atheistical and immoral systems. We have seen that 
 they have their truth, they also have their excellence and beauty in 
 themselves, i. e. as pure intellectual facts they are both beautiful and 
 excellent. How did they almost certainly arise ? not in the minds of 
 irreligious, sensual men ; but deep in the hearts of earnest, large-hearted, 
 eublime-visioncd men, whose inmost souls recoiled from the view of ar- 
 bitrary and unmeaning collocations of events, whose deepest intuitions 
 rejected the conception of isolated ' creations ' or unconnected laws. To 
 them the idea that the universe was one grand necessity, or had happened 
 as it was, was a glorious poetic phantasy, a glad, religious inspiration. 
 I see their rapture ; I feel the throbbing of their hearts when first the 
 thought that the universe was one burst upon their souls. I bow with 
 them in their new, profounder adoration of the infinite Spirit ; my soul 
 expands with theirs in that new capacity for devotion wh that opening 
 of the eyes creates. The pious joy of their hearts renews itself in mine. 
 Thus seen and felt in their pure intellectual relations, these views of 
 nature are not false but true, not degrading but almost too sublime. 
 
 What then has falsified and polluted them ? what but unholy will ? 
 Those great conceptions of the intellect have been taken by the evil- 
 hearted as the basis of atheistic systems and so made false. 
 
 Hence it is that to think rightly we must suffer our emotional nature 
 to have its due weight in our opinions ; must judge as we feel, believe
 
 101 
 
 a we like. This the philosophical foundation of the fact I have so often 
 noted, that our opinions are determined by our feelings. For when a 
 man resolves to be guided by intellect alone, hia spirit interferes with 
 the action of his nature, and the only possible source of absolute intel- 
 lectual error comes into play. Hence the absolute falsehood of materialism, 
 wh is a doctrine taken up by the intellect alone, in opposition to the 
 nature, or consciousness or feelings. Hence also the authority and certain 
 truth of intuitions or universal and spontaneous beliefs. These must be 
 true because they are a part of nature. They are not human but divine. 
 They are God's ' action,' and if we can only find them out correctly, we 
 may be sure they can no more be false than the rest of God's works. The 
 spontaneity is the point to ascertain. 
 
 It is a natural enquiry why I so insist upon the existence of moral 
 evil or of Sin. The reason is twofold. 1st. That it is a fact, wh it 
 behoves no man to shut his eyes upon. 2nd. That if sin cannot be, there 
 can be no goodness. Unless there be that capacity for original and moral 
 action wh renders sin possible, there can be no virtue in holiness. To 
 deny the possibility of sin is to annihilate the moral world. Sin .-. being 
 clearly possible, on theoretical and moral grounds, and being clearly also 
 a fact in man's history, how could it be the path of wisdom to ignore it ? 
 If it exists it is in one sense the great fact of any world in wh it exists, 
 one around wh almost all the other facts of that world must be grouped, 
 throwing them all into new relations and imparting to them all new 
 meanings. Sin sheds its glare or gloom upon everything that coexists 
 with it. 
 
 The one thing that exists is moral action ; God's action and that of 
 other spirits. All the action of a spirit is moral ; being free it is either 
 right or wrong. All nature, and all that is //^voluntary in us, is God's 
 action : and .*. it is moral action, for morality lies not in the deed but 
 in the agent. Thus the universe presents to us nothing that does not 
 possess the highest of all possible characters. It is what it should be, 
 pervaded from first to last with soul and will, amenable in each minutest 
 detail to the judgment of the highest Law. "What do we want of an 
 aggregation of passive material things ; how sad a waste of creative 
 energy wd such a creation be ; how poor and paltry it must grow even 
 to ourselves ; what difference can extent or bulk make in the dignity of 
 things ? What there is, is a universe of moral agents and moral action : 
 it satisfies the heart as well as fills the eye. Each fact, as we call it, in 
 nature is a morally right act, done at this present time. 
 
 The moral quality of belief is because the volition continually inter- 
 feres with the intellectual process. 
 
 Doubtless many opinions that seem to be opposite are both true. 
 What can seem more opposite than the opinions that the world is the 
 result of necessity, and the result of chance ? yet a little wider vision 
 shows us that both are one and both are true. And so will many other 
 opposed opinions be found when we see more. Consider the vast space 
 occupied by our ignorance ; what room for the reconcilement of apparent 
 contradictions there is in that. I doubt not that the opinions that the 
 wicked will be punished for ever, and that they will be destroyed, are 
 both true. Consider what an unexplored chasm lies in idea of existence 
 what do we know about that ? 
 
 Differences of opinion are like differences of constitution, of wh indeed
 
 102 
 
 (when they are not moral and due to the spirit) they are but parts ; and 
 as we can see the use and beauty of differences of constitution and 
 adaptation, so we ought to enlarge our hearts to see the use and beauty 
 of differences of opinion. It is not an evil to be put up vith, but a 
 felicity to be enjoyed : e. g. the doctrines of necessity and chance as 
 the origin of the world, what are they but the two halves of the ' Law 
 of Liberty.' And so is not the truth of all things thus two-fold, con- 
 sisting of two almost opposites ; of wh our extreme opinions take up 
 each one sid9, and our poor intelligence cannot join them. Law and 
 liberty are the two poles of creation, physical and moral who shall 
 unite them for us in the moral world as is done in the physical ? Truth 
 is too great to be cribbed in our views, too living to be entombed in our 
 formulas. She speaks in each spontaneous thought, she dwells with 
 each earnest heart, none ever sought her and found her not. 
 
 Are not the two opinions polar, the male and female opinion ; should 
 they not be mutually attractive ? 
 
 The action of a perfectly holy spirit embodies absolutely the law of 
 liberty. He does ever absolutely right, and ever also absolutely what 
 he likes or chooses, perfect law and perfect liberty in one. But this is 
 just what the universe is, the action of a perfectly holy spirit, and so 
 absolute law and absolute liberty are in it. The problem of the universe 
 is to reconcile these two. This is done for the physical world by the 
 doctrine of motion in the direction of least resistance, wh is at once 
 absolute law and absolute liberty ; but where this reconcilement is not 
 accomplished there is and must be difference of opinion : one man sees 
 the law, another man the liberty. The old cosmogonies of necessity 
 and chance repeat themselves in modern times in the development 
 theory (creation by law) on the one hand and the doctrine of special 
 creations on the other. These are the law and the liberty, two partial 
 views : the truth includes both. Everything is an absolutely free special 
 creation, everything is absolutely under one law, part of one whole. 
 The opinions of eternal pnnishment and destruction represent I think 
 in some sense these two elements : the eternal punishment is the law, 
 the destruction (the getting rid of the wicked the easiest way) the 
 liberty. [Drummond's argument for killing criminals is the argument 
 for the destruction of the wicked.] These two elements comprehend 
 every possible form of human opinion or thought, i. e. of natural or 
 genuine thought. There are but two opinions, or modes of thought, in 
 the world ; as there are but two winds (see Schleiden on the Weather) 
 making up all the" vast variety. They represent law and liberty : the 
 truth lies in the union of them, and the possibility of this must be 
 believed in spite of contradiction. That this is the essential difference 
 between different opinions may be very widely seen, e. g. legalism and 
 antinomianism Artninianism and Calvinism [for ourselves and for God 
 respectively]. The true process of arriving at truth is therefore to 
 expand the soul to take in and unite opposite views. 
 
 The reason why we find it so difficult to see that law and liberty are 
 one, so difficult to arrive at truth by this synthesis, I take to be that 
 they are not one to ourselves. The law of right is to m a restraint, it 
 is felt as an infringement on our liberty, and therefore we conceive of 
 law almost as an infringement of the liberty of the Divine Being ; or 
 on the other hand, our liberty being licentiousness and running on into
 
 103 
 
 lawlessness, we fear a free universe, and seek to limit God Himself by 
 laws. But the secret of this is our depravity : it is the evil in us that 
 puts us out of harmony with nature ; if we were good we should see 
 that law and liberty are one, that right and choice are identical. The 
 antagonism that uppears to us between necessity and chance, uniform 
 development and direct creation, unvarying law and absolute spontaneity, 
 wd disappear. The shadow of our moral ruin projects itself upon the 
 universe, and throws into gloom and doubt that wh if we were true wd 
 be clear and self-evident. Thus it is true as the best philosophers have 
 held, that intellectual error has its deep root in moral pravity. 
 
 Do not these two moral or intellectual elements correspond with the 
 two primary conceptions of the physical world ; the force and the resist- 
 ance the two polarities, the male and the female ? I think they do. 
 The law is the male or the force, the unity ; the liberty is the female, 
 the resistance, the variety. (Emerson also speaks of these two ; unity 
 or identity and variety). I see this The law, or force, is one ; the 
 liberty or resistance is many ; the two together constitute the ' fact ' : 
 motion and resistance yes, not two but one and the same. May we 
 without irreverence trace the threefold aspect of all things up to its basis in 
 the divine nature the Father, Son, and Spirit ? Power, resistance, act ? 
 The Son is begotten of the Father ; is one, consubstantial with Him : resist- 
 ance is one with motion. The Spirit ' proeeedeth from the Father and 
 the Son ' ; the fact is the joint effect of motion and resistance. Oh God, 
 if in this I do presume too much and take Thy holy name upon unhal- 
 lowed lips, Thou knowest that my inmost heart hallows and venerates 
 Thy name, that my soul is prostrate in deepest humility and reverence 
 before Thee, and I pray Thee to forgive. 
 
 To this view of the malo or force as law, the female or resistance as 
 liberty, and the two being one, the more rigid analysis of them only 
 furnishes confirmation. The female is divergence, the male approxn ; 
 i. e. the male is the returning half of a vibration ; the law, the force wh 
 under different resistances becomes diverse action various divergt actions 
 or half vibrations. The approx act typifies the law, the various resist- 
 ance typifies the liberty ; the resulting divergent act, ' the fact.' 
 
 May it not even be that not only two, but three different views go to 
 make up the truth ? Nature is at once the result of necessity, of chance, 
 and of God's direct and special creative act. May not the eternal 
 punishment of the wicked, their destruction, and universal restitution, 
 all be true ? I can hardly help thinking so. 
 
 All that the human mind has thought is dear and sacred to me ; it all 
 has its use and place in nature. Does not the old Cartesian ' plenum ' 
 make its appearance again ? and even his vortices, as effects instead of 
 causes ? are they not the spiral ? That thoughts should be true and im- 
 mortal it needs only that they should be genuine ; real utterances of the 
 nature. And in order to this they must be positive ; true thought is 
 creative, and its creations are facts, like God's creation. It matters not 
 how false in point of logical accuracy a man's real thought is ; his 
 thinking it makes it a fact, and as such it has an eternal truth and an 
 eternal value and cannot be destroyed ; however it may be for a time 
 brushed aside and denied in the advance of knowledge, it will reappear 
 and take its place with sun and stars, coeval with the duration of the 
 human race. The thoughts that perish, perish because they are no thoughts,
 
 104 
 
 but logicalities, reasonings, and above all, denials; attempts to narrow 
 down the bounds of the universe, and make it less. 
 
 It appears to me that almost the greatest stumbling block in the way 
 of science, the greatest hindrance to natural views of nature, is the 
 conception of specific or inherent or fixed tendencies of things to be as 
 they are, or to assume certain arrangements in and of themselves, as it 
 were : an idea arising from the permanence of ' types ' as they are 
 called. It is seen in the ' elements ' in chem compounds, and most 
 strikingly in living beings, there being termed ' species.' Because they 
 are constant and perpetually recur of the same kind (within narrow 
 limits) it is supposed I hardly know how to express it that there is 
 some special tendency or power in nature to form that thing and no 
 other ; they are formed after an imaginary type ' an idea supposed in 
 nature to wh all the realizations are conformed. It seems to be the old 
 doctrine of the faculties ' under another form. The one error of 
 science is at the root of it ; viz. the putting the cart before the horse 
 the phenomenon before the cause. The constant repetition of the same 
 thing is the phenomenon, the last result of a chain of causes ; but being 
 familiar it has been put first, as ever, Constancy of results, or facts, 
 depends upon constancy of conditions. A waterfall illustrates it : drop 
 after drop of water follow each other in a course to our view the same, 
 for ages. The same fact endlessly repeated ; by any special tendency, 
 any reproductive power ? Of course only because the conditions are 
 the same, each one obeys the law, and moves in direction of least resist- 
 ance. Do we not owe much of our enslavement to the mathematicians, 
 and perhaps to Newton ? 
 
 Whewell observes of the ' first law of motion ' that it was discovered 
 experimentally, tho' now we see it is self evident. Herein is the entire 
 history of science ; we discover things slowly by experiment wh when 
 we see aright we shall perceive to be self evident : we shall see every 
 fact in nature to be so. When we advance a little farther our experi- 
 mental knowledge and our perception of things as self evident will be 
 co-extensive : or rather while we perceive every fact to be an instance of 
 a self evident law, we shall see in the laws a capacity for embracing 
 not only every fact that is known but every fact that can be known. 
 
 The inveterate error of science, that of putting phenomenon before 
 cause, manifests itself characteristically in that theological perversion 
 by wh the law is constantly put before God ; and wh, reacting, marrs all 
 science by leading even wise men to imagine that to affirm a law, has, 
 to say the least, some sort of looking towards excluding the Creator. 
 
 The basis of the number three as the number in nature, perhaps, is 
 manifested in the forms under wh we conceive all knowledge ; space, 
 time, and number : and of these space and time are again threefold ; 
 length, breadth, thickness ; past, present, future : what three is there in 
 Dumber ? 4- , , and unity [?] The plus and minus have a real relation 
 to the two halves of a vibration the elevation and depression ; put 
 them equally together and they mutually destroy, or by partial coinci- 
 dence or union (interference) produce varied amounts [or curves] in 
 either direction. There seems here to be more than a fancy. Are they 
 the two poles : -f divergent ; approximating ? Is red divergent ; blue 
 approximating ; yellow, like unity, between ? past and future the poles ; 
 present a unity between ? the present time being a mere point, the point
 
 105 
 
 of union of the two. Plus and minus, future and past, are infinite alike ; 
 unity and the present are points. The plus represents the future, 
 female ; the minus the past, male. 
 
 Can the relation of past, present, and future be : 
 
 minus unity plus. 
 
 male female child. 
 
 The child the future, proceeding from the past and present ? Then 
 space might be length, breadth, depth ; the depth, the future, the con- 
 tinuance, or the child. The depth gives the continuance : it is that wh 
 makes the curve a spiral instead of a circle ; and this spiral form depends 
 upon repetition or reproduction see it in trees upon the child in fact. 
 
 Depth is the child. And how about color : are red, yellow, and blue, 
 past, present, and future. Does one answer to depth ? This must be 
 found in chemistry also. 
 
 The conversion of the forces is but one example of this threefold form 
 of nature. Conversion of force involves the three elements : force, re- 
 sistance, issue [Father, mother, child: past, present, future]. The 
 form assumed by the force by virtue of the resistance, is the issue, de- 
 velopment, result. It is the third term of the trio: therefore motion in 
 direction of least resistance embraces all these ternary conceptions, i. e. 
 so far as motion is an appropriate idea. 
 
 The relation of female to male is that of divergent to approx action ; 
 i. e. as in pendulum the female succeeds the male, and in one sense is 
 caused hy it : speaking in relation to life the female replaces the male 
 and is higher than it. The vital action wh ensues from any given 
 decomp, is female to that decomp. Thus actually the male always pre- 
 cedes and causes the female ; but in reference to the entire course of 
 nature it is evident the female must have preceded the male. The first 
 divergent action must have preceded the first approx (as in pendulum), 
 And this is the right conception the first creative act produces a diver- 
 gent, a female ; i. e Nature is female. The creative act, or force, itself 
 corresponds with the male that produces the divergence. The creative 
 force is the homologue, in relation to the first divergent action, of the 
 approx actions wh in the actual course of nature ever precede the several 
 divergent actions wh constitute the course of nature. ' God by a spiritual 
 act ' produced first divergence. Thus we see partly how there is no time 
 to God. The past is ever present ; male and female and issue all co- 
 existing, all one. His first, or one, creative power is every approxima- 
 tive action ; His first, or one, creative act is every divergent action. 
 His power is all the male ; His act all the female ; the union of them 
 all the development. And these three are not successive but contempo- 
 raneous : i. e. in themselves, tho* not so to us. 
 
 The people who hold special creations little think it, but they really 
 belong to the opinion of ' chance.' They are the philosophical descen- 
 dants of those who taught a fortuitous concurrence of atoms. That is 
 the opinion wh reappears in this form. It is altered in expression, and 
 in bearing also to some extent, but it is the same dogma. 
 
 The trinity tri-unity or the three being one, is a necessary con- 
 ception of the human mind. The only way of arriving at unity indeed, 
 is by this synthesis. To aim at any other unity to individualize either 
 of the three and affirm it either to the exclusion of the other two or as
 
 106 
 
 different from them, is to seek an impossibility ; it is to divide under 
 the idea of making one, to separate and to make many. All our 
 simplest, most individualized ideas, are thus made up of three elements ; 
 and unless the three be all embraced in the one we cannot have unity at 
 all : we get infallibly a multiplicity of individuals wh yet are not unities 
 or wholes. The human race is one, in a sense in wh neither man, woman, 
 nor child is one. Time is one, in a sense in wh neither, past, present, 
 nor future (alone) is one. To make a true unity the three are 
 necessary. 
 
 But here we must guard against the common error ; against putting 
 the law first and God afterwards. The Divine Being is not a trinity 
 because it is a law of our minds that every unity is threefold : but all 
 unity is threefold because the Divine Being is a trinity. The Trinity is 
 not an application of a human conception to the Deity, it is a revealed 
 fact. But nature and man correspond to the Divinity. Past, present, 
 and future coexist to the Divine Being : may we say are in Him ? 
 Wherefore should I fear to speak or to think freely and gladly of Him 
 whom I most love ? Is there not here a most striking fact that the SON 
 was made flesh ; became a part of nature ; Nature being the female to 
 God's action, the male. 
 
 The doctrine of special creations, denying that all natural events are 
 strict sequences (in a causal sense) is an immoral doctrine, (always 
 meaning no slur upon those that hold it). It cannot be less immoral to 
 deny the consequences of God's acts than of our own. It is as if one 
 shd say a man's destiny is determined by special interferences of God, 
 and does not depend on what he does ; that the future is not the result 
 of past and present. It is the fatalist's doctrine, tho' appearing so dif- 
 ferent. Nature is at once necessary and casual it is God's will acting 
 perfectly without control according to absolute law. Distinction cannot 
 be made between things and deeds. 
 
 Observe : the divergent action is not properly the female that is the 
 issue or child ; the resistance is the female : a new relation in the idea 
 of polarity. Is here a reason for motion being turned at right angles by 
 resistance ? resistance is, theoretically, at right angles to force ; it is as 
 breadth to length. The female, or resistance, comes in between the 
 force and result, as present intervenes between past and future ? Does 
 this apply to color ? 
 
 Is there not something in this : that a resistance like that of the pen- 
 dulum wh merely diverts the motion at right angles (call it a resistance 
 at right angles) only causes a divergent motion like the approx : causes 
 in fact a repetition of the same form of action this is continuance, or 
 reproduction ; like producing like : it is in the planets also. But a re- 
 sistance wh does not divert the motion at right angles but stops it, as a 
 weight falling to the ground or two balls meeting, causes a new form of 
 action ; in the cases supposed, heat, &c. ; in fact it causes development. 
 Here the difference between reproduction and development : it lies in 
 the kind of resistance, whether complete or partial, and the nature of 
 the moving body may partly determine ; as gases move at right angles, 
 and solids grow hot, under same circumstances : i. e. the cohesion of the 
 solid renders the resistance absolute, supplies another element of resist- 
 ance. Can we trace reproduction to partial, and development to an ab- 
 solute resistance ? or to the same resistance rendered partial or absolute 
 by differing circumstances ?
 
 107 
 
 Are not the chemical changes related as the divisions of time are ? 
 Acid, alkali, and salt past, present, future. 
 
 remarked that the idea of gravitation a universal attraction 
 
 seemed simpler than my doctrine of polarity. Observe : all inventions 
 of course are the simplest and most obvious means of explaining the 
 particular facts they were invented to explain, otherwise the invention 
 of them wd be absurd ; but they lose their simplicity when applied to 
 other facts : and looked at in themselves how obscure they are : e. g. how 
 can seven motions coexist and not be one ? how can all matter, as such, 
 attract? 
 
 Was not Newton only a great mathematician, not a great philosopher ? 
 He could glorify any conception by making it the foundation of almost 
 superhuman calculations. Witness also his invention of the inconceivable 
 doctrine of fluxions. In fact was he not so entirely a mathematician 
 that he introduced into ordinary thought modes of intellectual operation 
 wh are suitable only to mathematics the use viz. of unknowable and 
 impossible quantities ? (Notice hereafter the exactly contrary thought 
 to this.) 
 
 The distinction between deeds and things, between God's action and 
 matter, makes contradiction where there is truly identity, blinds us so 
 that we state contradictory things with the view of being consistent, 
 maintain atheistical doctrines to guard the idea of a God. The assump- 
 tion of matter as an actual substratum, how it mars mechanics ! Think 
 of the ' axiom ' ' Inertia is as the quantity of matter ' : as if God created 
 inertia for the express purpose of overcoming it ! It appears strange to 
 me that a Being who like God is capable of acting without the existence 
 of matter should be supposed to have created it. For what reason ? He 
 can act no more or better after than before, and indeed has constantly 
 to maintain the matter when it is made ; that is He has constantly to 
 create it. This indeed is what I affirm ; that God constantly, in an ever 
 present sense, creates nature. God is not a Creator [save as regards 
 spirits] He is an Actor. To us who require some thing in order that we 
 may act, it wd have been a great boon to have had a chance of once 
 creating matter, especially if afterwards it wd have taken care of itself 
 and provided for its own existence. But God being independent of 
 matter for His power of doing all that He pleases, why shd we invent 
 a matter with its laws for Him to create, as it were to place chains upon 
 His own hands ? The idea of God creating matter is an anthropo- 
 morphism. I should say, not ' God created the world,' but God does 
 the world/ 
 
 The doctrine of special creations (wh once created continue themselves 
 by some specific energy) bears so badly on science in this way, that it 
 brings before the mind as primary facts, and as causes, the very things 
 that are the last effects the special forms and numbers of parts of living 
 bodies, e. g. These are not referred to conditions and traced up to their 
 origin by scientific analysis, but are assumed as God's direct act, and 
 used rather as causes to account for things, than as things that need to 
 be accounted for. They are indeed adduced as the producers of the very- 
 facts that produce them (phenomenon before cause). It is interesting to 
 trace this disease of science, to see it pervading every part, and 
 strengthening itself continually by fresh assumptions, wh yet are one at 
 bottom : not seeing that God does everything ; the assuming a force and
 
 108 
 
 a resistance to begin with, instead or seeing only an action. 
 
 The supposition of special creative acts is a repetition in each case of 
 the error of making statics precede dynamics. It is assuming a special 
 (specific or definite) resistance in each case as directly created ; just as 
 in mechanics the abstract or general idea of resistance is assumed. In 
 each branch of science, on the assumption of special properties imparted 
 or impressed by God, what is done is assuming a force and a resistance 
 instead of a motion, i. e. a machine instead of an action ; and this for 
 the sake of preserving the idea of a personal Creator ! The species of 
 animals the properties of bodies are only special forms of resistance 
 wh arise out of special forms of motion : as resistance in its first con- 
 ception does from motion. 
 
 As resistance arises from opposite motion wh is a turning of motion 
 upon itself [?] so each special resistance, each new order or form of 
 action, does it not first arise from something wh may be expressed as an 
 opposite motion or turning of the motion wh is converted upon itself? 
 The question is, how ? Pretty certainly as the turning arises now it 
 arose at first. Here is the distinction between the origin and continuance 
 of each form of action ; a problem wh we look at chiefly in regard to 
 forms of life. 
 
 This is the difference between the origination and continuance of 
 species (and all different forms of action) the former is dynamical re- 
 sistance, the latter static. There is a dynamical and static epoch for each 
 special resistance -the dynamical once, the static ever after. How is it 
 that two directions of the same motion produce a motion which never 
 existed before. It is the problem of interference : reflection wd give it, 
 but then whence the reflection ? This is the scientific form of the 
 problem of the origination of things, and I think it can be solved. It 
 can be traced in one class of facts, perhaps one specific resistance may 
 be traced arising, and from thence all. 
 
 The reason that statics have thus ever been put first, resistance invented 
 as a primary element instead of being traced as an effect, [i. e. specific 
 properties wh are the resistances] the cause and excuse of the error, is, 
 that in our experience statics do come first. The resistance is a fact wh 
 we do not see arise or begin, we know only motion under resistance ; we 
 seldom see motion becoming resistance. In our observation tension pre- 
 cedes motion, rather than results from it. Kesistance trace motion as 
 we may seems always pre-existing ; it is in truth the phenomenon as I 
 have said, and we place it first. 
 
 Is there not a connection between these abstract laws and the facts of 
 development ? The development of the animal kingdom seems to take 
 place by the coalescence of two or more (potential) lower animals into 
 one. Is not this another expression for the idea of origination of species 
 by dynamical resistance, and propagation of them by statical ? Dynamical 
 resistance is a putting together of two motions, in direction only opposite, 
 and from these comes a new form of motion. Take the new form of vital 
 action (the new species) to be this new form of motion ; it is produced 
 by the union of two similar motions one the force, one the resistance. 
 
 The production of higher species by union of two is same as production 
 of heat by interference of two (potential) vibrations ; e. g. of sound. It 
 is an interference. And these two animals wh coalesce into a higher, 
 being theoretically motion and resistance, doubtless are in some sense 
 [Metaphysics, 28.
 
 109 
 
 male and female to each other. Is here a bearing of opposite directions 
 of male and female shells ? also of fossil and recent ? 
 
 May varieties of species or individuals be analogous to tones produced 
 by partial interference ? vibrations and forms of animal life are both 
 motions under resistance. 
 
 Is the idea of reflection, as the cause of the interference or coalescence 
 of two into one higher, admissible in this sense, viz. as indicating that 
 the former motion (or action) has reached its limit ? It turns back be- 
 caiise it cannot go on, as each animal begins to decay when it has reached 
 its limit of age. And in case of the original motion we suppose it to 
 turn and become opposite when it has reached its limit ; i. e. divergent 
 motion reaching its limit becomes approx, and vice versa. 
 
 And here wd be the origin of the first dynamic resistance ; viz. the 
 divergent motion continuing, while a part of it having already reached 
 its limit had turned and become approx, these are the opposite motions : 
 or in same way approx continuing while some has become divergent. 
 
 Thus then the problem ef development is the very same as that of the 
 limit to the primordial motion. How all these ideas go to enforce the 
 unity of nature. 
 
 Thus the one idea required for the whole of nature is motion and a 
 limit ; and of these one is a fact, the other a necessary conception of the 
 mind. The idea of limit is substituted for that of resistance ; a much 
 better, simpler, and more natural one : and from it the resistance is 
 easily traced, as a form of the motion itself. 
 
 The statical idea of resistance may perhaps be seen in the tendency of 
 a string once harmonically divided to continue so ; the existence of the 
 ' node ' perpetuates itself. By the bye, may we not compare specific 
 resistances to nodes ? Nodes are species, forms, ' types,' their positions 
 ' centres of creation.' 
 
 The idea of a limit necessary as a conception in relation to the uni- 
 verse is clearly presented to us as a fact throughout nature. In the 
 vibrating chord it is very clear, and every vibration has a limit beyond 
 wh it cannot pass; the production of harmonics or octaves often de- 
 pending upon the intensity of the note so blowing loud in a flute gives 
 the octave of the note produced by gentle blowing. Life also has its 
 limit each individual life and the life of each cell, why not the life of 
 each species ? All the forces too are converted into others by intensifi- 
 fication, as if each had a limit beyond wh it could not go ; reaching wh 
 it is ' reflected ' interferes subdivides, and forms another force. 
 
 This view seems best expressed, and with beautiful simplicity, thus : 
 that ' Nature is a finite motion.' Nothing has to be conceived or assumed ; 
 we have only to abstain from assuming what we cannot conceive ; viz. 
 an infinite materiality. A finite motion is necessarily a vibration (as 
 before shown) ; and all follows from that by interference. 
 
 The idea of finite motion is not only the most natural conception of 
 motion, is it not necessary, involved in the very idea of motion ? for 
 motion is change of place, but place has no relation to infinitude. Finite 
 motion . *. is only two words for one ; motion alone implies all : so that 
 in truth all nature is reduced to the one idea of motion. Grant motion, 
 and by the very definition of the term, all nature follows. Again, that 
 motion must be finite may be argued from the necessary limit to approx 
 motion. Can approx motion be necessarily finite, and divergent motion
 
 no 
 
 motion not finite ? And yet again : it is certain in fact that the motion 
 is finite has a limit because it is motion under resistance. In-finite 
 motion motion without a limit is motion without resistance. 
 
 By the bye, with respect to the idea of a vacuum it is to be observed 
 that space being an idea subordinate to and derived from that of matter, 
 it is a transgression of logic to hold it to exist independently of matter ; 
 where no matter, no space has any right to be supposed. 
 
 In the successive formation of natural forces and things by interference 
 may we hope to find a clue to the various senses, bringing us into relation 
 with the various external forces ? in some way these organs of sense 
 must represent these forms of action. Is not the force produced by in- 
 terference and division of motion female to the producing ? 
 
 I have succeeded in rejecting, or rather resigning, successively the 
 conceptions of matter and of resistance [to say nothing of the ' properties'] 
 how shall I free myself from the assumption of motion ? will it not also 
 disappear as we progress further, and leave me face to face with God 
 and His spiritual action. 
 
 As in each animal and in the general development the structures wh 
 precede are less developed and capable of less development than those wh 
 succeed, so has it not been in the history of man: those races whose 
 civilization has passed away [including even the Greeks] were really not 
 capable of so high a development as the present civilized races ? The 
 Anglo Saxon race e. g. a replacing structure ? and there is a physiological 
 analogy to the improvement of races by mixture. 
 
 Seeing nature is in truth seeing God. That idea of matter with laws 
 of its own, hiding God so from men's eyes, sets them all wrong. Not 
 only is the universe God's act, but all of us, all of our mental being that 
 is not truly volitional is God's act also, and we shd reverence it as His 
 work. Hence all thoughts that truly, adequately, express any man's 
 nature, must be true, as all instincts must be. What a beautiful specimen 
 of an instinct is that conclusion of Lord Brougham's about instinct, that 
 it is the Creator acting thro' the insect such bad logic but such profound 
 philosophy. Not that such natural thoughts must necessarily be truly 
 applied, or appropriate, by any means : even an instinct may lead to the 
 worst results, but still the instinct is right, and the destruction to wh it 
 may lead the animal is right also under those circumstances. So the 
 most truly natural and .. divine opinions may be wrong and even lead 
 to evil, and yet be absolutely true. Nor is the distinction between great 
 and small, important and trivial, any more allowable in mental than in 
 physical things ; our most trivial thoughts, if right expressions of our 
 nature, are God's acts as much as the most sublime. 
 
 The opinion represents the man, and not a part of him. 
 
 The doctrine of final causes is not more truly applicable to organic 
 than to inorganic nature ; it only appears to be so because in the organic 
 world we take a more comprehensive view, see larger relations, because 
 of the smaller size of the object. See the earth's position in relation to 
 the sun, e. g. Therefore this doctrine cannot be legitimately applied to 
 organized bodies in any other sense or degree than to inorganic ; and 
 that is clearly not at all in a dynamical sense, as, e. g., that coal beds 
 existed that we might have fires : yet it is just the same as to affirm the 
 origin of the heart to be that the blood may be circulated. 
 
 Whewell is quite wrong in representing the way in which truths are
 
 Ill 
 
 discovered, as being the invention of an immense number of hypotheses 
 and the selection of the right one. Truths are not invented, they are 
 seen ; and they are best discovered in the most passive states of the 
 mind. There is no comparison of possibilities or probabilities, but the 
 truth strikes upon the mental vision as a thing, takes violent possession 
 of the intellect as a fact, fully as independent of anv volition or choice 
 or even effort, as the seeing any other thing that is before us. That 
 intent fixing of the mind upon a question is quite another thing from 
 inventing possible solutions. The habit of inventing hypotheses would 
 be much rather a hindrance than a help to the discovery of truth, the 
 great requisite for wh is to have the clearest possible perception of our 
 ignorance, wh hypotheses tend to hide. At the same time the power of 
 framing hypotheses I suppose is a requisite, and a judicious use of it 
 frequently helps a discoverer in advancing towards a discovery, but it 
 does not form any part of the actual process, the act of discovery ; that 
 is an absolutely passive perception. Kepler's case, if an exception to 
 this rule, is surely an exceptional case. In fact discoverers discover new 
 truths as ordinary people discover ordinary truths : by no means inventing 
 hypotheses, but seeing that the thing is so. How very much like Art 
 discovery is ; it is a creation : an instinctive act, and lo ! what is done 
 embodies, represents, is a part of nature. 
 
 We bring God into His own creation not only violently and partially, 
 but almost apologetically ; as if we said, ' I grant you, God is not here 
 now, but you cannot prove that He was not there once.' ! For this doc- 
 trine of God's direct action at the origination of each separate thing or 
 species, is merely a hypothesis, and rests for its proof upon our ignor nee. 
 The upshot of it is, that God may have created the world for all we 
 know. In truth a present Deity is the God for men, and happily they 
 believe and love Him in spite of their logic. 
 
 Final Causes. 1st. We see final causes wherever we see a whole, or- 
 ganic or inorganic. Our conception of any aggregate as being a whole 
 or not, it is, that determines our application to it of the idea of final 
 cause. Take the solar system e. g. we see it as a whole, an individual, 
 and we see at once the reason why the planets and sun are so arranged is 
 for the sake of a purpose : the sun's heat and light, &c. So that it is 
 not true that the idea of final cause has application to organic bodies, as 
 such. 2nd. With regard to Bichat's arguments that in reference to life 
 alone the idea of disease exists there is here a twofold error. First we 
 do entertain the idea of actual or possible disease whenever we entertain 
 the idea of a whole or an individual ; e. g. what is easier than to suppose 
 the solar system as diseased either by internal derangement or the influ- 
 ence of foreign bodies, nay the latter is even a very probable contingency. 
 Suppose it came too near another star and so its motions deranged, wd 
 not that be disease ? and might not such a disease be treated by a medi- 
 cament wh shd have the effect of removing such foreign influence ? The 
 former argument may be applied to a crystal in formation. But this 
 idea of disease applying only to life involves another misconception, viz. 
 that disease in life is something different from any possible mode of action 
 of the inorganic forces. It is true every such action is right, is such as 
 it ought to be, but it may be very abortive or diseased with reference to 
 particular effects. So in the organic world considered as a whole, all 
 natural disease is right and as it ought to be. Natural disease [not
 
 112 
 
 resulting from wrong spiritual or moral action] is as much the right 
 acting of the forces concerned as health. All vital action, including dis- 
 ease, is as it ought to be just as truly as all physical action. Nor does 
 this view of disease at all exclude therapeutics. The use of remedies is 
 as much right and a part of the normal course of nature as either health 
 or disease. Disease is as the discords of music. 
 
 The advocates of final causes wrong their cause by thus limiting it to 
 the living world, excluding the entire mass of the universe from this 
 highest and noblest conception of nature as a means to an end. And 
 this contracted statement it is wh gives all their force to the objections, 
 wh consist in showing that the special adaptations are results of ordinary 
 processes. But this is no real objection, and would be seen to be none if 
 the doctrine were largely stated. For the truth is that all things in nature 
 both correspond exactly to law and perfectly subserve use. They are i. e. 
 the free act of a perfect spirit Law and liberty. 
 
 ( Whewell, Phil. i. p. 632) ' The idea of force as distinct from mere 
 motion, as the cause of motion or of tendency to move.' Here is the 
 radical error plainly stated : Force cause of motion, instead of a form 
 of it ; i. e. motion resisted, and resisted primarily by itself. 
 
 Is this the English characteristic, in science, to discover causes, as in 
 the doings of life, to take the lead in head and hand. Eminently a dy- 
 namic people ; other nations gifted more in respect to forms and laws ? 
 
 That the psychical world is developed in same way as material world, 
 seems sound. Thus as two potential chemistries give appearance of 
 spontaneous growth in vegetable world, so two potential vegetables give 
 appearance of spontaneous action in animal ; so two potential vegetable 
 tendencies are the active instinct of the animal, rising doubtless through 
 many grades ; and finally, two potential instinctive capacities constitute 
 reason i. e. as a cerebral faculty. But the will or spiritual power is not 
 developed. The Man is no part of nature ; he is not a thing done ; he is 
 an agent. 
 
 Doubtless not only each form of physical life has its representative all 
 thro' nature, its corresponding note as it were but each form of instinctive 
 or mental life has its corresponding notes throughout ; just as every do or 
 re, &c., is the same note as every other do or re. 
 
 Can consciousness the power of sensation be rightly esteemed a de- 
 velopment of any material action ? can that apparent gulf be bridged 
 over? 
 
 If it be asked how we know that God created us, it is replied usually, 
 'Because He created Adam.' If I be asked how I know that God 
 created Adam, I reply, ' Because He creates me.' 
 
 When I say we as truly see God as we see men, of course I speak of 
 the matt, the spirit. I imply that the body is no part of the man ; that 
 is part of God's act. In the human body it is God that I see and not 
 man, save as human moral action has altered it. 
 
 Before I made any discoveries I had given up ambition, had come to 
 the opinion that I was not capable of doing anything, and had even laid 
 aside the wish to do so. It was my design, and it entirely contented me, 
 to live a quiet domestic man, with no aims beyond my children, and im- 
 mediate sphere of influence. 
 
 Do not I see the world as God sees it, and find it right I From this
 
 113 
 
 cause also really springs as its fountain head all my power to understand 
 it. 
 
 There is something amusing in the way in wh Whewell speaks of the 
 difficulty some people have in conceiving matter acting at a distance ; as 
 if to a well regulated mind it was one of the easiest conceptions. The 
 fact being, as I take it, that both the thing and the conception are impos- 
 sibilities, and that we only do not see the idea to be self-contradictory 
 because we cannot really conceive it. The more distinctly we succeed in 
 conceiving it, the more do we perceive it to be a contradiction. And 
 again, it is rather amusing to observe how he speaks of Astronomy as a 
 Science of Causes, and refers to the planetary motions as known not only 
 as to their laws but the forces wh produce them. As if our ignorance of 
 the origin and nature of the tangential motion were a matter of no con- 
 sequence. That enormous assumption being familiar goes for nothing ; 
 yet it it is notable that on the ordinary hypothesis the motion of the 
 planets is really produced by this tangential unknown force, and merely 
 deflected by gravity. Gravity is so far from being the cause of the 
 motions, it is only a modifying agent. In what sense then have a physical 
 astronomy ? 
 
 May we not derive from it a hint in respect to life ? viz. that a curved 
 motion resulting from a resistance to a straight motion must ever be an 
 ellipse. The chemical force in life being source of the action must 
 determine an elliptic form, as it were. 
 
 That common language outruns and is more correct than science, is it 
 not seen in astronomy f Astronomers most boldly calling gravity the 
 cause of the planetary motions, while in theory they affirm it to be only 
 a modifying or deflecting cause Nature is too strong for them. 
 
 Does not the fact that the weight of bodies diminishes in going towards 
 the equator prove that the attraction of the earth is not by its mass but 
 to a certain point, and is less in proportion to distance from that as to 
 a nucleus. And indeed how do we know that the revolution of the earth 
 on its axis is not really the revolution of its shell round an oppositely 
 polar nucleus? the shell of the earth representing the mass of the 
 planets, and the nucleus the suu. It seems remarkable to me, this dimi- 
 nution of weight at the equator. It is exactly what is the case in a 
 magnet attracting many particles ; all the particles are attracted to the 
 magnetic pole, and attract also one another ; but the force of the attraction 
 is not proportionate to the entire mass, including the attracted particles, 
 diminishes with the interposition of these particles (tho' themselves at- 
 tracting) between any given particle and the magnet. If the earth 
 attracts by its bulk, as matter, it ought surely to attract more at the 
 equator : attraction really to or rather by the centre by a point, an 
 abstraction will not enter my intellect. 
 
 I see a threefoldness in relation to mind wh is worth noting. I find it 
 in Whewell's contrast of fact and theory (Phil. p. 120). The three 
 elements are, the Fact, the Theory, the Knowledge or Science. The fact 
 and theory, as he remarks, being one and the same altho' opposed : the 
 force, resistance, issue ; law, liberty, development, &c. And as fact and 
 theory are one altho' opposed, so Science consists of both, proceeds from 
 both. Moreover, what is theory at one time becomes fact at another ; 
 
 I
 
 114 
 
 the theory of one generalization is the fact of the next. This is true 
 development. Here is the female becoming male ; the successive replace- 
 ment wh is the law of nature. 
 
 Fact. Law I Theory.. Liberty I Science. Development 
 
 male [ female j child ; embodying both. 
 
 And yet another threefold idea occurs, viz. the development of science 
 by means of the two opposite modes of philosophizing that of comparing 
 our own conceptions, and experiment ; the ideal and the thing-al : the 
 actual development of science being the product of the two. And the 
 opposition of the two polar elements is well seen : Deduction, Law ; 
 Induction, Liberty ; Science, development. The Unity ; the Variety ; 
 the Fact. And the processes succeed each other. I doubt if the specu- 
 lative period in the 4 dark ages ' will seem to have been much too long in 
 comparison with the experimental period wh has succeeded it, or whether 
 indeed the experimental period has been in regard to the essentials of 
 science, so great an advance upon it. It is true that without this ex- 
 perimental period the deductive or conceptive efforts of the succeeding 
 period could not be, or could be of little value : but then also may we 
 not say that if it had not been for the speculative labors of the preceding 
 age the experiments of the last age would not have been made, or could 
 not have been made aright. 
 
 Another triplet is Cause, Condition, and Effect ; corresponding beau- 
 tifully, and how essential that idea of condition is to introduce between 
 cause and effect ; as essential as is the resistance in relation to conversion 
 of force. A great mistake to speak of cause and effect as if it were a 
 direct and primary relation ; the same error as supposing a direct con- 
 version of force. 
 
 The doctrine of the necessity of a special creative act for the origin- 
 ation of each new group of properties, or especially of each new living 
 species, appears to me to be one of the bad conceptions we owe to math- 
 ematics. Even historically surely the men of the mathematical era had 
 much to do with introducing it. How little conformable it is to the idea 
 of unity in variety wh was so maintained by the Greeks, and how little 
 likely .*. to have been invented at an earlier period. It seems mathematical 
 too as involving so much of the idea of inertia to the exclusion of power 
 from nature ; as if things might continue for ever as they are, in motion 
 or not, but could not, save by divine interference, alter. It is the true 
 material, formal doctrine, just such as mathematics is ; abjuring, like 
 her, all reference to causes. And again, in this way it seems to lie at the 
 door of the mathematicians ; as a kind of penance and compensation. 
 They might have felt (and especially Newton) that by referring so much 
 to an universal property of matter they had gone some way towards ex- 
 cluding God from the universe, and .-.be glad to make the most of any 
 opportunities that offered of bringing Him in again. The origin of this 
 idea must have been not religious but irreligious 
 
 Motion is, to my conception of it, finite or under a limit, as I have 
 noted : place, and .-. change of place, necessitate the idea of boundary, 
 have no relation to infinitude. But motion being God's action, how is it 
 finite ? I think here is the solution : God's action, under a limit (God's
 
 115 
 
 action, made by Himself limited?) is motion. That is the term for God's 
 action when under a limit : the definition of the word motion. And so 
 we see the relation of motion, time, and space ; the idea of a limit is in- 
 volved alike in each : they are dorellative. The element wh constitutes 
 them all is the limit to God's action. Are Motion, Space, Time, a 
 triplet ? (Law, liberty, development). Infancy this may be held. And 
 number also depends on limit [are the three, Place, Time, Number ?] In 
 this idea of a limit wd lie the basis of these conceptions : and .-. they 
 are not to God. May we go even farther, and trace their origin and 
 the reason of their being laws of our minds rather to the limit that is in 
 us than to an actual limit in relation to God. Does this ' limit ' arise 
 from our inability to apprehend the infinite ? this the reason of our laws 
 of thought ? With a power to comprehend infinitude wd not space, time, 
 motion, number, alike disappear, and God the Infinite in truth be all 
 in all ? Thus the material world appears to us by virtue of our finitude : 
 its laws are God's infinite action viewed by a limited being. 
 
 The idea of a limit as the cause of the apparent order of things, i. e. 
 of things being as we see them and that this limit is not in the things 
 (i. e. the divine action) but in us becomes more satisfying to me. Thus 
 it is not truly correct to say that motion is necessarily finite, or involves 
 the idea of a limit ; that is putting the cart before the horse ; making the 
 effect primary ; the universal error, that viz. of considering a thing as 
 having properties or forces by virtue of its essence, forgeting that the 
 properties or forces make the thing. The truth rather is this : God's 
 action limited, or seen as under a limit, is motion. Just as it is not so 
 correct to say that Time involves the idea of a limit, as to say that 
 duration limited, or considered as under a limit, is Time. The limit 
 (wh is probably in ourselves) determines the thing, not the thing involves 
 the limit. What we call motion is not limited because it is motion, but 
 it is motion because it is limited. 
 
 Thus I see how right Berkeley was in saying that abstract terms were 
 the chief cause of error. It is true ; that is one form of putting effect 
 before cause : it comes practically to be held that the thing causes in some 
 way the properties, instead of the properties causing or constituting the 
 thing. ' Properties of something ' I see the vicious process of thought. 
 As if the properties existed because ' the thing ' had them : not that we 
 think of the thing because we perceive the properties or actions (divine 
 actions namely) ; or sometimes perhaps our own, as in the case of adding 
 the limit wh constitutes motion. 
 
 I think I have observed before as one of the principal rules for arriving 
 at truth, this : if our view of a thing be perplexed, difficult, in any sense 
 obscure and unsatisfactory try the inversion of cause and effect : see if 
 it do uot put it all right to regard as effect that wh we have been treating 
 as the cause. 
 
 Observe the double value of the idea of a limit. (1) It accounts in 
 some degree for our perceiving God's spiritual act as motion ; and (2) it 
 is precisely the element wh is needed in order to derive the universe from 
 motion : viz. it gives the resistance : i. e. it turns the motion ; so resolving 
 it into force and resistance. And (3) it is so simple and so naturally 
 derived from our own constitution ; ' a known incapacity ' as Hamilton 
 says.
 
 116 
 
 'Newton says, 'the first cause wh is certainly not mechanical.' This 
 is just the point at wh science stops : the conversion as it were of this 
 first cause into mechanical cause, or motion. Or as the problem may be 
 better put, what is that wherein consists the act of a spirit becoming 
 motion ? This is the problem ; to bridge the gulf which separates a 
 spiritual act from motion the mystery of creation is here. There may 
 be more than one suggestion for* its solution. (1) the hypothesis of 
 matter or a substratum in wh motion inheres as one of its properties is 
 evidently simply a mode of solving the difficulty ; the hypothesis was 
 manifestly invented for that object. It appeared I suppose simpler that 
 a spiritual being shd create matter and put it in motion, wh motion wd 
 then ' naturally ' continue, or continue by the laws of motion (whatever 
 that means), than that a spirit's action should itself be motion. And 
 indeed at first sight this solution does seem to have some advantages ; to 
 our minds it does seem natural that matter should move, there is a con- 
 formity between the nature of the two things : also it does not seem so 
 hard to understand that a spirit should put matter in motion : not that 
 the idea is at all simple or intelligible, but I suppose we readily accept 
 the supposition because we are conscious of being able to do the same 
 thing ; by our spiritual act, our mil, we move matter. The idea has 
 that deceptive appearance of comprehensibility wh arises from familiarity. 
 Also by supposing a creation of matter once and a putting it in motion 
 wh continues as a matter of course, we throw back the difficulty if we 
 do not diminish it : it does not press on us as a present mystery the 
 thing was very wonderful when it took place, but it was so very long 
 ago that it does not concern ns much, and besides it was altogether a 
 different process from any that takes place now, so that it is no wonder 
 if we find it mysterious. But upon this we may remark (1) That it 
 does not really relieve the difficulty. (2) That it rather substitutes a 
 greater difficulty for a less one. (3) That it is in point of fact utterly 
 inadmissible. If a spiritual may become a physical action at any time, 
 why not now ? why suppose two processes or orders of things when one , 
 wh must in any case be supposed, will suffice : and again as has been 
 said, we are conscious continually in ourselves of a spiritual act becoming 
 a physical act; why shd we exclude God from doing that wh we do our- 
 selves ? If part of the motion wh exists is our spiritual act, why is not 
 the rest of it God's spiritual act ? why two different causes for like 
 events. But the difficulty is by the hypothesis of matter, really rendered 
 greater. "We cannot see how a spiritual act, either our own or God's, 
 can produce or be (wh is a better term) motion ; but hard as this may 
 be we do at least perceive it in our own experience, whereas the creation 
 of matter is a thing at once much harder to conceive, and entirely beyond 
 ^experience. It is not only inconceivable as a process but is illustrated 
 by no analogies. That God creates the world by a spiritual act, as we 
 by spiritual acts take a part in the production of the phna, appears by 
 the side of this past and done creation of matter, a thing of course, so 
 simple by comparison, that we almost forget that it too is an impassible 
 mystery. But also this hypothesis of matter is inadmissible [as long 
 seen] on scientific grounds. Useless and worse than useless as an ex- 
 planation of the fact wh it was invented to explain, it is positively shown 
 to be false alike by metaphysics and by science. It fills the world with 
 needless mysteries without helping in the least to remove a necessary
 
 117 
 
 one. "But tho' the hypothesis of matter only makes had worse, the 
 problem may he attempted in other ways, -and as it seems to me some- 
 what mitigated if not solved. Berkeley tried to do this by affirming the 
 world to be God's action upon man's mind, wh is at least better than the 
 material hypothesis, altho' open on one side to fatal objections. I pro- 
 pose this view : That the universe is God's action absolutely, and quite 
 independently of any percipient. But God being a spirit His action of 
 course is spiritual action : how then do we see it as physical, i. e. as 
 Motion, wh is not a spiritual attribute ? [I do not say as matter and 
 motion, because the idea of matter is so evidently derived from motion, 
 viz. thro' resistance, wh is only motion opposed to motion]. This is my 
 solution. "We perceive God's spiritual action as motion, because we our- 
 selves, by our own finite nature, impose a limit on it, i. e. God's action 
 being in itself unlimited, [as He is an infinite spirit] having relation 
 neither to time nor space, we by virtue of our finitude, perceive it in 
 relation only to such boundaries : that is we see it as motion, viz. the 
 material universe. 
 
 Further than this at present I cannot go, but I think this view ma- 
 terially diminishes the pressure of the difficulty, and at the same time 
 leave us our present omni-facient God. It may be said I only solve the 
 problem by denying the fact : this is undoubtedly true. I conceive the 
 fact to be an appearance I overleap the gulf by affirming it to be an 
 illusion: true also. But let me ask what are all our facts but appear- 
 ances ? what are all our speculative difficulties but illusions ? Does God 
 see difficulties in the universe ? the fact of our seeing a difficulty shows 
 that we are under an illusion, and if the difficulty be cleared up by 
 simply showing that we are so, of all possible hypotheses that is the 
 most likely. We are under the illusion of thinking the world is material 
 and mechanical, when in fact it is a spiritual act of God. We make the 
 limits of time and space, and perceive therein motion and matter, and 
 then fret ourselves with the question of how a spiritual act can produce 
 a material phenomenon. Let us be content. When God gives us such 
 a problem as that to solve, He will give us faculties suitable thereto. 
 
 This is why the laws of Nature are truly the laws of our minds 
 why the conceptions by wh material phna are bound into science are 
 supplied from within, not gathered from without: why it is in truth 
 himself that man studies in the universe. Science is man's view of God's 
 action. Doubtless each order of intelligent beings have a different 
 science according to the limit their nature compels them to put upon the 
 divine action. Our perceptions themselves involve the ideas of space 
 and time ; they are only human ' forms ' not actualities : and we can 
 conceive of force only as motion ; whatever God might do, if we perceived 
 it, it wd be motion to us. Probably God does many things all wh are 
 motion to us : the cause of the unity of force lies in us. What sort of 
 science can beasts have in what sense do they perceive God's action ? 
 
 Newton, speaking of active principles of matter, as gravity, cohesion, 
 fermentation, says ' These principles I consider not as occult qualities, 
 supposed to result from the specific forms of things, but as general laws 
 of nature by wh the things themselves are formed. 
 
 In reference to the uniformity of nature as tending against the idea of 
 its being God's direct action, is it legitimate to point out that even the 
 moral, i. e. spiritual, acts of man are pervaded by great uniformity when 
 regarded on a large scale.
 
 118 
 
 May it not be adduced as evidence that Instinct is motion in direction 
 of least resistance, that it changes under change of circumstances; i. e. 
 when its operation is resisted : just as tying up one bud of a tree causes 
 another to come in a different direction by that law of growth. 
 
 Is not this a proper triplet : Force, resistance, matter : ' result and 
 representative ' of both ? And this : Motion, limit, force ? 
 
 All difficulty and mystery, in truth, must consist in and arise from our 
 looking wrongly at things ; there can be no other source. This the 
 entire history of our knowledge also proves : everything in turn has 
 been mysterious, and the mystery has vanished as soon as men hare 
 applied to it the right idea. So surely wd the mystery of the creation 
 disappear if we could find the appropriate conception of it. The thing 
 itself must have been natural enough ; nay if we could once see how it 
 was, or rather is, shd we not think directly that it cd not be otherwise ? 
 One step towards such an appropriate conception I consider this idea to 
 be : that it is a limit applied to infinitude by ourselves, originating so 
 time and space, that causes the universe to be to us matter and motion. 
 
 This is why each thing has so decided a twofold character, one 
 spiritual, the other natural ; speaking to us on the one hand by its beauty 
 and moral meaning, and on the other being so much matter under such 
 mechanical laws. What is the link between these two aspects ? how 
 can one thing be at once a spiritual idea, and an inert material mass ? 
 Is it not a contradiction ? Yet the world wd be no world for us if it 
 were not so ; take away the spiritual life from nature and it is no longer 
 a home for man but a tomb a loathsome charnel house. How then is 
 one thing two ? Man has replied, and has replied truly and yet falsely : 
 truly, for he has said, The world is what it is in itself, and also what 
 we make it. But also sadly wrong : for he has said, The world is in 
 itself matter and mechanism, but we from the riches of our spiritual 
 being cast over it an illusory glow of loveliness and feeling. Alas for 
 us, if this were so. Let us thank God that it has not been left for us to 
 impart the spirit to His creation ; that He has not mocked us with a 
 dead image to clasp to our warm embrace, and vivify if we can with our 
 own life. Let us thank God that the solemn friendship of seas and 
 forests, the sympathizing looks of flowers and stars, the glad greeting or 
 sorrowful rebuke, alike full of love, therewith the earth and skies ever 
 meet us, are not cold reflections of ourselves. It is true indeed that 
 Nature is two things that wh God makes it and that wh ve make 
 it ; it is true ; but wh Nature does God make, and wh man ? Question 
 answered in the asking ; wh to answer further were profane. The love, 
 the joy, the sympathy, the glad encouragement, the sternly tender mo- 
 nition the still small voice wh the soul hears thro' and above all other 
 sounds these, oh Father, are Thy Nature ; the dull material clod in 
 wh they are enwrapped, too often crushed and stifled, this we add. 
 
 The spiritual in nature is the true, the real act of God ; the material 
 appearance arises from our creature littleness of view. Look at a tree, 
 e. g. it is a thought, a constant spiritual act, but it is also matter and 
 motion but only so because of us. 
 
 Are not metaphysics and science thus brought into one ? From 
 science we ascend up to the conceptions of time, space, and motion. Its 
 phna and laws point to these ae their origin. From metaphysics as 
 [Metaphysics, 36.
 
 119 
 
 expressing the laws of our own minds and the conditions of thought, 
 flows all the order of nature. Thought and -physics, intellect and 
 matter, I see to be one. The fundamental relation of the understander. 
 and the understood appears. Therefore it is that every perception or 
 fact involves the idea of time or space and of motion (in the shape 
 either of actual motion or force or resistance), because in truth the con- 
 dition of our mental action, that selfness in us, that limit wh arises from 
 our nature, constitutes, and causes the fact or phn to be such as we 
 see it. 
 
 I should classify the requisites for Science thus : 
 
 I. Essential. Sympathy, or thing necessary for doing it at all. 
 
 II. Corrigent. Sound logic, good dialectics, or thing requisite for 
 
 doing it rightly. 
 
 III. Adjuvants ; or aids to a man who can do it, viz. a good 
 education, general knowledge, industry, skill in observing and 
 analyzing facts, and mathematical power. 
 
 These three elements correspond with the three elements of human 
 nature. The feelings (or emotions) ; the intellect, or reason ; and the 
 understanding : but the power is the feeling ; that without wh it cannot 
 be done at all. That is Genius : a sympathy with nature, or as I have 
 said, a brain wh represents nature truly. It belongs rather to the 
 emotional or perceptive nature than to the strictly intellectual : a brain 
 rightly organized. Then there are moral qualities, of course, such as a 
 willingness to abandon a false hypothesis or view ; but this I say nothing 
 about, for the idea of a man clinging to an opinion because it is his own 
 seems to me so thoroughly ludicrous that I can hardly think of it except 
 as a joke : I must confess that I do meet with it as a fact, but the effort 
 to understand it I have entirely abandoned. 
 
 If I have any power of investigating nature, it is because the world 
 is a work of genius and I love it. God's heart is in it, and I know it as 
 a friend. The solemn throbs and pulses of its vast vibrations are not 
 merely mechanical events to my eye, I feel them as the beatings of a 
 heart pressed close to mine. I throw myself on Nature and press my- 
 self upon her bosom in the passionate embrace of a friend ; our thoughts 
 are one because we love. 
 
 Does it not seem as if my view of the relation of male and female 
 must be modified ? The female is not the higher grade, but the resist- 
 ance wh causes the higher grade or new action. The female is the same 
 in opposite direction, arising from the limit ? 
 
 The threefoldness of every idea I conceive must have its origin and 
 cause in ourselves it is to our ideas that it so absolutely seems to apply. 
 What is its cause ? Must not a vibration be in some way threefold ? 
 and is not this idea of vibration like space and time a form of thought ? 
 It depends also upon a limit, causing a resistance. It is motion, limit, 
 and opposite motion. How all that seems most fixed and solid appears as 
 a mere development of our own ideas or forms of thought. And yet it 
 is no more than ought to be, if matter and motion are merely our way 
 of viewing an infinite spiritual act. All material phna .. considered as 
 material, must have their origin and foundation in our mental processes ; 
 must be mental processes indeed : wh is what I am amazed to find them
 
 120 
 
 to be. This is just about what Berkeley affirmed, is it not ? and yet I 
 cannot help it. Perhaps he was more nearly right after all than I 
 thought. 
 
 With regard to vibration again : matter being result of motion i. e. 
 motion in form of force and resistance constituting matter it appears 
 that matter is vibration ; the same elements make up the two ideas. Is 
 it thus : motion turned by limit and actually resisting itself becoming 
 force and resistance is matter : motion turned by limit and assuming 
 opposite direction not actually resisting itself, but existing as opposite 
 motions is vibration ? Thus vibration and matter are dynamics and 
 statics. So all things must be vibration just as all things must exist in 
 space. I wonder those who have reasoned about matter and motion and 
 unity of force, have not seen that all action must be vibration. 
 
 Life also I see to be vibration, wh also is necessary ; and this sanctions 
 the idea that creation is life. Vibration is life, and vibration is the 
 universe. God's act is Life : is and must be. The law, the necessity, 
 is in ourselves. Life .'.is God's action under a limit. 
 
 It is because the laws of nature exist in ourselves, have their origin 
 and cause in us, that we know truth when we see it. We recognize its 
 conformity with our own mental constitution : see ourselves in it in fact. 
 But then how is it that before knowing the truth we always err ? Surely 
 only because the universe is too large for us to grasp ; we cannot for a 
 very long time comprehend the simplicity of nature. Therefore we 
 look wrongly upon things, but the error is in detail not in principle. 
 The principles of natural docrines are ever true, axioms do not deceive 
 us, enlargement of view is all that is needed to help us to apply them 
 rightly. And truth ever succeeds ; it must indeed, for truth is but the 
 natural action of the mind : and to ' arrive at truth ' is only this that 
 the laws and forms the mind imposes upon that part of God's action 
 with wh it has to do, shd not be arbitrary but consistent. And the mode 
 in wh we err is most suggestive ; for what is it but that we invent things 
 and properties wh have no existence. Error is the seeing what does not 
 exist ; seeing in fact many things where there is only one. The progress 
 of truth consists in the rejection of multiplicity and the substitution of 
 unity and simplicity of conception. But this shows what the prerogative 
 and necessary action of the mind is. No one wd say that we are made 
 to err arbitrarily in our progress towards knowledge : these erroneous 
 creations ' or forms imposed on nature by the mind are the legitimate 
 steps of its advance. Its prerogative is not to receive but to give laws 
 to nature : the work of science is how best to do this. Man is the ruler 
 and lawgiver : things have to conform to him not he to them. As he is 
 more and more filled and penetrated by God's work, so does he rule 
 nature better ; so does he carry out to greater perfection his own mental 
 action ; and instead of many partial and discordant powers, properties, 
 and laws, comes to see around him one act : the normal operation of 
 his own mind, and that alone, ever presented and repeated before him in 
 that wh God does. Knowledge is not a being filled to the brim : science 
 is not a submission of the intellect to laws. Knowledge is power ; 
 science is dominion. Hence the twofold aspect of science : it sprang 
 first complete into existence. Man gave laws and right laws to the 
 world when first he was placed upon his throne : he enunciated right 
 laws when by the first philosophers his statute books were written.
 
 121 
 
 But also he had need of larger knowledge of God, of a nearer approach 
 to Him in His work, before he could use his power fully. Man by 
 studying nature brings himself into communion with Gcd, that from 
 Him he may learn how to discharge his Godlike office of Lawgiver. See 
 Kepler ' binding Mars in the chains of an eccentric.' 
 
 The poet and the artist .'.as truly know nature as the man of science ; 
 i. e. they rightly ordinate material facts under the laws of their own 
 mind. They do it rightly so far as they are perfect poets and artists. 
 The man of science can do no more. The moral meaning wh the poet 
 sees in a material object is as truly the nature or law or explanation of 
 that object as any law or explanation that the strictest scientific induction 
 can afford. In fact the real process is the same in both cases, viz. a re- 
 ferring of external facts to an internal or mental law or feeling [the term 
 1 feeling ' being fully as applicable to science as to art.] Indeed, in this 
 feeling or sensation of things consists scientific or inductive genius. The 
 law of a group of facts is as truly felt as the poetic signification of a 
 group of objects. The law in science, and the signification in poetry, 
 are only two aspects of the same thing. Science and poetry are not op- 
 posed altho' they have been opposed, in their culmination and perfection 
 they are one, as will be seen hereafter. ' Science is poetry.' 
 
 Is not the task in science solely to harmonize or bring into agreement 
 man's own sensations : to make all the facts wh he perceives conform to 
 one statement. He has to prevent his own ideas from being discordant. 
 Therefore may we not say that science is always true and never true ? 
 It is always true because it always harmonizes the ideas of men, that is 
 the very object for wh it exists. It can never be absolutely true, save 
 in an omniscient Being. The Epicycle-astronomy was a true science, 
 for it harmonized all ideas until the positions of the planets were also 
 considered ; then it was false because it wd not harmonize those two 
 ideas, and was necessarily rejected. For surely man never believes the 
 false. The human mind, like the rest of God's works, is always right. 
 It may not answer its apparent and immediate end, just as there are 
 many abortions and monstrosities in nature, but even then it is still 
 right So in science, that is right wh harmonizes the ideas, and this is 
 always believed. The difference between true and false scientific opinions 
 is of amount and not of kind ; the truest do but harmonize more ideas. 
 Therefore also there can be no other test of truth in science but its 
 agreement with facts : that is right science wh harmonizes our ideas ; no 
 other test is supposable. An absolute truth in science is not only not to 
 be expected but not to be sought, because truth in science is subjective ; 
 it is our constitution that makes these relations of matter- motion, time, 
 space, order, &c. also even cause in one sense wh constitute science : 
 and beyond ourselves there is no appeal. 
 
 Is not the view of nature as one, like an ellipse in place of many 
 cycles ? 
 
 Motion is as essentially part of our idea of matter, as space, if the 
 conception be rightly analyzed : e. g. resistance, the property of matter, 
 comes from motion. 
 
 That science is imposing the laws of our own minds upon nature, 
 appears also from the advance of pure mathematics having ever preceded 
 advance in physics : as our conceptions are developed and cleared up, so 
 does the external world arrange itself more simply in conformity with 
 them.
 
 122 
 
 Types. Physiology has been seriously injured by Natural History as 
 I conceive; having imported from it the idea of a type. A type is legi- 
 timate in Natural History ; merely meaning a thing wh many other 
 things are like, but physiologists have raised it almost into a causa efficiens, 
 or at least a final cause, and speak of animals as formed upon a type ; an 
 ideal wh is nowhere to be found but wh somehow presided at the creation 
 of each species or class. Introducing this idea of a type in any way 
 whatever in connexion with the being or origination of the thing or an- 
 imal, is exactly like saying a dog has four legs because it is a quadruped. 
 
 When a clear perception and a vigorous carrying out of the laws of 
 thought is attained, the transference of these laws, the imposition of 
 them, as it were, upon the universe, is natural and simple. If the laws 
 are true for the mind they are true for the universe : so certainly that 
 often the true laws of phna have been seen while the phna themselves 
 were incorrectly known. The laws are in us, not in the things : that is 
 the laws of Science. Nature truly obeys laws independently of us, but 
 they are not scientific but spiritual laws. God's action has its own har- 
 mony, it is holy, wise, and full of love : but of that we cannot know* 
 nor could words express it. Dimly seen, from a human point of view, 
 in the simplicity and grandeur of material laws, in the repose and dignity 
 and beauty of material things, but not being these, our feeble thought 
 cannot attain to it : to these material things it is, as God is to man. 
 These are Thy works, oh Father, as man's weak brain and narrow heart 
 can comprehend them : Thy real works how infinitely more glorious then : 
 Thyself how glorious. This beauty and simplicity that we see, this order 
 amid unbounded variety, this unrestrained variety of loveliness comprised 
 in perfect order, the simple laws wh regulate alike the vastest orbits of 
 innumerable suns and the delicate tints of the most fragile flower ; all 
 these arise from the limits we impose upon Thy boundless work, and are 
 but faint shadows of the grandeur in wh Thou dwellest. "WTio by 
 searching shall find out Thee ? 
 
 But the laws of science being first in the mind and then imposed on 
 nature, surely the best training for a science must be a good exercising 
 of the mind in the laws of right thinking. A proper metaphysical study 
 the best preparation for science ? To know ourselves, is not that to know 
 the world ? More and more clearly I perceive that motion is a ' form 
 of thought ' ; and that all things are vibrations, because motion in our 
 mind is vibration. 
 
 May it not be thus : that the conception of a vibration [wh is the ne- 
 cessary ' form of thought ' in relation to material action] involves a three- 
 foldness : that the basis of the threefoldness of nature lies in the nature 
 of the idea of vibration ? It is suggested to me by the three colors of 
 light : the luminous vibration seems in fact to have a special relation to 
 such threefold division. Thus each triplet wd constitute a vibration, and 
 wd correspond in some sense to red, yellow, and blue ? 
 
 Is not intellectual action, too, vibration ? See the relation between 
 metaphysical or ideal reasoning and observation. To the former belongs 
 the conception_ of unity, to the latter of variety ; the former development, 
 the latter special creation, &c. Is there not here the law and the liberty ? 
 unity and variety ; force and resistance ? and the putting together makes 
 science. 
 
 In the discovery of gravitation the general fact was first shown, to
 
 123 
 
 indicate the law ; special facts, and inequalities being disregarded ; then 
 these were shown themselves to be instances of the same law. But the 
 law itself could never have been established except by first ignoring 
 them and being content with showing the general outlines of the fact. 
 So in regard to life : at first we must be content to show the nature of 
 the general fact largely considered, designedly omitting to consider 
 smaller and apparently opposing groups of phna. Then afterwards these 
 smaller groups may doubtless be shown to be instances of the same great 
 law acting under given conditions. Thus in respect to repair : the law 
 of it is that it is motion in direction of least resistance. This is the 
 theory in its outline ; but there may be special facts not comprehensible 
 in the general statement in reference to the primary influences concerned ; 
 but these are not objections, trace them out and they will be seen to be 
 results of that same law in relation to other elements. So with gemma- 
 tion, and all processes of growth: as the root growing into the hard 
 ground. 
 
 This idea is suggested to me by the foregoing trains of thought, and 
 especially by reading "WTiewell's Essay on the Laws of Motion : that it 
 is never worth while to try to ' clear up ' difficulties in any given view, or 
 to make obscure points plain ; to make it possible to conceive a theory, 
 and so on. In fact, those views or theories wh want explaining or 
 clearing up want rejecting. Obscurity or necessity for argument is 
 wrongness. The true theory of the world, as Emerson says and it 
 holds good for every part of true theory is ' self-evident.' All argu- 
 mentation and making things square is labor lost, and worse. If what 
 you have to say needs anything more than to be said, quit it ; throw it 
 over as fast as possible, and begin again. You are wrong: all true 
 opinions are like the facts of nature and speak for themselves. That wh 
 needs proving cannot be proved, and is not worth proving if it could be. 
 So people consider that a thing may be true or real altho' it involves pa- 
 radoxes, e. g. they do not see that the paradoxes wh ' matter ' involves 
 disprove the existence of matter. 
 
 This also may be said in favor of our giving laws to nature rather than 
 receiving them from her : viz. that the mere empirical study of facts 
 leads to worse dreams and more fantastic inventions than the most un- 
 bridled license of the speculative faculty. I am convinced that our doc- 
 trines of specific properties of matter, including universal gravitation, of 
 inherent tendencies and powers, as of living bodies, and the doctrine of 
 special creations for each specific form, throw entirely into the shade for 
 visionariness any dreams of the neo-platonists. No possible thing that 
 gives identity and oneness, a character of any kind of consistency and 
 conceivableness to the universe, can be so baseless and so fantastic. The 
 right theory of the universe may be hard to light upon, but any theory 
 that can be consistently expressed, is better than a jumble of inconsistent, 
 inexpressible theories. One chimera is surely less chimerical than a 
 thousand. 
 
 In this study of facts alone, man has abandoned his prerogative ; the 
 rightful king has made himself a slave. His place it was to rule over 
 nature, to bind her with loving bonds, a yoke she wd how gladly have 
 accepted, and opened to her lord her inmost soul ; but he has blindly 
 laid himself at her feet, has bowed to every feature of her external form, 
 as to an idol it were sacrilege to touch, until that wh should have been to
 
 124 
 
 him a loving and yet dependent friend, throbbing with his own life, has 
 become an imperious tyrant, holding him in a bondage of slavish admi- 
 ration unreturned by one loving glance, repelling every advance with 
 cold reserve. It serves us right. Nature is a spoilt child, and we have 
 spoilt her. And yet not spoilt ; still is her heart simple and gentle ; 
 still wd she murmur in our ears the sweet rhapsodies that thrilled with 
 joy the hearts of those who first wooed her in the bright dawn of phi- 
 losophy. Not of her will is it that we find nothing in her but inexpli- 
 cable, inexorable laws. 
 
 "Ours was a youthful contract which we first 
 
 Broke." . . . 
 
 The fault lies in us. Nature stands ever ready, not with iron-fettered 
 hands and feet that tread wearily one appointed round, but with out- 
 stretched arms and beating heart, she waits the return to love and sym- 
 pathy of truant man. She is our help-meet ; she exists but for and 
 through us ; widowed and disconsolate until man know and love her. It 
 is for us to rise and to assert our dignity. This it behoves us to see ; 
 that nature and its laws are what we make them. It is no place of ours 
 to collect phna and investigate them passively, believing them to follow 
 any rule wh may best seem to account for the particular facts : of each 
 group of events it is ours to say This is a particular illustration of those 
 absolute laws wh exist in my own mind, and by virtue of wh alone the 
 material universe is such as it is : this is no new series of events, distin- 
 guished by essential differences from all others, it is the same familiar 
 fact presented in another way ; that wh I know best, gives me the best 
 idea of it. The task these facts have to perform for me is to help me to 
 extend, to render more exact and comprehensive, my knowledge of the 
 essential laws of thought. Until my generalization will exactly embrace 
 these phna also, it is too limited, the grasp of my intellect needs to be 
 strengthened : this is the use to wh this part of nature ministers. The 
 laws that I have made for nature do not do justice to my own capacity, 
 are not correspondent with the dignity of my intellect, if I can perceive 
 anything wh those laws do not embrace. Studied thus, nature becomes 
 immeasurably vast, and overwhelmingly simple ; freed from mystery and 
 difficulty but infinite in instruction, beauty and interest. The task each 
 un-explained fact presents to us, is, not to find out a new law, but to 
 improve our own conception of universal law ; Nature in short must never 
 be regarded or studied as a thing without us, but as a mental state within 
 us. The laws of matter are and must be considered as the laws of 
 mind ; increased knowledge of natural laws is truer mental action, and 
 nothing more ; our perceptions, or knowledge of facts, are given us for 
 that end, to rectify and enlarge our conceptions.. The one task of science 
 is to make all our mental actions consistent. Looked at in this view the 
 history of science is instructive. It began with a true, but obscure 
 statement of the true conceptions. These attained greater distinctness 
 gradually, and by the philosophers of Plato's school were enunciated with 
 perhaps greater truthfulness and completeness than ever they have been 
 since. In the last few centuries men have been accumulating facts under 
 the false hypothesis that the laws were in them instead of in ourselves ; 
 so that naturally the primary conceptions the laws to wh all facts con- 
 form have been obscured, almost lost; and instead we have a vast 
 number of secondary, independent, indeed inconsistent laws (so-called)
 
 125 
 
 of phna, but no science. We must go back to the old position of science, 
 taking with us the fruits of all this recent empiricism, and give to the 
 fundamental conceptions of science happily knowing them to be internal 
 and not external a comprehensiveness and exactitude wh they have 
 never had before, and could not otherwise have had at all. Thus all 
 things that God does are right ; even the errors of the human mind. 
 
 "Woman being taken out of man (not throwing doubt upon its literal 
 truth) affords an excellent allegory to illustrate the relation of man and 
 nature. Nature is ' taken out ' of man ; it is himself that he sees thus 
 as something external and secondary, and subordinate to himself. Yet 
 not himself merely not a phantom or illusion but God and he working 
 together ; not man without God nor God without man, but God using 
 man, as it were. So in nature : God's uses man's mental constitution to 
 educe out of His spiritual action a material universe suitable to himself. 
 Nature is thus, as woman was, the product of God's action and man's 
 ' substance.' It is man's mental substance or constitution, wh, brought 
 into relation with God's (spiritual) action, is nature : i. e. man imposing 
 a limit on God's action (itself infinite) perceives it as matter and motion. 
 And the relation of nature to man shd be that of woman to him it shd 
 be his second self: it shd be known to be so : it shd be treated so. Man 
 has degraded alike woman and nature to be his material minister : miser- 
 able error, miserable loss. Both are his spirit's peer's and friends. 
 
 It was the old (practical) error of the a priori philosophers that theories 
 to be true needed only to agree with the laws of our own conceptions ; 
 it is the recent (practical) error of the empirical philosophers that theories 
 to be true needed only to agree with the facts. In each case the same 
 error of defect. 
 
 Instances of the disregard of the laws of our own conceptions in the 
 formation of recent scientific theories are innumerable : in fact that vice 
 pervades the whole scheme and structure of modern science the putting 
 the cart before the horse. Either way of course agrees equally with the 
 facts; indeed the facts suggest rather the wrong than the right, and .-. 
 by men who thought their only or chief business was to make their 
 theories accord with facts, the wrong was naturally adopted. But the 
 structure of our minds demands the reversal of these views : an entire 
 turning round of science, a re-assertion of the law* of mind. 
 
 The a priori chimeras had at least this advantage, that in the very 
 nature of them they were obliged te be expressible and .-. conceivable ; 
 but the chimeras of experimental science will not even submit to this 
 slight restraint. They float, many of them, in such an equivocal region, 
 that when you want to speak of them, their enunciation is found to be a 
 thing no less than impossible. 
 
 That was a great error of Bacon's : he thought truth was in nature 
 instead of in man, and that formulae correctly expressive of natural facts 
 must .-.be true. The very error of the a priori men, in another form 
 but still identical, for they believed that formulae correctly expressive of 
 laws of thought must be true. And has not this falsified science ever 
 since, the idea that formulae correctly expressing facts must be true. The 
 error is palpable those only are true formulae wh bring facts into accor- 
 dance with the laws of thought. Is not this the error of the mathema- 
 ticians ; using hypotheses merely as means of calculation ? Bacon 
 thought also that by changing externals he could alter internals ; could
 
 126 
 
 eradicate a false intellectual habit by substituting a new method. Just 
 what those men do who are for reforming mankind by altering institutions. 
 It was the one-sided-ness of men that wanted removing, and Bacon es- 
 sayed to do this by turning men altogether to the opposite side. But I 
 also am wrong in thinking that I cd improve history. What is this al- 
 ternate excess but a vibration, what the union of the two but develop- 
 ment ? We must excuse the vagaries of the period of liberty ; variety 
 and apparent caprice are its element. The future science shall embody 
 both the law and the liberty in one. 
 
 The law of science is, to make our perceptions and conceptions harmo- 
 nize ; thus it is altogether an internal thing. How recent science has 
 failed even to aim at this, is palpable : of the two it is more important 
 that our theories shd rightly correspond with our conceptions than with 
 our perceptions ; [for after all these are what we mean by facts]. Laws 
 may be true altho' not agreeing with facts, the facts being incorrectly 
 observed or regarded ; but laws that do violence to conceptions cannot be 
 true. The universal error of putting cart before horse, phn before cause, 
 almost necessarily arises from the idea of receiving laws from, nature in- 
 stead of giving them to her. 
 
 How simple, comparatively, it makes the mystery of perception that 
 we are the cause of the facts wh we perceive, i. e. the cause of their being 
 as we perceive them. All that mystification about ' outness ' and the 
 'authority of the senses,' &c., ceases. 
 
 This also I see ; the law of cause and effect, under wh we see nature, 
 is a form of thought. It is nothing real, truly belonging to the essential 
 action wh constitutes the universe ; but a relation like that of time and 
 space and motion, arising from our constitution : it arises as time does 
 from the limit we impose on that wh is unlimited. Hence its absolute 
 authority, hence its absolute non-entity. It is one of those things wh is 
 and is not, (like time and space). And now the value of this thought : 
 this relation of cause and effect, succession of 'second causes,' what is 
 it except the mode in wh we view God's immediate action. Therefore 
 when we say anything occurs under or by virtue of this law of cause and 
 effect, what is it that we affirm ? See if it can be anything else than 
 that God does it ? We see God's action as a chain of causes and effects ; 
 seeing them so by virtue of our finiteness of view, just us we see things 
 in time. Cause and effect, because they are cause and effect, may be 
 known to be God's direct action. And it follows that if cause and effect 
 be God's direct action, God's direct action consists in cause and effect : 
 and therefore to affirm direct creation is to affirm creation by second 
 causes : the two things are one. To see the law of cause to be a form 
 of thought removes that apparent difficulty also. But does it raise any 
 difficulty respecting miracles ? 
 
 B. Powell's idea of cause and effect, that the connection is not one of 
 efficiency but of reason, is good, if cause and effect be regarded as a form 
 of thought alone. In tracing a chain of ' causes ' we are not tracing a 
 ' thing ' wh really exists, but imposing upon nature accurately and 
 wisely the law of our own minds. We are bound to make the ' facts ' 
 agree with our ' ideas,' and do not see the facts until we have done so. 
 Our idea of cause and effect is the true and only possible fact of cause 
 and effect. There is no other ' law ' in nature but a law wh we make. 
 God is not the < Lawgiver ' to NatureHe is the Doer of it j we are the 
 Lawgivers.
 
 127 
 
 Hence it flows, that the laws of science are best learned by a study of 
 the broad features * the fair face ' of nature ; and not by minute invest- 
 igation of details. Only make these larger and obvious phna conform to 
 the laws of thought, and all other phna must conform to them. Interpret 
 rightly one thing, and that interpretation, rightly applied, shall suffice 
 for all things. Rightly to apply the interpretation is the problem ; this 
 needs patience, caution, accuracy, and more than all, that wh is at the 
 bottom of all, includes all, Love. 
 
 I believe Berkely was right in protesting so strongly against the in- 
 troduction of those illogical and contradictory mathematical formulae, of 
 fluxions, infinitesimals, &c. It might have seemed a trifling matter 
 whether they were philosophically accurate if they gave correct results, 
 but if was not so. It was a fatal habit, that of accustoming themselves 
 to use false and unmeaning expressions as a means of arriving at truth ; 
 for doing it in one branch of science, and that the one which made the 
 loudest claim to strictness and accuracy wh professed indeed to be the 
 pattern and model of all what so natural as that the same plans should 
 extend themselves, and no demand be made of any hypothesis, but that 
 it shd yield correct results. Berkeley's warning was prophetic, meeting 
 a prophet's fate also : men were too much dazzled with the splendour of 
 present results to question means. Nor indeed do I mean to condemn 
 the means : those mathematical chimeras may have been necessary and 
 right for this purpose, but shd not the man who invented them have per- 
 ceived their danger and given a caution against their abuse ? Are not 
 Newton's gravity and optical theories ' fluxions ' under another form ? 
 Things used to arrive at results and then politely requested to vanish ' 
 and not stand in the way. ' Evanescant fluxiones ' as he says. ' Let 
 the theory vanish,' it has given us the results and that is all we wanted 
 it for. 
 
 It is no assumption to affirm that all the phna of nature must conform 
 to the principles of our mental action, because these phna themselves 
 owe their existence, as phna, to these principles : they are such as they 
 are by virtue of them. 
 
 The assumption of specific inherent qualities or powers accounts as 
 well for facts as the tracing of one force or motion ; and inherent modi- 
 fying and converting powers account as well for the facts as a varying 
 resistance resulting from one motion : indeed the facts suggest it as the 
 first impression. Bat the laws of our mind demand an opposite view; 
 our thoughts if we do justic to them will not rest in such disconnected 
 fragments but demand that all things shall be parts of one action. Thus 
 e, g. specific chemical properties account for chemistry ; but the mind, 
 if unfettered, demands that all such special properties shall be shown to 
 be results of preceding action. It applies to them the maxim ' no effect 
 without a cause.' So with regard to vital properties ; it demands a cause 
 for them. In truth, cause and effect being a form of thought, the form 
 under wh we see God's action, the assertion of original specific properties 
 is really the assertion of independence of God. GocCs action we see as 
 cause and effect : whence comes that wh is not under this law ? Not 
 from God by the definition. We think we only see God where we really 
 have [in our logic] excluded Him. 
 
 The mind wd never have sat down submissively under this maze of
 
 128 
 
 disconnected properties and incoherent laws, except by being sternly 
 schooled and disciplined. "We have taught, and forced ourselves into, 
 this ' voluntary humility ' and abnegation, by lectures on the futility of 
 a priori reasoning. Does not the unity of nature arise from the unity of 
 our own minds, the one-ness of our mental action ? Nature must be one 
 to us, because we can have but one way of conceiving things. 
 
 Bacon's reform is as if there were something wh could only be done 
 rightly with two hands, and men had been in the habit of doing it with 
 their right hand alone. He points out truly enough that this is wrong, 
 but he sets people to do it with their left hands alone, an alteration 
 rather for the worse than for the better, but having this advantage that 
 it gets the other half of the work done. The a priori mode was certainly 
 using the right hand as compared with the empirical mode : it is not 
 worthy to be called experimental, for that is a sacred word, combining 
 experience in its deepest sense with sensation. Moreover it may be sup- 
 posed that the a priori mode was the better of the two from its having 
 preceded the empirical mode ; it was nattiral that men shd use their right 
 hand first. The theory besides being right for the facts, i. e. accurately 
 expressing them, must be right also for the mind. 
 
 All truth all the laws of nature being, when we rightly see them, 
 but carryings out of the laws of our minds reductions of perceptions into 
 conformity with those laws all real knowledge may be rightly said to 
 be self-evident. Nothing that is absolutely and finally true can be proved, 
 nor can need to be proved : whatever needs any other kind of proving 
 than a full and explicit statement, needs not to be proved but to be un- 
 said and corrected : truth is not an opinion to be proved, it is a thing to 
 be perceived. No natural law can have or will accept other evidence 
 than a clear application to phna. The proof of laws is like that proos 
 that two triangles are equal, wh consists in putting them together : i. e. 
 no proof at all, but merely a perceiving that they are the same. 
 
 All science .-. depending upon the laws of our minds, as mathematics 
 does, must not all science tend to, and in theory possess, a demonstrative 
 certainty such as that of mathematics ? The motions of the planets do 
 not more certainly conform to mathematical formulae than the obscurest 
 and apparently the most capricious phna of life. The distinction between 
 the demonstrative and the experimental sciences is in a measure arbitrary 
 and founded upon superficial differences. But what is the real difference ? 
 why can we reason a priori with absolute certainty respecting space and 
 number, but not respecting things, or matter ? Whence arises this oppo- 
 sition of deductive and inductive science ; from general to particulars, 
 and from particulars to general, by introduction of a conception ? And 
 how is it that induction at last leads up to a general self-evident idea 
 from wh all the facts of nature necessarily flow ? as e. g. the idea of 
 motion, necessarily limited, subdividing. Why is it that for these neces- 
 sary conceptions we are practically thrown upon nature, and at first 
 wander so widely ? 
 
 We have endeavored to transfer to nature, as hers, the very elements 
 of our own mental constitution. 
 
 Descartes with his ' plenum ' was good so far ; that conformed to the 
 law of the mind ; but then he invented specific properties in his vortices 
 and so violated it. Specific properties absolutely cannot be ; they are 
 without exception inadmissible. Humanity forbids them, and no evi- 
 dence of facts is of the least avail to prove them. 
 [Metaphysics 49.
 
 129 
 
 Whewell is wrong in his great principle, that for each new class of 
 phna we require a new fundamental conception. That is the very thing 
 we must not have. Our one fundamental conception must be such that 
 it can embrace all possible phna. If our conception of that wh we know 
 best be such that it will not rightly apply to everything that we know 
 at all, it is not truly right for anything. 
 
 The substitution of simple for complex conceptions marks the assertion 
 of the laws of thought. Every step towards simplicity and oneness is 
 an instance of the soul giving laws to nature ; but we ought to have it 
 a settled thing in our hearts that there is an absolute oneness in nature, 
 whether we can see it or not ; and shd reckon that we understand nothing 
 in wh we cannot see examples and illustrations of that unity. 
 
 This is it : Men have lately been taught and have thought that any 
 hypotheses wh wd fit and connect, or (in the lowest sense) explain the 
 facts i. e. express any possible mutual relations of ever so limited a 
 group of similar facts wd do for science ; might pass current without 
 being subjected to any other scrutiny than whether or not they agreed 
 with the facts, and were not self-contradictory, or directly opposed to 
 other empirical formula? better established. But this has been an error. 
 All such theories must be tried also by principles of the human mind to 
 wh all science must conform, and wh may be shortly summed up in the 
 doctrine of the absolute unity of nature. Discoverers are precisely the 
 men who with more or less of consciousness and success have done this ; 
 men who have not only made theories wh conformed to facts but who 
 have ordinated facts under laws of their own being. Great discoverers 
 are great conquerers. This is ever Genius : not so much (as I have said) 
 a brain organized truly to nature, as a mind true to itself, and capable of 
 showing that all other things are true to it also. The idea of the conformity 
 between the mind and nature I retain, but I transfer the standard. 
 
 "What we need to see is that the external world is in its forms and 
 laws an efflux from ourselves ; and can teach us nothing but rightly to 
 understand ourselves. All science that does not tend towards, and make 
 its final standard of, ourselves is false. Every fact or law collected from 
 without is of value only as it clears up and reveals its parent-law within, 
 Here is the absolute disproof of universal gravitation : this tendency of 
 matter to a centre the laws of thought forbid. No evidence can prove 
 it to exist. 
 
 Men who maintain cause to be a form of thought, an universal law of 
 mind, do not see that if it be so it must exert an absolute authority over 
 all ' primary qualities ' ; that the mind as imperatively demands a cause 
 of gravity as of the ascent of a balloon, and can no more rightly be put 
 off by a reference to a direct act of God in the one case than in the other : 
 both are equally God's act. That is why we perceive them as links in a 
 chain of cause and effect. To call a thing God's act is to bid us find its 
 cause that we may see it to be so that is how we see God acting. The 
 mind, in short the man I should say humanity, rejects everything 
 except action. One action it accepts as the universe ; properties are 
 mockeries, feeding a hungry and thirsting soul with dust. God ! is its 
 cry. Let me see God and I see all things. Blind me not, dare not to 
 stifle me, with those dark veils of matter ; clothe not the universe in 
 sackcloth. Life pants for life. I wait for the Lord, my soul doth 
 wait.
 
 130 
 
 I think there is value in the idea that ' properties ' are actions resisted ; 
 weight being the type of them. Properties .-. and tendencies should be 
 interchangeable terms ? I shd perhaps say all those properties wh (like 
 weight) have the power of producing action (or motion) ; for all these 
 properties are forces, of wh the definition is, action or motion resisted. 
 
 Universal attraction at any rate is an assumption. We know polar at- 
 traction, and will not it account for the facts on wh the gravitation theory 
 rests ? while the polar attraction itself may be accounted for [thro' vibra- 
 tile motion] ; and it brings the phna of the heavens into unison with 
 those of the earth and of life. The ordinary idea of gravity cannot be 
 held unless it can be proved not to be polar. 
 
 Must not the same principle be applied to all the chimeras of modern 
 science ; they are false because they cannot be distinctly conceived : all 
 these scientific properties and inherent tendencies and powers ; especially 
 vital tendencies. Is not the only way in wh the universe is conceivable 
 that of an action ? wh action is only conceivable as motion (see Grove), 
 wh motion is only conceivable as taking the direction of least resistance, 
 and so on. All facts in nature .*. by the law that everything not dis- 
 tinctly conceivable is false, must be bronght under the law of motion in 
 direction of least resistance, and must be conformed also to any other 
 principles wh may be involved in that law. 
 
 Surely this i& a good view of the argument : (1) All material actions 
 must be motion (opposite not conceivable.) (2) All motion must be in 
 direction of least resistance (opposite not conceivable) .*. this is the law 
 of Nature. It is almost incredible that science shd be so simplified, yet 
 is it not certainly true ? God is kinder to us than we could conceive. 
 The same argument, I feel, may be applied to the existence of matter. 
 That it shd exist is not distinctly conceivable. 
 
 This voluntary enslavement to externals, into what a strange condition 
 it has led us, surrounded with a whole array of inconceivable hypotheses, 
 and .-.as much at a loss as we shd be in arithmetic or geometry if instead 
 of the necessary relations of number and space we had constructed tables, 
 definitions and postulates upon the basis of an experience wh wd of course 
 have misled us, or at the best have left us without necessary truths. 
 
 In my own experience there is a good illustration of the identity of 
 two opposite opinions. For example : formerly I could not be brought to 
 admit special creations, because it appeared to me that all was law, and 
 accomplished by second causes. Now I see that there is no special 
 creation because all is God's direct and special act. Formerly I saw the 
 law, now the liberty ; but not two things : these are one, the chain of 
 causes is God's absolutely free and direct action. These two are one, just 
 as in nature necessity and freedom are united in motion in direction of 
 least resistance. The advance is to see the liberty, but not to see it as 
 exceptional and opposed to the law. Because law and liberty are one it 
 is that God's (direct) act appears to us as cause and effect. One sees 
 that God does as He chooses in nature, and holds a special providence ; 
 another sees that nature is the expression of an absolute law, and holds 
 it to be a chain of second causes, with wh God does not interfere. But 
 we shd open both eyes, grasp Nature with both hands ; embrace the 
 Deity with head an d heart. When we have most enlarged ourselves still 
 is God too great for us, but how great He is we cannot see while we shut 
 ourselves up in less than our native littleness. How God sets our
 
 131 
 
 distinctions at defiance, and bids us learn from each other. He does as 
 He chooses in acting by law. The chain of causes is His free agency, 
 His direct and immediate act. The incompatibily of law with freedom, 
 of direct action with unvarying causation, lies in our imagination alone, 
 is the fruit of our weak and corrupted will. Let us not bring God down 
 to ourselves, but rise rather up to Him. Law is His freedom : be law 
 our freedom too. It is the only freedom. The absolute Right alone is 
 Liberty. Nature thus, in her primary conception, in her very foundation 
 and essence, is moral : she is spiritual in truth, as man must have her to 
 be. Nature is law and liberty because she is right action the holy deed 
 of a spirit, and regarded every way teaches that great lesson of the con- 
 formity of the will to right. Trace matter back to its essence and it is 
 found to be Holiness. This is involved indeed in saying that the universe 
 is a spiritual act. The great principle wh Nature embodies, its essence, 
 what it means as a great chain of causes and effects, is Rectitude. 
 
 1 To be natural ' .-. is to love, and willingly to do, the right. Nature 
 is voluntary or spiritual lightness ; moral goodness : spiritual because 
 absolute freedom ; right because absolute law. We are surrounded .*. 
 by, exist in, goodness ; hence the discord with Nature of moral evil, a 
 discord how powerfully felt, how fearfully seen, in human life. Every 
 voice of nature to man has this meaning, ' Choose the right. Make your 
 liberty conformable to law ; in conformity to law achieve and maintain 
 your liberty.' Not driven and compelled, but how sweetly solicited to 
 good, is man. Each softest or sublimest object whispers in its beauty, 
 ' I am right,' or in its grandeur thunders, ' I am right.' This seeing, 
 God pronounced it good. All good but one thing ; and that the one that 
 Thou madest, oh God, in Thy image, the crown and glory of Thy cre- 
 ation, choosing right like Thee. How long shall he be thus dishonored 
 and abased, walking the earth with step erect, but with heart crushed 
 down with evil and face bowed in shame : blushing, or alas ! not blushing, 
 before each weakest insect, and each humblest flower. Teach us, I 
 beseech Thee, to see Thee so in nature, that Thy moral beauty there re- 
 vealed may win us to be like Thee ; Thy holiness fill us with shame, 
 Thy tenderness melt us to penitence. Lead us thro' Thy works unto 
 Thy Gospel; by the condemnation teach us to seek the pardon; by 
 proof of ruin and corruption subdue our hearts to renewing and sanctifying 
 love! 
 
 And that this law of Nature the law and liberty seen in motion in 
 direction of least resistance is given to it by ourselves is the ex- 
 pression indeed of our mental constitution, how it shows us to be made 
 for good. This is in us intellectual rightness ; the sign and proof of 
 that spiritual rightness wh is our native but now lost inheritance. This 
 world could have been made only by a good, or holy, Being : its very 
 structure involves it. Eight is stamped everywhere. Holy, holy, holy 
 Lord God ! 
 
 Have I not solved that question I proposed to myself so long ago : 
 What is that action of God's that we see as matter and motion ? It is 
 His Holiness ; His choosing the right. Nature is right, and right by 
 His choice, therefore not infused or filled with the moral element ; it is 
 morality. Each true thing I have ever heard seems now to come back 
 to me with a new kind of truth : this for instance, that the glory of God 
 is His moral character : even His creative glory. The universe proclaims
 
 132 
 
 not only His power and godhead, but truly understood His moral excel- 
 lence also. God answers prayer. In my earnest wish to know some- 
 thing of what His work in nature was, I prayed ' I heseech Thee show 
 me Thy glory.' And He has shown me, sufficiently for mortal compre- 
 hension, what His glory in creation is. The lightness of each object in 
 nature is an instance and evidence of the spiritual rectitude of its 
 Maker. Beauty, being, as I have seen, conformity to the universal law, 
 bears this testimony : He that made me conformed His will to law. The 
 world is infinitely beautiful, because God is infinitely holy. 
 
 Emerson : Oversoul, p. 243. ' That the sources of Nature are in his 
 own mind if the sentiment of duty is there. 1 There is all that I have been 
 saying : Nature is duty, rectitude, or holiness ; the terms may be inter- 
 changed. It is strange how many think that Emerson's chief peculiarities 
 are in his style, that his great beauties are only new expressions of old 
 and common ideas. There is one sense indeed in wh this is true. No 
 really new thought has entered or ever shall enter into the human heart, 
 since the first man first gazed with earnest eyes upon the heavens. But 
 so far from this being the distinction of Emerson, I find that his expres- 
 sions are his weak points, he fails when he does fail, chiefly ha his words, 
 He knows and feels more and more rightly than he can speak, as who 
 indeed that knows and feels at all rightly must not. This is clear from 
 the variability of his modes of expression : he must have felt it. Dis- 
 satisfied with one form of his thought he has put it in another and 
 another. Some of them good, some far from good. But he must not be 
 judged by these ; his meaning is to be taken not from one but from all, 
 or rather from his best. And the meaning, how blessed is that ! Shall 
 we throw away the fair fruits of Paradise because they are enveloped in 
 an earthy rind ? And yet again it should be remembered in judging 
 Emerson how very far the language of Scripture is parallel to some of 
 his most decidedly pantheistic expressions. We forget the vast fields of 
 dazzling glory wh passages in the Bible open to us : we have chosen and 
 have been taught not to see them ; and when another writer opens up the 
 same thoughts, if the words be not the same, we stand appalled and 
 think it profane. The fault is in us, and in our having sunk so much 
 below the Bible. And lastly it shd be remembered also that however 
 objectionable, even when the most candid allowance is made, many of 
 Emerson's expressions may be, still Emerson's God is a freely acting, 
 moral, i. e. spiritual Being, the source of all goodness, excellence, and 
 power. Is not that our God also ? And as for his making Nature one 
 with God, and therefore confounding God with ' matter,' is it not clear 
 that Emerson has not invented ' matter,' and rejects the idea as invented 
 by others. There is no fear of any philosopher who stands within sight 
 of Emerson confounding God with matter. Nature to Emerson is Holi- 
 ness, as to me. Can it do much harm to confound that with God ? It 
 is not the pantheists who confound things, but others, by their wonderful 
 distinction of Beings into matter and spirit. To make a wrong dis- 
 tinction causes just as much confusion as to ignore a right one. It is 
 truly a strange thing when one comes to think of the pass to wh philo- 
 sophy has come : that matter is first invented, and a portion of the di- 
 vine action claimed as matter, and then those who looking naturally at 
 things sec that there is nothing but spirit, are accused of irreligion as 
 confounding spirit with matter. Why matter is only a name given to
 
 133 
 
 certain spiritual acts there is no confusion but in the word. Cease to 
 imagine your substratum, or even set to -work to define it, and all is clear 
 again. 
 
 And here I cannot help reflecting how grievously philosophy has been 
 abused. The pantheistic has been made atheistic, just as those old doc- 
 trines that the world came by necessity or by chance have been : namely 
 by the invention of matter. It is that wh has poisoned philosophy as it 
 has ruined science. Except matter be supposed no philosophy can be 
 atheistic ; and it is I doubt not a libel upon the ancient originators of 
 philosophical systems wh bear in our material times an almost necessa- 
 rily atheistic character, to suppose them to have designed atheism. In 
 fact, words wh in the mouth of a man who without a * matter '-theory 
 looked simply at Nature and so saw in it of course nothing but a spiritual 
 activity words wh in such a man's mouth were words of deepest and 
 purest piety wd become when a substratum-hypothesis had been intro- 
 duced, and ' inertia ' had come to be regarded as the great ' existence ' in 
 the universe, words of irreligion or blasphemy. It is for us to correct 
 and reverse this degradation-process : to restore philosophy to her pris- 
 tine piety ^nd therein her pristine honor. The remedy is simple : only 
 to abandon what never shd have been invented and undo that wh was a 
 grievous error to have done. Cease to assume a thing of wh we know 
 and can know nothing ; wh never has been or can be of any use to us : 
 believe only in that wh we either see or know, of wh we have either in- 
 ternal or external evidence ; and the thing is done. To drop an assump- 
 tion takes away the sting from all false philosophy, and renders atheism 
 impossible. It will be a great gain to those good people who think it 
 worth while to engage in theistic arguments, to set the atheists upon 
 finding reasons for believing in matter, instead of finding objections to be- 
 lieving in a God. If the atheists are kept at bay until they have proved 
 that there is matter, they will not trouble us for a long while. Yet of 
 all such writings as Emerson's &c., may we not justly say: that if men 
 were good they were needless, and men being evil they are of no 
 avail. 
 
 With all its errors Science is a glorious thing : it is looking at God. 
 And those chimerical ideas introduced to classify the results of experience 
 lay the foundation for the perception of the divine action. It is a tuneful 
 discord. This action of the human intellect has been in the direction 
 of least resistance after all ; and .-. the natural course and the best. The 
 natural course of human knowledge is spiral winding to one side and the 
 the other in its onward course ; appearing to turn quite aside and yet 
 making the surest progress. Science or the observation of nature, and 
 philosophy or the observation of our own minds, are the two motions or 
 forces at right angles wh produce the curve. Or are they not rather the 
 force aud the resistance, the unity and the variety, the law and liberty ? 
 First begins knowledge as metaphysics the force ; then the resistance, 
 as observation of the external world ; and these two operating together 
 produce that curve of grace and beauty wh God sees the development 
 of the human mind to be. This is true also in details and in each one's 
 history as in the large features of science and the history of the race. 
 Here we see the beauty and meaning of the successive advances, and al- 
 ternations of knowledge ; and what it means that one man finds another 
 wrong, and each succeeding generation perceives error in its predecessors j
 
 134 
 
 this is the constant resistance and turning wh exists throughout all 
 nature and gives beauty to every object. Knowledge, or the action of 
 the humau mind, must be constahtly turned into a curve by resistance 
 i. e. by opposition -just as all material action must be. And the resist- 
 ance springs out of is, in truth the very action itself wh it resists. 
 We find our forefathers wrong and set them right. Thus we bend human 
 progress into its curve ; but we are no more truly right than they were. 
 Both are right and equally right ; the whole is right, not a part right 
 and a part wrong ; without the whole indeed no part wd be truly right : 
 it wd be like cutting a tree into portions aud saying this is as it shd be 
 but that is bad. And blindly as modern science has been prosecuted 
 in some respects, and sadly as its true ends have been overlooked, still 
 there is mnch in it that must ever be loved and admired : even its self- 
 abnegation and utter submission to Nature will be looked back upon 
 with reverence as a noble error, and with thankfulness as having been 
 the means of obtaining for man a minute and accurate knowledge of de- 
 tails, essential to real progress, but wh except under such an error might 
 never have been attained. And the diligence and perseverance of the 
 men of these days who have devoted so much time and toil to science 
 
 with so little actual reward or prospect of reward that as says, 
 
 seeing so little they shd have done so much will redound to their 
 eternal glory. This age too will have its apotheosis ; its errors forgotten 
 or tenderly and even thankfully regarded ; its graces and its benefits to 
 man held in everlasting remembrance. All is right. Thou doest it all, 
 and stampest Thine own character upon it. In me, too, Thou workest. 
 
 The great revelations in philosophy are merely the great turns of the 
 spiral : and none of them final, as their authors fondly thought. Nature, 
 and knowledge as a part of it, is an 'everlasting spiral.' To be a 
 channel for God's action, that is the privilege, the glory of true men ; 
 open and free to the lowest, the highest possibility to the greatest. 
 
 Nature and truth avenge themselves. The advantages of that me- 
 chanical artifice of using false or impossible conceptions have cost an 
 equal sacrifice : filling science with impossible and ' surd ' hypotheses. 
 The mind depraved in one aspect of its activity carries the vicious habit 
 farther. A lie is never harmless ; not even when it consists merely in 
 the invention of a contradictory symbol for the purpose of analysis. 
 
 Some of the old mystics had the same threefold idea wh I haye 
 gathered from nature ; but they applied it direct to the Godhead, as if 
 the ultimate truth of the Divine nature were expressible in their formulas. 
 I own that these laws of our mind exist because of the Divine nature, 
 but recognize them nevertheless to be but laws of our own thoughts and 
 apply them only to the sphere of our own perceptions and conceptions. 
 But the fact that the laws of Nature are derived from within us explains 
 how it is [wh at first seemed wonderfal to me] that others found by mere 
 intuition what I had gathered by a long induction. 
 
 "We want to learn a true and genuine self respect, founded upon the 
 conviction that God is not so much the author of our mental and bodily 
 constitution, as the doer of it. The doctrine of second causes takes away 
 all the glory from our relation to God as His creatures. So many things 
 may have happened between what He did and what we are. If we be 
 weak, deformed, incompetent, it it is little consolation to us to know that 
 God made Adam a perfect man full of power and of beauty. Let us
 
 135 
 
 not seek consolation there : it is nothing to mo that God made Adam, 
 but it is everything to me that God makes me. This feeble, ugly, frame ; 
 these dull and unsatisfactory mental powers that I have grumbled at and 
 been ashamed of so long, touched with a sudden glory, glow before mo 
 as the visible and conscious manifestation of God Himself. Save my 
 spirit, wh is truly I, I am nothing but a part of God's unbounded action, 
 of that holy and beneficent deed with wh He constitutes the. universe. 
 Shall I blush for my Maker : shall I dare to be ashamed to be what He 
 has not been ashamed to do ? Humblest, most afflicted, most self-discon- 
 tented child, look up. There stands not an angel before the throne of 
 God in glory and in beauty more complete than thou. Absolutely right 
 thou art ; to the least particle of thy frame, the least tendency of thy 
 mind, absolutely such as thou shouldest be. Revere thy Maker in thyself, 
 nor dare to say of anything within thee or without, This might have 
 been better had it not been so. For this we may blush, for this be 
 ashamed and humbled in the dust, that our will is corrupted and our 
 spirit evil. Just so far as we deviate from that wh God made us, shame 
 and self contempt belong to us. But in that alone : in moral character 
 only could we be aught better than we are. Let us concentrate our 
 shame upon our sins, and see our sins more vile, hy appreciating more 
 fully how good and glorious a Being they spoil. When we have need to 
 mourn for anything God docs in us, the universe will put on sackcloth ; 
 God will blush before the whole, and the whole will feel the thrill of 
 agony. [See Ruskin: Painters, Vol 3.] 
 
 This should be our grand task and aim : to be ourselves,. to be such as 
 God made us, thereby letting God shine through us. Not hiding or dis- 
 guising our peculiarities, not ashamed of anything that is truly part of 
 us ; proud rather of all that is nature within us [and therefore the more 
 heartily ashamed of all sin wh is so opposed to nature]. Acting each 
 one ourself, fully and wholly, a new view of God's wisdom wd be opened 
 to the world : and philosophers wd turn away from the adaptations and 
 beautiful interworkings of the external world, exclaiming with glad sur- 
 prise, ' Men too are exactly and most wonderfully adapted to each other.' 
 It needs only that each one shd truly exhibit God's action in himself, for 
 it to be seen that each one has the exactest adaptation to all the rest. 
 But alas for the human will, for man's corrupted spirit ; all ways wo 
 spoil ourselves. We commit sin ; and losing thus our self respect, think 
 to make matters better by hiding our unsinful nature. We dare not re- 
 veal our selves lest the plague spot of our iniquity should appear. Thus 
 each attempt to reform anything in man, however external or apparently 
 unconnected with morals, brings back to the bitter fountain of all bitter 
 waters. It is his Sin. May we not truly say that all false thought, 
 even, is a fruit of sin. I doubt if a holy Being wd ever have invented 
 matter ; he wd have sympathised with holiness too much. 
 
 Genius sees things as results of principles ; common men see principles 
 as properties of things, or as results of the relations of things. Of 
 course the things are in conformity with the principles [rather with the 
 Holiness] from wh they flow, and .-.in some sort of back-handed way 
 the principle may be educed from them. But how poor the result even 
 at the best. The true man sees, in humble measure, as God sees. 
 
 It is possible that in reasoning on the mental powers of animals we 
 attribute to them some faculties or modes of mental action they do not
 
 136 
 
 possess ; impart to them much of that wh is .due to our spirits alone. 
 The very same external actions in them and in us may indicate different 
 internal processes, as we possess a spiritual element co-working with the 
 psychical nature, wh is wanting in them ; hut as we have no basis for 
 judging save our consciousness, it is natural for us to conclude that the 
 internal action is equally indicated hy the external in hoth cases. 
 
 Both motion and resistance are only ' forms of thought ' : that wh is 
 without is not and cannot he either motion or resistance. It is not that 
 there is nothing without ; on the contrary, everything is without ; hut 
 not matter and motion those are ideal forms wh we from within apply 
 to external realities. It is vain for any one to suppose they can avoid 
 making nature obey their own conceptions. In the very ideas of matter, 
 motion, and force, they subject nature to themselves. They have already 
 done it before they can think they will not. Scientifically to trace out 
 the connexion of things and consciously to impose on them the laws of 
 our mental processes, is only to do the same thing better and more truly 
 wh we do absolutely tho' unconsciously when we first speak of a 
 'thing.' 
 
 The reason and in some sense the excuse of our having made the effect 
 precede the cause in our reasoning, lies in the effect or phn necessarily 
 preceding the cause in our experience. Motion e. g. to us does seem 
 clearly consequent upon matter and force. The phn is merely God's 
 action on us ; only by it, at first, and by its means, at last, do we know 
 anything. If there were no one capable seeing [although there wd still 
 be the same vibrations] there wd be no light ; so we see God's spiritual 
 action as matter and motion ; and if there were no such beings as we, 
 altho' there wd still be God's action there wd be no matter. 
 
 Here come a group of vibrations sweeping thro' the air, mere matter 
 and motion ; and lo ! they fall upon a human eye and ear, and straight- 
 way are become thought and emotion, an overwhelming passion of love, 
 or joy, or grief; virtue, or penitence, or heroism. If those vibrations 
 were truly matter and motion, here is a miracle. But what if those vi- 
 brations, as we thought them, were in very truth, God's spiritual act ; 
 His thought, emotion, passion, surging against another spirit's bosom, 
 what then more natural and just ? The miracle resolves itself into 
 sympathy. How can we so stultify ourselves as to think that what ori- 
 ginates and ends in love and gladness, becomes matter on the way ? poet 
 nor madman ever feigned such a metamorphosis ! I adhere to common 
 sense. That wh is once spiritual is spiritual for ever. 
 
 I was going to say that whereas the excuse for the putting effect before 
 cause was its constant priority in our experience ; so the faculty of in- 
 verting this apparent order, and seeing cause and effect in their right re- 
 lation, is Genius or inspiration. It is not the logical faculty that can do 
 it : logic is eminently the ' phenomenal ' faculty. It is sympathy with 
 Nature, that is with God, wh imparts the right order to man's universe. 
 And where this step of putting things in their right order has been 
 earlier taken, as in the doctrine of a God and Creation, not the logical, 
 but the religious or moral faculty has been the agent in the advance. 
 The moral need of a God it was that led man right : or science wd have 
 yet been far enough from discovering the necessity. And so the veritable 
 pantheistic doctrine of a soul in nature instead of nature being the act
 
 137 
 
 of a soul (or spirit) lies open to the objection of putting the effect before 
 the cause. That is an example of enslavement to the phn. But in jus- 
 tice it must be conceded that this is an exceptional form of pantheism, 
 of wh the juster idea is that the universe flows from God ; surely they 
 mean as a man's actions flow from him. And do we not justly and truly 
 say that a man is or is in his actions : if we see his actions do we not see 
 him ? So regarded (and I think it is just) even the language of pan- 
 theism repels us less. 
 
 A tree is a good emblem of human science : its beauty and . its right- 
 ness consist in its bending about in all sorts of directions and never going 
 straight. Moreover a tree is never finished, it is always complete and 
 never complete. It is ever just such as it shd be, and yet may be added 
 to indefinitely. So there can be no final science : every scientific advance 
 is but one twist of the spiral wh prepares the way for a twist in the op- 
 posite direction. So it ever has been and ever shall be. The tree, and 
 science, represent the world ; or rather Nature : ever complete yet ever 
 progressing, ' wreathing an everlasting spiral.' So everything is and is 
 not infinite. 
 
 There is no mystery in Nature. Since 'matter' results -from our con- 
 stitution, the laws of matter must result from it also, must flow from us, 
 and .-. may not be mysterious. All mystery in nature is the result of a 
 confusion we have made. It is ours to abolish it, by applying to it self- 
 evident laws of thought. The true mystery is God's wondrous act wh 
 underlies and constitutes this phantasm ; the throbs and pulses of that 
 great heart with wh our own is in such mysterious accord. There is pro- 
 fundity and unfathomableness ; there we are lost and know not what to 
 say, and only bow in reverence. But in this ideal < matter ' there is 
 nothing to revere : we are like children frightened at our own shadow. 
 Touch it, and it disappears, and shows us that it was but an image pro- 
 jected from ourselves. Reality is love and rectitude ; spirit and spiritual 
 
 Because the laws of our nature are our own mental laws it is, I sup- 
 pose, that the reflective rather than the observant people are the disco- 
 verers of natural laws. The ' observers ' who have no interest in abstract 
 reasonings busy themselves with God's action, the thinkers who have in- 
 terest in facts only as they express principles and laws, busy themselves 
 with their own nature. But it does not hence follow that the former oc- 
 cupation is the nobler ; because our own minds are equally God's action 
 with the external world, and the mere observers not less give the laws 
 of their own minds to nature ; the difference is that they do it wrongly : 
 witness their almost invariable opposition at first to the right when it is 
 done for them. 
 
 Opposite polarities are always complementary, and together make up 
 an uniform vibration. Mankind are thus oppositely polar or complemen- 
 tary, intellectually as well as physically : the observers and the reflectors 
 e. g., and this polarity in intellect tends to show that intellect is a part 
 of nature. 
 
 Cause and effect is such a relation of things as agrees with motion in 
 the direction of least resistance : regarded so the things are motion in 
 direction of least resistance : therefore it is a right and ' natural ' rela- 
 tion, and we call it a relation of cause ; hardly avoiding, or rather abso- 
 lutely falling into, the absurdity of supposing some real efficiency or
 
 138 
 
 power in the cause, as if it were a spirit and could act. Cause and effect 
 is God's action, wh we see as motion in direction of least resistance, be- 
 cause it is right. Causation like all the other laws of nature is our 
 ' idea,' a form wh the Divine action receives from our perception. 
 
 Thus cause and effect is seen to be parallel to Beauty, wh also is 
 motion in least resistance. This in every case is both cause and effect, 
 and beauty, to us : it satisfies both the logical and the esthetic faculty. 
 And both are in us, and not in the things ; both ideas or conceptions not 
 realities in nature. Can we trace in what respects cause and effect, and 
 beauty, are the same, in what different ? Is it not this inversion of the 
 real and ideal [making matter the real] that spoils [the theory of] Art? 
 Beauty is not attached to objects, but objects rather flow out of Beauty ? 
 
 I insensibly argue from the nature of our conceptions to the essence 
 and necessity of things. I can conceive the position taken that our con- 
 ceptions are no rules for the reality of things. But I maintain my 
 ground : because matter and its laws are results of our own mental action, 
 our conceptions do and must determine the nature of things the thing 
 is such as it is only by virtue of our perception and conception. We 
 must learn to., conceive rightly, according to the laws of conception or of 
 mind, and nature must and certainly will conform thereto. 
 
 Pro. R. S. 30/11/49. ' Those who deny that a common type or pat- 
 tern has governed the construction of animal bodies,' (p. 689.) Here is 
 the idea of a type put in its worst and most chimerical form. And yet 
 the idea is good as a way of setting forth the oneness of animal nature. 
 It is a right thing wrongly done. In truth this seeing in each part of 
 each animal the same thing that appears in other forms, is in its way 
 precisely that wh philosophy does when it traces throughout nature one 
 and the same act under an endless diversity of appearance. The ' typical ' 
 structure of the animal kingdom is itself a ' type ' of Nature. 
 
 I do not hold that I can construct a final system ; mine is but a step 
 not more truly right than that which has rightly preceded ; only the 
 present right. Dearest and most welcome of all men to me is the man 
 who shall supersede me. His further and clearer vision is to me even as 
 if it were my own. But it must be by a step forward that I am to be 
 overthrown. I am not so foolish as to imagine that I, a mere channel 
 for the surging tide of truth, can stop its ever advancing waves. It 
 flows through me and goes on. Thank God. When I have done my 
 work what can it be to me but joy that others also shd do theirs. 
 
 The necessary truths and universal principles do not apply to God's 
 real action ; that is moral, and has no relation to our necessary concep- 
 tions. The question whether our conceptions correspond to the real na- 
 ture of things no longer embarasses us : our conceptions are the things. 
 The only realities with wh they are to be compared are God's spiritual, 
 that is, holy deeds. 
 
 Granted that these universal truths are the mind's own action are 
 based thereon : still the question returns, Why and how ? What is it 
 
 must so 
 question 
 act wh we see as Nature ? 
 
 The whole of human knowledge is either metaphysical, i. e. material 
 and scientific ; or spiritual, i. e. moral and religious. For science is and 
 ' [Metaphysics, 61.
 
 139 
 
 must be metaphysical. The things with wh metaphysics deals are those 
 wh constitute science : the ideas namely of substance (or matter), form, 
 space, time, cause and effect, force and resistance. Metaphysics in short 
 belongs to matter ; it is the material science ordinating and giving laws 
 to the physical sciences. Hence it was that the physical sciences began 
 as metaphysics. They also end as metaphysics. An end shd come to 
 representing any part of the action of the human mind as absolutely 
 wrong and bad. All is right ; the past not less than the present. What 
 we call the laws of mind, or metaphysics, are in truth the laws of 
 matter, and what we call the laws of matter are in truth the laws of our 
 minds. 
 
 The forms of thought, the law ; the external world, the liberty : 
 that true knowledge can only advance by bringing both into one, is only 
 one instance of everything being both in one. Everything is twofold, 
 and knowledge also. Nature is the embodiment at once of our laws of 
 thought and of God's free and special and uncontrolled action. We look 
 in ourselves for the former, around us for the latter. For Nature corres- 
 ponds with those laws because God chooses to act right : we cannot know 
 except by experience what those things He does will be. 
 
 Is it necessary to distinguish between matter and space ? or is it not 
 a kind of substratum for a substratum ; a division of one idea wh ought 
 to be indivisible ? I think it arises from the making matter a thing in- 
 stead of an idea ; a thing of various kinds and of course needing a sub- 
 stratum to exist in. But we do not want space for an < idea ' to exist in. 
 It is really a joke this real space as a substratum for a real matter. 
 
 "" ---*.-. in science and metaphysics seems to have 
 
 lodes of thought were 
 matter, and why ? above 
 all why did he persist in it ? I am convinced ' matter ' must have been 
 first invented as a ' thing ' in the middle ages. I do not believe it ex- 
 isted as such in philosophy before, and of course the people have no 
 opinion about ' abstract matter ' except such as they derive from the phi- 
 losophers. The popular opinion indeed is decidedly against * the matter 
 of the schools.' And here how beautifully things work together. Surely 
 this realization ' as we may term it of matter must have prepared the 
 way for that greater attention to facts and investigation of material phna 
 wh were the destiny and have constituted the work and power of these 
 later ages. 
 
 Both metaphysics and science have got wrong by being divorced from 
 each other. Science, dealing with ideas as if realities, was chimerical. 
 Metaphysics dealing with ideas as distinct from the ' things ' wh the ideas 
 constitute, was tedious, obscure, unsettled, of no authority. Only put 
 them together. See that science and metaphysics are one ; and that one, 
 Common Sense ; and have we not a glorious, lovely and loyeable uni- 
 versal science. 
 
 This union of the law and the liberty in everything is the basis of the 
 universal antithesis : that everything may be affirmed and denied of 
 everything ; as thus : that everything and nothing is accidental. 
 
 The converse of if we know one thing we know all ' is this : * in 
 order to know one thing we must know all.' 
 
 * Things ' are various motions in one substance, wh substance is a * sub- 
 stratum,' an idea wh we supply in order to conceive ' motion.' Just as
 
 140 
 
 'events are various actions in one Time, wh Time is a substratum, or an 
 idea wh we supply in order to conceive of actions. I begin to perceive 
 more meaning in what those say who deny that the word Eternal in the 
 Bible has any reference to duration. [See Emerson.] The secret of 
 Emerson's strength and weakness is to be found in that (longer) Essay 
 on Nature, in wh he at once is and is not a spiritualist ; perceiving nature 
 to be a spiritual fact and yet unwilling to abrogate it, and not perceiving 
 that these are by no means connected, he vacillates. 
 
 Why does the mind see Nature as material ; why supply substrata ? 
 is the great question of psychology. Is it sufficiently answered by re- 
 ferring to its finiteness, and tracing these conceptions to a limit placed 
 upon God's infinite action by ourselves ? One shd see farther. Does it 
 aid at all to consider that the mind itself is part of this act that it 
 perceives ? 
 
 ' Laws ' are the expression of a spiritual will, determining his own 
 acts, and determining them right. Our conviction of law in nature is a 
 moral conviction, a spiritual apprehension. Hence it is reasonable that 
 our knowledge of nature has been so perverted by Sin. That depravity 
 clouds those spiritual perceptions that sympathy with God by which 
 alone knowledge can be raised to pure science. It we had been holy we 
 shd have seen that the laws of nature were expressions only of God s 
 present and eternal holiness, and never invented material ' seoond causes.' 
 The more a man's spirit is in conformity with God, the more he will see 
 God in the laws of nature, and see that God is in nature only by Laws. 
 The two errors, of self-sustaining laws and special interferences, are 
 kindred in origin and essence. 
 
 The cause and mode of human error is adding something of our own 
 some invention thereby excluding that wh is Divine. To know when 
 to stop is the secret. These are the evil ' theories,' these the hypotheses 
 that impede science : the true Theory is when a man perceives what is, 
 and says it, adding nothing. And this error, of adding our own inven- 
 tions, excluding thereby God's realities, may similarly be traced to 
 < want of sympathy ' with Him. If that sympathy were perfect it could 
 not be. Filled with Him we cd add nothing of our own, or our own wd be 
 truly His. [Of course, not true ; man's mode of perception necessitates 
 theories.'] 
 
 God acts spiritually ; but as soon as man perceives that action he per- 
 ceives the universe existing with all its laws : must perceive it with its 
 laws because these are his mode of perceiving it. Man therefore never 
 cd perceive an origination ' of the universe ; as soon as he perceives at 
 all, he perceives the universe existing. If we conceive of him as a pure 
 spirit not within the physical universe, then what he wd perceive wd 
 not be a material universe at all but God's spiritual action apart from 
 these forms wh make matter and motion, and the question of ' origination ' 
 clearly wd have no bearing. 
 
 All objections shd turn round into proofs. They shd be like rain to 
 the sea. My views become them .. they are my views. 
 
 The old philosophers at least made their science possible. They had 
 onefative possible science we have several /active impossible sciences. 
 
 If material action be called by any other name than motion, it will 
 still conform to the same relation as that of least resistance ; and this 
 being one with cause and effect, the law of cause will be universal.
 
 141 
 
 The mind is part of nature. That the laws of nature are the lawa of 
 our minds is but one form of the statement that the entire laws of nature 
 exist in every part we do but affirm its unity. The mind does not give 
 laws to Nature in any other sense but that Nature and Mind are one. 
 The mind embraces the whole of nature just as music does, or any other 
 form of action, the whole in each. 
 
 I doubt whether the difference between necessary and contingent 
 truths does not depend upon the amount of our knowledge : e. g. If we 
 knew all about grass I conceive we should see it to be as much a neces- 
 sary truth that it is green as that two straight lines cannot enclose a space. 
 And Truths are contingent because we can conceive the opposite ; but 
 then we can conceive the opposite only because we are ignorant of the 
 facts. The opposite is not really possible, or conceivable by an instructed 
 mind. In fact there are no contingent truths ; this is nothing but the 
 doctrine of chance. All truths are contingent to us of wh we do not 
 know the necessity ; but all things when we have traced them to the 
 nature of motion will evidently be necessary truths to us. Just as to a 
 skilled mathematician the complicated geometrical deductions are neces- 
 sary truths. Is it not the fact that everything is necessary when we un- 
 derstand it ; and that we understand only necessary truths. Some things 
 are supposed to be contingent because they are really supposed to be 
 arbitrary : a scientific denial of the holiness of God, or voluntary sub- 
 ordination of His will to law. Thus all disputes as to the way in which 
 we arrive at necessary truths, are meaningless. It is the idea of matter 
 as an arbitrarily created thing, that might have been made otherwise, 
 sets us wrong here also. 
 
 That anything appears to us contingent, as that it appears paradoxical, 
 shows that we look at it wrongly. Each thing is as necessary as the 
 last step in a demonstration; all are but definitions and axioms in 
 another form. Is here the true meaning and value of mathematics ? all 
 Nature in truth is but a mathematical problem worked out for us and we 
 have to trace it out and show the steps : but we have forgotten this, the 
 first men saw it, tho' falsely. This is why we want both the laws our 
 own necessary conceptions and the facts, or the lines &c. of the figure. 
 We must trace the lines by the internal laws or we wholly fail of their 
 true nature and significance : as lines and angles and rorms they mean 
 nothing, they have a geometrical relation to each other wh we must 
 find out by looking within. But again by looking within we may see 
 mathematical principles and even execute problems but we can gain no 
 knowledge with regard to the particular one before us. We must trace 
 those particular lines and figures and see what they demonstrate. We 
 need both facts from without and laws from within ; the geometrical re- 
 lations are the law, the particular problem the liberty. 
 
 May not Motion, Matter, Space, be a triplet, and rightly distinguished. 
 And as to space being a substratum for an idea, matter is so also ; viz. 
 for the ' idea ' of motion. So that probably my objections to admitting 
 space as a distinct ' form of thought,' apart from matter, are not 
 valid. 
 
 Is not the finite derived by a limit from the infinite ? There is really 
 something here tho' it sounds obscure. It aids true philosophy that the 
 infinite shd precede and give origin to all finites, rather than the finites 
 be first and suggest the infinite. This agrees with the origin of material
 
 142 
 
 ideas by a limit imposed by ourselves on God's infinite action. Perhaps 
 here is a real argument for an Infinite Being : that while the ideas of the 
 finite are easily derivable from the infinite, the infinite is in no way de- 
 rivable from the finite. 
 
 Are not rules for philosophizing founded on a mistake ? e. g. for dis- 
 covering. What is wanted is something new, that has not been done 
 before, and indeed cannot be conceived. These are two negative ones : 
 not to rest in anything that gives the least indication of inconsistency or 
 incompleteness ; and not to invent anything : and then to do that wh is 
 natural and in the most natural way. But no man will discover anything, 
 or do anything of any real importance, unless he has an earnest passionate 
 love for something ; the essential thing is sympathy. 
 
 I think this must be the law of development of Thought. From a 
 common error in the minds of two persons of the opposite classes, arise 
 the two opposite opinions. The one perceives the true idea, but misre- 
 presents the facts ; the other truly (or more truly) states the facts but 
 misrepresents the idea ; puts a false meaning on them. This is well seen 
 in the history of Homoeopathy. The common error of Homosopathy and 
 Allopathy was that medicines produced no effect except by virtue of the 
 drugs contained in them ; or rather an under estimate of such effect. The 
 Allopaths .. denied the facts of the cures ; misstated the facts but main- 
 tained the true principle : the Homoeopaths truly stated the facts but 
 misrepresented the idea. The Allopaths represent the special creationists ; 
 the Homoeopaths the developmentists. And the advance or true deve- 
 lopment of Thought here is to see that the facts of the one and the 
 theory of the other are both true : to put them together and so to over- 
 throw the original error. That is how thought advances. Two opposed 
 views flowing from one common error, put together and harmonized, in- 
 troduce a true conception in place of the primary false one : teach us 
 something new ; advance us to a new grade. Thus in one sense the de- 
 velopment of thought is the inverse of that of the material world : the 
 material world developes by subdivision ; Thought by putting together 
 and rising to more and more comprehensive conceptions. Can this throw 
 any light upon the nature of Thought ; that it is the material world 
 turned upon itself? But what an expression this is ! I did not see it till 
 I had written it : that wd be to make the material world and mental 
 action, a Vibration Is there not in this the germ of a truth ? 
 
 The action wh constitutes the material world, then, is the downward 
 half of a vibration of wh the sum of mental action is the upward half. 
 Thought rises to the point from wh the universe began ; the act of God. 
 Is here the secret of the correspondence of the universe with thought ? 
 And not only is each thought vibratile as each thing in nature but 
 surely the act of perception must in some sense partake of a vibratile 
 character. Here a basis for a new meaning in the idea that thought re- 
 presents each of the physical forces, from motion up to life ? 
 
 Two other ideas also arise with this view of thought. (1) That 
 feelings determine opinions : starting from the common error, the two op- 
 posite opinions have in some sense equally good evidence ; but the evi- 
 dence is of opposite character, on the one side logical, on the other as it 
 were perceptive ; one respects the steps of the process, the other the re- 
 sult. And by wh of these any given person is influenced, or in what 
 proportions by each, depends mainly on their feelings, their general
 
 143 
 
 emotional constitution. Both have good reason and neither can convince 
 the other. (2) As in the material world so in the psychical, the idea of 
 a ' limit ' plays a most important part. For in truth this ' common 
 error ' is only the boundary of knowledge ; it is that wh we do not know. 
 Where our knowledge terminates there is an erroneous or rather an im- 
 perfect view. From this imperfect view it is that the opposite opinions 
 arise. Hence till man is omniscient there will ever be these two ten- 
 dencies of thought, and knowledge will continually go on developing in 
 a similar way, by the putting together of the two opposite views. The 
 union of the polar opinions furnishes as it were a lever for lifting the 
 boundary of knowledge farther back. 
 
 And the mode in wh knowledge developes by union of the two opposite 
 opinions is simply using at once observation and sound reasoning or sub- 
 ordination of the facts to our own conceptions. For these also are the 
 two halves of a vibration. In the undeveloped states of knowledge one 
 man knows the facts more or less correctly but puts a wrong conception 
 on them, another has more or less nearly a true idea but regards the facts 
 in a wrong light, or perhaps denies them. He who developes knowledge 
 at once sees the facts aright in the main, and makes them conform to just 
 and true conceptions. But at the point at wh he stops is another erro- 
 neous or imperfect view, and from that again diverge two opposite 
 opinions, and many facts have to be discovered and many arguments dis- 
 cussed before another and farther step can be taken, by putting those two 
 opinions together and finding that they are one. In fact that species or 
 grade of mentaMife has to reach its limit before it can develope. Alike 
 in mental and physical development the two wh are put together to form 
 the higher must be opposite ; i. e. must be polar to each other it must 
 be a sexual union. And so alike in reproduction and in development: 
 the physical development of animal races must have taken place from 
 union of two potential animals wh were in some sense of opposite sexes. 
 As in production of vertebrata from two articulata ; the neural and haemal 
 arches are of different polarities. [N.B. It is mollusc and articulate]. 
 
 There must also in the development of thought be the analogue of the 
 musical developt of matter ; i. e. the inverse progress in grade and form : 
 as thought developes it must be in octaves [see before] i. e. there must be 
 in the progress of thought that wh corresponds to the degradation of 
 animal species coincidently with the development of new species. 
 
 "We must have been perplexing ourselves unnecessarily in respect to 
 the nature of thought. That question as to the ' thinking substance ' i$ 
 something like that as to ' real matter ' ; and the question as to matter 
 thinking has made the confusion worse. Is it not enough to recognize 
 thought or the mind [these terms being parallel to motion and the natural 
 world] as God's action ; with a certain part of wh we are brought into 
 relation, as we are with that part of His action wh constitutes our body. 
 As to what it is we do not know any more than what that act is wh we 
 perceive in the external universe. [There is therefore just the same 
 truth and untruth in Emerson's saying ' there is one mind common to all 
 individual men,' as there wd be in saying ' there is one body,' &c. in 
 both cases truly it is one act of God wh equally constitutes all.] God's 
 act is thought to us, as it is motion : that the act shd be to us a vibration 
 of wh one half is the perceived the other half the perceiving, is surely 
 no special mystery. And see how the perceived continually becomes the 
 perceiving.
 
 144 
 
 The conception of any fact being contingent, that it might have been 
 otherwise, is really that of God acting arbitrarily ; but this the concep- 
 tion of nature as a spiritual or moral action, and .-. as a holy action, en- 
 tirely excludes. If nature as it is be a holy action, then if it had been 
 other than it is it wd have been other than holy ; wd have been unholy. 
 This arbitrary action is really, if it were seen aright, unholy action. But 
 speaking thus of God's action as holy, does not the question legitimately 
 arise what other standard of holiness there is except the will of God ? 
 
 This view of the physical and intellectual world as the two halves of 
 a vibration suggests that as the mental development is now in progress, 
 the physical is probably completed ; i. e. that man is the last form of 
 terrestrial life : and that with the complete development of the human 
 intellect the history of the present world will be at an end : Man the 
 sum and consummation of this world's history ; when the natural world 
 liaa fully reproduced itself in mind, then returns the cycle of events ? a 
 new heaven and a new earth ? 
 
 That expression of ' torturing nature ' fills me with a shudder. Yet I 
 suppose it was right : a kind of courtship ; the ' pangs ' of love. 
 
 By the very idea of motion, all these coexisting motions [actual motion 
 or tension] wh constitute the universe, must be one motion. For all 
 motion whatsoever that coexists is one. We analyze or resolve an intri- 
 cate motion ; this is our science ; dividing it into various branches, 
 making many out of one. Thus akin to music : for in the most compli- 
 cated concert it is one motion wh falls upon the ear, and is heard as so 
 many sounds. Astronomy illustrates it. The earth performs many mo- 
 tions in its course thro' the heavens ; but whether as regards the earth 
 as a whole or each least atom of it, all these motions form one motion ; 
 a most intricately twisted and convoluted line wd describe the earth's 
 real motion. Astronomy out of this educes several distinct and self con- 
 sistent motions. Just so the whole Nature. The material world presents 
 to us just such a problem as the motions of a planet or of the moon one 
 great but most intricate motion ; and the work of science is to do that 
 wh astronomy does ; or wh the ear does uninstructed, intuitively. The 
 whole course of nature is such a one intricate motion wh science resolves. 
 Hence all science, all nature is necessarily one. The motion of the earth, 
 sound, electricity, magnetism, heat, light, chemistry and life, make up, 
 or are, not many things, but one simple though intricate motion. Here 
 another view of the Unity of Nature. 
 
 Facts need proving, and proof is legitimate and necessary for them ; 
 they rest upon evidence. Theories shd not want proving ; the distinct 
 and complete statement of them shd involve and supersede all possible 
 proof: a relation between our ideas that wants proving, wants rejecting. 
 Mathematical, i. e. geometrical truths are not proved : they are only 
 fully and distinctly stated one by one, and each one, the last equally 
 with the first, is self-evident when it is understood, and rests upon its 
 own visible necessity. So will all science be when we understand it ; 
 and as we gradually understand it will become more and more so. That 
 a person does not at first sight see a remote geometrical deduction does 
 not affect the real evidence on wh it rests, any more than that a child 
 cannot see the truth of the axioms of geometry : it is a question of un- 
 derstanding, i. e. of seeing. I find all Nature to be geometry, all truth
 
 145 
 
 to be mathematical. All nature is mathematics, and .. must not 
 mathematics, as a special science, cease to exist ? altho' it still continues 
 as an art ; as a special and technical mode of doing certain things : or 
 rather, all science being one, there can no longer be sciences. There is 
 ' Science ' and it will be known and felt that all the special branches are 
 cultivated separately, not because they are different but only for conve- 
 nience ; that each is the same thing under a different superficial form : 
 that in truth it is one motion [or rather it is Life.] 
 
 Mind is part of Nature. Does not the difficulty as to what determines 
 the ' will ' rest on the idea of real efficient [second] causes. There is no 
 real cause but spirit. ' What determines the will ' is not and cannot be 
 any concatenation of circumstances : if the spirit act, it acts ; if not God 
 acts there is no cause but God and other spirits. It is a difficulty 
 similar to that wh is made respecting matter thinking, by the invention of 
 a real matter. In this question of freedom of will are the very conditions 
 wh I see are the conditions for development of thought : two polar 
 opinions ; one good logic, the other good result. Now passively putting 
 them together ; saying the one process and the other result are both right 
 tho' we cannot see how, does not advance science, it puts an absolute stop 
 to it. Our business is to find out how both the opposite opinions are true : 
 the facts of this one, the theory of the other. We are bound here to re- 
 concile the heart and the intellect, not to make a hollow truce. We must 
 supply another element at the limit of our knowledge, so as to see that 
 man is free in obeying nature ; in fact that law and liberty are one. It is 
 the old, the universal question. Is there such mystery about the union of 
 body and mind and the connection of the spirit with both ? Body and 
 mind are of course connected ; they are the opposite halves of a vibration. 
 And the spirit is connected with both because they are God's spiritual act 
 with wh of course the human spirit must be in relation, and being finite 
 must be in relation with a finite portion of such spiritual act of God : i. e. 
 the infinite must bear a finite relation to it. The spirit is in relation 
 (limitedly) with God's action wh to it ( ? because of such limiting) is vi- 
 bratile : i. e. it is in relation with matter and mind. 
 
 It is in vain to talk about using both methods equally in science. They 
 succeed each other, not coexist [in perfection]. Thought is a vibration ; 
 and each age, as each man, has its character. And it is right that they 
 should thus oscillate ; that gives to knowledge its beautiful spiral form, 
 and gives unity and energy and character to human history. We should 
 make a man so wise that he wd be a fool. Human error after all is a 
 sacred thing : it is the striving of a finite Being after the infinite. The 
 two forms of error are two forms of love of truth : true result by false 
 process ; true process and false result. All for truth, save where moral 
 evil interferes. We must learn not only to compassionate but to love and 
 reverence the errors of the past and of the present also ; recognizing 
 therein the foolishness of God wh is wiser than men. Nothing is wrong 
 but sin : nothing but wrong doing can be better than it is. 
 
 What a strange idea that it behoves Science to submit to paradoxes, as 
 things we shall never know : it is merely to ' deliver their ignorance from 
 ignominy.' To submit to paradoxes is the very thing that Science must 
 not do : her very existence depends on and consists in the contrary. A 
 paradox cannot be in nature ; we make it and the remedy is to unmake it.
 
 146 
 
 How humanity is ever the same : we doing the same thing the old phi- 
 losophers did and fcr the very same reason [only inverted]. So Hu- 
 manity repeats itself. And developed or righter thought must be like 
 developed nature more in the same ; condensation the law of develop- 
 ment here also ; higher thought is many thoughts in one. What is the 
 real relation between thought and motion ;, how are they comparable in 
 themselves ? 
 
 I think I see a little towards a consistent doctrine of human liberty. 
 The mind is not the spirit, but God's act external to it. How can God's 
 [external] act make or compel or rather be [for there is no other physical 
 causation] the action of a spirit of wh the very definition is that it acts 
 of itself? If it be objected that we first assume that a spirit acts of it- 
 self and then proceed to prove it, the answer is easy : for the idea of 
 action is derived from consciousness and only needs to be negatively es- 
 tablished by argument. Also how natural it is that all Beings should be 
 active. The ' real-matter ' hypothesis it is alone that gives any force to 
 such objections. Spirit, or Being, is Agent: there being no 'things' 
 that are acted upon ; that entire idea being a hypothesis, not actual. 
 These motives, feelings, likings that we share with the beasts, are things 
 vh the spirit uses. They cannot determine it ; they have no adaptation 
 to do so. The chain of causes and effects embraces Nature is Nature ; 
 that is its boundary. If the spirit be included in it then it is made a 
 part of Nature, i. e. not a being but an actiou, and man ceases to be a 
 true Being and is merely a part of that action wh we call Nature. But 
 that man is a Being, a person, who is separate from Nature is surely the 
 very first and basic fact. Can there be here any advance towards a 
 right conception of depravity itself ? that it is the spirit voluntarily sub- 
 mitting itself to the chain of causes and effects, submitting to the 
 bondage of physical laws, instead of adhering to its own free law, that 
 of Eight ? In doing wrong man enters as it were into the chain of phy- 
 sical causes, abandons his prerogative of using nature and submits to be 
 used by it : chooses to disobey right for sake of physical or mental plea- 
 sure : abandons i. e. his personality ; ceases to be like God, an Agent 
 or Doer, and becomes a thing, the sport and slave of nature. This is 
 God's trial of him : Will you choose the right, and so be free and holy, 
 or will you abandon this your choice and become a slave and sinful ? 
 God's action in the form of Nature presents continually this choice to 
 man. Use Nature, like God, doing right ; or let Nature use you like a 
 thing, doing wrong. When man, i. e. the spirit, acts freely, under its 
 own law of right, then he is is holy : when he submits himself to events, 
 deviating from his own free law of right, then he is depraved. For a 
 man only does right because he chooses ; nobody compels him. The 
 law of spirit is the law of liberty ; not the law of cause and effect or 
 bondage that is Sin. But this does not make nature unholy ; though 
 there does seem a mystery in the constant temptations presented by the 
 physical and intellectual world : yet when man acts truly in accord with 
 nature he acts right. Whence comes it that there are these temptations 
 in nature ? only from man's evil tendencies ? yet if so whence the evil 
 tendencies, if no temptations without them ? Eight is the very law of 
 liberty : the very idea of right arises from our consciousness of being 
 able to do or not to do. 
 
 Things are simple when we get rid of that idea of real existences that
 
 147 
 
 are not Agents, i. e. free spirits. It is a, contradiction to speak of an 
 Existence, a reality in itself, [distinct from an act wh also has its own 
 reality] wh is not free ; or can act only as it is acted upon. That is the 
 law of actions, not of Beings. 
 
 A proper understanding of cause and effect must help us in the question 
 of liberty. Cause and effect is a hypothesis a substratum as it were 
 to enable us to conceive the succession of events ; as matter is one for 
 the properties, or existence, of the motions. Is not cause and effect in- 
 appropriate to the acting of a spirit in the same sort of way that matter 
 is inappropriate to Thought ? It is applying the substratum of one kind 
 of action to another. May we say that the idea of right is a mode of 
 conceiving (a substratum for) the acting of a spirit, just as ' motion ' and 
 cause and effect are modes of conceiving the act itself God's act wh 
 constitutes nature e. g. May this be an approximation. The ' ideas ' of 
 right and -wrong are absolute ; at least as inexorable as those of matter 
 or cause. I believe that they are ideas of the same sort; especially pa - 
 rallel to cause and effect : this the form in wh the thing done appears ; 
 the other the form in wh the doer, or doing, appears. On precisely the 
 same basis do these ideas rest : they are necessary ideas of the mind. 
 
 But does this in any way invalidate their authority and reality ? I 
 think not. Cause and effect tho' not real in nature are real in respect to 
 God's relation to nature. 
 
 It has been the opinion that metaphysics is otfl3ure and science diffi- 
 cult, but is it so ? Really metaphysics is simple, the simplest possible 
 of things ; being only, in truth, the attainment of simplicity. And Sci- 
 ence is easy, the easiest of things ; being in truth only simplicity 
 realized, being Common Sense. It is difficult at first to discover truth in 
 science ; impossible, except to to those who have a special adaptation 
 and organization ; and metaphysical ideas are apt to be obscure, until the 
 simplicity is seen. But this is not peculiar to science or metaphysics 
 this is universal. Science is only made difficult by inventions ; take e. g. 
 that idea that living bodies assume their special forms by some inherent 
 tendency or power. The thing is fearfully difficult to understand ; nay 
 it cannot be conceived, 'tis impossible ; contrary to the very definition 
 of matter. To try to bring the idea closely before the mind is all that 
 is needed to condemn it : it is affirming something of that wh does not 
 exist. And not only so, but then also an infinite number of such ' specific 
 tendencies ' have to be supposed. The intellect is crushed and absolutely 
 deadened by it. It is not Science. There must be distinct and simple 
 causes for all this. Science is the knowledge of them, and that is not diffi- 
 cult ; cannot be difficult, when once we know them. To see that all this is 
 motion in direction of least resistance ; matter going where there is most 
 room for it, in accordance with the impulse that it obeys : how easy 
 it is. 
 
 The infant is born because it cannot grow ; it enters on a new and 
 higher course because it has attained the limit of its former state. 
 
 In the course of my own thoughts, how, and how often, contingent 
 truths have become necessary; showing clearly the natural relation of 
 the two : contingent in my ignorance ; necessary in my knowledge. They 
 are contingent as first gathered indirectly from nature : necessary when 
 brought into union, as they must be, with the laws of mind. Contingent 
 and necessary correspond to the two halves of Science.
 
 148 
 
 This vice pervades all Bacon's works : the idea that men can improve 
 upon God's way of doing things. God's mode of advancing human 
 knowledge is manifestly to work by means of errors and excesses ; from 
 many one-sidenesses to obtain one large all-sideness ; Bacon himself 
 being an illustrious example of this very fact. This is the vibratile 
 or spiral nature of thought : but Bacon wd make each man all-sided [if 
 possible, wh it happily is not] so that he wd have a lot of little (how 
 little !) all-sidenesses from wh of course no large all-sideness could be 
 constructed. They wd not match i. e. they wd not be complementary. 
 In fact it is as if having to construct mankind, he had made them not men 
 and women but a lot of attempted hermaphrodites, who no doubt wd 
 have been barren enough. Nature must correspond with our conceptions 
 and must be made to do so [wh however is not done unless all her actual 
 facts are rigorously induced] : to imagine a universe is not to make 
 nature correspond to our conceptions. 
 
 In the name of humanity I repeat Bacon's protest against the talk of 
 the limitation of the human faculties. Again and again doubtless it will 
 be opposed to the progress of enquiry but it will ever be as false here- 
 after as it was in Bacon's day and is now. Doubtless the human faculties 
 are limited, but man will never arrive at the ultimate boundary of them ; 
 nay it may even be affirmed that his imagination of such an event is it- 
 self a demonstration that it has not taken place. What means that con- 
 sciousness of restraint, of inefficiency for discovering what we fain wd 
 know, except that we can know more ? When we have reached the 
 limits of our powers we shall sit down quite content and cease to talk 
 about it. By that sign, that time may be known ; but I think eternity 
 will be exhausted first. The limit of our faculties is a self-imposed 
 limit ; imposed i. e. by our errors. God bars our way because we are 
 going wrong. It is in truth not humility that prompts the thought but 
 vanity, the glorification of one's self at the expense of the race that is 
 of God. It is a grand thing that 7 shd have come to the limit of the 
 human faculties when I am at a loss. That the race is so much the 
 weaker, and God so much the less glorified therein, is a small matter. 
 
 The word ' necessary ' is not wrongly applied to natural and material 
 events ; they are the very things to wh it is rightly applied. Necessity 
 is a ' form of thought ' and therefore has special relation to the material 
 world. 
 
 That thought is a part of nature obeys law of direction of least re- 
 sistance, &c., opens such a field of analogy. Thus surely thought also, 
 in a figurative but true sense, is developed in a uterus [see Physical 
 Morphology] ; in such sense as it takes direction of least resistance this 
 must be so ; it is implied. And this is beautiful : is this ' uterus ' that 
 developes thought, the limit wh I have found so necessary and fruitful an 
 idea in reference to thought ? Thus the ' limit ' brings us to putting to- 
 gether the two polar forms of thought aggregating them into one higher 
 one ; i. e. developing thought. So the limit i. e. the limit in ourselves 
 is origin of our ideas of matter, motion, time, cause. Is this limit 
 the uterus ; ' the womb of Thought ' ? Science is not many alone, nor 
 one alone ; but many in one and one in many. May we not hope that 
 knowledge will advance in an accellerated ratio ; knowing that it is 
 vibratile, that neither direction is rigkt to the exclusion of the other, 
 [ Metaphysics 7 6 .
 
 149 
 
 will not the normal relations be more readily and truly maintained, 
 more quickly succeed, and be more mutually aidful ? 
 
 Instead of saying that everything not sinful is for the best, I shd say, 
 it is as God meant it : I perceive that some people do not think these are 
 the same. 
 
 Nature oheys the man who acts right, for he takes part with God. In 
 right action Nature has her origin and her existence ; to right action she 
 owes an absolute allegiance. Hence it is, sin works its own punishment : 
 there is no deception, no defect, no error in Nature's justice ; each wrong 
 however it may seem for a time to succeed is fully avenged. No criminal 
 can overrule her process by his power, no secrecy elude her vigilance.- It 
 is indeed a fearful thought : weak as an insect as man is in Nature's 
 grasp, absolutely and passively within her power, how shall he dare to 
 put himself in opposition to her. Inevitably those fatal wheels will 
 crush him : yet this he does when he does wrong, for Nature is holiness. 
 The earth's motion, fearful as it is to contemplate, hurts us not, because 
 we move with it. 
 
 The existence of a particularly difficult and manifest paradox is one of 
 the best of signs, it is the indication that the time has come for an ad- 
 vance in thought, for its development or advance to a higher grade. The 
 two opposite opinions must be put together, not by a compromise, nor by 
 holding two contradictory opinions, or making one yield, but by main- 
 taining both in their fullest and most absolute sense, and seeing how they 
 agree and are one ; i. e. by adding another element to our knowledge and 
 raising the platform or level of our thought. Strong and startling para- 
 doxes are ground for hope and not for despair they are the things wh 
 turn the course of thought when in that direction it has reached its limit : 
 turn it and elevate it, if dealt with aright, i. e. in a spirit of manful 
 boldness and earnestness, and not of cowardice and compromise and dis- 
 trust of power. In fact paradox is in mind the analogue of that condi- 
 tion wh caused development of species : two extremes two polars ; and 
 what did Nature do sit down and talk about the limitation of her 
 powers ? She took the two, each in its completeness, and putting them 
 together, educed a new and higher race : setting us there as ever an ex- 
 ample. A paradox in point of fact is male and female. Paradox is the 
 puberty, the adolescence, the nubile state of thought. Each new deve- 
 lopment of thought is as it were an infant, or family ; the sexual or polar 
 distinction is there from the first, but latent. Boys and girls grow up 
 together and we do not perceive the opposition or mutual adaptation at 
 first, but by and bye the two groups declare themselves at first in very 
 trifling differences, then more deeply, at last absolutely : then thought 
 has grown to the paradoxical state. Male and female each assert their 
 nature and will not yield one atom to the other. "We have, not many 
 views or ideas of like kinds, but two opposite kinds wh each maintain an 
 absolute and indefeasible footing, and will not be put down. At first 
 they repel each other and are shy, even quarrel and dislike ; but Nature 
 at last asserts her purposes, mysterious sympathies grow up ; each one 
 admires and respects the opposite and is drawn unconsciously towards it* 
 incomprehensible difference from itself. The magical charm overcomes 
 pride Love is established, but at first the talk is not of marriage but ol 
 friendship ; they will retain their individuality and opposition but live 
 in amity and mutual kindness and goodwill ; in short they will make a
 
 150 
 
 compromise. Short-sighted ideas; short-sighted even as mortal men. 
 You shall not have your friendship ; your touch is fatal ; it is the vortex 
 of a Charybdis upon wh you enter, wh will draw you certainly within 
 its gulf. You are not two hut one ; and one you shall become by a power 
 higher than your will. This is the nature of paradox : it is polarity, 
 and its issue is a bridal day. 
 
 In animal life, when development ensues, the creature gets into a pa- 
 radox : i. e. there are two opposite tendencies or forces with wh nothing 
 can be done but a union into one. In animal life this is done by instinct 
 polar attraction as in thought it is done by Genius. The work of 
 Genius in raising the grade of thought is the very same as that of instinct 
 raising the grade of life, and done too with as little foresight and design. 
 The instinct and the genius have no reason for what they do except that 
 the thing 'must be so of course.' It is their nature to put it right. 
 Genius .-.is love, or sympathy, as I have said ; and marries male and fe- 
 male thought : unites the law and liberty in one. For this also is mar- 
 riage ; it is the law of liberty. And this is a further insight : not only 
 is the law of right the law of liberty, but the law of love also. Law 
 and liberty in one alike are holiness and love : absolute freedom and ab- 
 solute law. And Nature, being the law of liberty, is not only holiness 
 but love. The holiness the law, the love the liberty : one in God. This 
 union is a true marriage, to be attained as man's spiritual development. 
 Male and female are holiness and love : at war now in man's moral being, 
 as are paradoxical opinions in his intellectual nature ; but they must be 
 one. Thus the progress of thought is a perpetual wedding feast ; the 
 intellectual repeats the social state of man : this is why love and mar- 
 riage are ever the sources of deepest and intensest sympathy. So is a true 
 marriage of nature and man. They are polar : thought, law ; nature, 
 liberty : truly wedded, and all the arts of life spring from the embrace. 
 All is one : the great fact of human life is the great fact of Nature's 
 life. 
 
 Genius is ever love ; poetic genius as well as scientific marrries thought 
 and nature : that is the poet's work ; so also the artist and the musician. 
 The latter perhaps most perfectly of all ; for he takes that wh is the 
 perfect type and image of nature and weds it to the soul. Thus is Ge- 
 nius one with instinct, wh ever is the operation of the same polar at- 
 traction. That is the definition of Instinct. And if instinct be polar 
 attraction, then are polar attractions instincts. Here is a link between 
 the organic and the inorganic worlds ; and another series of parallels 
 embracing all nature. Is not this the best of lights to throw on chemistry 
 chemical affinities are instincts ? a name wh indeed we do not scruple 
 to apply to vegetable tendencies and so onwards even to the motions of 
 the stars. In Life we see these polar attractions as instincts, I take it, 
 because we see wholes. Does not indeed all the peculiarity in life arise 
 from the smallness wh enables us to see the 'wholes,' and trace the con- 
 nection of many changes in one result ; and the increasing complexity of 
 vital phna in higher grades be from the increasing ' smallness ' wh gives 
 more results as one. [As the attraction of the opposite sexes is polar 
 attraction, so is not the fighting of the males of many animals polar re- 
 pulsion ?] Is it not a beautiful view of polar attractions to regard them 
 as instincts : a doing of a thing for its own sake wh has another object 
 and effect. The earth does not approach the sun in order t that it may
 
 151 
 
 become part of a well ordered system and the parent of boundless life. 
 She gravitates by instinct, and because she must. And so all affinities 
 and unions ; all are instincts subserving a higher and ulterior purpose. 
 As instinct i. e. polar attraction has heen the instrument of animal 
 development, so, surely, polar attraction i, e. instincts have been one 
 great means of the development of the inorganic world. 
 
 All human action is instinct, and must be seen so by higher beings ; 
 these intuitions and perceptions especially the things that must be so : 
 our laws and forms of thought all that is not moral. Doubtless per- 
 fectly holy men would have worked as rightly as insects : they wd have 
 conformed perfectly to the laws of nature wh are holiness. That Science 
 is instinct is a pleasant thought to me. The bird builds its nest in order 
 to have certain physical things in their proper relation according to its 
 nature, it put the things right and could give no answer why it does 
 it except that they must be so. So man in making science simply puts 
 certain physical things into right relations according to his nature ul- 
 timately there is no reason or basis for it except that ' it must be so ' ; 
 that is the ultimate appeal for truth and falsehood, it is truly an instinct, 
 a making things conformable to our own nature. Thus in truth it is 
 that the laws of nature are the laws of our own minds ; this is the case 
 just in the same way and sense as that the ' idea ' of the nest exists first 
 in the bird's instinct. The nest is not in nature but in the bird, so hu- 
 man science is not in nature but in man. [But both science and the nest 
 are very conformable to nature and indeed form part of it when they are 
 made]. Science is a thing wh has its origin altogether in the human in- 
 stincts as the nest has its origin in the bird's ; indeed it is not like, nor 
 analogous to, anything in nature there wd be no such thing without 
 man : yet also the instincts and all their results are part of nature, and 
 science is truly part of nature in that sense, as all instinctive works are. 
 And none the less is the result perfect for man, none the less natural and 
 right, because his science is in no sense or way a real copy or represent- 
 ation of the facts (any more than the nest is of nature, altho' this is so 
 in one and a very beautiful sense) but only an arrangement of them in a 
 way conformable to his nature. These laws of matter and motion, cause 
 and effect, time and space, are artificial arrangements beginning and 
 ending wholly with himself, but none the less truly does he by their 
 means rise to a perception of God's moral character, and a sense of his 
 relation to Him, Human science represents the reality of things just as 
 a bird's nest does the world. Both truly do so in one sense, but what a 
 sense ! [see the spiral form in the nest]. If science be thus the result 
 of an instinct, or a polar attraction, does it not show the polar relation 
 of nature and thought i. e. the vibration they constitute ? The instinct 
 of science is the ' attraction ' of nature for the intellect. How the con- 
 structive instincts of the bee seem to be interchangeable with its sexual 
 instincts ; substituted for them as it were. As I see that perception is 
 best regarded as an instinctive or reflex action, so I conceive the Instincts 
 [bodily and constructive] are due to and determined by the perceptions : 
 and that it is the difference of the perception that causes the difference 
 of the external or the constructive instincts of animals. 
 
 The mere passive inductions from nature are sure to be intensely hy- 
 pothetical [from putting phna before cause]. This habit surely it must
 
 152 
 
 be wh has set people so inveterately on proving everything, to wh what 
 can be said but that false theories may be proved, but true ones can only 
 be seen. A fact is not to be argued, but looked at. Has not even the 
 hindrance to science from authority been in people retaining a part of a 
 given view altho' their better knowledge has altered other parts, so they 
 retain in an inconsistent form what was consistent when first uttered. 
 No intentional submission to any man or men, but familiarity with a par- 
 ticular view making them unable to see that it is not fact but theory. 
 
 I see in reading the writings of the mathematicians, so far as I can un- 
 derstand them, that my reasoning is a mathematics. I do not go into 
 details and employ formulas, but as to the essential nature and self evi- 
 dent and demonstrative character of their reasonings, it is alike. Mine is 
 mathematics of things, where arbitrariness has been. God writes in an 
 unchanging present- ' on the instant Eternity ' before our eyes a Geo- 
 metrical Diagram ; and we deal with it in the strangest way. In the first 
 place we are apt not to perceive at all that it is one, but to regard it as 
 a series of isolated lines and figures, arbitrary, any part of wh might 
 have been otherwise without detriment to the whole ; nay we even con- 
 sider it rather irreligious to say the contrary. And these isolated lines 
 and portions of the figure we endeavor to trace out in their relations to 
 each other ; i. e. to gather from them any consistent meaning that is 
 most obvious : but making them accord as parts of one whole and tend 
 progressively to one result, does not enter our heads. "We do not feel 
 ourselves justified in insisting that each single group shall represent clear 
 geometrical principles ; we have no right, as we think, to do that, we only 
 want to know what they are, we are ' ministers and interpreters ' only of 
 nature, and whether there be any strict mathematical relations between 
 the parts we do not know. And then, stranger still, when we do find 
 out such true relations, such logical connections of things the meaning 
 of each part we straightway call them causes ; and imagine that in 
 these relations exists the power wh produces the figures between wh they 
 hold. Only that wh we cannot understand do we give God the credit of 
 doing i. e. directly : anything that is reasonable and intelligible we 
 seem to think unworthy of Him, and as soon as we have traced its rela- 
 tions to other things we sever it from His hand. But this surely is 
 simply a form of anthropomorphism ; because we consider Him to be and 
 to act like ourselves. We, acting on things only by taking part in God's 
 action, i. e. only on something that is without on a substratum in short 
 do really act primarily and secondarily ; institute chains of causes ; do 
 some things directly and others indirectly ; act ' immediately at first ' 
 and ' afterwards thro' the powers of nature ' as Newton says. But this 
 is the very sign of our imperfection ; it is the result of our creative in- 
 capacity. It is because we are man and not God that we do this, and it 
 is because the Creator is God and not man that He does not. This poor 
 fancy rests clearly upon the idea that God acts and requires to act upon 
 a substratum as we do. 
 
 I see two things in Nature ; give as it were a double solution to the 
 problem. One of them has reference to the reality, the other to the hu- 
 man perception of it. The latter is ' vibratile motion in direction of 
 least resistance ' ; the former ' God acts rightly,' or God's holy act : the 
 language of sensation translated into the language of reality, or the 
 reality deduced from, and seen in, the appearance ; rising from the phn
 
 153 
 
 to the cause : wh is the course of true science. And this last deduction 
 is the truest science ; science cannot stop short of it, it is her mission to 
 deduce causes from phna. Nor is anything in nature truly known until 
 it is thus known : till it is seen that moral action is the very being of all 
 things, Science is but on the threshold of her domain. She is busied 
 with subjective impressions, with sensations and ideas wh she professes, 
 and rightly, to despise, and has not entered on her true work wh is to 
 explore the objective reality. It must rise to spiritual facts and moral 
 deeds or it does but sport with illusions, and remains but an idle classifier 
 of sensations. What you wd say of him who thought to study optics by 
 comparing, arranging, and grouping colors unenquiring whence they arise, 
 holds true of all who trace the laws of matter and ask not what spiritual 
 fact is there. And here is a new branch of knowledge opened : the cor- 
 respondence viz. of the spiritual and moral world with nature ; the par- 
 allel I shd say, not only of Thought and nature but of character and na- 
 ture. If nature be holy action, then shall holy action be in some sense 
 nature. And we must seek to trace all things not only in the intellect 
 but in the moral sense : not only truly to understand Nature by seeing 
 her repeated in intellect, but appreciate nor by tracing her again in the 
 virtues. Then Nature shall be known. 
 
 Science is now as it was in Bacon's time, only in a different grade ; 
 the inductions of the present time need to be inductively treated as the 
 inductions of his time did. An induction is but a fact of larger size, 
 grown as it were and developed. These laws of nature are facts wh will 
 yield their laws only to a right induction. And induction of facts gives 
 true laws, or higher facts, an induction of laws gives the true axiom, or 
 relation of nature to ourselves, and this rightly interpreted gives the 
 true moral reality. Formerly speculators sought to invent laws without 
 induction of facts ; or else empirics sought merely to collect the facts 
 without using them for induction. Now the same condition exists : 
 speculators seek to invent the axiom, or fundamental conception of the 
 universe, without induction of the laws ; or empirics seek merely to col- 
 lect the laws without using them for induction. But surely the same 
 process had been gone thra' before, and people been recalled to the neces- 
 sity of induction' from sensations to learn the facts. Here the vibratile or 
 spiral element appears. The tendency to error or excess in the human 
 mind is in opposite directions in the alternate grades : within, without ; 
 within, without : each ' limit ' turns it round. The three ' turns ' of 
 philosophy compose a spiral ? May light be thrown even on Nature by 
 
 "When we come to put laws together, and interpret and compare and 
 use them as means for further knowledge, then only is it that we are 
 able to perceive how they themselves ought to be. But it is strange that 
 this should be so. The vibratile character of mental action is also indi- 
 cated by this : the induction of facts seems to tend to exclude God ; the 
 induction of laws the opposite vibration tends to bring Him back. 
 The future Science must be called surely * Intellectual Science ' rather 
 than ' Physical,' consisting of induction of laws, or mental sensations. 
 
 All science has a physical and a mental stage in the one it is mate- 
 rial, in the other dynamic. Light e. g. material and undulatory hypo- 
 thesis ; chemistry is still in the physical stage and has not yet risen to 
 the mental. Newton's epoch was astronomy rising to the mental stage.
 
 154 
 
 la not this the reason all the principles in nature are one, and every 
 advance in theory consists in seeing that a thing we have not understood 
 is the same as one we do understand viz. that there is only one principle 
 or law of causation, or. rather only one causation : and that all these ad- 
 vances must be bringing things into unity because they consist in seeing 
 one causation. The identity of causation, the reason of the oneness of 
 nature ; thus nature's oneness to us is the mode of our own mental 
 action ? I see that all things in nature are not resemblances of one 
 another, not analogies of mind ; but that they are the very same things 
 disguised and assuming other forms ; but the identity is the reality, the 
 difference is the semblance. Se the poets erer say, not one thing is 
 like another, but is that other. In Shelley, the mountain tops are not 
 'like ' forests offering incense, but they do 'offer iucense.' Is here a 
 distinction between poets ? Paul says ' Christ is the head of the Church, 
 wh is His Body.' 
 
 A right theory is merely an arrangement of facts in the direction of 
 least resistance ; wh gives a mental sensation, just as a physical sensa- 
 tion is motion in the body in direction of least resistance. 
 
 Why do we perceive God's action as motion ? that is the one mystery 
 in the spiritualist view. To answer this let us consider the conceptions 
 involved in ' motion ' ; what we really do perceive. 
 
 1. It is action. 2. It is in the direction of least resistance. 3. It is 
 vibration. Now these three elements are so conformable to the facts of 
 the case as almost to go some way towards an answer to the question. 
 1st. It is action, i. e. it is the act of a spirit. That is the definition 
 
 of action ; it involves the idea of power, i. e. spiritual agency. 
 2nd. It expresses the law of liberty : expresses i. e. holiness. Herein 
 also referring us directly to the action of a spiritual Being. ' Motion ' 
 means power and holiness how could we more rightly see God's 
 act? 
 
 But 3rd. It is Vibratile. This arises from a limit ; the limit consti- 
 tutes the vibratile character the limit being in ourselves. This 
 also agrees. "We taking our necessarily limited view of God's act, 
 see it as motion in vibratile relations to and frc : i. e. see it as 
 motion ; for if it were not vibratile it wd not be motion ; action and 
 reaction wd not be equal and opposite. And matter results from 
 vibratile motion. 
 
 Thus the elements wh enter into our idea of motion are these three ; two 
 of them having relation to God and one to ourselves : and all three per- 
 fectly appropriate to the perception by man of the divine action. The 
 real question rather is, Why do we perceive God's action as Things ? 
 That is the right word ; for no one pretends that we perceive ' matter ' 
 (the abstraction) and it avoids theory. This divides itself into the two 
 questions ; 1 the one already treated, why do we perceive God's action 
 as motion ; and 2, why do we perceive motion as Things ? This we 
 treat in the same way, by endeavoring to ascertain what ideas ' things ' 
 do really involve and how they are appropriate to motion. In the idea 
 of a thing ' I find two elements that of form and that of cohesion or 
 resistance ; the forms and the cohesion being of unlimited variety. 
 1st. Resistance, wh is due to cohesion, is a result of polar attraction 
 [see before]. But polar attraction is the attraction of the two oppo- 
 site halves of a vibration ; it is a form of motion, and arises from
 
 155 
 
 the vibratile character of motion. Eesistance .-.is a consequence 
 of motion, and so far this first and most essential element of the 
 idea of a ' thing ' is appropriate to motion. 
 2. Form also is obviously a result of motion, wh it needs no evidence 
 
 to prove and no explanation to make plain. 
 
 There appears .-. nothing in ' things ' that does not plainly flow from and 
 belong to motion. Why we perceive motion as things is because motion 
 is vibratile, and because it belongs to vibratile motion, first, incessantly 
 to subdivide itself by interference, producing thus variety ; and secondly 
 to be subject to polar attraction, producing thus cohesion and the pro- 
 perties of bodies. The essential results of vibratile motion constitute 
 things, such as we see them. Thus the conception of ' things ' is appro- 
 priate to motion : the conception of motion is appropriate to God's 
 spiritual act. Therefore I hold there is no real inappropriateness or 
 mystery in our perceiving God's act as things. God's act, motion, and 
 things, correspond with the threefold nature of man : spirit, mind, and 
 body ? Things or ' facts ' are physical or bodily sensations ; motion, or 
 the laws of nature, are mental sensations ; God's act, or the reality of 
 nature, is the spiritual sensation. It is a threefold gradation : man rises 
 from the lowest to the highest. Uninstructed man perceives in nature 
 only things, or so many isolated facts, and even these incorrectly. Sci- 
 entific man perceives in nature not only things but laws or forces working 
 in definite manners, wh produce or at least formulate the things. But 
 even these are incorrectly regarded until we learn to perceive in nature 
 not only things and laws, or bodily or mental sensations, but the funda- 
 mental reality and cause of all the phna, viz. God's right action. This 
 man can do because he is a spiritual being, and is capable of spiritual 
 sensation. God's holy action is the spirit's sensation, or perception, of 
 nature, just as facts are the bodily perception of it, and laws of science 
 the mental or intellectual percepti6n of it. 
 
 Quite parallel to this question is this ; "Why do we perceive vibrations 
 as sound or light ? the question of physical sensation ; but it appears 
 much less soluble. Also, why is it that shape or form is perceived as 
 tone and color ? Surely these sensations, sound, light, &c., are modes of 
 perception precisely parallel to the forms of thought : they are to phy- 
 sical sensation what motion and matter, time, cause and effect, vibration, 
 are to mental sensation. Is not this the true analogy for the forms of 
 thought ? Sound and light, color and harmony, are like cause and effect, 
 matter and time ; therefore not realities, but modes of action in ourselves 
 tho' produced by, and conforming to, and giving certain evidence of, ex- 
 ternal realities. We do not perceive God's action directly as things, just as 
 we do not perceive vibrations directly as sound. For ' sound ' is separated 
 as it were from vibrations, as things ' are from God's act, by the inter- 
 vention of something intermediate, viz. ' motion ' between ' God's act ' 
 and ' things ' ; and an action in ourselves (i. e. in our bodies) between 
 ' vibrations ' and sound. So that the latter question resolves itself into 
 two. (1st.) Why do vibrations cause action in our own bodies ? 
 And, (2nd.) Why do we perceive this action in ourselves as sound? 
 Observe, the ' motion ' is the action in ourselves (the mental sensation ') 
 produced by God's spiritual act. Then why we do not have a primary per- 
 ception of the spiritual or moral nature of this action does not need so 
 much explaining ; for we have not a primary perception of the vibratile
 
 156 
 
 nature of sound ; we perceive it as sound an afterwards learn to regard 
 it as vibration. The ' matter and motion ' as wh we perceive God's 
 action, when we reason about them scientifically, are the action in our- 
 selves. Here the real meaning of their laws being the laws of our own 
 minds modes or forms of thought The laws of nature are in fact only 
 a definition of motion. It is always action in ourselves that we perceive, 
 in body or mind ; i. e. either physical or mental passions : e. g. sound, 
 or the scientific idea of vibration. It is natural that action without us 
 shd produce action in us. Thus perception is no mystery if we keep the 
 idea of action before our minds as the idea : but for action we do not 
 want ' things ' but an Agent. God in fact is the one and sole logical re- 
 quisition in whatever point of view we regard the question : God and 
 our spirit. The introduction of the idea of ' real ' things only makes a 
 simple thing difficult and mysterious, indeed inconceivable. Add this, 
 that action must exist without things, not only in reason but of necessity, 
 for God must have acted before things were, in the very act of creating 
 them. 
 
 I accept the doctrine that my views are only matters of expression. 
 That is precisely the work of the Interpreter ; nor can his work be any 
 other than to express aright the facts of nature. The opening out of the 
 mind and heart, as Bacon said, is discovery. And yet this is also 
 bringing the world down to the understanding ; wh science is and must 
 be. It is both at once, the giving the laws of our mind to the world, and 
 expanding our mind to the reality of the world : both one. 
 
 There is as much reasonableness in investigating ' the law of nature ' 
 in attempting and expecting to find some common ' form ' wh shall 
 comprehend all known laws, as there was in Bacon's day, or is now, in 
 an investigation into the ' form ' or nature of heat ; the two things indeed 
 are exactly parallel. It is no more a doubtful assumption that a gene- 
 ralization is possible in the one case than in the other. The evidence 
 and the instinct are equally conclusive and intuitive in both. The ex- 
 press idea of science is to get rid of the human, or sensation element of 
 knowledge ; and .. it cannot stop when it has substituted mental sensa- 
 tions for physical sensations, but must go on, and laying aside as ele- 
 ments of its knowledge also the mental sensations, or laws of thought, 
 must see through them the spiritual reality. 
 
 The double or vibratile nature of man physical and mental a ten- 
 dency to variety and unity, is surely the reason why there must be this 
 double process in his intellectual history : things tending to variety, 
 mind to unity. Facts and theory are as body and mind, not .. opposed 
 but really one, tho' having the opposition wh exists between the two 
 halves of a vibration. The wish to confine thought to one, is like the 
 idea of separating the downward and upward motion of the pendulum, 
 and having the one without the other. The fact is each comes to an end, 
 and can only be repeated by the agency of the other. If man in his 
 science will not have this oscillation, science must cease ; it is a condition 
 of its continued existence : each form must recur in its order or the pos- 
 sibility of continued action is gone. Each is the condition of the exist- 
 ence of the opposite. So nutrition and function are a vibration and go 
 necessarily together. So discovery of facts permits theory ; theory pro- 
 duces discovery of facts. Theory is the function ; observation the nu- 
 trition : observation exists for theory. So Thought also, as well as
 
 157 
 
 Nature, is Life. Life is vibration, and therefore all is Life. 
 
 The present chimeras about the nature of things about Life and so on 
 are curiously parallel to the old ones. It will be interesting to arrange 
 them in parallel groups some day, and show that they are the same things 
 in another grade. Action through a vacuum, as attraction, is an instance. 
 But does it not prove that the real substratum the mind demand for mo- 
 tion is space and not matter ? The resistance of matter is not at all in- 
 volved as preceding motion ; for this attraction is motion ; i. e. the 
 tendency thereto, and the idea of motion is absolutely in part dissevered 
 from matter i. e. resisting matter and applied to space alone. 
 
 The advance and happy simplification of science is truly the result of 
 the labors of the preceding centuries. God loves and rewards honest 
 and patient labor even beyond our utmost hope or thought. Man's de- 
 sires, wild and extravagant as they often seem, do not equal God's 
 bounty. He has not left us to ask more than He will give. He gives more 
 than we can ask, but He will have work and patience. God's gifts out- 
 run our wishes. If we had hitherto had no light could we have wished 
 for anything so glorious as the Sun ? who of imagination so extravagant, 
 or of heart so bold, as to have wished for the Sun ? 
 
 I not only see what people mean, or may mean, in calling my views 
 ' matters of expression,' but I also perceive that it is true, I do but give 
 the right and natural expression of the facts, i. e. put them in the right 
 relation. 
 
 I perceive more clearly that in addition to Nature being motion in least 
 resistance, the original direction and amount of the motion furnish 
 matters to be regarded. Nature is truly all possible things the amount 
 and original direction of the motion being such as they are. But might 
 not these have been different, and an altogether different Nature have 
 been the result ? or as we shd say, Might not God have created an en- 
 tirely different universe ? I strongly feel not ; and that this is quite a 
 wrong mode of conceiving the case ; that the existence as a whole of 
 Nature as she is, is as much involved in God's holiness as each or any 
 part. Remember also that as motion is a [mental] ' sensation ' and not 
 a reality, so these questions respecting original direction and momentum 
 really refer to the spiritual acts wh we so conceive. It would be much 
 better, instead of saying, ' Nature is motion in direction of least resist- 
 ance,' to say that it is' motion,' wh involves all. This must be the 
 final form, but at present it wd not do, it wd convey no meaning. Surely 
 the idea of direction is inapplicable to the origin of Nature ; it supposes 
 the motion. 
 
 As remarks, those motions of the hand in drawing wh are easiest 
 
 and most pleasant, come most natural, are those wh produce the best 
 effect ; they are the most beautiful touches wh are done altogether without 
 effort : so it is also in thought, that wh is no effort, wh comes natural, is 
 truest and best. 
 
 The true view to take is that there is neither matter nor motion as 
 they appear to us at present. Some such alteration we want as that wh 
 has occurred in our view of Light, discarding the matter and taking a 
 different idea of the nature of the motion from that wh inhered in the 
 material hypothesis. Instead of a moving matter, we held light to be a 
 motion in some substance quite other than itself; so with the universe, 
 instead of holding it to be moving matter we must see it to be a ' motion ' 

 
 158 
 
 in something quite other than itself. We must abandon our present idea 
 of motion not less than that of matter. The universe thus instead of 
 being itself matter and motion wd come to be ' motion ' or rather action 
 of a different kind in something previously existing, and what is this but 
 the Divine Essence or Being? so the universe comes again to be regarded 
 as the act of God. Not as being the substance of God, but His Deed ; 
 for indeed it is no substance but only action. Like light the universe 
 has been regarded as matter and motion. It is rather a vibration strictly, 
 as I have seen this whole order of things is one vibration. But then a 
 vibration in what ? The universe a vibration a two-fold action : whence 
 and why this twofold character ? 
 
 In listening to music what an immense variety we perceive from the 
 simplest cause : how good a practical illustration of the universe. All 
 the different classes of sounds are the same action under different forms ; 
 illustrations of the different forms of force. And how unlike that wh it 
 really is music appears to us : we could almost swear that it is a thing. 
 In the widest and strictest sense indeed, as long ago noted, we perceive 
 only force. The true analogy for the universe are these Forces, light and 
 music. The universe like them is a state or action, if it were not so we 
 shd not perceive it. 
 
 Matter has been invented to create a difficulty, just as in relation to 
 planetary motions a vacuum had been ; get rid of the vacuum and the 
 planetary motions become plain get rid of matter and the universal 
 action becomes plain. The vacuum and the matter have been put in the' 
 wrong places. In truth, being no matter there can be no vacuum. 
 
 A capital analogue of a living being is a flame a thing wh has all 
 apparent properties of matter. It looks material, has shape and form, 
 it affects powerfully all our senses ; we can move it, can place it in cus- 
 tody, it resists us most powerfully, indeed destroying most things that 
 resist it. Yet it is no thing ; it is merely a result and presentation of 
 action and of divergent action produced by approx : in one sense it is 
 Life ; justly it might be called a living being. And such as it is, is the 
 universe : no thing, but result and presentation of action : justly to be 
 called Life ; and as truly as aught else a Living Being. 
 
 In short, the fact that the mind in its own action always [as if by its 
 very nature] produces matter and its laws, is a proof that it is a part of 
 the material creation. It is in fact the materiality of the mind that pro- 
 duces the materiality of the universe. The mind is in the same sense 
 matter and motion as the universe is ; that is to say neither of them are 
 BO. [But the mind is not the spirit : by no means is the moral nature 
 part of the material universe, but something very different]. The mind 
 at once creates and obeys the ' laws of matter,' because it is itself part 
 of those laws, i. e. part of God's one act wh constitutes them. But the 
 spirit neither knows nor obeys those laws. It acts as God acts ; and 
 produces Right and wrong, holiness and sin. The mind being thus part 
 of the material universe, when it appears to us of course appears as part 
 of it ; i. e. as brain : but in truth it is our minds that give to mind this 
 material appearance. 
 
 Now in the laws of brain are to be found all the laws of matter ; what 
 
 we see in the universe is that wh occurs in the brain. Hence it is that 
 
 the universe is most truly viewed as a living whole, because the brain is 
 
 such. Its laws are the laws of life, because such are the laws of brain. 
 
 I Matter, d.
 
 159. 
 
 Thus it is that all nature appears to be the succession of divergent and 
 approx action, because all action in brain is such. The mind makes the 
 universe what it is. Thus motion in direction of least resistance, and 
 turned at right angles, and every law of matter in short, is such because 
 it is the law of the brain. But in truth these laws are laws of the brain 
 only as they are the laws of all other matter ; because they are the laws 
 of the mind. The mind is the source of them. That is how God created 
 the universe as we conceive it, by creating the mind with these laws. 
 Clearly that is all that was necessary so far as we are concerned, as me- 
 taphysicians proved long ago ; and now facts and induction prove that it 
 is all that is. Not that the mind is all ; God's action is, of which the 
 mind is part. The material world is not a series of ' illusions,' but of 
 facts, that is of Deeds. We may say these mechanical laws, in wh all 
 Nature consists, are in the same sense laws of the universe and of the 
 mind ; and that .*. if the mind be not material so neither can we assert 
 the universe to be. 
 
 The mind or intellect, in even its most intellectual operations, obeys 
 the very same laws as matter ; or rather as all material laws resolve 
 themselves into one, viz. that of motion in least resistance, so this is the 
 Law that intellectual operations obey, wh they do very manifestly as any 
 one will see who will closely watch his own thought [it has its polar at- 
 tractions also, &c.]. To say that the mind has not the properties of 
 matter weight, resistance, &c., is to speak without meaning ; for these 
 are not properties of matter but forms or results of action [or motion, if 
 that term shd be used]. In truth, if we analyze the case it will appear 
 that what we call material properties belong not to the external world but 
 to the mind, i. e. they have no existence save in the conception, or the 
 sensation. The materiality of the external world has its origin in the mind. 
 
 It is this view of the relation between the world .and the mind that 
 enables us to comprehend the true poetry of the universe. Man must 
 see himself, his own nature, reflected everywhere in nature because the 
 laws and properties of nature are first but a reflection of himself. Thus 
 e. g. polar attraction must precisely represent sexual attraction, or love, 
 because the very facts of polar attraction are but an external represent- 
 ation of the mind's own conscious attraction. The two must be one, 
 because the external is only a reflection in one sense a re-creation of 
 the internal. The internal conscious law or action makes the external 
 unconscious one. And so of all other natural laws or facts : they appear 
 to us in external unconscious nature, because they exist in our own con- 
 scious minds. The laws of nature are an outness given to the laws or 
 actions of our own minds, just as the objects of nature (so far as we 
 know them) are an outness given to our own sensations. 
 
 The brain being so wonderfully built up by the body, each part of the 
 brain by that part of the body with wh it is in special relation it is 
 not so so difficult to conceive the exact and marvellous mutual adaptation 
 between the two. Also that thought should obey the bodily or material 
 laws : and that the thinking agent should appear to us as matter. The 
 difficulty of conceiving matter thinking vanishes when we consider that 
 matter is but ' a mode of thought ' as it were. The thinking, perceiving 
 Being is a creation of God ; as it thinks and perceives so does it produce 
 material phna motion in least resistance, polar attraction, &c. : hence 
 form, substance, cohesion, resistance : these things are the result of our
 
 160 
 
 laws of thought. The properties of matter cohesion, resistance, color, 
 weight, being results of action (motion as we call it) under the laws of 
 nature, the matter wh consists in them and is nothing else is clearly an 
 abstraction : the word matter is an abstract term by wh we express gen- 
 eralized phna wh are only forms or results of action. The action /. is 
 the Thing, the real existence ; the particular ' matters ' are ideas general- 
 ized therefrom. This is the chain of Creation : God's action, producing 
 action in a conscious being, becomes to that being the result of such con- 
 scious action, according to the laws not of matter (wh wd be an absurdity) 
 but of mind ; mind being only a term for such conscious action according 
 to the universal laws. Hence it is that the true power of discovering 
 the laws of nature lies in acquaintance with the laws of mind ; it is me- 
 taphysical power, not acquaintance with phna. 
 
 The harmony wh this view of matter introduces into nature is delight- 
 ful. This is why all nature seems to us to be subject to law, while it is 
 in truth the absolutely free unfettered immediate act of Deity : the laws 
 are in ourselves. It is the laws of our minds that we perceive without 
 ourselves, as it is the sensations of our own minds that we perceive 
 without ourselves when we perceive material objects. Hence all nature 
 is subject not only to law, but it has and must have one law, as our minds 
 have and can have only one. Hence we being living, the universe mus t 
 be living too ; and all the laws of nature must be the laws of life, as I 
 have seen them to be. God acts ; and one part of this Divine action is 
 the creation of conscious beings. These conscious beings perceiving more 
 or less the Divine action, find in the results of this action facts, wh be- 
 cause external to them, appear to them as matter and motion. The actual 
 externality is the cause of the apparent materiality. To God, to whom 
 nothing is external, nothing can be material. But the reality of things is 
 as they are to God. Is it not beautiful that God's action thus must ap- 
 pear to the conscious creatures He has made, as an Universe of Things ? 
 
 In dealing intellectually with ' material ' or physical things with sci- 
 ence keep the brain free from the influence of the spirit. In dealing 
 with spiritual moral or religious things, keep the spirit free from the 
 influence of the brain. For want of this is it not that man has come to 
 invent matter and its properties ; and to doubt about religion. But the 
 religious difficulty has been first got over, and because of the moral ne- 
 cessity laid upon man to get over it. The reality of matter and the non- 
 existence of spirit or virtue are one proposition : they are the converse of 
 each other. Undoubtedly there is not both matter and spirit. 
 
 What real existence can that be, the laws of wh are best investigated 
 on the supposition that it does not exist ? 
 
 The process of intellectual development and action is also in musical 
 form advances as a fugue and by octaves. Thus arises what I have so 
 often noted, the striking deficiencies as a rule, of men of genius ; they 
 are less developed inform because they commence new octaves. They 
 are ' children ' in those things in wh others excel and are men ; but they 
 have faculties and relations altogether above the sphere of the others. 
 Thus there are no mountains in this world without valleys ; when Nature 
 makes a great advance in order or rank, she retrogrades in form. Each 
 ' tonic ' man produces his own, produces, that is, an epoch and gives his 
 name to it : after him come the successive notes generations of men
 
 161 
 
 wh belong to him, constitute his octave : then the octave of him or re- 
 petition of himself on another scale. Can each such mental octave be 
 traced in its seven notes ? 
 
 Berkeley's argument on matter seems to fail in one respect, viz. that he 
 regards external objects as the action of God upon the mind or spirit. The 
 true view is that they are the absolute action of God, altogether indepen- 
 dent of any percipient. By this simple view it seems to me that all ob- 
 jections are removed. Of this Divine action our minds are a part; not 
 our spirits, wh are active beings. The essential idea of being indeed is 
 that active power wh we call the attribute of the ' spirit.' This, or free 
 will is the essential mystery ef existence. Existence is spiritual all 
 existences are active, i. e. spirits, 
 
 In denying matter nothing is denied but a hypothesis. The forces or 
 actions wh are perceived as things remain as they were. They are the 
 Theorists who assume something that they do not perceive and that cannot 
 be perceived, nay not even conceived. Having the action, wh is the ob- 
 ject of sensation and of thought, why shd we go beyond ? Having God's 
 action, how can we go beyond ? what marvellous phna are they for wh 
 God's act does not suffice, or if this be not sufficient what can be added 
 thereto but an eternal matter ; wh then does but exclude the Deity, and 
 take His place : removing in the change not mystery, but love and 
 justice, joy and hope. 
 
 The problem of free will is the problem of existence. To ACT is 
 one with To BE. 
 
 It is an absurd idea to rest in mechanical forces ; as if an act could 
 act. 
 
 The mystery of the union of the spirit with a body disappears under 
 this method of viewing nature. It is simply that an active being finds 
 itself surrounded by God's action, and of course one portion as it were 
 of God's action in immediate relation with itself. May we not also say 
 that not only is the problem of free will one with the problem of existence, 
 but the problem of consciousness also ? All existences are conscious, 
 moral, i. e. active Beings : these powers constitute the very idea of ex- 
 istence ; to see them is the one thing that has to be done in seeing the 
 universe. And tho' this is a task beyond our power, still it leaves upon 
 the mind no sense of incongruity ; it produces no feeling of astonishment 
 as of a thing difficult to conceive. Of all things that might exist, how 
 natural that conscious active beings should be the one. We feel disposed 
 to say, of course it is and must be so, and to wonder that we should ever 
 have thought otherwise. But by this consciousness I do not mean sensi- 
 tiveness and capacity for thought such as beasts have. At present I 
 think they must be parts of that divine action wh we call matter. I 
 speak only of that true consciousness or sense of Being and individual- 
 ization in wh man, as we may be very sure, differs not less from the 
 animal creation than in his moral capacity and power of acting. 
 
 Men think that God first made matter and then put it into action, just 
 as ' men of talent ' write a book with a moral, or music with a meaning : 
 forgetting that men who are truly great are above this twofold way of 
 doing one thing a true poet or musician makes his work and his meaning 
 one. 
 
 That matter has no real existence becomes more and more demonstra- 
 tive. See Whewell's treatment of the Idea of Substance ' (Phil. p. 408) 
 
 H
 
 162 
 
 where he clearly shows that it is only an idea, like time, space, cause, 
 resemblance, &c. In fact substance by his showing is an attribute or 
 form. But apart from this take the very criterion of matter, i. e. weight, 
 what is this but a tendency to move ? or take its resistance, what is this 
 also but static motion ? In fact, substance or matter seems to spring out 
 of statics or resistance. No matter till passive or static resistance has 
 arisen ; e. g. in the form of cohesion, or weight, wh may be regarded as 
 tendency thereto : but static resistance arises from dynamic, or opposite 
 motions : .'. no matter until after motion matter is an effect of motion. 
 Not motion a property of matter, but matter an attribute of motion. 
 [Can we have two opposite motions in same matter ?] Hence it is of 
 course that to speak of motion is to speak of matter also indeed, in sci- 
 ence matter is best left out : we might say, I think, to reason right, it 
 must be left out. The reason the idea of matter is unavoidable by us is 
 because we only see motion under resistance; and .-. only under those 
 conditions in wh matter has become its attribute : the matter arises with 
 the resistance. [Force is a correlative with matter]. Hence onr world 
 [our conception] is at once matter and motion ; these are identical pro- 
 positions or ideas. There wd surely be no difficulty in practically re- 
 garding weight simply as tendency to motion. All the properties of 
 matter, except extension, are the result of motion and resistance ; i. e. 
 of two opposed motions, or probably of one motion becoming two opposed 
 ones. And with extension alone, matter is the same as space. Two mo- 
 tions resisting one another in same matter [interference of vibrations] 
 shows that resistance does not imply matter ; the matter is absolutely in- 
 different, it bears the same relation to each motion. 
 
 For attaining an idea of a vibration [wh I find the fundamental idea 
 of nature] the thing to do is to separate the idea of motion from matter, 
 to conceive of a progressive motion without progress of the matter. This 
 is supposed to be a difficulty, but it is not really so difficult ; nothing is 
 more natural for the mind than to drop the idea of matter. And ' inter- 
 ference ' the origin of all things makes the same demand upon us ; to 
 lay aside matter and think only of motion. It is two motions alone that 
 interfere ; the matter is entirely left out ; and indeed as it is represented 
 two motions in one particle plays an impossible part. 
 
 The arguments for infinite divisibility of matter are arguments against 
 matter, and those holding it are non-materialists without knowing it. 
 And in a similar way the arguments that cause and effect are synchronous 
 and not successive, are in truth arguments against the existence of time, 
 and doubtless they are valid arguments. As a reason for not believing 
 in matter it is quite sufficient to say with Newton, ' Hypotheses non 
 fingo.' The matter- theory is the hypothesis; viz. that all that^we per- 
 ceive is ' properties of a substratum,' wh is inference only. I assert that 
 what we perceive is that wh really exists, viz. action ; and being action 
 therefore spiritual by the very definition, ' action ' applying only to 
 spirit. 
 
 We perceive shadows as things : we not only see them, to all appear- 
 ance solid things, more material often to the eye than the things wh 
 cause them : but we also feel them ; viz. we feel coldness where they 
 are : a shadow may be of a distinctly different temperature from the sur- 
 rounding sunshine. Nay, a shadow in the same sense may act ; matter 
 removed from the sun's rays into a shadow often undergoes chem change.
 
 163 
 
 Here is all the evidence for a shadow being a material thing that it is 
 possible to have for the existence of matter at all. "We see it, and feel 
 it, and it acts chemically ; and yet it is nothing but an ' absence 
 of action.' 
 
 What a strange idea to have recourse to, as soon as a real matter is re- 
 jected, that the universe is a ' picture, painted by God,' or wh is similar, 
 ' action of God upon the mind ' ; in each case an illusion ; a special 
 thing done for that special result. How much more simple that it is an 
 absolute and other-objected act of God, wh we perceive because it is 
 really existing and naturally to be perceived. If we have an act of God 
 we do not want the picture. God does some Act for His own infinite 
 purposes, and that little of it into wh we come in relation is the universe 
 to us. This is an instructive instance of the mode in wh the human 
 mind goes wrong ; viz. of ' inventing ' by supposing too much ; the result 
 of wh is ever that we have too little. ' God's act upon the mind ' said 
 Berkeley ; ' God acts and paints a picture,' says Emerson : too much and 
 ..too little, both. "Why could they not say ' God acts ' and stop? 
 
 Science, to be a true science, must be metaphysical ; metaphysics having 
 to do with ' ideas ' has precisely to do with material phna ; and I expect 
 that the confusion wh has existed in metaphysics has arisen chiefly, from 
 trying to think of an idea, viz. matter, as a real existence. Reality is 
 morals. Of all conceptions, right and wrong are the truest and clearest, 
 and have the deepest basis in fact. 
 
 The true way of putting the question as to the real existence of 
 matter is to forestall it. It ought never to arise. Matter is an ' idea,' 
 and so must remain. If any one affirm it to be a real existence, merely 
 point out that he is confounding things that differ ; that such a transfer- 
 ence of ideas to ' things ' is useless, mischievous, and impossible. An 
 idea is what we want in that place. "We do not wish to get rid of matter, 
 as matter, i. e. as an idea; it is a real idea, and a most essential one : 
 we can no more deny it than we can deny ' time.' The ' idea of matter ' 
 is all right ; that indeed is just the thing that is right about it ; and we 
 are right in respect to it so long as we keep to the ' idea.' We may turn 
 round to the materialists and say to them that ' matter is one of the me- 
 taphysical entities,' as they say of the vital force. Let them define it, 
 nay let them even say wh we can of the vital force what it does. 
 
 Nature .-.is not made for us in that low and paltry sense ; not for our 
 education and delight. We are not children who want toys, we are men 
 capable and worthy to take a part in activities that stretch beyond our- 
 selves. Nature delights and profits us so because its objects are so large. 
 We are not in a nursery, nor even in a school, but in the broad fields of 
 life, participant with God in deeds of infinite significance and bearing. 
 We are a little part of one great drama, not being where we are for our- 
 selves, nor indeed for ourselves being at all, but as subordinate agents 
 doing our part to complete the grand design. This glorifies us, elevates 
 the universe, sanctions and ennobles sympathy with nature. It is with 
 God that our hearts beat in unison when they throb beneath her influ- 
 ences, it is in His infinite designs that we share a part when, one with 
 nature, we also patiently and gently do and receive our allotted portion. 
 That we love the expansion, the flowing out from personal to infinite 
 ends this is what nature does for man. It is this being part of God's 
 great action, subserving .. the best and highest ends, that gives the
 
 164 
 
 nobleness to human life, and makes all that hefalls us (without sin) 
 right, good and dignified. Nothing is noble unless it serves. Our life 
 serves also, and an end infinitely beyond ourselves. "We are of use to 
 God. These our trials, misfortunes, weaknesses, mistakes, part of the 
 great harmony wherewith His eternity is vocal, and whereto the highest 
 spirits listen with awed and delighted wonder. Therefore each poorest, 
 weakest, most deficient man shd look up and rejoice to be what he is. 
 More beautiful and satisfactory this than to regard all things merely as 
 means of our own development wh yet is not excluded, for God's general 
 laws are special deeds. Serviceable to God are we so : in that infirmity, 
 in that distress, blinded by tears, bowed down with cares ; struggling, 
 yielding, despairing ; so God uses ns. This world of ours and this our 
 human life are too near our eye for us to see them in their true propor- 
 tions. The personal consolations of religion, such as arise from thoughts 
 of heaven, the transient nature of trial, &c., need to be elevated and 
 sanctified by such thoughts as this, that our sufferings are part of the 
 excellence of the universe. 
 
 Doubtless our faculties are limited, yet I venture to be very sure that 
 there is nothing in matter beyond them ; they are on a par with that . If 
 there be a real matter and material world the distinction of God's action 
 into primary and secondary is unavoidable ; for then there must have 
 been a difference between the first creation of matter and its subsequent 
 changes, and so on. This is why it is that good men have clung to the 
 doctrine of special creations. to have as much of God as possible, to 
 break the chain of second causes wherever there was a chance : a true 
 instinct, good right feeling. Stand up, oh heart, and yield not an inch 
 of thy rightful territory to the usurping intellect. Hold fast to God in 
 spite of logic, and yet not quite blindly. Be not torn from thy grasp 
 upon the skirts of His garments by any wrench of atheistic hypothesis 
 that seeks only to hurl thee into utter darkness, but refuse not to let thy 
 hands be gently unclasped by that loving and pious philosophy that seeks 
 to draw thee from the feet of God only to place thee on His- bosom. 
 Trustfully, tho' tremblingly let go the robe, and thou shalt rest upon the 
 Heart, and clasp the very living soul of God. Dreadful ! Laws that act 
 generally for good ! the words thrill me with horror as I write them. 
 
 This invention of real matter has put the human mind all wrong. 
 Under its influence intellectual humanity is like an animal placed in un- 
 natural circumstances, where its instincts no longer avail, and the 
 things it does most rightly and according to its nature lead to the worst 
 effects. And so its very instincts are modified, and it does things quite 
 contrary to its natural instincts to accommodate itself to its altered cir- 
 cumstances. So on this real-matter hypothesis all the operations of the 
 intellect are perverted. The truest reasoning conducts to the most in- 
 tolerable consequences, and the best men do the most violence to the 
 ' intellectual ' instincts in order to attain morally the best results they 
 act w/maturally in order to secure a natural end. This is the meaning, 
 the justification, nay the legitimate praise of these scientific falsities 
 maintained for religious ends. They were not right or natural in them- 
 selves, but right under the circumstances : the modifications of instinct 
 under unnatural conditions. Put the conditions right, and the natural 
 instinct will lead to right ends. The common error is the ' altered con- 
 dition ' ; the opposite opinions are the unaltered instinct working right
 
 165 
 
 to a wrong result, and the modified instinct working unnaturally but to 
 a better resxilt. May not even the physical development of the animal 
 world have been from action of instincts under altered circumstances ? 
 leading perhaps to opposite processes, and in the end to union of two. 
 And here is an analogy : the opposite opinions are the polar opinions, wh 
 put together make truth ; the various intermediate opinions are results 
 of partial mixtures, i. e. partial interferences ; that is, tones or colors, or 
 chemicities. Here another link between the physical and mental world : 
 surely the various chemical substances represent the various forms of 
 opinion. 
 
 Each new grade of thought is from two polar thoughts of lower grade. 
 Thought developes as Nature does, by union of oppposites. For the 
 law is the downward motion, and liberty the upward. Thought is vi- 
 bration ; and there must be in the development and history of mind the 
 analogues of all nature ; each force or grade has its correspondent. I 
 half believe, and hope, that mine is the vital stage ; it is arrived at too 
 thro' life. In each epoch opinions divide into polar forms : two forms of 
 one mental vibration. These reach their limit ; the time for develop- 
 ment comes. Then the Genius is born : the two opposite mental actions 
 are put together, and a new grade of thought is originated. Men's in- 
 stincts do it, yet it is done by absolute law. So in the development of 
 the animal world, instincts probably were the agents, and yet all was 
 absolute law. 
 
 Thought, as vibration, is two equal and opposite motions each gene- 
 rating the other, and by the bye, resulting in a third wh embraces both. 
 On a large scale we see this vibratile character in the opposition of ancient 
 and modern philosophy : and in the successive grades of thought, is 
 one type ; an essential identity and invariable hornologies. In fact in the 
 mutual relations of the animal kingdom is a pattern for the progress of 
 thought ; no violent transitions, but ever a retention in abortive forms of 
 previous elements not now useful. From the * common error ' wh pro- 
 duces the polar manifestation of thought comes the apparent opposition' 
 of heart and intellect. 
 
 The source of error in man must be in the spirit, i. e. must be moral ; 
 matter cannot go wrong. Human error, so far as it is in excess, must own 
 only a spiritual cause. The revolution of the planets is a good illustra- 
 tion : We might say, why does the planet move all towards the sun in 
 one half of its course, and all away from it in the other ? pointing to 
 this as a wrongness. But that is the very Tightness : so from each arises 
 again the opposite. The first metaphysical stage produced the experi- 
 mental ; the experimental now renders possible another metaphysical. 
 Thus thought is like life : metaphysics and experimental science make 
 up a vibration as the chemical and vital action do in a living body. The 
 male, or metaphysical, not attaining its goal, runs on into the female or 
 experimental, and so on ; and so it shall go on in ever larger ellipses. 
 This is the diminishing eccentricity of the planet's orbit the change 
 being in each case due to the relations of the two forces in respect to the 
 motion to the aphelion, i. e. the difference in each deductive period due 
 to the previous experimental ; or perhaps the first historical deductive 
 period was not the first, many might have preceded it, and perhaps many 
 between it and the present. 
 
 I think the real matter must be a remnant of the old theory of real
 
 166 
 
 ideas. At first in almost every science a real-matter is invented ; as for 
 light, for electricity, for heat, and for life in shape of animal spirits, 
 vital fluids, &c. Chemistry is still in the same condition. Banish the 
 idea of real-matter from the domain of chemistry, and its dominion is at 
 an end. And does not Thonght in its progress present itself in forms 
 corresponding with those of the subdivisions of matter, but conversely ? 
 the/rsf stage of thought being the vital, when everything appeared 
 living and acting, and there were endless ' realities ' based only on ideas ? 
 Nature is a Divine act, passing thro' all its various grades to man : then 
 becoming thought, and passing up again, thro' vast grades more or less 
 [in idea] removed from him, but gradually rising to God's Hand again. 
 Thought rises up from matter and motion to God's act, just as God's act 
 flows down, apparently, into the same. The natural and the mental 
 world thus correspond, being each a polar half of the same vibration : 
 the world, the variety or liberty : Thought the unity or law. ' Mature 
 is the Bride of the soul.' 
 
 I think here is a proof of the need of a revelation, to give us a certain 
 assurance that God hates sin ; wh otherwise indeed we might know, and 
 yet but obscurely and half doubtingly, because all is right : how could 
 we knoiv that that also was not as He made it and .-. right also ? 
 
 As advance of Thought, or Science, consists in the putting together of 
 opposites, so Genius of course is large sympathy. As the material and 
 mental worlds are two halves of one vibration, so surely are the physical 
 and mental part of each man polar in the same sense ? Do not mind 
 and body make up one vibration ? hence their correspondence. And 
 further, matter and mind being the two halves of one vibration, where- 
 ever there is matter there is also mind, one cannot be affirmed without 
 the other. 
 
 As the human spirit finds himself in relation with a certain part of 
 God's [downward] action wh is his body, so also with a certain part of 
 God r s [upward] action wh is his mind. Mind and body bear the same 
 Delation to him ; are equally he and not he. He uses both. So we are 
 conscious that our mind grows and acts involuntarily, as our bodies also ; 
 it does what u-e do not do. Animals are body and mind including sen- 
 Bation, perception, thought, &c. but without a spirit ; i. e. animals are 
 not Beings, but God's action. The downward half of God's [vibratile] 
 action we see as motion, and invent the substratum of ' matter ' ; the 
 upward half we see as thought, and invent substratum of ' mind ' as a 
 material moving substance parallel to an immaterial thinking substance. 
 Motion and thought are a vibration in the form of the nutrition and 
 function of the brain. To see Nature as an act puts so much right, e. g. 
 there can then be no doubt about our own spiritual existence, for we feel 
 that we are real existences ; persons, and not impersonal acts. Being is 
 personality, i. e. spirituality : Being is moral Being. Nothing is that 
 does not act : the universe consists of Acts and Agents. I think in some 
 relation to this view -our spirits in connection with God's spiritual action 
 the union of law and liberty in respect to free action will be found. 
 
 Is not the right conception of matter easy ? God must act to create 
 matter, He must still act to maintain it : thus on each view God is acting. 
 But if God is acting what more do we want ? what so natural for us to 
 perceive as God's act, we and He alike being spirits ? We have only to 
 step when we have enough. Add to this that matter is only a substratum
 
 167 
 
 supplied by the mind for action. Why has this simple view been 
 rejected ? I answer 
 
 (1) Men must be in error more or less. 
 
 (2) The errors are right ; play their appointed part. 
 
 (3) The view has been mis represented by those who advocated it : it 
 
 having been made to appear that the external world on that 
 view was really a sham and an illusion, than wh nothing can 
 be more unjust. As an act of God it has a significance it can 
 never have as mere ' matter.' 
 
 [Aug. 1869. The question is, why do we perceive God's act as things ?] 
 This dispute as to 'matter' presents the universal question in the 
 universal shape. There is the true result the real external world by 
 false process, viz. that of inventing a 'real-matter.' There is the true 
 process with false result ; viz. denial of real matter leading to denial of 
 real external world. What is the common error ? 
 
 It is clear that Thought is God's act : mind like matter is a substra- 
 tum. But God's act is one ; .-. mind is one with nature ; .-. vibration. 
 That wh proceeds from God must return to Him. Thought is nature re- 
 turning to God. 
 
 How instructive are those words ' fact ' and ' hypothesis.' They indi- 
 cate that nature is an act, and matter no reality. Fact, a thing done, 
 reality : hypothesis, substratum ; the very thing that matter is : it is 
 exactly a hypothesis, the very definition of the term. That opposition 
 of fact and hypothesis is the opposition of act and matter an instance 
 of common language being right. The point one wants to know most, 
 here, is why we so necessarily invent a substratum ? but this is best en- 
 quired into in respect to such things as are best understood ; e. g. light, 
 electricity, heat, &c., where a substratum was always first invented. It 
 is the same for the substratum of nature, but can be better traced out : 
 why for all the ' forces ' was a real matter first supposed ? 
 
 The change of forces takes place in two opposite modes ; motion be- 
 comes smaller, dividing ; or it becomes larger, two uniting into one ; as 
 heat becoming light, or light becoming heat. The former the development 
 of matter ; the development of thought is the inverse ; thought developes 
 from smaller to larger, by two being brought into one. Have not these 
 opposite modes of development of matter and mind some relation to the 
 ' opposite ' inductive and deductive methods ? Thought is the function 
 of nature. Induction is divergent ; deduction approx. The inductive 
 period represents nature ; the deductive, thought. Thus the physical 
 world went on developing till man was perfected. Now the opposite 
 action is taking place : no more development of nature, but opposite de- 
 velopment of thought. 
 
 Nature must as it wero return to God or it wd be independent. Man's 
 thought is the offering up of and consecration of the world to God. But 
 this is only one small and partial vibration ; the whole universe is the 
 same. In the form of conscious appreciation the universe as a whole 
 also, as in each part, returns to God. 
 
 The inductive and deductive philosophical periods are polar motions ; 
 in opposite directions, and therefore by repetition, not exactly cor- 
 responding, make up a spiral. But this cannot be seen while only two 
 such motions are regarded, there it looks merely like opposition and in- 
 consistency, and as if one being right the other must be wrong. 80
 
 168 
 
 while only the present epoch and the preceding were regarded it seemed 
 as if the former was wrong and the present right ; but now that a third 
 period dawns, the true relation of all the preceding becomes apparent ; 
 and surely there have been many such periods before. Motion is not 
 one chain let down from God's hand and returning simply; but one be- 
 coming many, and each and all returning together. The arteries and 
 veins in their relation to the heart more nearly represent it. The de- 
 ductive period succeeds again by virtue of the mind's native tendency 
 to abstract truth when the momentum wh has produced the inductive 
 action has exhausted itself when the pendulum has risen as high as the 
 momentum will carry it. 
 
 Thought gravitates towards abstract truth or unity. That is, so to 
 speak, the mind's natural tendency and does not need to be accounted 
 for in the same sense as the inductive activity. But it is the question 
 ivhence this gravitation of the mind to truth why does thought thus 
 tend to unity? It is no more a primary fact than gravitation. As 
 God's one act becomes the variety of nature, so thought brings back the 
 variety of nature to God's one act. 
 
 Thought tends to unity as nature to variety, it is the equal and oppo- 
 site motion ; and thought never tends to variety save by impulse of op- 
 posite, wh is well seen even in each man, who always collects facts in 
 obedience to some theory or hypothesis even the most rigid experi- 
 menters. And the great author of induction saw and recognized this 
 law : induction unless produced by deduction is unnatural and vain. 
 [How this is true in my own experience.] The resistance wh causes 
 thought thus to vibrate is human ignorance or error, something that de- 
 flects the motion from the truth. Perfect truth wd forbid all vibration ; 
 if thought at first deductively attained truth the wd be no induction ; a 
 motion of approx, completed, does not give a strict vibration, but a de- 
 velopment. [In this succession of deductive and inductive periods, each 
 different, lies the analogy to the diminishing eccentricity of the earth's 
 orbit.] But of course all approx action in nature, altho' appearing first 
 to us, is really contingent upon a primary divergent action, so all de- 
 ductive mental action is consequent upon a primary induction. 
 
 Is not the true form of Descartes' axiom, ' Ago ergo ego,' based on 
 action not on thought. 
 
 asks, How can an idea attract or be attracted ? I replied, that 
 
 was asking how we come to perceive God's act as matter, wh I do not 
 know. But I might reply that attraction also is an idea ; how could 
 anything but an idea be attracted or attract ? How can a vibration be 
 colored, &c. ? It is the law of all our perceptions, and must be, that 
 we never perceive the reality : we perceive the effect upon us, and must 
 distinguish between the impression and its cause. 
 
 Not only is it necessary to lay aside the idea of a real Time before we 
 can see the relation of nature to God as one present act [being no time, 
 there can be no chain of second causes] but even many of our own ideas 
 require us to remember it is a form of thought alone. Thus with refer- 
 ence to the relation of man to nature ; it is simply this : the human 
 spirit is in relation to God's action, i. e. necessarily to both forms, matter 
 and mind with each half of the vibration, so far as its limited sphere 
 exists and man came into existence only when nature was fully 
 developed, because that is the very idea of the vibratile act itself; man's 
 [Matter, x.
 
 169 
 
 existence indicates as it were the turning point ; the end of matter, the 
 beginning of Thought. The relation is one belonging to the nature of 
 things ; it is not really a relation of time at all, but of the nature of vi- 
 bratile action, yet this does not at all weaken the force of the thoughts 
 relating to the preparation of the world for man. 
 
 He who wd go right in Science must abstain from inventing that is 
 the first and great commandment. And above all things he must abstain 
 from inventing a real matter, of wh neither the senses nor the intellect 
 know anything : wh body, soul and spirit alike disclaim. The wrong- 
 ness of our thought lies in the false view of matter ; we can no more 
 leave that and put it right than we can mend a broken leg without union 
 of the bones. Every child must understand it, and fortunately every 
 child can ; all that is needed is not to teach them wrong : they will never 
 invent matter if they are not taught to do so. Especially it is odd that 
 people shd have transferred resistance wh is a form of motion to 
 matter wh ' logically ' precedes motion. The true conception of matter 
 as a substratum for motion excludes resistance : and this matter surely 
 wd be space. Do not the puzzles about matter become simple if it be 
 remembered that matter is an abstraction (an idea). What perplexes is 
 shifting the meaning of the word and making it stand for a real thing. 
 Thus e. g. with regard to the infinite divisibility of matter : matter and 
 infinite divisibility being both abstractions, or ideas, they go perfectly 
 well together : of course matter is infinitely divisible, that is the right 
 relation of the ideas. All the objections arise from the objector sup- 
 posing himself to be dividing a real thing. No one said that things are 
 infinitely divisible. 
 
 Berkeley seems to have confounded the mind with the spirit : there is 
 no mind for God to act upon, that being part of God's action. It is the 
 spirit or ' Man ' that is in relation with God's act : the mind is like the 
 body, and is acted upon truly, and truly of course by God, but by means 
 of things. God acts upon the spirit directly, and His act constitutes 
 alike physical and mental phna : nature and thought. 
 
 Leaving speculations let us look at facts. When we say we perceive 
 a thing, we mean, that the thing said to be perceived excites an action 
 in us of wh we are conscious. Take any one of our senses, sight and 
 hearing e. g. Now that wh is true of all perceptions must of course be 
 true of perception as a whole. Thus it is only action that can produce 
 action ; it is an external action wh is the cause of the action in ourselves. 
 The action in ourselves of course depends upon our own constitution : it 
 is in fact the function of the brain ; and to it .-. all the deductions con- 
 cerning function are applicable ; viz that it is caused by the action wh 
 the vital action has restrained, and that the external action is not the 
 determining cause but only the stimulus ; .. not like or even necessarily 
 proportionate. Everything about all our functions is determined by that 
 wh is within not that wh is without, except in a very secondary sense. 
 Thus also a new idea suggests itself about the kind of action that con- 
 stitutes perception and thought, &c. : it is the action wh the vital action 
 has restrained ; it is the life or vital action wh immediately repeats it- 
 self in mind. Is not that why mind repeats the living world ? And 
 this vital action is the same as all other action ; it is the one motion, 
 only divided. Is not this why nature is to us vibration ? 
 
 Matter is an abstraction ; it is only a name given to certain respects in
 
 170 
 
 wh all things agree : viz. in having three dimensions, and in resisting 
 motion : but consider, what is there in this but spiral motion ? Is it not 
 so : that the clearest conception of matter we can get is simply spiral 
 motion ; wh is motion in direction of least resistance. 
 
 All that Cousin proves about his time and space and cause is not that 
 they are necessary and universal but that they are correlated ; that thev 
 are bound up together, one implying universally the others. Supposing 
 matter ' substance ' as he calls it there are absolutely and universally 
 time, space, principle of causation, and so on. But how about the entire 
 group ? this is quite another question, requiring to be treated on grounds 
 of its own. The ' phna ' or events, involve time, &c., but what are the 
 ' phna ' ? An excellent illustration of our perception of matter surely is 
 to be found in our perception of the sun's motion. For we see the sun 
 go round the earth absolutely and certainly ; no opinions can alter that 
 perception : we see it just as certainly and inevitably as we see matter. 
 Yet it is only a change in ourselves that we thus perceive as a fact ex- 
 ternal to us. And as for the real existence of the external world, is not 
 a real change in us as real as any external thing can can be ; and must 
 it not have as real a cause ? And further, our perception of matter, tho' 
 a delusion, has been essential to our mental life ; it has been the nutrition : 
 it involves the specific vital wrong relation ; viz. phn or effect before 
 cause. 
 
 Aug. 19, 1856. I perceive what the idea of matter really indicates as 
 the fact in nature viz. an organic wrong relation of elements, wh fur- 
 nishes the power for producing a function ; renders nature fit food for 
 our minds : its function being our nutrition or assimilation in us : just as 
 the function of the vegetable world is the nutrition of the animal ; ef- 
 fected too by its own decomposition. The vital relation of the elements 
 in us is not the same as that wh exists in our food ; so our idea of matter 
 does not correspond with that wh really exists ; but that has an equiva- 
 lent vital relation of elements. "What our senses give evidence of is the 
 existence of some force [some function i. e. of a previous approx passion 
 if we could see far enough] : they affirm a cause, but as to what, they 
 say nothing. Nay we may be sure that in our perceptions the elements 
 are arranged in opposition to their affinities ; that they must be put right 
 before we know what our senses were meant to teach us, before our 
 mental nutrition performs its function. 
 
 The amount of motion of wh Nature consists to us depends upon our- 
 selves, arises from our perception. The real act is infinite ; we see so 
 much because so much measures our capacity. But I do not mean that 
 nature must have been such as it is and could not have been otherwise. 
 It may be that God might have created our spirits differently so that 
 our perception of His action shd have been different. Must all created 
 beings perceive His action as motion ? or not rather in innumerable 
 ways ; the highest and holiest those, among whom it may be our privi- 
 lege perhaps to rank hereafter, who directly and primarily perceive its 
 moral character ; who perceive that they dwell not in a world of things, 
 but in a universe of holiness. Thus God deals with His creatures, 
 making different worlds for them and subjecting their moral being to 
 different conditions, not by creating worlds, but by giving them different 
 modes of perception. Thus He surrounds a spirit with ' matter ' by- 
 causing it to perceive His action as motion, and that spirit He subjects
 
 171 
 
 to temptation and trial, to sorrow and solicitment to evil ; He places it 
 so in a state of probation, and says to it to us Wilt thou forsake Me 
 for a sensation ? wilt thou let go reality and grasp a dream ? To other 
 spirits He may cause His act to appear in other ways : His great act wh 
 is for its own end, yet serves as a means of happiness, of education, of 
 moral probation and award to innumerable spirits whom He has endowed 
 with such capacities as seemed good to Him of perceiving it : one means 
 accomplishing many objects. We do ourselves perceive light in two 
 ways (at least) as light by the eye, and as heat by the skin. 
 
 May it not be our heaven directly to perceive God's action as holy 
 moral action, appeciating its objects and essential character : thus per- 
 ceiving really the same fact that we now perceive as Nature by our senses, 
 but in a way higher and truer. Thus heaven the same as earth, but how 
 different ; so a right life on earth fits for heaven. Not, as Swedenborg 
 represents, that after death we still perceive a physical world, the same 
 ' things ' as now, wh I feel unsatisfactory both to feeling and intellect. 
 "We perceive ' things ' because God's action produces action in our bodies ; 
 it is thro' motion that we perceive ' things,' and without bodies surely 
 neither the motion nor the things are perceived as such. Here indeed may 
 be another step towards why we perceive God's act as ' things ' : it is 
 surely because we perceive them by means of the senses. Surely after the 
 dissolution of the body the spirit perceives the reality very differently. 
 Think of this : not only the effect of our senses on our mode of our per- 
 ception, but how we come to have senses. 
 
 Do not we perceive ' things ' as we hear ' sounds ' ; viz. because in both 
 cases the immediate objects of perception are states or actions in our own 
 bodies ; i. e. Functions : or actions ' permitted ' in machines produced by 
 the balancing of the minutest forms of motion. The action wh ensues 
 on the permission of the play of polar attractions restrained by the pecu- 
 liar vital action, in one part of the brain, is perceived as sound. So the 
 actions wh ensue from permission of the play of polar attractions (gene- 
 rally speaking) in the body are perceived as ' things.' It is important to 
 fix our eye upon the precise nature of the action wh we do perceive, it 
 is & polar attraction or perhaps rather the result of such attraction 
 previously controlled by the highest [or smallest ?] of all the forms of 
 motion. The very act of sensation is like muscular contraction, viz. the 
 result of a motion caused by the (previously restrained) polar attraction. 
 [But this is only so in the language of our perception, not that of 
 reality.] 
 
 How is it that motion and mental action mutually cause or are con- 
 vertible into each other ? I think it is not so. I doubt if any motion 
 ceases to exist as such when it ' produces ' thought. Whatever amount 
 of ' thinking ' a man may do, all the ' motion ' wh akes place in his 
 brain continues as motion; and if so, motion and thought are not 
 ' correlated ' in the true sense ; motion does not become thought. Thought 
 rather ensues as downward motion does after upward ? The upward mo- 
 tion does not become or produce the downward, tho' the downward does 
 become or produce the upward. So motion permits or furnishes condition 
 for mental action ; and mental action produces motion : another view of 
 nature [or motion] and thought which agrees well with their con- 
 stituting a vibration Thus thought only arises in connection with a 
 brain ; only when motion has arrived at its utmost point, the other half
 
 172 
 
 of the vibratile action begins. But the divergent motion does not produce 
 or cause the convergent. Thought is not a result, in that sense, of the 
 brain's action ; altho' if the brain do not act there is no thought. Is 
 there an inherent necessity for thought, such as gravity is for the fall of 
 a weight ? So that thought causes motion, but is not caused by it, only 
 permitted, i. e. rendered possible. So the vibration goes on. 
 
 Is there not value in the view that what we perceive is a polar at- 
 traction, i. e. in the brain : i. e. an action solely due to the construction 
 of our own bodies, and being previously restrained by the vital action or 
 state. Thus the external action wh we say we perceive, is not the cause 
 of the action in ourselves that depends wholly upon our bodily consti- 
 tution ; it not only exists in ourselves but from our own constitution de- 
 rives ita entire character and origin. The external action is only the 
 stimulus, i. e. it permits it by removing the force wh prevented it. The 
 perception .'. is not caused by the external action ; i. e. the external action 
 is not perceived ; it has only such a mechanical relation to us to our 
 bodies or organs of sense that it calls into play the coerced tendency to 
 action. Any cause or action whatever that neutralizes or removes that 
 particular restraining vital condition produces the same sensation [as 
 sights or sounds from disease or mechanical irritation]. 
 
 Light and sound, &c., are in us, rise from a perception of chem action 
 in us. They are as it were written in our constitution and merely made 
 manifest by luminous and sonorous vibrations. And such is our relation 
 to nature as a whole : such our perception of things. The act of God wh 
 brings our perceptive powers into action, does but permit the action in 
 ourselves and render visible the latent inscription. Thus it is that 
 matter is an idea, in all its forms ; i. e. an action in ourselves, and de- 
 pendent upon our own constitution : not corresponding with the external. 
 
 To make the parallel complete the mind also must be considered as 
 constructed on the same principle ; i. e. with restrained tendencies wh 
 produce given actions on given stimuli, but these not caused by or cor- 
 responding with the stimuli. And this I suppose is the right view : it 
 also is living. Intellectual life ' is parallel to physical ; the mind has 
 not a spiritual or original active power, it is not moral : and all the ar- 
 guments in my paper on Function might be used with proper mutations 
 in reference to intellectual as well as physical function. Again appears 
 the identity and parallelism of nature and Thought. Just as the living 
 body wd be inactive without external stimuli so wd a ' living mind ' : 
 and as the living body is developed and even made capable of its functions 
 by having its functional activity elicited by external actions, so also is 
 the mind. The absolute dependence of Thought upon the external 
 world remains, just as the dependence upon bodily function does ; nay 
 even the existence of the mental life, or at least its development and 
 proper expansion and capacity are shown to be dependent on such relation 
 to the external world. 
 
 Our perception .. and our conceptions, in short that wh we perceive 
 and call nature, being thus the result of an action arising from the con- 
 struction of our minds, and only in truth permitted by external things or 
 actions, wh are the stimuli, it is surely to be expected it must be that 
 we shall understand what we perceive. What shd we understand, if not 
 the action wh results Irom our own construction ? 
 
 Is there not a parallel of physical nature and thought ? some relation
 
 173 
 
 between the ' forms of thought,' the universal ideas 'so to speak, and 
 some physical elements ? are they related to the senses ? e. g. ear, time 
 eye, space ; touch, matter ? There is a field here to be worked j a real 
 investigation of the intellectual world by the aid of the analogy of the 
 physical. 
 
 The real ultimate thing wh in our bodies immediately precedes our 
 sensation is a polar attraction, i. e. a play of previously coerced tenden- 
 cies. Here is a step towards the relation of mind to body : consider 
 the relation of thought to ' polar attractions.' Do different nerves and 
 parts of brain subserve different sensations because they permit different 
 polar attractions to come into play ? 
 
 To learn facts what is it but to procure more of this internal action ; 
 to subject ourselves to more stimuli ? but the facts are all internal. To 
 have our thoughts right we must have plenty of facts, plenty of internal 
 mental action. 
 
 How different is the appearance of the heavenly bodies to our senses 
 from that wh they really are ; how utterly unlike the bodily to the 
 mental sensation. Then why find it strange that spiritual (or real) per- 
 ception of these same objects should be utterly unlike the mental sensa- 
 tion : that is only over again what we are well used to. Nay more : the 
 spiritual perception of nature is not so unlike the mental perception of 
 it [as motion] as is the mental sensation unlike the bodily : or rather, 
 tho' in some sense almost more unlike, the entirely new element of moral 
 character being introduced, yet the relation of the two is more easily 
 traced ; the reason of our mode of perception is not so uttterly incom- 
 prehensible. 
 
 How Newton abandoned physical science for Theology. Who will try 
 to persuade us to do such violence to our instincts as to put anything 
 before God ? 
 
 I deny nothing save in so far as is requisite to enable me to embrace 
 opposites. Thus I reconcile the conviction of the reality of the external 
 world with the persuasion of the merely phenomenal and relative nature 
 of all that we perceive ; a persuasion so deep and so universal that in 
 every civilized age and country it has been affirmed, even at the expense 
 of denying reality and thus doing violence not only to intuitions but to 
 sympathies. Why these two opposed tendencies of the mind, neither 
 of wh can entirely subdue the other, except that both are true ? So 
 science and religion also are made one. This is, to be a priest, per- 
 forming at least his matrimonial function. In this sense, and it is a 
 worthy one, the priest is the interpreter of nature ; for of nature also we 
 may justly say, emphatically, that she marries ; in a true pre-eminence 
 that is what she does. Marriage persists in being a sacrament : and we 
 must find the sacred element in science. 
 
 That Nature is the Bride of Man proves that she must be spiritual. 
 How can a thing respond to human passion ? sympathy with Nature is 
 sympathy with God ; wh if man had possessed, his science had been ever 
 right. Moral wrong is the only source of ' error.' [This has its truth 
 if * spiritual ' be put for ' moral.'] The true sense in wh the world is 
 made for us is the holiness that constitutes it. This is our interest, our 
 right in it: it is in its holiness that it is ours. This solid earth so 
 adorned with form and color, is our spirit's repose upon the bosom of 
 God ; these innumerous vibrations, that fill earth and sky with glory, are 
 our spirits vibrating beneath the Creator's touch,
 
 174 
 
 The negative duty of man is to control and moderate polar attractions ; 
 i. e. to use nature instead of letting nature use him. 
 
 The difficulty attaching to the idea of free, or primary, i. e. moral 
 action is somewhat diminished when we perceive that all action is such : 
 that there is no action but primary moral action, nor any Existences but 
 freely acting i. e. really acting moral Beings [one almost says, of 
 course not ; what could be the use of such : they could only be perpetual 
 stumbling blocks]. It is remarkable that tho' the power of self, or pri- 
 mary, action is theoretically denied to matter, yet it is virtually attri- 
 buted to it: as e. g. in the idea of specific properties, tendencies, or 
 powers : not to mention other ways. In fact the mind will have no 
 Beings but Doers ; no real existences but moral Agents. Those who 
 hold matter to be real are sure to assign to it in thought, tho' not in 
 words, powers wh belong only to self-acting spirits ; such as e. g. the 
 power of attracting, or of moving matter. A truly passive, unactin-g 
 matter, is seen and felt at once to be not only useless but in the way. 
 The man who truly sees the passivity of matter perceives also at once 
 its non-existence ; i. e. that it is an ' idea.' 
 
 Always remember that to act, i. e. to do right, is the spirit's nature. 
 Sin is a passive yielding, wh is absolutely against the nature of the 
 spirit, i. e. of the Man. 
 
 That ' to be natural ' is man's duty. I perceive more the necessity of 
 making this clear : both intellectually and morally it is of eminent value. 
 It is misunderstood ; as (1) that what is morally wrong can be natural : 
 wh is that moral right can be zmnatural ! Even allowing in fullest sense 
 a depraved nature, does not the very fact of its being a depravation show 
 that the evil is unnatural ? 
 
 (2) People not only think that wrong can be hatural, but also that an 
 exaggerated exclusive action can be natural, not seeing that to be natural 
 includes necessarily all checks, and means the acting out, in full and 
 just proportions, the whole nature. 
 
 (3) They do not see that ' nature ' is that wh God does ; and that to fulfil 
 our nature is to let God act in us ; and this is a high and moral act on our 
 parts. The work of acting out our nature rightly done, makes all indif- 
 ferent things, wh else have no moral quality, holy and right ; gives a 
 religious meaning to every act, and realizes what else seems more like a 
 fantasy, that of eating and drinking and doing all things to the Lord. 
 It not only intensifies the power, but extends the sphere of the moral 
 sentiment. Is it not better as far as possible to see how natural good is 
 to us that we may see how unnatural is sin. AVho wd hesitate to affirm 
 that of all possible things Sin is the most extreme in unnaturalness ? 
 
 (4) They do not see that if all people truly acted out their natures, 
 human nature, as God has made it, is so complete and true, that all right 
 and proper things wd be done in the best way and in truest proportions, 
 just as in all other nature. They think many things wd be left undone, 
 not trusting God to have made man right : not perceiving how exact and 
 wonderful a mutual adaptation wd reveal itself if God acted in man. 
 Nor do they see that even the best remedy for a wrong is not another 
 wrong but the right. Each man's nature truly acted on wd make human 
 life again a paradise. Each person then could find exactly the person 
 that he wanted, or if not would come into contact with none who 
 were not lovely and refreshing, being absolutely perfect in their way
 
 175 - 
 
 as nature is. And further the rule of acting out their nature acted on by 
 all wd produce an universal tolerance of, if not delight in, and at least a 
 respect for, every one else's nature, and each one wd say, I act my nature, 
 and so may he, his. It is the attempt to produce an uniformity in life 
 that makes the wheels go so roughly. 
 
 (5) Again, are we justified in not acting out our nature for the sake 
 of either greater advantage to ourselves or even what we think greater 
 good to others ? God gives us a certain nature that we may do that ; not 
 what we think better but what He has thought best. It is the call of 
 Duty if we could hear it. Surely a bird has wings in order that it may 
 fly ; a man has a special capacity and tendency in order that he may do 
 that thing. If the doctrine of final causes is worth anything, surely it 
 is of avail here. What if all the birds thought they ' could do more 
 good ' by walking on the ground ? And see how Nature avenges herself: 
 not only how badly is unnatural work done, or rather how it fails to be 
 really done at all, but also how unflinching a penalty is exacted for re- 
 fusing to obey God's voice in our instincts. See Kirke White, killed by 
 studying mathematics, because his position at college ' made it his duty.' 
 It was no duty, it was a sin ; and God took his life for it. His duty 
 was to be a poet. He obeyed man rather than God, and so do we all 
 when we turn from God's voice in our breasts to listen to man's voice in 
 our circumstances. Only see the matter rightly. Do not do what you 
 like, while thinking another thing is duty ; that is Sin ; that is the 
 greatest violence that can be done to nature ; more natural is it for man 
 to live in caves of the sea like a fish, than in evil like a devil. But open 
 your eyes, unbiassed and simply : God gives us special powers and tend- 
 encies wh are His voice calling us to do certain things. These things 
 do, because He calls you thus to do them ; i. e. because they are your 
 nature ; what He does in you. Thus your every act shall be so holy, 
 that no act can be holier : thus you shall do if not that wh seems best 
 and wisest to you, that wh God wanted done when He made you ; and 
 will not that be good and wise enough ? In fine, this view puts a stop 
 to all pride, vanity, and envy : whatsoever we do naturally God truly 
 does in us, and all God's works are equal. This acting out our nature 
 is another form of the law of liberty : it is action in least resistance. 
 True it is absolute liberty, but it is absolute law also. Thus it corres- 
 ponds with that wh is the essence of the divine both in its spiritual and 
 physical aspect. It involves also a noble confidence in God ; and recog- 
 nition of the vastness of His works. We do not seek to do only that 
 wh we have seen others do and wh so has been proved to be good. We 
 do not await human testimony ; we are content to trust the Divine Wit- 
 ness. That God wants a thing done is enough voucher for us that it 
 shall be good. Every advance in human life arises from some man acting 
 out his nature ; doing what was never done, what there was no previous 
 evidence for. Men cannot practically believe that God is greater than 
 they. Shall I seek to carry out my views mathematically, or experi- 
 mentally because mankind have proved these ways to be good, and they 
 have the stamp of human approbation ? If God calls me to another way 
 they shall enumerate it hereafter among the ways proved good. God 
 has an unbounded variety of modes of human action yet to reveal. I 
 will not modify my natural and instinctive way of treating these scientific 
 and moral questions one atom, to conform to present tastes and established
 
 176 
 
 modes. I will do the thing. as absolutely in my own way as if there 
 existed God and myself alone. 
 
 But consider also whether our circumstances do not also express or 
 rather are not the work and voice of God : our calling, our human ex- 
 ternal calling, truly a call from God ? It is so in so far as it expresses 
 our duty ; but we must see clearly God within as well, to know what is 
 our duty. 
 
 Man is the Interpreter of Nature. Yes, it is his office to translate 
 Nature back again into her native tongue ; into the spiritual language ; 
 to show her to be a holy spiritual act. That is the true interpreting of 
 Nature, wh Science must be : the showing that each thing must be as it 
 is because holiness demands it : to reveal the moral Tightness of each 
 thing is to interpret it. The spiritual law of liberty is the fountain and 
 spring of the physical. 
 
 To see truly the evil of sin it is necessary to see how good and how 
 perfect God made man : and that there is nothing wrong about him but 
 sin. It needs our constant care to avoid thinking that God has not made 
 man good enough ; for how far we are from being content with our na- 
 ture as God made it. "We rather divide the blame of man's evil between 
 the creator and the creature than take it all to ourselves. Let us try to 
 remember that man's true nature is perfect, as all nature is. If man 
 alone does wrong, nature cannot be wrong : Nature is not man's work. 
 But one must remember the reflex influence of evil acts : the internal 
 tendencies to wrong that arise from and are created by wrong doing. Is 
 our ' nature ' thus not right because altered by wrong doing ? And what 
 is that tendency to evil, wh seems to exist in us and manifests itself even 
 in children ? is that a perverted nature, from Adam's sin ? 
 
 What is the meaning of those passages, ' Cursed be the ground,' and 
 ' The whole creation travaileth : ' do they indicate a real wrongness ju- 
 dicially set in nature in punishment to man ; or not rather a violation 
 thro' sin of man's right relation to them ? Does not the fact of nature 
 being absolutely ' action in least resistance ' prove it to be absolutely 
 right ? I think it certain that nature for this reason is right, without 
 the least flaw or failure ; all the wrong is in ourselves. And God's 
 dealings with man are all in mercy, not in hatred, all to win him back 
 to right; how could this object be achieved or aided by making nature 
 wrong ? It revolts our reason and appals our heart. The truest, deepest, 
 as the kindest and wisest punishment must be to have left nature right. 
 In man's disharmony with the holiness of nature lies at once his heaviest 
 curse for departing from his Maker, and his tenderest invitation to return. 
 How do we deal with children ? When they are wrong do we not sur- 
 sound them more carefully and tenderly then than ever with the right ? 
 Thou leavest Thy Nature right, oh Father : right for this reason : that 
 we may see for ever, and at the same time, before our sinf ul souls, an 
 avenging God, and before our repentant hearts, a loving and forgiving 
 Father. It is love that punishes not less than forgives. 
 
 * If thou hadst fazed upon the face of God 
 
 This morning, for a moment, thou thon hadst known 
 
 That only pity can chastise.' 
 
 The curse upon the ground was the evil within man's heart : there the 
 barrenness, the darkness. God's act, wh cannot be but holy, excites in
 
 177 
 
 us an action of perception according to our own internal nature. Man's 
 evil heart it is that spreads its own blight over nature. It must be so : 
 that is the strict literal meaning of the words. When we see that Nature 
 is God's act, all these mysteries cannot choose but go. How can God 
 make His own act wrong 1 Is not the act of a holy Being holy 1 The 
 thought of wrong in nature involves a contradiction. We express our 
 utmost abhorrence of crime the very worst sins by calling them un- 
 natural : i. e. they are in the highest degree ' unnatural '. 
 
 It is the love of human sympathy that is the great cause, the good 
 cause so to speak, of this conformity to usage, and doing violence to our 
 natures, and the remedy for it is sympathy with God. If He were our 
 friend, closer, dearer, more intimately felt, than the closest human .friend, 
 then it wd suffice us if we did what He wished and had His sympathy. 
 The need is that we shd see Him : shd perceive in our nature His work, 
 His voice. The parallel between mind and nature, or between thought 
 and things, is well seen in the identity of the tendencies and processes in 
 science and in external life. The necessity for having ideas right is the 
 same thing as the necessity some people have for having things tidy, or in 
 proper order about them. The advance in arranging ideas, wh is the 
 progress of science, is the same as the advance in the arranging of things, 
 wh constitutes the triumph of mechanical skill. And this is the same 
 thing as the constructive instincts : the bird or the bee must have things, 
 and must put them, tidy : in right relations. Man is an animal with 
 ' instincts ' [his body and mind] ; but he as a spirit uses this animal. He 
 is an animal a physical and mental machine used by a Being, or moral 
 Agent. It is the spirit's nature to do right. 
 
 The act of perception is like an instinctive bodily action, performed 
 under the influence of a stimulus, and does not repeat or represent or 
 correspond with the external action wh causes it. It is an instinctive 
 adapted action ; and perhaps both instincts and perceptions may receive 
 their best elucidation by a mutual comparison. And dreams, illusions, 
 ' perceptions ' without real external stimulus, must be like instinctive 
 actions spontaneously performed. This view differs from that wh makes 
 perception to consist in God's action on the mind, in transferring the 
 form of the perception from the external cause to the internal structure. 
 The tendency within us to action of a certain sort is the cause of the kind 
 of perception, rather than external action embodying in any way such 
 reality. All mankind perceive alike, as all animals of one species have 
 identical instincts. And doubtless perceptions and instincts go together : 
 if we could ascertain the real relation between our perceptions and our 
 instincts we might perhaps from the instincts of animals define their per- 
 ceptions. Is it not obvious, in relation to our perception of the universe, 
 that such an instinctive action is the thing wanted, and all that is wanted ; 
 and that a real matter, as distinct from an action, wd be useless and un- 
 meaning ; that whatever might result from it it could certainly have no 
 adaptation [? possibility] to be perceived ? The same internal and instinctive 
 mechanism wd be required, but having that the matter is not required. It 
 does not contribute in the least to the understanding of perception to sup- 
 pose the existence of the thing perceived. The outness pertaining to our 
 perceptions is parallel to the outness of our instinctive actions : these all 
 tend and refer to external operation, yet have their determining source, 
 and in truth their origin, from within.
 
 178 
 
 Our perceptions .-. being thus truly internal actions, it results that 
 observation of nature, and the carrying out of the laws of our own 
 minds, are really one, and not two : here is another instance of a polar 
 opposition prophetic of union. Both perception and reasoning are in- 
 ternal actions j inductive and deductive refuse to be differently defined. 
 What is reallv objectionable is an artificial, a priori reasoning, wh is 
 not the carrying out of our nature but the effort of our perverted will. 
 
 Even the spiritualists, as Berkeley and Emerson, have looked for the 
 cause of the mode of perception externally instead of internally ; and 
 thus have failed to give a tenable explanation of the facts. And this 
 is not only scientifically physiologically so to speak erroneous, but 
 also prevents a due appreciation of that external act itself wh is the 
 cause or stimulus of perception ; making it necessary to regard that as 
 having such a primary if not sole reference to ourselves, wh we, even 
 unconsciously and not knowing why, must and do reject. We cannot 
 in our souls put up with such a personal view of the universe ; it is too 
 small even for us. How wrong we shd be in our physiology if we 
 looked for the causes of the modes of instinctive action in their external 
 stimuli. "We shd be talking about these just as we do about percption : 
 e. g. if we looked for the reason of a decapitated animal kicking when 
 pricked, in the prick itself. But as an Instinct, tho' the character of 
 perception, and its boundaries, are determined wholly by our mental 
 mechanism, its peculiarities within those bounds are determined by the 
 special mode of action wh constitutes the stimulus. Thus it is that our 
 perceptions truly represent to us relations. How this view of instinctive 
 action agrees also with chemical tendencies and reactions ; wh have a 
 general character determined bv internal constitution, but the peculiar- 
 ities of wh are determined by the kind and amount of external action. 
 
 Is not every thing a machine, consisting, as it were, of motion [force} 
 and resistance, and .-. tending to act, and ready to act on stimulus. As 
 we say there is no rest but equilibrium of opposite forces, so is not the 
 mind, in like manner force and resistance; and .-. ready to act, and 
 tending to act on stimulus ? 
 
 The true parallelism [? identity] between physical nature and thought 
 lies in this, that all action takes direction of least resistance. This is 
 one mode of thought, that is applicable to every possible fact or class of 
 conceptions, and embraces both the physical and intellectual worlds ; in 
 fact it expresses, so far as this view extends, the whole of God's action. 
 Thus physical nature and thought are one ; being alike action in direction 
 of least resistance, and the significance of this law is the same in the 
 mental as in the physical. Now the resistance to mental action or 
 thought, must it not be also Thought ? as the resistance to motion is 
 motion. Of course in relation to thought the same consideration must 
 be allowed to the original direction of the action as in respect to motion. 
 In speaking of thought we cannot avoid the use of terms appropriate 
 only to motion ; direction, course, rapidity, &c. All thought as all 
 motion must be two equal and opposite actions ; it is essentially vi- 
 bration. 
 
 Logic (that we think so stiff} is really action in direction of least re- 
 sistance. The trees are the type of it. Nature is logical, just as logic 
 is natural. When we assent to a syllogism, it is because thought takes 
 direction of least opposing thought. Thus the true and the beautiful 
 [Metaphysics 108.
 
 179 
 
 are one : and the basis of this unity lies in both being action in least 
 resistance. One might almost consider the word ' nature ' to mean 
 action in least resistance, and substitute that expression ever for it. 
 Thus ' Truth is natural,' might run, truth is thought in direction of 
 least resistance. "We might say of physical nature almost that it is 
 ' true,' even as we do say ' true to nature.' Here too is the link of the 
 true and beautiful with the good, i. e. with the holy : for action in 
 least resistance, or truth and beauty, are but expressions of the morally 
 holy. That is the source and substance of them. We say ' Thought 
 branches out.' 
 
 An argument surely is a sort of machine, wh we construct in such a 
 way as that the direction of least resistance for thought shall be svch 
 as we desire. All machines are exactly this causing the direction of 
 least resistance for motion to be such as shall result in a certain effect. 
 We direct the course of thought by resisting it, preventing its taking 
 other directions, wh we do by suggesting other thoughts : we deal with 
 thought in an argument just as we do with motion. 
 
 Has not a great error of metaphysics been in considering that its bu- 
 siness was with the abstraction ' mind,' even as science has erred so in 
 making its object the abstraction 'matter.' The object of science is 
 motion : the object of metaphysics is thought : motion as forming or 
 constituting Things ; Thought as forming or constituting Minds. 
 Motion and Thought are the sole objects of the two divisions of Science 
 [thus science is dichotomous, and the two branches are oppositely 
 polar ?] ' Things ' and c minds ' endowed with ' powers of acting ' are 
 results of opposing actions, action restrained. 
 
 It is true .. all natural thought is right; and in a sense true, i. e. 
 true under the conditions ; just as all nature is beautiful, regard being 
 had to the conditions. It is not of course all correct, just as in nature 
 some things wh are none the less right, fail of their apparent design : 
 and indeed everything fails of its apparent design except the very last 
 and highest. The design of life was Man from the first ; but when the 
 earth contained nothing higher than crocodiles was not this an utter 
 failure in regard to this design ? The real design is ever accomplished ; 
 it is for a certain result in a certain way. The thought being natural, 
 all the erroneous, deficient, false forms of it are correspondent to unde- 
 veloped forms of life. How miserable a failure is an embryo; how 
 ugly, mis-shapen, useless, yet it is no less perfect than the highest and 
 maturest animal. God asks of all things bodies, minds or spirits 
 but one question, ' Art thou true to thy nature ? ' To the highest de- 
 velopment of an animal only more action of the same sort as in the em- 
 bryo state is wanting ; so to perfection of thought is wanting only 
 more. 
 
 The problem is to trace what we may call the '< Physical Morphology ' 
 of the mind. How minds are formed by Thought, and its development, 
 by taking direction of least resistance ; and by action restrained produ- 
 cing living minds, minds capable of acting on stimulus. For if Thought 
 be vibration, there will be in Thought both continuous and transitive 
 vibrations. And do not the ' continuous ' form here also the living ? 
 
 In mental as in physical action we can obey or refuse to conform to 
 this nature of action that it takes direction of least resistance; just 
 as we do in our architecture and other arts. This construction of
 
 180 
 
 Science is like the construction of a building : if made conformable to 
 law of least resistance it is true or beautiful ; if made otherwise it is 
 false or ugly. Thus, in each, genius is manifested ; viz. in conformity 
 to that 'nature of things,' and making, alike, the internal or the 
 external structure correspondent with and expressive of action in di- 
 rection of least resistance. How strikingly it is true that right thought 
 is such : when I see that a mental conception cannot be in one way 
 (that it is manifestly false, absurd, &c.) what do I mean but that thought 
 in that direction is resisted ? as we say, ' there is but one course open.' 
 In truth is not this nature of action even more manifest in relation to- 
 thought than to motion, as if in fact it were the mental world that must 
 explain the physical. 
 
 Thus Science is one with Art ; and they are respectively physical and 
 mental Instincts ; and poetry is as it were a link between the two ; true 
 science being also true poetry. 
 
 Thought that is consistent is in a sense rif/ht ; it may be poor and in- 
 adequate enough ; it may want to grow and to develope but it is not 
 wrong. Consistency in thinking is mental action in least resistance, 
 and this brings us at once to logic, wh is merely a test of such consis- 
 tency ; a bringing the resistances to bear. "We have no such test for 
 beauty ; we cannot bring that to the proof in a similar way. Here is 
 an indication that the laws of action may be best traced out in the world 
 of Thought, rather than that of motion. Thus we see again the evil of 
 hurried, inconsistent, or disproportioned civilization, or instruction of 
 children ; all development must arise from mental action in least resist- 
 ance if not, it will not stand. The correspondence of development of 
 thought with that of physical nature proves identity of action ; proves 
 vibration and least resistance. Hence the limit ; hence the other thought 
 wh resists or opposes, and wh uniting causes development. 
 
 Our minds are the result of Thought in least resistance, as our bodies 
 are of motion tho' either may be deformed or diseased by that law. 
 But as our bodies, influenced by our spirits, may in our external actions 
 conform to action in least resistance or not, so may our minds influenced 
 by our spirits in their thinking, conform or not thereto. Brutes in their 
 actions, .both bodily and mental, appear always to conform. A further 
 proof that the disturbing influence in man's case is the spirit. Indeed, 
 what but a spirit can make action take any other direction ? All devi- 
 ation from that proves a spirit, an Actor. 
 
 How natural and right it is that man's science shd have been hitherto 
 so wrong : i. e. that he shd have looked not to the cause and essential 
 nature of things, especially in life, but to their uses, and admired the 
 goodness of God in the results rather than His wisdom in the means. 
 This has been in one sense his first business, it comes home directly to 
 his heart and has givert the right training to his faculties. The inven- 
 tion of so many ' specific ' chimeras, tho' certainly odd, and even lament- 
 able in one sense, is but a slight evil. 
 
 I will substitute the word passion for ' action ' for all physical and 
 mental phna, applying the term action only to true or spiritual actions. 
 
 A fundamental axiom of science will be, Passion takes direction of 
 least resistance,' The associations of the word are right ; and when we 
 say that nature expresses God's ' p.assion ' it serves to mark the sole 
 eminence of God ; that with Him passion and action are one. The
 
 181 
 
 world that expresses His passion expresses in the same -way His 
 Holiness. Thus nature is action when regarded in relation to its origin, 
 it is passion when regarded in itself : as the former it is holy ; as the 
 latter it is beautiful. The word action is a misleading one to use in re- 
 lation to natural events ; it bears contradictory meanings. We already 
 call the most powerful and most ' active ' process in the mind passion ; 
 why not extend it ? 
 
 What is there in thought corresponding to the * continuous ' and 
 ' transitive ' vibrations, or the organic and inorganic ? There must be 
 this parallel : minds are clearly the living forms of thought, the mechan- 
 isms, with power of acting on stimulus. These /. appear to be connected 
 with the continuous vibration. But observe, all mechanisms are not the 
 result of continuous vibration. In the steam engine when the expansion 
 takes place, it is transitive. So with a clock, the weights do not fall and 
 rise again ; the vibration is transitive, but the first action is prevented. 
 In order for a machine, or a body endowed with 'irritability,' it is not 
 necessary to have continuous vibration but only resisted action. 
 
 I wonder whether instinct is the inorganic form of thought, and our 
 mental action reason as ordinarily called is the organic : if this is the 
 distinction of transitive and continuous. It is really likely I have 
 before suggested that reason is two instincts, as life is two chemicities. 
 
 We perceive thought as we do motion our own thoughts as our own 
 bodily motions. We are not truly conscious of them, any more than we 
 are conscious of nature. Is not ' thought ' like ' motion,' a perception ? 
 we perceive some divine act as Thought just as we perceive some other 
 as light or heat ? Shd not the word ' conscious ' be confined to the 
 spirit, being inseparable from conscience. A man's mind is no more him- 
 self than his body is. 
 
 The problem is to trace the origin and development of mind : has it 
 an embryonic stage, in wh it is formed as it were, .of course by thought in 
 least resistance and by the bye what is the womb of the mind ? what 
 external resistance causes the development of mental action into a perfectly 
 formed mind ? There is no ground to believe that a child at first per- 
 ceives as we do ; i. e. ' things ' as existing in space, &e. Perception of 
 objects, as such, surely only arises when the mind is developed so as to 
 perform instinctive or adapted actions, i. e. when a stimulus elicits or 
 permits a certain train of passion, for wh the mind as the body must pre- 
 viously be formed. And does not the embryonic stage of mind correspond 
 with that of the body ; passing thro' lower forms, &c. ? Matter, time, 
 space, cause and effect, are expressions for the instructive passions of 
 minds first formed by thought, or mental passion, like the instinctive 
 motions of bodies first formed by motion. And the spirit uses body and 
 mind ; we need not suppose any development in it : it uses them as 
 they are. Is not the special in science parallel to instinct, and the 
 general parallel to reason ? transitive and continuous vibration ; and 
 latter arise from putting together of former ? Reason is living as com- 
 pared to instinct ; it alone developes ; is subject to disease, to error, to 
 transitional states. But as there is one sense in wh the inorganic world 
 is organic or living needing only to be regarded in larger relations so 
 in one sense is not all inorganic mental passion, or instinct; also organic ? 
 Thus Science represents life, or continuous vibration, developing. The 
 deductive process is the approximative passion : this corresponds with the
 
 182 
 
 instinctive passion : but it fails of perfection ; it passes as it -were beside 
 its object, and goes on into an opposite action of same form the in- 
 ductive process, wh .. represents the divergent or nutritive passion, and 
 wh again permits and reproduces the conditions for the deductive, and so 
 it goes on. It is the failure of the deductive process that leads to the 
 inductive, and constitutes the life of science. Thus it is error and failure 
 that constitutes the vital character of human mental passion ; that gives 
 man reason as opposed to mere instinct. Man's "weakness and failure are 
 his glory ! Instinct is perfect, but its perfection islts bound : as it is the 
 perfect union of its particles that constitutes the crystal not vital. * Is 
 there here an explanation of the modification of instinct as if by a pro- 
 cess of reasoning to meet altered circumstances ? The instinct does be- 
 come reason, it fails ; like our reason it passes by, ' missing ' its object, 
 and goes on to an inductive process a continuous vibration and issues 
 in a true reasoning, viz. a repetition of the same action in a different 
 way. By resistance is instinct made reason, as chemical action by re- 
 sistance is made vital ? Whenever an action failing of its accomplish- 
 ment is repeated in a way better adapted, that is a reasonable act ; and 
 consists in an inductive process coming between two deductive. This 
 indeed is the definition of reason, and it corresponds with the definition 
 of life : it is an act of induction passing on into an act of induction, 
 and leading again to another and more extended, more correct, act of de- 
 duction, and so on. Thus the question of observation and theory ex- 
 plains itself when it has its natural expression. They are respectively 
 nutrition and function ; and here also while function is cause of nutrition 
 [as ever] yet nutrition exists for function. 
 
 We see these relations as it were inversely in the physical and mental 
 worlds : the facts the same, but our primary view of them different. In 
 the physical world we see first as it were the result, in the mental world 
 the process ; but when we see both result and process in each, then we 
 perceive that the two are one. Science thus being the expression of the 
 life of the human mind being itself indeed a ' life ' by the very consti- 
 tution of things an alternation of deduction and induction, we see how 
 truly passive great men have been. The leaders and advancers of science 
 have been merely instruments and media of manifestation of mental life. 
 Bacon's great reform e. g. was merely a vital process of the intellect. 
 Not Bacon spoke but humanity in him : humanity, that is God : and yet 
 humanity too, for it spoke falsely as well as truly. And well falsely, 
 for if it had not been so his wd have been a fatal utterance for science. 
 The day when human science is perfect and misses not its mark, will be 
 the day of its death fhe vital resistance will be gone. For behold how 
 God is glorified in all things ; this constant and un-eliminable quantity 
 in human knowledge error, mistake, or failure this it is that gives it 
 life. The error is the turning at right angles wh carries the planet round 
 the sun : the atom in the living structure round its neighbour atom. And 
 this too is noble ; for what is the resistance that causes turning aside of 
 thought ? only other thought. It is not man's knowing less than the 
 truth that makes his thoughts or works less perfect, but his knowing 
 more. His instinctive mental and physical passions are resisted and 
 turned aside by others. Hence their life. 
 
 [So Genius, wh is parallel to Instinct, is by a minus. See Art, 1869.] 
 An animal while its instinct acts perfectly, or gives exactly the result
 
 183 
 
 conformable to its nature, no doubt appears to have a perfect compre- 
 hension of the universe ; it never thinks of observing farther, of any in- 
 ductive process : but when the instinct does not produce satisfactory 
 results, then it ' feels its ignorance/ begins to observe, reasons. Only 
 his relation to external things, preventing the perfection of his external 
 works, makes him a reasoner. And an animal will often try its natural 
 instinctive process several times under circumstances that prevent its 
 success before adopting another. Just as men do ; try their theory over 
 and over again where it will not succeed before enlarging it by induction, 
 For an instinct I take take to be precisely the expression or carrying out 
 of a theory, 
 
 This struggling to make our a priori theories fit where they will not, 
 is just what the term resistance expresses : the physical exactly expresses 
 the mental event. But it yields at last : human thought resisted and 
 failing as certainly turns into the opposite course as motion does : in- 
 duction follows as surely as life follows decay, or the rise of the planets 
 their fall. Also, as e. g. in the planets, neither process is as it were 
 pure : the planet yields to gravity trhile it rises, and as it falls yields 
 also to the tangential force so the inductive process is also deductive ; 
 the deductive is also inductive : theorizing embodies observation and 
 observation embodies theory. 
 
 In Thought we see plainly enough the vibratile character on a large 
 scale ; so we perceive plainly the vibratile character of life on a large 
 scale : but we only infer the vibratile character of the minutest motions 
 wh constitute life. Is it not so in mental passion also ? in the individual 
 Thoughts wh constitute the Reason we can only infer the vibratile 
 character. I want to see how each thought, as each motion, is a vibra- 
 tion : there is the same logical necessity for vibratile character of thought 
 as of motion ; viz ; from law of continuance and limit. Both are 
 passion not ceasing, and yet under a limit ; .-. necessarily vibratile. 
 
 Men are in a hurry to think they can determine the progress of the 
 world : how many forms of social and political regeneration have been 
 traced out ; no one has dreamt of regenerating Science ; yet it seems 
 that God has ordained a scientific regeneration first. Yes : for only 
 knowledge can give right basis for action]. 
 
 This instinctive passion of mine is a perception ; precisely, and 
 nothing else. Here is a twofold argument : (1) That all perception is 
 an instinctive passion. (2) That all instinctive mental passion is per- 
 ception : all the functional portion of the vibratile mental passion is 
 perception strictly and solely: .. it wd result again that all instinct is 
 perception, external expression or reproduction of that wh is perceived. 
 How we use the words wh indicate perception and especially seeing, 
 wh is the perceptive faculty to express the deductive process in all its 
 parts. 
 
 The simplest way of putting the case appears to be that the deductive 
 and inductive processes [bad terms] bear to each other the relation of 
 the downward and upward movements of the pendulum ; or of the 
 chemical and vital motions. 
 
 Now one thing more : there is in mental passion some analogue of 
 vegetable life ; something between pure instinct, or inorganic, and true 
 animal, or functional, reason ; some continuous vibration subsidiary to 
 strict reason : is not this the ' Arts ' ? Observe how the mental life
 
 184 
 
 illustrates the physical as well as the physical the mental ; how much 
 is known about the deductive and inductive processes wh may serve to 
 explain the nature of physical life. The advantage for comparison 
 arising from our having different points of view for the two ; seeing one 
 in its results the other in its process : much should be done by this. 
 
 Thus how wrong is made right, because resistance is the source of life ; 
 a resistance that must always seem evil and unfortunate at the time, 
 because it baffles or prevents a passion tended to or desired. Thus it 
 is that God leads us on, ignorant, as He leads nature unforeseeing ; we 
 aim at one thing and accomplish a higher and better ; we achieve a life, 
 because we fail. The motto of life is ' Try again.' 
 
 Is not common language ever right ? how widely we have applied the 
 word ' life,' and wherever it has been applied is there not continuous 
 vibration ? 
 
 Do I not see that art bears the same relation to truly intellectual life 
 [Science] that vegetable bears to animal life ? I believe Art was first. 
 Man's first efforts were to produce, to express what he saw ; i. e. con- 
 structive art, as the instincts are in animals now ; and the resistance to 
 these, their failure, organized his Science. [As animal organized from 
 vegetable, and of course by resistance to it.] And still the Arts, the 
 practical expressions of his perceptions, nourish the intellectual life, 
 and mutually ; as animal life tho' primarily organized from and main- 
 tained by vegetable, maintains and nourishes and developes it in turn. 
 And are there not artistic and scientific epochs alternately, as alterna- 
 tions perhaps of greatest vigour of animal and vegetable life. Inorganic 
 chemistry resisted resulted in vegetable life ; vegetable life resisted in 
 animal life ; and now they mutually interwork. So the perfect instincts 
 of animals (inorganic) resisted, produced human, imperfect and con- 
 tinuous, or living and progressive Art or external expression. Art re- 
 sisted produced Science, i. e. a continuous or progressive intellectual 
 passion ; and so now they co-exist in mutual dependence. Man, the 
 microcosm, embracing all pure instincts wh are perfect, inorganic ; art, 
 or vegetable life ; intellect, or animal life : and with them also a 
 spiritual life. 
 
 As the nutritive passion, as opposed to the functional, depends on 
 food, so does the nutritive passion of the mind depend on facts : induction 
 or observation is like taking food, wh is not the vital process itself, but 
 the condition of it ; furnishes the material in wh the vitalizing process 
 may take place ; so the gathering of facts furnishes the material in wh 
 the vitalizing mental process may take place [i. e. for theorv.] The in- 
 ductive tendency is the instinct for food. Now in adult life the instinct 
 for food is dependent upon functional passion food is useless if no 
 function. 
 
 It is interesting to note the attempts to deny vital force, and to deny 
 any other mental process but induction. These are the same tho' 
 converse. 
 
 Here is one great proof of the oneness of the human race that dif- 
 ferent individuals, nay different races and ages, do parts of an intel- 
 lectual passion that is manifestly one. The whole race is as clearly one 
 organized body, performing actions as a whole, as any most compact in- 
 dividual body that can be found. And so also is not all nature together ? 
 
 The necessity for observation of nature, induction of facts, is the
 
 185 
 
 necessity for taking food. The present state of Science has been called 
 a plethora of facts ' ; we have over-eaten, or at least taken a thoroughly 
 good meal ; it is time we shd be up and doing. And here is a reason 
 why the inductive and deductive epochs succeed each other instead of 
 going on together. No creature is eating always, or is performing great 
 external functions while he is eating. Nature bids us do one thing at a 
 time ; eat while we are eating, work (or play rather, for are we not her 
 children} when we have done. Hence also perhaps, why there are long 
 deductive periods and comparatively short inductive ; we soon take a 
 meal and then work a long while. This a great delight to me, to see 
 that those ' theoretical ' dark ages were not so dark after all ; that also 
 was right. They worked ; we have been feasting. But our turn to 
 work comes also : labour succeeds to refreshment. Bacon's work was 
 but the dinner bell ; perhaps rather long in coming tho' not late by God's 
 time : but we also have dallied long over our meal and feel perhaps dis- 
 posed to go to sleep, but it is for work that we have eaten and gained 
 fresh strength. We may quit unreluctantly the relics of our feast ; anon 
 we shall find the table spread again with new and more delicate viands, 
 and shall come with well earned appetites. Some are fond of eating, 
 some of working : there is in the scientific world this division of eaters 
 and workers, but the intellectual life of humanity will run its living 
 alternation of eating and of working. While men are reasoning a priori 
 against a priori reasoning, behold a better theory of things is worked 
 out, and that wh they have proved never can be, is. So exact is this 
 comparison that it even suggests a recurrence to the embryonic condition 
 of body and mind. For the embryo at first receives nutriment only and 
 performs no function, and afterwards its functions are comparatively very 
 slight, while it is in utero. But this reception of nourishment is not an 
 instinctive or voluntary taking of food : just so in earliest stage of 
 mental development, at first, there is only observation and no deduction, 
 or but the slightest. But this ' embryonic ' observation is not induction, 
 and observe the first act after birth is not taking food but performing 
 function, of breathing, crying, &c. ; this function leads to the taking 
 food. 
 
 "What in the history of the intellectual life can be parallel to the 
 birth ? Whatever it is, observe, the first act of taking food or induction 
 is preceded by function deduction it is the approx causes the diver- 
 gent. I shd like to know that is the embryonic, infant, adult condition 
 of mental life : I am convinced it has these stages. There is an instinct 
 or tendency also to induction, or to the performance of the mental vital 
 process, just as there is in the living body tendency of the approximated 
 particles to assume vital state, or of fallen pendulum or planet to rise. 
 Finally even taking food involves functional passion : so even in observ- 
 ation, in every form of the purest induction, there is necessarily more 
 or less of the functional deductive or theoretical passion. As observed 
 by many, there is no observing except by aid of a theory, as there is no 
 feeding save by aid of a function the theory is the grasping and eating 
 the facts. The real advice of Comte and such people, put into intelli- 
 gible language, is ' Be content with eating ; make no attempt to work ; 
 nay vigorously check and keep down every instinctive tendency thereto. 
 Make no further use of hands or feet or head than is requisite for the 
 prehension and mastication of the food.' Certainly good advice for the
 
 186 
 
 attainment of 'quiet and order.' (See Preface and Introduction.) 
 Because men could not accomplish certain tasks when they had fasted 
 long and were faint, are they not to try again when their strength is 
 renewed with food ? If not to try again, wherefore renew the strength ? 
 When God has given us a Bride shall we be content with taking measure 
 of her proportions, calculating lengths, registering temperature and 
 chemical composition ? 
 
 There is no passion in nature that is not more or less restrained : no 
 analogy can be found for any absolutely uncontrolled. Unceasing self- 
 control is the very fact of nature ; unrestrained passion, be it of what 
 kind it may, is unnatural. 
 
 The true vital passion in the mental life is not the observation of 
 facts, wh is the taking food, but the process of differentiation, discrimi- 
 nation (the very words imply the separation, the divergent action), it is 
 the process of distinguishing, as has also been pointed out. The 
 functional process in mental life is the approximating, the bringing into 
 one, the perceiving identity. The variety and unity are the two elements 
 of vital action throughout : life is unity in variety. As vital it is the dif- 
 ferentiating process ; as functional it is the identifying process. But the 
 true unity can result only from the differentiation. He cannot perceive 
 the real oneness of things who has not a thorough appreciation of their 
 difference. Truth is unity in diversity. Those who ' make one ' 
 theorize vithout first discriminating, try to have the function without 
 the nutrition. This is the order of events in mental as in physical life 
 eating, nutrition, function : observation of facts, discrimination, 
 unifying. 
 
 We must trace the parallel between the various mental and bodily 
 functions, and between the instincts and forms of chem affinity : also 
 what in mental function corresponds to the casting off of effete tissue ? 
 
 Surely men represent the divisions of the natural world : 
 
 Men of action, merely, . . . inorganic. 
 
 Artists vegetable. 
 
 Scientific men animal. 
 
 True moralists or theologians . human. 
 
 ' What do I act for ? ' Suppose for nothing to exercise my muscles, 
 as a child plays. Suppose when I have eaten I choose to stretch my 
 hands and feet, and see what I can do with them ? Shall I never be 
 hungry any more because now I wish not to eat but to act ? Do we do 
 despite to the bounty of nature because we say ' We have had enough.' 
 
 Are there not natural mental diseases as there are physical ? The ex- 
 cesses of either tendency are diseased conditions : excessive function or 
 theorizing, what are they but inflammation ' ? What are the diseases 
 of observation and discrimination ? 
 
 It is ever functions that are induced by stimuli ; .-. that wh in mind 
 corresponds to stimuli to body, induces function, i. e. the unifying or 
 theorizing. Is it thus that perception, induced by stimulus, is essentially 
 a theorizing process involves the ' Laws of Thought ' ? Theory is per- 
 ceptionseeing a thing ; seeing how or what it is. Thus Perception is 
 functional, as eating is : it is not till a chemical passion has set up in the 
 food, and partly by virtue of it, that the vital or assimilating process 
 begins. Perception or observation is a functional process : as eating and 
 incipient digestion are a, functional one.
 
 187 
 
 Now in myself, how my theory or perception of a parallel between 
 physical and mental life the unifying process leads me straight to 
 a discriminating one, an exact weighing of the peculiarities of each form 
 of mental passion, and seeking for more facts to guide me therein ; and 
 because my theory is felt to be incomplete. This is the course of mental 
 life. I have noted before how it is the incompleteness of our knowledge 
 that causes the polar opinions, the union of wh (by limit) causes develop- 
 ment of thought. 
 
 What is the parallel to the production of effete matter in function, and 
 its elimination ? Here my functional view shd help me : this decomp 
 of the tissues is not effect of function but cause : now in what sense are 
 our mental functions produced by this ' decomp ' the opposite to the vital 
 or discriminating process ? Is it somehow thus : By the vital or dif- 
 ferentiating process ideas (wh are mental ' things ' or f bodies ' or atoms) 
 are placed and retained in relations of divergence, opposed to their 
 ' natural tend*ency ' i. e. their polar attractions, as in organic life, in 
 fact word for word. Now when a ' function ' is performed (a perception ?) 
 it is by means of the (permitted) play of these tendencies ; the mental 
 ' atoms ' approximate by their own tendencies and the function is the 
 result. This is very inadequate, but it seems true. By this ' differenti- 
 ation ' we mentally arrange apart things that are really one ; we suspend 
 their * affinity ' : having come together as one performed the approxn 
 wh is the cause of function they are no longer available for mental 
 vital passion or discrimination ; they are effete. But this approxn is 
 not the function, but the cause of the function. The ' laws of thought ' 
 or ' forms ' have some bearing here. Surely there are three strictly 
 mental functions as three bodily, viz. 
 
 Perception. Thought. Emotion, 
 
 wh are 
 
 Muscular motion. Secretion [separation]. Nervous passion. 
 
 By ' perception ' I mean perception of external objects ; muscular mo- 
 tion has external rotation, is eminently excited by external stimuli. This 
 perception comes again to be an ' instinctive muscular passion,' deter- 
 mined like all instincts by internal constitution a kind of ' grasping.' 
 Thought theorizing, unifying represents secretion, and has for its ob- 
 ject the raising the vital grade, development of vital state. Emotion is 
 the cerebral function the ruler, and mover of all ; the truly human ele- 
 ment : as man is the Brain of Nature. 
 
 Facts wh have been once unified are cut off from '.being part of Hie 
 living or differentiated frame ; they cannot be made vital again : ever 
 fresh facts are required as food. What is mental Kespiration ; always 
 indispensable ? It is best not to be in a hurry to ' express ' : that is the 
 function, debilitating like early over-exertion. Take food. i. e. observe 
 and discriminate ; that is mental life : so being well nourished we shall 
 have power to act : when our ' ideas ' can be kept apart no longer, but 
 will unite, then we perform a spontaneous natural function, and see the 
 truth. Vigorous nutrition and vigorous function are inseparable. 
 
 A beautiful idea of mental and spiritual life is involved in this con- 
 ception of life as consisting in arrangement of elements in opposition to 
 their tendencies ; constituting so an accumulation of power. In spiritual 
 life, our passions restrained from the accomplishment of their primary
 
 188 
 
 tendencies, constitute a sonrce of power, we can live and do good things 
 because by resistance to affection we have accumulated a store of affec- 
 tion and of passion ; it is that very emotion, wh, if we had not directed 
 and resisted it, wd have been evil, constitutes the emotional power 
 wherewith we love. By moral resistance we store up moral power, as 
 by physical resistance physical power. In the moral world we have 
 the privilege of producing Life : the resistance we there apply becomes 
 vital. And in the mental life the idea is hardly less beautiful : in our 
 truest mental processes our thoughts do but obey previous tendencies, 
 wh the resistance [of other thought] has hitherto kept in abeyance. And, 
 as in the body, the resisted thought at once forms the mechanism and 
 constitutes the power : from this permitted play of prior tendencies in 
 the so-constructed mind, result adapted passions, true functions. See 
 how life elevates : by its resistance in a living body mere chemical passion 
 is made to produce adapted results ; in the living mind mere instinct 
 is made to produce the results of reason : and in a living spirit mere 
 animal emotion is made to produce the effect of holy love. 
 
 How scientifically true is Swedenborg's doctrine, that man's percep- 
 tions depend upon his nature : his universe, hereafter, such as his Love. 
 There is a profound idea here ; worthy of the man who saw ' Nature 
 wreathing an everlasting spiral.' If there be, within, moral death, the 
 universe also is death. It is life that produces life. There is a deep 
 moral meaning also in the physiological fact that only life generates 
 life. 
 
 All life is subject to disease, but this so far as it is not a result of 
 moral wrong- doing, is right also. And all life has a period of non- 
 development, wh is incompleteness, failure in regard to the ultimate re- 
 sult, yet this also is right. The earth was as right when it was the abode 
 of fishes alone as now or ever : yet to a Being who knew it was designed 
 for man it wd have appeared far wrong. It is time, a human element, 
 that sets our conceptions wrong. We may help ourselves against it by 
 taking another unit of time in imagination : e. g. take as our unit of time 
 the whole physical existence of a man. Let his whole life be to us the 
 ' now ' then all idea of progress, development, imperfection, is excluded : 
 there is no defective period ; all is right, all is perfect. God's * unit of 
 time,' or rather of duration, is Eternity : the moment, the space that 
 is now to us. 
 
 The physical appetite, occasioned by the nutritive process, of course is 
 for those articles of food wh are most needed ; and in physiology it is 
 recognized that that food is best wh the appetite prefers. That mental 
 food also, those classes of facts and observations, for wh there is the 
 greatest appetite, shd be the most needed, save in cases of mental dis- 
 ease, wh answers doubtless in strict terms to bodily. 
 
 Does not the mental life develope in the history of man from a mere 
 instinctive period, up thro* an artistic, a scientific or intellectual, and an 
 emotional period, to come at last to a moral period : and are not these, 
 respectively, inorganic, vegetable, animal, human ? And do we not see 
 the same in the individual ? in the infant first mere instinct ; then, in 
 the boy, a constructive period (artistic) ; then an intellectual period ; 
 then an emotional one wh it rests with himself to develope into a true 
 life. In History- the human memory we trace back clearly to the ar- 
 tistic or constructive period ; as the individual's extends back to boyhood ; 
 [Metaphysics, 129.
 
 189 
 
 the infantile or truly instinctive period is pre-historic ; memory does not 
 rehearse it, tho' sometimes memorials are found. 
 
 Each process of the mental life, as of the physical, is vibration : hence 
 the origin of mental polarity or attraction, i. e. of Instinct ; as the 
 source of physical polarity is the vibratile character of motion. "We see 
 rather the result in the physical, and the process in the mental world, 
 and the difference perplexes the eye at first. 
 
 How often we see, indeed how familiar has the idea become, affection 
 repulsed or crushed by death, failing i. e. of its satisfaction, develope 
 into beneficence and piety. 
 
 Can I see how Art and Science, as corresponding to vegetable and 
 animal life, play an opposite part with respect to oxygen ? i. e. what is 
 the analogue to oxygen and respiration in mental life ? I need to dis- 
 distinguish here between those mental ' functions ' wh we commonly call 
 mental actions perception, reasoning, &c. and those so to speak mole- 
 cular changes by wh the living body is formed, in wh its nutritive and 
 essential functional passion consist. These are of course altogether dis- 
 tinct : can we find what the latter are in relation to mental life ? - In 
 relation to life as a whole is not the death of individuals the function ? 
 It seems to us ruin, a mere downfall, but it is in truth only a step in 
 vital advance, an instance of function causing development. 
 
 To us, in these days, is not all passion whatever the result of polar at- 
 traction, directly or indirectly : that first action of God wh constituted 
 the motion, when as yet there was none, that first motion wh became the 
 one vibration from wh all the others spring is the mystery of creation, 
 the thing we do not (? cannot) know. 
 
 Development, the progress from one condition to another relatively 
 more perfect, is the universal character of nature (including even the 
 moral world, for we need no longer seek to separate from ' nature ' the 
 moral sphere). Yet there is no imperfection really, to God, whose Unit 
 of duration is Eternity. How is it that we come to perceive these things 
 in time, and perceive thus imperfection and progress ? The ' time ' is 
 one of our mental instincts. 
 
 The development of embryo throws light upon development of mind. 
 
 First there is laid the basis of the nervous system emotion or feeling. 
 Next ,, ,, muscular ,, perceptive. 
 
 Last secretive or glandular intellective. 
 
 The truly intellective being offspring as it were of perceptive and emo- 
 tional ? I think this is so : we think only in consequence of perceiving 
 and feeling ; as secretion is a result of the functional activity of muscular 
 and nervous systems. 
 
 Eespiration in mental life, does it not appear to be some kind of con- 
 stant relation to the external world, [having some connection with per- 
 ception, as respiration is a muscular process], without wh mental life wd 
 cease: it is different from that 'observation' wh constitutes food, and 
 the necessity for which is much less imperative and constant. It 
 seems almost as if it were our constant perception of an external world, 
 the habitual perception of things well known ; and here is an inverse 
 relation to the Arts or constructive passions, i. e. to the vegetable world, 
 wh go to increase, as it were, the external world itself to add oxygen. 
 So ' Eespiration ' is that relation to the external world wh is the constant
 
 190 
 
 source and spring of the mental passion itself: and thus the arts purify- 
 as it were man's mental atmosphere ; invigorate his life. And this men- 
 tal respiration, hy causing the constant functional activity, produces thus 
 the life, the nutritive passion itself. And what is the ' Circulation ' ? 
 
 It is beautiful to see in the mental world how life arises from failure, 
 i. e. from dissatisfaction ; when I try to express an idea I do not satisfy 
 myself. I try again ; do it over and over again, and better and better : 
 that is life. So life in its very idea involves development ; it is not a 
 stationary condition of activity, but always and necessarily a development. 
 The question whether life has truly developed itself is absurd ; if it does 
 not develope itself it is not life. And so the indication of a capacity 
 for a higher life is ever a dissatisfaction with the present. Those who 
 advance the intellectual life are first discontented with that wh exists. 
 It must be a precisely parallel process in the physical world that leads to 
 the development of animal life. And the parallelism may be traced into 
 the very details as it were ; the resisted passion, by other passion. For 
 what is the reason that a theory or view that satisfies one man does not 
 satisfy another [capable of judging] but that in this other's mind there 
 is more thought wh resists the other thought ? a conclusion cannot be 
 reached ; the passion fails of its accomplishment, that wh seems right to 
 the other to him is absolutely wrong, because there is more than that 
 view will embrace. It is ever more passion, as it were, in the same limits, 
 wh causes development ; as I have seen in life, it is more vital passion 
 in the same space ; the doctrine of development by pressure. 
 
 Has not the development of Science consisted, historically, in making 
 more and more of our knowledge to be one ? First was mathematics : 
 then other and other things seen to be mathematical. Now do not I see 
 that all physical things are ? But first there has been much false uni- 
 fying, much, failure of the approximating passion : as e. g. when all phy- 
 siology was referred to the shapes, sizes and angles of particles. From 
 this view of the mental life we obtain a deeper insight into the fatal 
 character of self-conceit. There cannot be conscious life where there is 
 not conscious failure, as physical failure is source of physical life. "Would 
 not even a perfectly holy man grow by conscious moral failure ? surely : 
 ' He chargeth His angels with folly.' 
 
 All things in nature are best for the whole ; even ugly things and de- 
 formed arise from due resistance. So, hard as it is for faith to see, God's 
 permission of sin and cruelty is ' due self control? 
 
 The useful is the idea of the inorganic world; the beautiful of the 
 vegetable ; the true of the animal. See the three arts ; Sculpture, 
 Painting, Music : being perhaps the muscular, secretive, and nervous ; 
 or, Perception, Thought, Emotion. In mental life what corresponds to 
 the peculiar characters of light and sound ? Is not the Brain as it were 
 the external world to the ' mind,' acting, in its passions, as stimulus to 
 it ; just as the external world, thro' the senses, by its passions, acts as 
 stimulus to the brain ? 
 
 In the head, the eye, the ear and the nose are at right angles in the 
 three dimensions of a cube. 
 
 In mind, as in the physical world, we cannot have one, truly, without 
 the opposite ; neither function nor nutrition without the other ; the ab- 
 sence of either falsifies the other : e. g. the true complexity of nature is 
 only appreciated by perception of its absolute unity and simplicity, and
 
 101 
 
 its simplicity is only arrived at thro* perception of its complexity and 
 variety. The wrong unifying is a partial unifying : there is hardly a 
 better example than the identification of electricity and nervous force ; 
 thus hindering the discovery of the true unity wh unites them. The 
 true unifying is the perception of the oneness of all things ; that oneness 
 wh they derive from being all God's one act ; and the progress is a gra- 
 dual approach to this. It is the perception of the falsenes of the partial 
 unifying that tends to the nutrition, or discrimination, to the taking food 
 or observation, that render possible the subsequent truer and larger uni- 
 
 rg ; but this often takes place not in the same man but in another 
 men being but portions of one humanity. As man is the mi- 
 crocosm, containing all in his human life, so in developed science, or 
 mental life, the ' all ' is united into one. 
 
 In the world of physical life the individuals most prominently catch 
 our eye ; BO much so that to affirm animal life to be one is held to be ir- 
 religious as well as foolish. In the mental world, on the contrary, it is 
 the whole that we prominently discern. We perceive human science, 
 the intellectual life of man, to be one ; and have to look in order to dis- 
 cern its division into many minds, and the co-working of these many to 
 make up the whole. But between the animal and mental worlds tho' 
 we as yet discern it not there is an absolute identity, in oneness and in 
 manifoldness alike. Nor is this identity confined to the mental and 
 animal worlds : it embraces all life, i. e. all nature : the universe is one 
 even as Science is one. 
 
 I perceive that the expression ' passion directed ' is much better an 
 expression for nature than that of ' motion (or passion) in direction of 
 least resistance.' It is not a truism : and it asserts the fact of the ex- 
 istence of the resistance, while that the passion is in direction of least, 
 is involved in the terms. 
 
 Now I shall have a sympathy with all things and with all persons, I 
 hope ; understanding the meaning of this daily life. Is not this why I 
 had not sympathy ; because it was necessary for me to know better : that 
 wh seemed knowledge to others to me was obviously not knowledge. 
 
 Aug. 1, 1856. Thinking of homology of urinary tubule to intestine 
 with stomach higher vitalization from secretion I was struck with the 
 secretion that goes on in digestion, and excretion of part of the food it- 
 self, as if one part of it was vitalized while another part decayed. Now 
 this must have its parallel in the mental life : there must be such a pro- 
 cess of elimination, or excretion, connected with the digestion and assi- 
 milation of the food, i. e. the facts of observation. 
 
 See how the complexity in perfect simplicity of physical life corres- 
 ponds with that of mental and moral life : the original tendencies, the 
 resistance : the nutrition, the functional Capacity ; the function main- 
 taining and invigorating the life. See it thus in love: there is the 
 spiritual resistance, the self-control, wh makes of love a moral life. Is 
 not this the meaning too of the instinct of modesty ; making of passion 
 an emotional life. 
 
 How the idea of life is embodied in a siege : the assault repulsed, 
 failing, or forborne [wh is the same in respect to mind] ; leading to bat- 
 teries, trenches, &c., wh again end in a renewed and more powerful 
 assault. That is like the recent course of Science : the assault, the func- 
 tion ; the investment, the nutrition. Do not I perform the function for
 
 192 
 
 wh the Science of the last centuries has by nutrition produced the 
 power ? 
 
 The use of this constant resistance is evidently to produce that wh wd 
 not be otherwise : everything, in nature, is because some passion was re- 
 sisted, and .*. went so. 
 
 Are not the esthetic, rational, and moral ' senses ' all perceptions of life ; 
 the love of life for life, as it were : is not this in some sense the found- 
 ation of them, that life depends on that due control of passion wh they 
 require ? And is there a real difference in the life, in nature also, ac- 
 cording to the proportion of such control ? In some things a more abso- 
 lute and perfect life ; a truer correspondence with the Living God, i. e. 
 with a holy spirit. It is in the spiritual element, the holiness, that the 
 true source of all natural facts and relations must be sought : the origin 
 of all things is from a Holy Spirit. Are things beautiful, true, right, as 
 they express more nearly the ' due self-control ' of holiness ? And yet 
 all things are the action of a perfectly Holy Being : does there appear 
 imperfection to us because we see them in time ; and .*. some to us do 
 more truly express perfect holiness ? Our perception of things in time it 
 is that causes us to see progress, development, immaturity, decay : to us 
 .-. not all is perfect, and some more truly than others express perfect 
 
 Are our physical senses to be understood by analogy with these ? 
 
 Will not the reason the necessity that there are ever male and fe- 
 male, be best seen in relation to thought : the two polar forms of thought 
 being male and female ; and in physical and mental world the process, 
 the law, the same ? Is not the one form function the adhering to right 
 result male : the other nutrition female ; pursuing right logic and ob- 
 servation even to wrong result. Why ? the answer will hold also in the 
 physical world. It seems strange that the adhering to right result with 
 wrong logic, shd be the male, and vice versa ; yet surely it must be so : 
 male and female hold respectively the oppositely sexual modes of thought. 
 It is certainly the right logic, &c., to wrong result, wh does the nutritive 
 part. One can almost trace here the process of impregnation and deve- 
 lopment of embryo. It is the female opinion fertilized by the male, that 
 gizes rise to the new opinion including the new element, Avii is the child. 
 The male opinion is the father, united with the female, producing the new 
 life the opinion reconciling both ; the child, or rather the aggregated 
 offspring, male and female. This mental triplet repro. souta past, present, 
 and future : the male opinion, the past ; the female the new facts the 
 present ; the developed opinion, the future. 
 
 All succession co-exists, or is now to God, as to us length, breadth and 
 depth co-exist i. e first man, then woman, then child (the order of cre- 
 ation). Length, breadth and depth involve the three vibrations at right 
 angles, i. e. a strict spiral, regarding form as result of motion ; and here 
 is another proof of the universality of the spiral : as there is nothing in 
 nature that has not length, breadth and depth, there is no form that is not 
 the result of spiral motion in strictest sense. And .-. also the spiral, in 
 its appropriate conception, must be involved in all the other triplets : it 
 may indeed be put for the triplet absolutely in all its forms. Past, present 
 and future are to God as & family father, mother, and offspring are to 
 us ; a perfect oneness and co-existence.
 
 193 
 
 Consider again how we are intellectually related to time : we hear of 
 the past, or remember ; we perceive the present ; we infer or anticipate 
 the future. Memory [including testimony], perception, inference; (are 
 not these the three elements of a syllogism ?) 
 
 Or Belief, feeling, expectation ; or 
 
 Faith, Charity, Hope ? and Charity hereafter to be all. 
 
 There is truly some great meaning in that ' Common Sense ' ; the in- 
 stinctive perception : it is a great function ' Cannot you put things 
 together ? ' we say : can it be the respiration ? 
 
 Thus I get also a new view of cause, condition, and effect : cause, 
 male ; condition, female ; or cause and condition are father and mother of 
 effect. 
 
 In ' things ' we see the three, in the form of length, breadth and depth ; 
 coexistent. In ' actions ' or ' events ' we perceive succession, or time. 
 Yet are the 'things' also 'actions,' in the very same sense, really; but 
 the perception of ' things ' is instinctive action in ourselves : is there 
 some clue here ? How is it that Brain is so constructed that certain 
 passions produced in it by the senses cause such things to be perceived ? 
 [Question asked wrongly : the brain being one of the things perceived by 
 sense.] 
 
 It is as if in chemistry such a spiraloid motion as constitutes polarized 
 light e. g., were turned back on itself, making so a true, and .-. a self- 
 contained, spiral, like the orbit of the earth, e. g., and thus a 'thing.' 
 
 Now do I not begin to perceive better how it is that actions spiritual 
 actions are ' things ' to us. A thing is merely a motion, perfectly spiral, 
 returning on itself, and seen as a whole ? Can we not conceive how to 
 some Beings our ' passions ' may appear as things ? but this is imperfect : 
 is not the conception of ' things ' an after-thought, rather a process of 
 reasoning, analogous to that by wh a picture conveys to us the idea of a 
 ' thing ' ? It is by sight and touch together that we gain the idea of 
 things ; thus it is an inference. It is the joint product of two different 
 passions in the brain. What is the difference between perception of 
 things and of motion ? We certainly conceive of many mere motions as 
 ' things ' at first. 
 
 When I say a thing ' resists,' what do I mean but that a certain motion 
 cannot be ; what is the inference from this ? 
 
 The identity between the mental and physical worlds is illustrated by 
 Fresnel's prediction of a fact relating to light, by mere interpretation of 
 a mathematical formula. Light is passion in least resistance, .. also 
 mathematics both the same. And is not each mode of mental passion 
 parallel to some form of physical ? 
 
 Does not a higher, larger ' life ' arise from the failures of life itself: 
 the attainment of the tendencies of life e. g. to perfect form resisted, 
 does not a life come from thence ; from defect, deformity, disease ? must 
 it not be so ? 
 
 Here are the polar elements in respect to Free-will : (1) The evidence 
 that appears of the determination of human action, as it were necessarily, 
 by motive logic ; nutrition ; female. (2) The Common Sense, and cer- 
 tainly, true, conclusion, that man is free function ; theory ; male. The 
 problem is to unite these two ; to fertilize the former by means of the 
 latter.
 
 194 
 
 In the mental world also the ovum if not fertilized, not truly united 
 to and made one -with common sense, is wasted and lost. Such new facta 
 and ' logic ' respecting them are ever arising periodically : all such new 
 false views are capable of being developed into a new life, giving a higher 
 development to knowledge and philosophy, if they were thus rightly 
 wedded. This is the real meaning of finding the truth that is in popular 
 errors and superstitions. It is the female mind the characteristic mental 
 constitution that produces the ova ; it is the male mind the opposite 
 mental constitution that fertilizes. But assuredly the mental and phy- 
 sical sexes are opposite. Man has characteristically the female mind ; 
 woman in the main the male mind : the mental world being as perfect 
 and as adapted as the physical. Both forms of course exist in man, but 
 the men who fertilize in the mental world are emphatically feminine. 
 As there are in men, in respect to the intellectual sphere, male and female 
 minds ; so surely in respect to the emotional sphere, perhaps especially in 
 women, there must also be male and female minds and a process of sexual 
 development. For the emotional world must correspond to the intellec- 
 tual ; repeating each other as the physical and mental do. 
 
 The very clever books on science and metaphysics wh seem so strange 
 to me, so wonderfully away from the point, and yet written with so much 
 discrimination, are precisely nutritive ; they are the ova : common sense 
 function is to fertilize them. 
 
 Now can it be that ' Genius ' is not, as I have supposed, universal, but 
 has relation especially to the fertilizing male process. Is it only the 
 ' theorizers ' not the ' discriminators ' who are strictly ' men of Genius ' ? 
 There may be something in this, that Genius applies only to function, not 
 to nutrition. The comparison of it to Instinct wd tend to this view, in- 
 stincts being functional ; it is only in a secondary sense that we speak of 
 nutrition as instinctive : altho' truly a result of polar attraction it is in 
 opposition to the attractions themselves. The functional passion is dis- 
 tinctly the work of Genius : the difference is felt directly. It is not the 
 nutrition and formation of the living Being, but the functional act that 
 we call Genius. It relates not to amount, nor to value, nor to truthful- 
 ness, but to kind. Thus Genius is male : the functional or approximative 
 as opposed to the vital or divergent. Ever the bringing together is the 
 work of Genius, not the separating : that must be done for it, just as 
 nutrition must precede function. 
 
 It is beautiful thus to see how the vital passion or nutrition is carried 
 on : an unconscious preparation for a function to succeed, and done with 
 no design whatever for the function. Nay the function is unwelcome to 
 the nutrition when it comes : the new theory is rejected by those who 
 have made the requisite observations and discrimination. Yet is nutri- 
 tion made for the function ; made for it i. e. by God, not by the indi- 
 vidual workers. 
 
 The work of Genius is ever to take up the present ; the facts and 
 feelings now existing and wh never existed in the same way before, and 
 unify them ; to make this present prose, poetry. 
 
 The one-ness of all mental life all minds making one living mind is 
 well seen, inasmuch as one mind performs the nutrition, and another the 
 corresponding function. Both are parts of one life. 
 
 True function, with wh goes organic death, is development : the func- 
 tion depends on a completion of the tendency, not producing therefore a
 
 195 
 
 continuous vibration, not a repetition of the same life. Surely function 
 is like sexual reproduction, a new life : all function is .-. sexual repro- 
 duction so to speak ; the function performed is a different divergent or 
 or vital passion the child. "Wooing and marriage are the great facts of 
 nature : they are the continuous and transitive vibration the nutrition 
 and the function. God makes them thus universal. There is no true 
 marriage without love, as no function without nutrition. Sensuality is 
 above all things the very image of death. The abhorrence for unchastity 
 has this deep foundation in nature ; and is perhaps of all facts the most 
 expressive. Love, the love wh precedes marriage, is emphatically 
 Life. 
 
 The unifying process, in thought, is ever a putting together of male 
 and female -a passion [not an ' action '] a result of polar attraction. In 
 those from whom a new grade of mental life originates, two previous 
 forms of mental life have been united into one. They are unifyers, re- 
 concilers : just as the first mammal was union of two ' reptiles ' or such 
 like. These originators of new grades of mental life are therefore cha- 
 racterized by a union of strict logic (female) and strict common sense 
 (male) ; they unite at once true processes and true results ; true discri- 
 mination and true identification ; a right induction and a right theory : 
 the male and female in one constitutes a new grade of life. Before such 
 individuals appear, in every successive grade, there are multitudes of 
 mental males and females separately ; i. e. of persons who have either 
 sound common sense and resolutely maintain right results even tho' at 
 the expense of right reasoning (male) ; or who have sound logical and 
 observing powers, who perceive isolated facts accurately and discriminate 
 them correctly, but who will adopt any conclusion, however absurd or 
 palpably false, in obedience .to a logical deduction from the facts they 
 happened to know or chose to think about (female i. e. mentally female.) 
 
 There are .. three methods of procreation or reproduction in mental 
 as in physical world: (1) Gemmation, or mere increase without sexual 
 union. (2) Sexual reproduction, &c. these two merely increase the 
 number of individuals, or the amount of life, without raising the grade. 
 (3) True development ; wh by an absolute union into one of two potential 
 (male and female) produces a higher life. [But the first two lead to the 
 third, the increase causes the limit.] 
 
 By this privilege of seeing the actual as one with God's ideal I live in 
 a new world of joy and reverence. We do not need the future state to 
 introduce us to the perfect Heaven ; it is here. We only need power to 
 see aright. 
 
 Thus I see in respect to mental life, what I before perceived in rela- 
 tion to physical, that male and female are the same in different time ; the 
 female becoming the male : the female of the present is the male of the 
 future the new facts and hypothesis of to-day (fertilized) become the 
 sound theory, the ideal, the common sense of tomorrow : or with same 
 meaning, but inversion of the terms, the theory of this age is fact of the 
 next. I must guard against this double meaning of the word ' theory ' : 
 properly denoting the male it is often used to denote the female as op- 
 posed to it ; new facts hastily put together form a ' theory ' [really an 
 * ovum '] opposed to common sense, needing fertilization. Note the subtle 
 tie wh unites the ideal and common sense ; how apt we are to use the 
 words as opposite, and theory as opposed to both.
 
 196 
 
 Surely the entire reproductive process repeats itself in every part of 
 the living frame. I thought of this, first, looking at a little girl : as 
 soon as she grows to maturity the production and casting off of ova 
 commence. So, I went on, in mind, the female mental life no sooner 
 attains maturity than it forms ova ; that is it invents new views, looks 
 at unohserved facts, reasons ahout them, puts forth novelties, ahsurd 
 enough doubtless, and needing to he fertilized by ' common sense ' to 
 live and grow ; and in mental as in physical world it is hut few ova that 
 are destined to live, hut life multiplies fast enough for all that. In this 
 case I suppose reproduction occurring by two individuals, female and 
 male minds distinct ; hut this very same process also takes place in each 
 individual mind ; the female element producing ' ova,' new views, fancies, 
 inverted groupings of before unnoticed facts, &c. : these fertilized by the 
 male element of the same mind become developed into real life. So it 
 is in the physical : not only does sexual reproduction take place between 
 different individuals but in the same individual ; the process of growth 
 is the same thing : the female element in each tissue puts forth ova wh 
 are fertilized by the male whether in shape of function, as of a muscle, 
 &c., or by light as in the vegetable in some way the approximative 
 passion of male element in tissue fertilizes the female element, and 
 causes its development. Thus, rightly viewed, each portion of a living 
 frame consists, as a race does, of male and female individuals. And here 
 again we may trace the origin of male and female, find the ' law ' which 
 determines the existence of both. Now surely in the tissues, as in ani- 
 mal races, there must be some in wh the sexes are about equal in number, 
 some in wh one sex greatly preponderates. 
 
 I rejoice in the idea of ' popular delusions,' the perpetual rising up of 
 new, however delusive, views in society, being (mental) 'catamenia.' It 
 is another instance that in the great world of mind, as of physics, nothing 
 is wrong. The excess of ova everywhere, and popular delusions, present 
 to us alike apparent waste. 
 
 My idea that we should act out our nature, and should bring up our 
 children ' according to Nature,' before I saw that Nature was ' due con- 
 trol ' was a female opinion of wh the male was the ' common sense ' the 
 * right result ' that children should be controlled : the union of these 
 two results is the new mental life. Both are true, because Nature is 
 due control of passion. And so everywhere ; this law of polarity is uni- 
 versal. Now thinks because it applies to everything it is nothing ; 
 
 but I am obliged to seek for a principle that will apply to everything. 
 Nothing else satisfies me. Is not this also polar ? 
 
 Hence arises a practical direction in advancing thought : it is to get 
 new views by noticing and reasoning logically on new facts (forming 
 ova) ; but also to bring them into unison with common sense, the clearly 
 right conclusions of the past. [Well seen in homoeopathy and in ' acting 
 out nature.'] Unite the female and the male. How well in this view 
 the male appears to be the past, and the female the present ; it is the 
 union of past and present, as of male and female, that makes the future. 
 And this light applies to all the triplets. 
 
 Thus I see that politics and social ' organization ' (what a telling 
 word) are also truly a life, embodying all the facts of life ; including of 
 course the great fact of sexual reproduction, Here is a new field : all 
 the principles of life apply absolutely to politics and civilization.
 
 197 
 
 Cannot the political and social Life be traced ? Meanwhile how the 
 law that the female present must be united with and conform to the male 
 past, is fatal to all those theories wh propose to do away with religion. 
 Our new philosophy, if it is to be fruitful, must be married to the old 
 piety. Not to note that these schemes assume that the human mind has 
 been going absolutely wrong all these years without accounting for it. 
 They do not see that this cannot be. Is not the co-operative scheme a 
 female element, an ovum ? 
 
 Surely social advance has its growth, gemmation, reproduction, and 
 true development or rise in grade : this last perhaps not difficult to trace, 
 and see as union of two (polars) into one. Suppose, as is suggested to 
 me, that knowing these laws of mental and social life will not make 
 things go on any better ; still it is knowledge. But does the progress 
 of man lead him to conditions that render absolutely indispensable to him 
 a knowledge that at at earlier stages he could exist without ? 
 
 That is a radical error, the idea of a method for discovery. There can 
 be none, any more than a method of growing and developing. Mind de- 
 velopes as the body does, by passion in direction of least resistance. 
 Men have supposed they made the mind. Have we not hitherto taken 
 more pains to do God's work than our own : there is but one work that 
 He commits to us, and that is moral control of passion : to do right is 
 the only thing we have to' do, and can truly do at all. All the rest is 
 His doing. There is no method for thinking, or prosecuting science : 
 thought developes by alternate nutrition and function, like other life. 
 First the function, or theorizing, is given as the method, then eating and 
 nutrition ! If we must have such a one method it is this alone : sym- 
 pathy with Nature ; Love, wh is life. Life is the ' method ' of the 
 
 mind, as of the body, as of the universe. The mind grows like the bcdy ; 
 the conditions are, in each, plenty of wholesome food and air, and plenty 
 of exercise. ' Which of us by taking thought,' is as true for mind as 
 for body. The mind is result of mental life, as the body is of physical 
 life. 
 
 Polar attraction then, the functional or unifying tendency, is tendency 
 to form an ideal ; in short it is tendency to form a whole. Every whole 
 is an ideal ; ideal perfection means wholeness [is not this holiness ?] 
 
 This applies to the physical also : thus chem affinity is tendency to 
 form a whole not a compound body, but an unity, a one. The compound 
 bodies in chemistry are the truly simple ones ; are not the most com- 
 pounded the most truly simple or one : those viz, found in life ; the 
 highest life the truest unity ? Are not all polar bodies compound ; viz. 
 by interference. Is not this so with man and woman ; humanity being 
 the simple ? Nature in all her attractions seeks to integrate herself. 
 
 Surely the erroneous view wh constitutes the 'ovum ' is thatwh is the 
 great error of Science putting the phn before the cause, because the 
 phn appears first. This is the life ; the vital state is this wrong causal 
 relation of phna ; this relation being opposed to polar attraction, and 
 giving rise to functional power, or capacity for unifying, by virtue of 
 this very opposition the divergent ' wrong ' relation. This is the life, 
 in relation to mental passion ; new observation is false observation, i. e. 
 is nutrition. [This idea thrills me, of our wrongness of perception being 
 the mental life, the failure producing the divergence, and giving functional 
 power.]
 
 198 
 
 Now two things : 1st. How does this ' life,' this vital condition, arise 
 from resisted idealizing of unifying ? 2nd. How does this wrong rela- 
 tion correspond to the vital relation of elements in the physical world ? 
 And the putting them right, or function, developes a larger or higher 
 life ; and those elements wh were in vital relation having done their 
 work, are excreted ? tho' here the parallel is not to the individual living 
 body ; for these become the basis of knowledge. Thus we see how very 
 much too limited is our idea of life, in confining it to the organic world. 
 It exists wherever polar attraction is resisted. 
 
 This wrong relation of observed facts constitutes their value as food : 
 food must be vitalized, and have tendency to approximative passion, else 
 it is of no avail for nutrition. Our minds could no more live on facts 
 observed in their right relations, than our bodies could live on crystals. 
 This wrongness in our perception is the vital condition of our food. We 
 see things ugly, false, and morally evil, that we may live by them ; in 
 order that in them, by influence of our thought [gastric secretion ?] upon 
 them, first an approximative passion may take place, wh [resisted] is 
 the source of the life we derive "from them. We perform first a func- 
 tion on them, viz. digestion : the figure of digesting facts is not a fancy. 
 From this function after taking food, or observing, arises the higher 
 life, the assimilation. So far is it from being the case that observation 
 alone constitutes the whole of science, the very use of observation for 
 mental life consists in our perceiving icronyly. in our perception of facts 
 in false intellectual relations ; in false esthetic relations, as ugly ; in 
 false moral relations, as unjust. &c. Our inability to perceive aright it 
 is wh causes our mental life ; this is the failure wh is the cause of the 
 divergent passion. Human error is not evil ; it is the source of man's 
 mental life ; ' tearful failure the glad parent of vital growth and living 
 energy.' And the resistance wh prevents our perceiving facts right, I 
 see, is our previous mental life, i. e. previous habits and modes of thought, 
 &c., as in a living body the living state constitutes the vitalizing 
 resistance. 
 
 But how does the mental life begin in each individual ; is not mind 
 produced from mind of parents by education ? 
 
 I see that if there be any ' wrongness,' Life, i. e. nutrition is the 
 great wrongness of the world : resistance to 'natural tendency,' failure 
 and wrong relations, especially seen in mental world, are nutrition. But 
 on the other hand, Life, including nutrition and function, is also the 
 ideal ; the ideal being simply the whole^ or ' a whole ' ; and wherever 
 we see a whole there we see life. Life appears thus to be at once the 
 ideal and the contrary to the ideal. All the wrong and the absolutely 
 right are one ; identify themselves. How strong a proof that all we see 
 wrong seems wrong only because we see it wrongly : the very fact of 
 our seeing wrongly being the basis and source of our mental life. So of 
 our esthetic life ; for the seeing wrong in nature surely is the basis of 
 our ideal tendency ; i. e. artistic passion. So of our moral life surely ; 
 it is our seeing things here as morally evil that generates the life of 
 ideal holiness. This the good of the evil around us : it is life, and 
 makes our life ; but it is evil, still, only here we see it wrongly : it is 
 absolutely good in itself, and our wrong perception is good for us. 
 
 The mind's functional power, spontaneous or T on stimulus, its power 
 of ' acting ' as we say, or its ' tendency to passion ' consists as in the 
 1 34.
 
 199 
 
 case of the body in the suspended attraction, in the vital relation of the 
 mental elements. 
 
 I think I shall hest discover what mental respiration is in myself. 
 Thus thinking is like breathing to me. It is my breath of life, and I 
 cannot leave it off or am compelled soon to begin again. And the respi- 
 ration of the mind of the whole, is it not some constant passion which 
 cannot but be done ; and the effect of wh is to cast off error and arrive 
 at larger truth ? Is not this work of mine one respiratory act of the 
 great mind of man ? 
 
 Our contempt for delusions is absurd. "When it was first noticed that 
 the sun went round the earth, that was a grand popular delusion. But 
 probably the delusion of a ' real ' matter is the very grandest delusion of 
 all in respect to the physical world. 
 
 An illustration of the mental life is in Astronomy : the, wrong first 
 perception of the facts is the taking organic food ; the attempt to put 
 them into right relation [Pythagoras] was function of digestion ; the 
 failure of wh (by resistance of other facts) produced the theory of Epi- 
 cycles wh represents assimilation, or a vital relation of the elements 
 corresponding with our mental life. Then by successive functions leading 
 to successive nutritions the present more adequate system was formed. 
 Kepler was a ' functional ' man. 
 
 For nutrition in every form of life it is necessary to have the elements 
 in divergent relations ; e. g. take the largest life we perceive as life, that 
 of the solar system : no nutrition could be afforded it, no addition to its 
 life, except by addition of elements in divergent relations : any elements, 
 new planets, &c., must be added at a distance from the sun, and a resist- 
 ance supplied to their gravitation ; planets in contact with the sun, or 
 gravitating towards it unopposed, could not add to its life nor increase it 
 as a living whole, i. e. could not nourish it. And so wherever life is 
 that is in all things. 
 
 But [?] every divergent relation is not the vital divergence ; and does 
 it not seem as if it were not a strictly vital divergence that was needed 
 in all cases : e. g. vegetables are nourished by inorganic materials, altho' 
 these must be not in final chem union, but ' divergent.' Is there a par- 
 allel to this in Art as compared with the intellectual and emotional life 
 the vegetable and animal in man ? Or is it not rather that as all pas- 
 sion is truly ' life,' so all divergence is truly vital divergence, tho' we 
 may not be able to trace it : i f e. it is vital in relation to that special 
 form of life. Trace this especially in relation to chemistry ; how all se- 
 paration of elements that tend to combine, and separateness of such 
 when due to natural causes, and considered as part of the life of the 
 whole, is truly a vital relation* Is not this a clue to chemistry and es- 
 pecially perhaps to elective affinity ? There must be a parallel in organic 
 and mental life to elective affinity in chemistry. 
 
 Thus all divergence or wrong relation whatsoever in nature is truly 
 nutritive, altho' we do not see it yet. Just as all natural human error 
 all that is not wicked is nutrition ; all the wrongness of thought right, 
 as the nutritive element of the mental life. 
 
 Everything exists for something beyond itself, or has a function : wh 
 function is never foreseen or designed in the doing of that thing : this is 
 the universal instinctive character of natural passion. And this is a
 
 200 
 
 great joy. We may always be sure that what we are doing for its own 
 sake be it what it may provided it is truly natural has another and a 
 higher object. Thus nutrition has for its function the production of ca- 
 pacity for functional passion : the ' function ' of nutrition is the pro- 
 duction of the vital machine with its power of self-passion. But this is 
 not known : nutrition in Science and Art is produced for its own sake : 
 but it does much more ; not indeed immediately and in its own accom- 
 plishment like the unifying passion, wh, in taking place, effects the func- 
 tion ; the function of nutrition is deferred. Function also produces nu- 
 trition ; it is mutual dependence. This is because passion does not 
 cease ; the real fact is only that. 
 
 But now when this relation of all our human passion of all man does 
 to another and higher purpose is clearly understood, may not men learn 
 consciously to work for and to expect such results ? Is not this what 
 man should do ; and were it not an advance if those who nourish Science 
 and Art knew they did it only for the sake of producing~functional power, 
 if those who neutralize the resistance and permit the unifying passion, 
 knew that the real object of this was a function, a higher end. Wd it 
 not be good and natural ; is it not the true development of man that he 
 should stand the consciom embodiment of life ? 
 
 I conceive Newton must have been functional in mathematics, nutritive 
 in physical science. 1 think this is probable, the more because I conceive 
 that the same men are apt to have the inverse character in different 
 relations. 
 
 I perceive I must not use the word theory as indicative of the unifying 
 passion rightly considered : talent constructs more ' theories ' as the word 
 is used, than Genius indeed Genius does not make theories in that sense 
 at all it destroys and sets them aside and shows simply how things are, 
 without any theory. 
 
 I have said that there can be no error in our views except our own in- 
 ventions : I must modify this ; there is error in our perceptions ; in that 
 consists our ' organic ' food. Yet the true unifying process the func- 
 tional science consists mainly in the mere rejection of chimeras and ar- 
 bitrary and indeed absurd inventions, and letting the facts fall naturally 
 into their places ; it is exactly that. This rejection of chimeras, is it 
 not precisely the part of the stimulus the neutralizing or removing the 
 vital resistance ? 
 
 Is not here a good thing : Science consists of certain groups of facts 
 truly arranged among themselves, these groups being falsely arranged to 
 each other. Xow this shows something about living tissues. Are they 
 not groups of particles chemically arranged ; the groups so composed 
 only being in a state of vital divergence ? 
 
 Observation of nature is taking organic food, i. e. elements of know- 
 ledge arranged in opposition to ' polar affinities.' And it will never be 
 otherwise ; the first view of facts must ever be a false view ; an inverted 
 view of their relations this is just as needful as that food should be or- 
 ganic. And it is an essential result of our mental constitution and re- 
 lations also ; as (1) we ever see the phn hefore the cause, and become 
 familiar with the phn before we discover the cause, wh .. we are almost 
 sure to take for an effect (well seen in relation to cause of function). 
 (2) This wrong or inverted perception arises from the limit of our know- 
 ledge, and .-. new facts are sure to be thus seen.
 
 201 
 
 The Epicycle- Astronomy was wrong or nutritive ; yet it was in a high 
 degree beautiful, but it wanted that great element of beauty, simplicity ; 
 and probably in the presence or want of a supreme simplicity exists a 
 main distinction between the nutritive and functional in Art and Science 
 alike. 
 
 The Epicycles are a good illustration of assimilation : it was not what 
 was perceived, neither was it true ; it was a new vital arrangement given 
 to the elements by the living mind of man : and as the mind developes 
 so does the vital arrangement change, and becomes simpler. Who could 
 have said that the Epicycle theory was wrong when no better vas known ? 
 Yet it was felt to be so by some. 
 
 Men of Science who are so contemptuous of ' popular delusions,' are 
 forgetful that the whole of this experimental physical science, of which 
 these last centuries boast so loudly, is really one great ' delusion.' It 
 contains the germs the ovum of a true Science, just as they do, and 
 nothing more. And what a life there must be in the future ; what a de- 
 velopment, of wh this present Science is but the ovum ! 
 
 Here is the distinction between nutrition and function in mental life. 
 The man of Talent says, ' If I put these things so, it will have a capital 
 effect' ; the man of Genius says, ' I know nothing about effect, but these 
 things go so and I cannot help it.' The man of talent arranges his ele- 
 ments according to his conception and produces his effect, more or less 
 grand, interesting, instructive or beautiful, as the case may be ; the man 
 of genius suffers his elements to arrange themselves according to their 
 nature, and the effect, wh is as novel and surprising to him as to any one 
 else, is inconceivable : it is the effect of the work itself and cd not have 
 existed before it ; it is a rising to a higher grade than before. In talent, 
 or nutrition, the conception precedes the work: in genius, or function, 
 the work produces the conception. In the nature of things it is as im- 
 possible that a man of genius should design the meaning and significance 
 of his work, as that the function should precede and determine the chem 
 change wh is its cause. Nay there is no relation of similarity between 
 them ; there wd be no adaptation in the ' meaning ' to produce the work. 
 The meaning is not even the result of the work, as such, but of the 
 structure of the living frame in wh it takes place. The grasping of the 
 hand e. g. has no adaptation to produce the chem change wh causes it : 
 nay, the chem change, as such, has no adaptation to produce the grasping ; 
 it is the living structure wh causes that ; the effect of the nutrition in 
 fact wh has preceded. Thus Genius could not exist to the exclusion of 
 talent, nor is it higher than talent; comparisons between them are 
 between the nutrition and function of the body. 
 
 In domestic or social life, normally, how the man represents the func- 
 tion the agent in all the external activities ; the woman the nutrition, 
 subordinate to him, and not extending herself at all beyond ; but 
 yet, as nutrition does, influencing, yes, determining, his action. Is this 
 the ' influence ' of woman. For if the male or functional be that to wh 
 the female or nutritive is entirely subordinate, on the other hand the 
 function is entirely dependent upon and determined by the nutrition. 
 The nutrition absolutely rules the function ; such as it is will the func- 
 tion be ; nor is there any functional power whatever save as furnished 
 by nutrition. Thus as in a living body function and nutrition are strictly 
 one and mutually dependent, so in human life are man and woman. The
 
 202 
 
 man indeed performs the function ; but the woman determines it. They 
 rise and fall together. Such as the woman is will the man be. 
 
 This also is the case with genius and talent. Genius is apt to despise 
 and lord it over talent as man is apt to do with regard to woman : but 
 it is no less an error. Genius is as dependent upon talent as function is 
 on nutrition. Such as the talent has been will the Genius be. Talent 
 rules Genius as woman rules man. If talent sinks and fails, Genius 
 must faint and die. There is no function where there is no nutrition, 
 and -where a depraved nutrition a perverted function. Here the depend- 
 ence of men of genius on the labors of their predecessors, and especially 
 those of talent rather than of Genius ; and talent again receives a new 
 capacity from G-enius. This is what I feel in reading scientific books ; 
 they are remarkably powerful, ingenious, talented ; but so wonderfully 
 wrong. 
 
 Our present Science is like the Epicycle theory. It is the vital per- 
 ception of Nature assimilated ; and truly it is wonderful, elaborate, beau- 
 tiful ; a remarkable monument of human ingenuity, industry and perse- 
 verance, and is unboundedly admired. It is grand, sublime, enchanting ; 
 it has but one thing to be said on the other side : it is simply wrong : 
 it wants some one to remove the ' resistance ' wh keeps the facts in these 
 divergent relations and let them fall into place according to their own 
 affinities. Then there will be a * function,' a meaning and a significance 
 in Science, altogether beyond and unlike any mere arrangement of phy- 
 sical facts. Then Science will ' grasp ' eternal, spiritual verities. 
 
 Is not our false perception of ' matter ' instead of God's action, like 
 the false perception of the sun going round the earth ? the former the 
 spring and source of all our scientific life, as the latter is of the life of 
 astronomy. 
 
 How this idea of nutrition and function applies to everything : nutri- 
 tion absorbs force ; the polar union reproduces it, and in altogether 
 another form. The general idea shd stand clearly before me in all its 
 applications, to organic, inorganic, and mental worlds alike. Just as 
 the function of Science the result of the arrangement of the elements 
 of Science by their own affinities is this higher moral meaning, so is 
 this higher moral meaning the function also of Art, of music, of painting ; 
 but only those forms of art can produce it wh consist in a permission of 
 the arrangement of the elements by their own affinities [Genius]. 
 
 The function of Science [effected by arrangement of the elements of 
 Science by their own affinities, my constitution acting as a stimulus to 
 permit it] is the view of Nature as a spiritual holy deed ; wh has no re- 
 lation to any particular arrangement of scientific facts, but results 
 because of the mental organization of the race, in wh the permitted 
 arrangement of the facts takes place. So the function of music and 
 painting must be similar. The function of anything cannot consist in 
 that wh it is in iteelf : not in its beauty, its expressiveness, anything 
 about it indeed, but in something altogether unlike itself [indeed of an 
 opposite polarity even] resulting from it only because of the organization 
 in wh it takes place: i. e. our organization who perceive the higher 
 meaning. Hence also while the nutritive art means one thing and only 
 one, viz. what the artist meant, functional art means everything anything 
 and all things that any observer is able to feel : the function does not 
 depend on the art but on the organization i. e. the organization of the
 
 203 
 
 recipient, not of the producer. The artistic fact, being a permitted 
 passion effected by suspended tendencies, produces a power wh will pro- 
 duce any effect according to the mechanism the mental organization to 
 wh it is applied. The peculiarity of the work of Genius is that it pro- 
 duces a power. There is a power from it,, not in it. There is power m 
 a work of talent ; a work of Genius exercises power the former is a 
 result of power, the latter a producer of it. Just as chem decompn is 
 result of force ; chem union a producer of force. 
 
 The true end and object of art is not that we should exert or perceive 
 power in it, but that it should exercise a power upon upon us. And 
 equally of Science : its end, its function, is not that wh we do in it, but 
 the power it is to exercise on us. The function of Science is the purifi- 
 cation of -the soul, by showing us Holiness all around us. 
 
 See further : the Being who performs a function designs only it and 
 not the means ; all animal functions are designed by the animal. I 
 cannot but think there must be some Being or Beings above us, who use 
 us to perform their functions they design what we unconsciously per- 
 form. Or is this Being, God ? It is of the essence of a function, surely, 
 to be intended or designed. Are not we the tissues wh unconsciously 
 perform the functions ; but who designs the functions wh we unconsciously 
 perform ? Are we parts of some greater Being ? or is it God who in all 
 designs these higher functions ? 
 
 The true function and effect upon us of music i. e. of music of Genius 
 is not our perception of it as it is, nor of its beauty, nor of its meaning, 
 nor anything that has any relation to it at all. It is the effect of the 
 force that it generates upon our organization ; causing in us a passion 
 that is not in any sense like the thing itself, though determined by the 
 kind and amount of force that it produces : a passion wh is akin to the 
 perception of nature, and surrounds us with an universe ; it represents 
 the universe to us, in fact. [Is here why a vibration is, e. g., bluet] 
 
 Thus do I see perception is divergent, and furnishes organic materials 
 why we must necessarily perceive things wrongly or in vital relations ? 
 viz. because all force produces divergent passion. 
 
 What we call our great system of scientific truth is a great system of 
 scientific 'wrongness '; if it were not for the wrongness and opposition 
 to the affinities of the conceptions there wd be no life, no power, in it. 
 An animal body that has just exerted to the utmost its functional power 
 is less living than it was before. So it is with Science : immediately after 
 every great advance, every true unifying, she is less living than before ; 
 but then a new nutrition sets in and restores the vital state, carrying it 
 indeed to a higher pitch i. e. a new wrong arrangement of fresh naturals. 
 This is the reason our senses deceive us. It is no misfortune, no evil 
 incident to our condition, it is essential to our mental life. 
 
 Nothing more marks the nutritive character of the recent epoch in 
 Science than the suspicion almost aversion with wh all work on the 
 arrangement of ideas has been regarded. Ever the cry is for new facts ; 
 but in a, functional operation new facts have no right place. Nutrition 
 succeeds function, and succeeds with doubled energy, but the function has 
 in itself nothing in common with it : the ideas it introduces are of a dif- 
 ferent order. 
 
 There is spontaneity, passiveness, an inability to help it, in Genius ; 
 an impulse in Talent. In a man of talent there is a force always urging
 
 204 
 
 him to put things in such and such a way : in a man of Genius 'things 
 are always dragging and pulling to go in a certain way, to wh he merely 
 yields ; they are tending and pressing to assume a certain relation until 
 he lets them, and this union produces actual psychical force, just as chem 
 union does. 
 
 The higher significance of the functional art of the music of Genius 
 as distinguished from that of talent, e. g. has no more relation to the 
 music, as such, than showing the time has to the falling of a weight. 
 
 In respect to the mind as to the body, the elements of wh it is com- 
 posed exist first around it, as it were, in nature, but in vital relations : 
 but now in what sense do the elements of our mental life ideas exist 
 in vital relations actually around us in Nature ? Surely Nature consists 
 as much of thought as of motion, as truly of ideas as of matter. Is it not 
 a great question : as the body consists of the very materials wh constitute 
 the world around, so does the mind : thought must be not in us only but 
 ^in the entire universe. Then the parallel is to be carried out : how we 
 assimilate these elements into our mental life, and they by their own tend- 
 encies effect a function in us utterly unlike the change in their own rela- 
 tions that causes it. 
 
 As our bodies consist of materials, like themselves, gathered from 
 Nature, so our minds must also consist of materials, like themselves, 
 gathered from Nature : thought must as really exist in Nature as motion. 
 Nothing is made out of nothing. A thought is God's action like motion 
 is, and equal and opposite as it were to motion the other half of the 
 vibration ; motion and thought must bear the same relation to us ; must 
 be the same deed external to us. Our minds are the result of the thought 
 in Nature, as our bodies are a result of the motion in Nature ; or rather 
 our minds are a part, a form, of the thought that is in Nature. Man's 
 mind bears the same relation to the thought-universe that man's body 
 does to the motion-universe. Is man's mind the highest development of 
 the thought that constitutes the thought-universe, as his body is the highest 
 development of the motion that constitutes the physical universe, i. e. so 
 far as we know it. 
 
 Do I approach here that mystery of ' mind ' and its connection with 
 the body. There is a great psychical ' life ' co-equal and correspondent 
 with the great physical ' life ' that constitutes the universe. The psy- 
 chical and physical make up the whole ; together they constitute a life, 
 are respectively nutrition and function ; the physical .the nutrition, the 
 psychical the function : each vibratile to its minutest detail. I take it 
 we as truly perceive thought in Nature as motion ; ' mind ' as matter ; 
 [or 'body']. The physical universe is a great 'body' corresponding 
 with a co-equal 'mind.' This is my old idea of Beings inhabiting the 
 universe as their bodies. The universe all Nature is instinct with 
 mental as with physical life ; and as each individual physical life does 
 but make part of the whole physical life, so each mental life does but 
 contribute part of the whole mental life. And there are Beings who 
 design our unconsciously performed functions as their immediate func- 
 tional acts ; and these again unite to constitute another and yet higher 
 function unconsciously performed by them, and so on we know not how 
 high. 
 
 ' Wie alles in dcm Allem webt, 
 Ein in dcm Andern wirkt and lebt.'
 
 205 
 
 [Goethe was nutritive.] And God does it all ; it is His creative act in 
 the ' Instant Eternity.' Blessed God, who seest it all and all aright, 
 who givest to the spirits Thou hast made to us among them the high 
 privilege of participating in Thy work, Thy work of Holiness, of con- 
 trolled and directed passion ; thus creating Life Thyself, Thou biddest, 
 invitest us to create a life, a moral life, for ourselves, like Thine. Yea, 
 when we refuse, and work death by yielding ourselves the slaves of un- 
 controlled, undirected passion, then Thou dost provide for us a new Life 
 again : ' Thou hast given unto us Eternal life ; and this Life is in Thy 
 Son.' 
 
 The error wh has prevented our comprehending all forms of life [i. e. 
 all things ?] has been one : viz. our recognizing only one form of passion 
 i. e. the ' vital ' the assimilating and referring all things to that ; 
 function and ali- It is in fact just one of the nutritive ' wrong relations.' 
 In respect to the mental life also we have referred ' function ' to the 
 vital force. Putting that one error right reveals a truer view of all 
 things ; in fact it is recognizing that ' motion ' or rather that passion, in 
 its entire scope, is vibration. The same kind of perplexity has been in- 
 troduced into mental as into physiological science by the confusion : there 
 was no accounting for the source of the force, nor for the power of spon- 
 taneous action ; indeed the whole thing was simply a puzzle. But this 
 wrong view itself was simply a nutritive process. 
 
 Can one trace out this idea of the right relation of ideas being that to 
 wh they tend by ' chemical ' [or polar] attraction ? Here is another 
 view of chemicity ; if it is by a*' chemical ' attraction that ideas vitally 
 arranged tend to that right arrangement wh produces function. Do 
 ideas .-.in the mind, correspond to the elements of the body 0, H, N, 
 &c. ? As only certain of the physical elements enter into the composi- 
 tion of animal bodies, so is it not only certain of the psychical elements 
 of the world that enter into the composition of the mind ; are capable of 
 what we call entering into ' organic life ' ? For what we call ' mind,' I 
 suppose, including ' instinct ' in animals, must be regarded as parallel to 
 ' organic ' life a portion of the great psychical life of Nature, as organic 
 life is of the great physical life of Nature ? 
 
 As in physiology, it was the approximating, the unifying or ' chemical ' 
 process that was disregarded, deprived of its place, and put merely as a 
 help to get rid of excreta, was there not something parallel in mental 
 physiology ? "Was not this unifying process, by virtue of resisted affi- 
 nities, deprived of its place among the causes of ' mental phenomena ' ? 
 
 In Science and in Art the nutrition is right, as right as the function ; 
 it is perfect, as perfect as the function ; of equal, excellence, honor, 
 necessity ; just as the woman is equal to the man : but, as the woman to 
 man, she shd know how to subordinate herself gracefully and cheerfully. 
 So shall she rule. In the mental as in the physical world there shd be 
 love between the male and female not aversion. They are not two but 
 one : together make but one. Are we not now coming to the period in 
 mental life when the repugnance of the sexes turns into love : is it not 
 the wedded heart I seek in Science. The male woos the female ; his 
 eyes are opened to see her beauty, her necessity to himself, his utter de- 
 pendence upon her love and willing service. ' Let there be love not 
 enmity between us.' he says. I also have been guilty. If inductive 
 Science has scoffed at theory, theory also has laughed to scorn induction.
 
 206 
 
 Let our hearts and lives be one ; nutrition and function be bound to- 
 gether in a glad union. It is now as it were the ' puberty ' in the 
 mental life : the man becoming aware of his sexual nature, and wooing, 
 consciously and with love ; this the epoch of the dawn of love. 
 
 The present nutritive science is like a maiden repudiating the idea of 
 love, and proudly determining to live for herself; and it has the maiden's 
 beauty if we could see it. But the maiden is to rise to the dignity of 
 the matron. As the good wife says, ' I live for my husband,' so the nu- 
 tritive experimental science will say, ' I live for the functional science.' 
 Yet both really exist not for each other but for the offspring. 
 
 The subordination of the female to the male mind, or science, is like a 
 subordination of the whole of womanhood to to the whole of manhood : 
 in the mental world we see the whole as the individual, as in the phy- 
 sical we see the parts as individuals, constituting a whole wh does not 
 at first appear so to us. It wd be beautiful if we could see the physical 
 world thus as one ; the whole as an individual, i. e. as a tri-unity for 
 the ' one ' is ever ' trine.' But we must use them for mutual illustration, 
 for wh this inverse relation of the two especially fits them. 
 
 As all the world of mankind constitutes really an adapted whole, 
 altho' we do not see it, so do not the failures in this mental adaptation 
 the wrong relations constitute a nutrition for a still higher ' function ' 
 wh we cannot see ? Can this be said even of Sin, that it, in its failure, 
 constitutes the nutrition of a life ? I think not. Sin is not life nor 
 produces life : it is death ; opposed to, not one with, God's action. 
 
 What we see is the very thing we must deny in order to get our 
 Science right. We always see wrongly ; we want in our art and science 
 not what Nature appears to us, but what she really is. 
 
 The function of each form of life is that which brings it into relation 
 with things of other classes : it is its applying its force to something 
 beside it. E. g. the mental functions of the body are simply its force 
 applied to psychical world ? It is clear .. that only that passion can 
 cause function wh produces force. 
 
 As life rises in grade each constituent atom becomes more complicated. 
 Is there a parallel to this in mind ? 
 
 It is a beautiful idea of organization as result of nutrition, that 
 besides the production of tendency to or capacity for functional passion, 
 it also produces the mechanism ; so each function leads to the production 
 of the vital organization. So the nutrition of the mind, produced by the 
 functions of art, science, &c., constitutes an organization whereby other 
 function is effected. 
 
 The mind, as the body, is the result of passion in least resistance ; the 
 one is as axiomatic as the other : the morphology and development of 
 the ' mind ' may surely be thus traced and demonstrated, as clearly as 
 of the body. Surely the mind corresponds thus altogether with the 
 body, morphologically as I may say, for the mental and physical passion 
 axe two forms of one thing. Thus too comes the correspondence between 
 each, body and mind ; and the adaptation of animal instincts ? 
 
 The nutrition so determines the function that we may truly say the 
 function expresses the nutrition. It is only that wh we perceive with 
 the senses that constitutes the organic food for the mind. Can it be 
 that the senses determine the organic character the vital wrong rela- 
 tion ; is mere a priori speculation like inorganic materials wh furnish no
 
 207 
 
 life ! These very things wh we call facts and consider so certainly true, 
 owe their character, and their value as nutriment, to the mental life, to 
 the false that is in them, to the delusiveness of the senses, the* wrong 
 relations in wh we perceive them. If they were absolutely true and 
 right as facts they wd be useless, perhaps ' poisonous ' to us. That our 
 senses deceive us is God's bountiful provision for our food. "We do con- 
 sciously in our mental life what is done unconsciously in onr physical 
 life ; psychology is self-conscious physiology. [Thus it is that we can 
 really study our own minds, because we can study them in our bodies, 
 and vice versa.] 
 
 The first indiscriminate observation of childhood is like infancy 
 putting everything into its mouth : and young minds as young bodies 
 are given food prepared by others are taught to observe. After a time 
 a man is careful what he puts into his mouth ; he scrutinizes his facts, 
 and corrects and guards his observation. Surely careful observation and 
 experiment are like cooking ; and are some courses of study like medi- 
 cines to excite secretion [thinking] and cast off accumulated errors : 
 mental and physical diseases parallel ? 
 
 Talent constructs a ' machine,' restraining tendencies by force ; tho' 
 not necessarily holding the elements apart : in a steam engine the ele- 
 ments are pressed together and tend to separate or expand ; surely there 
 are both these forms of machine in works of talent : some elements are 
 forced apart, some are forced together, here is the power they provide 
 for use. Now surely in physical life there must be both these sources 
 of power ; not only some elements held apart from their natural chem 
 union, but others also pressed together equally against their tendencies. 
 This opens a view of the constitution of the ' organic atoms.' In gun- 
 powder surely there are both these conditions coexisting. 
 
 All mental life must develope, as physical life. Each new nutrition 
 determines a larger function, each function leads to a larger and higher 
 nutrition. Many effect the nutrition, the accumulation and arrange- 
 ment of facts or other mental elements by their own power ; one effects 
 the function. It requires for that only so much power as shall suffice to 
 neutralize the vital resistance ; it is only the part of a ' stimulus ' ; the 
 stronger the tendency of the elements themselves to unite, the less 
 power is required to permit it. 
 
 The object of Art .*. , as of Science, cannot be to represent Mature as 
 she appears to us, but in opposition to that, as she really is. Yet the 
 nutritive art must first assimilate nature in vital relations, then the 
 functional may, presenting the elements in the relation wh their affinities 
 produce, represent Nature as she is. 
 
 Man's imperfection, as the imperfection of the whole of nature, is 
 only as he appears to us ; i. e. as we appear to ourselves. We are not 
 really imperfect as God sees us, except in so far as we are sinful. There 
 is no possibility of wrongness in the universe, except vital nutritive 
 wrongness ; always remembering that we do not speak of Sin. 
 
 The nature of the function in mental life is, perhaps, best seen in 
 Science : the function of Science is to show us the holiness of God, to 
 make us see Nature as a Holy Act of God [wh it must be : every act of 
 spirit must be holy or unholy.] This is the ' function ' produced by the 
 right self-arrangement of physical faota, or ideas of them, but having no 
 relation to any such facts, (ideas) or arrangement in themselves. This
 
 208 
 
 strely must be the true function of Art also : a moral function to 
 teach u| holiness, due self-control ; tho' in another way, through another 
 1 sense.' As our sense of truth is given us not that we may know and 
 perceive truth, but to show us God's holiness and make us holy : so our 
 sense of beauty is given us not that we may see and appreciate beauty, 
 but holiness. 
 
 God's act appears to us as mental and physical passion ; God's act is 
 perceived as this passion : the appearance to us is a vital wrongness. 
 "We see the appearance before the fact, are familiar with it, and think 
 it natural and certain that it really exists as we see it, before we discover 
 the fact wh produces such perception in us. 
 
 As the ' elements of science ' are modes of thought, so the ' elements ' 
 of a body are modes of motion. May it not be that defects and errors 
 and evils in organization, both physical and mental, constitute the nu- 
 trition of another life ? 
 
 Is there not a special wrong relation wh constitutes the vital state or 
 nutrition, viz. that of inversion : not any wrong relation or simple con- 
 fusion and mixture ; a definite wrong relation between certain appro- 
 priate elements constitutes nutrition. This is true for any special life ; 
 each needs a special wrong relation i but all wrong relation is nutrition 
 in reference to some form of life. There is no such thing as absolute 
 mere confusion, for all is life, wh excludes it. 
 
 Schiller's poem ' Ehret die Frauen '-expresses the functional maleness 
 of the female mind the nutritive femaleness of the male. 
 
 Nature is truly the Bride of the Soul, she is fitly wedded, of one sub- 
 stance ; God's act is both. But it is of man's mind that Nature is the 
 Bride, not of his spirit ; his spirit is not consubstantial with Nature, 
 but high above, and can own no love but God. [Nature held as the 
 phenomenal.] 
 
 In the emotional life also there must be a nutritive and functional 
 what are they ? 
 
 The approximative passion in living bodies is never complete or total, 
 that wd be death ; it is only partial, if it were absolute there wd be no 
 vital state left to cause nutrition. So in life of mind is no complete 
 and absolute function, embracing the whole of the mental life ; that wd 
 be its death. Whatever function performed, still the vital wrongness 
 remains in largest degree. The cause of assimilation, of course, is the 
 existence of a vital state, a wrong relation of elements before ; and it is 
 according to each man's mental life, or modo of thought. 
 
 Functional art excites passion a perception in respect of something 
 entirely unlike itself; just as nature does perception : to excite perception 
 in us is alike the function of Art and Nature. Is it not only functional 
 nature that excites perception [i. e. perception of things'] in us ? Here 
 it is ; in nutritive music we perceive the music and its characteristics 
 what it is, what it means, &c. ; but functional music excites in us a 
 perception of something wh is altogether unlike music, bearing no rela- 
 tion to it. So surely in nature there is what we may call a nutritive 
 and a functional motion : one as it were divergent, the other approx ; 
 the one absorbing the other generating force : the latter only producing 
 in us perception of things, wh ' things ' are wholly unlike the reality 
 wh causes the perception ; as a function is wholly unlike the approx 
 passion wh causes it. 
 
 Metaphysics, 173.
 
 209 
 
 Thus our perception being regarded as a function of nature wd be the 
 result of that passion only in nature wh was approximative and produced 
 force. [This also seems to agree with the conception of ' things ' as 
 motion resisted, and their 'properties' as tendencies to motion.] We are 
 the ' organization ' in wh the force thus generated in Nature acts. 
 
 As we know in perception we are influenced only by force : whence 
 this force ? Now all force is one : it is the same force that effected the 
 nutrition that is reproduced by the permitted passion and constitutes 
 the force that produces the new nutrition the function. Practically 
 i. e. now all the force in Nature is the result of such permitted passion, 
 more or less directly : that is ever its ' origin ' as we shd term it ; i. e. 
 its proximate origin. Altho' it may be transmitted thro' other things, 
 we have never come to the origin of any force, in any sense, until we 
 have traced it to the ' permitted ' passion from wh it immediately com- 
 menced ; tho' that also was determined by a preceding nutrition, and so 
 on, up and up, in an unending chain wh proves that the chain itself is 
 but a. phenomenon. 
 
 The approx passion in living bodies is never complete or total, that 
 wd be death ; it is only partial, if it were absolute there wd be no vital 
 state left to cause nutrition. So in the life of mind, is no complete and 
 absolute function, embracing the whole of the mental life ; that wd be 
 its death. Whatever the function performed, still the vital wrongness 
 remains in largest degree. The cause of assimilation, of course, is the 
 existence of a vital state, a wrong relation of elements before ; and it 
 is according to each man's mental life, or mode of thought. 
 
 Nature .-. being a life consists of nutrition and function. It is the 
 functional in Nature that we perceive as things, as matter, as something 
 that is not in the least like the reality wh causes it. Do we not perceive 
 the nutritive in Nature as motion, i. e. we perceive that to be what it is, 
 and to mean what it does in itself; we perceive that, in fact, as we, 
 everywhere in every form of passion, perceive the nutrition ; but the 
 functional [the functional motion I suppose] excites in us a perception 
 of something that has no relation to the motion as such : it excites in 
 us a perception of sun and stars, earth, animals, men of ' things ' in 
 short. Here is another great characteristic of the functional, viz. that 
 the perception wh it produces seems not to be the result but the cause of 
 that wh produces it. Functional music produces an emotion, or concep- 
 tion, wh seems to have caused the music, tho' it is entirely the result of 
 it ; functional science produces a moral view wh seems to have caused 
 the arrangements of the physical facts. So functional motion produces 
 a perception of 'things,' wh things seem to cause the motion that pro- 
 duces the perception. 
 
 The function ever depends entirely on the organization. Only the 
 force the Divine act is in Nature ; the perception is the function wh 
 that force excites, by virtue of our organization. And see ; the function 
 produced by the force in nature, this perception, is the nutrition of our 
 mental life. Here is evidence of psychical as well as physical force or 
 passion in Nature, as well as in ' animal minds.' Do we not perceive 
 the higher significance of functional art and functional science as we 
 perceive ' things ' or ' matter ' in Nature ? Do we not perceive the mo- 
 tion in Nature as being what it is passion, the result of power or force : 
 motion absorbs force ; ' things ' give back the force of the motion' wh
 
 210 
 
 constituted the nutrition of wh they are the function. Motion, we sec, 
 
 The ordinary principles of dynamics must be applied to all passion, 
 mental as well as physical. Nothing in the mental world is produced or 
 ceases, any more than in the physical : thought is indestructible, even as 
 motion, and obeys the same laws. Our minds, as our bodies, with all 
 their powers, existed in nature before they existed in us. The psychical 
 passion that constitutes our minds and our mental life exists really in 
 the world around us, or our minds wd never be ; as the physical passion 
 wh constitutes our bodies and physical life existed before in Nature, or 
 our bodies wd never have existed. Neither are ' created ' for us. The 
 force that constitutes our physical life is the force that was in the organic 
 food ; so the force that constitutes our mental life was in our organic 
 mental food.. 
 
 But hence arises a question : the force wh constitutes our bodily life 
 is the force that held our food in the organic condition, the force that 
 put the elements in vital relations. Now what is the force that puts 
 the elements in these vital relations in our mental food ? "We perceive 
 wrongly, but is it not from ourselves that this wrong relation of our 
 perceptions comes from- our senses ? Are the elements of our food ex- 
 isting in such vital relations really in Nature ? is it God's act, not ours, 
 that puts them so ? I do not see. Does not the solution lie in what 
 really exists ? 
 
 Is it true then that the thought the psychical fact the mental 
 passion, with wh a deed is done or a thing produced, remains in it, is 
 there, as well as the physical force, the material thing. Thought exists 
 in the same way as motion : never ceasing to exist, never coming into 
 existence, save by transference. Every physical passion has its mental 
 and psychical passion coexisting with it, and as indestructible, however 
 varying in form. Is this a clue to many uncomprehended mental facts ? 
 as we cannot move without affecting the whole material world, so we 
 cannot think without affecting the whole psychical world. 
 
 The mind is the result of mental life, as the body is of physical life ; 
 and, as the body, it is the result of is produced by its own life, vital 
 passion in itself: surely originating, as a germ, from a parent. The 
 first organic mental life, of course, from the inorganic ; there must have 
 been a development of mental as of physical life. 
 
 The vitally wrong, the nutritive, or assimilated Art or Science, much 
 more exactly represents Nature as we see it : the functional passion, tho' 
 produced by the existing affinities of the elements, is in opposition to 
 the way in wh they exist as we receive them from nature. It is well 
 called decomposition, disintegration, decay, altho' truly a Composition, an 
 integration, a union or making one. Further, this decompn only takes 
 place with any effect on us, when we have assimilated the elements, and 
 made them part of our organization. It is a strange thing, but obser- 
 vation of nature is not a direct road to truth : nay it can only lead to 
 truth thro' error : the error is as essential as assimilation is to function. 
 
 May we not think that Science might advance faster and more peace- 
 ably and altogether prosper better if this vital connection between its 
 various phases were understood : if observers were aware that the result
 
 211 
 
 of their labors ought to be assimilation and not abstract truth, and de- 
 signed to be reversed in a function. For the mental life is conscious, 
 and is meant to be so : those processes wh are meant to be carried on 
 unconsciously in the bodily life are surely to be carried on consciously in 
 the mental. 
 
 Do we perceive Nature because we are part of Nature ; the real passion 
 in Nature produces in us the function of perception because it takes place 
 in an organization of wh we are part ? 
 
 The true way to perceive the one universal life, is to recognize in each 
 divergent or nutritive passion (work of talent) the effect of some previous 
 approx passion of wh it is the function ; and to see in every approx pas- 
 sion a function prepared for by some previous nutritive passion, and itself 
 the source of a new nutrition. Thus the universe is seen as a truly 
 living whole, consisting indeed of innumerable organs, but only one or- 
 ganization ; effecting innumerable functions, but all by virtue of one life, 
 and all mutually dependent. This is the true life of the universe the 
 continual and reciprocal succession of nutrition and function, in various 
 forms, but as part of one great whole ; of one great Vibration indeed, wh 
 is life just as the entire life of any animal, the entire life of man, is one 
 vibration, And further, all these functions may be classed under the 
 three divisions as in man : all the organs of the universe into the three 
 systems. The one ' function ' is motion. 
 
 Movement (of masses ;) molecular motions) organic life : or 
 
 inorganic forces ; j 
 Muscular, Secretive, Nervous. 
 
 These three systems, or sets of functions, coexist and make up one 
 whole. Thus in every living whole we see the past, present and future 
 coexisting as one. 
 
 Surely I know that Nature, the universe, performs just so many 
 functions as we do our bodies and our minds alike. Each of our mental 
 functions represents and corresponds to some ' group of phna.' "We love 
 Nature because like loves like. 
 
 Our mode of trying to solve vital and mental phna altogether our 
 physiology and our metaphysics was truly like Hamlet with the part 
 of Hamlet left out. We ignored and omitted polar attraction; yes, 
 omitted Love, the great source and cause of all passion ; as if we had 
 omitted God. At least it was like attempting a philosophy of the phy- 
 sical world omitting polar attractions and gravity among the rest. 
 
 This gravity, if it were rightly understood, is simply a recognition of 
 the approximating tendency wh constitutes the functional power, and 
 effects the functional acts, of the universe : it is the primary functional 
 power in reference to the life of movement. 
 
 Our belief in a real matter, and motion as a ' property ' of it, is like 
 holding the decomposition of the tissues as a result of function. 
 
 Again I come to the old truth that he who sees only the material fact 
 sees only a fancy, a conception, and not the reality. Men who assert a 
 real matter are visionary ; they put their ' ideas ' in the place of realities, 
 they go alone by that wh is in themselves, as if that gave the law to 
 heaven and earth. In fact all the terms of reproach that were ever ap- 
 plied to the most confirmed idealist are justly and without exaggeration 
 applicable to them. They are just like men who shd assert against all
 
 212 
 
 astronomy that the sun does go round the earth hecause they see it ; and 
 indeed have really less reason, for the latter is conceivable. It is strange 
 that in these days when the delusiveness of the senses has passed into 
 a proverb, and the first lesson of science is said to be to learn to distrust 
 the senses, men shd so clamorously assert a real existence of matter, on 
 the evidence of the senses alone. The spiritualist is the man who goes 
 out of himself and fairly confronts the universe, and he alone. 
 
 As the motion of the sun wh we perceive is the result of a passion in 
 ourselves, so are the things, the material universe : but for this passion 
 in us, in both cases, there is a real and equivalent cause, yea doubtless 
 in the latter case, also, a cause much exceeding the apparent fact. For 
 the real motion of the earth greatly exceeds the apparent motion of the 
 sun. Or rather, see how little relation there may be between the actual 
 passion in ourselves and the phn produced : e. g. at the pole a man being 
 simply turned round on his own axis causes him to see the sun revolve 
 a vast circuit. 
 
 Again, which man knows best the laws of the sun's motion he who 
 really believes it, or he who knows it to be a delusion ? So in order to 
 trace the ' laws of matter ' it is first and above all necessary to know 
 that it is a delusion of the senses, and trace the reality ; from it the 
 laws of the phna will follow. 
 
 Is not organic life the function of the inorganic world ; man the 
 function of the organic world ? 
 
 The inventions in science wh I reject are precisely the special vital 
 resistance wh I neutralize : but they are simply equivalent to the vital 
 resistance the divergence in the elements as received from nature. It 
 is the same life in nature and in man, not altered in amount, only in 
 character. 
 
 Our ideas derived from nature and assimilated have just as much or- 
 ganic wrongness, and no more, as the psychical elements had in nature 
 herself. It is an effect of force, but not exerted by us ; we could not do 
 it. Whence and what is the vital force in psychical nature ? I know it 
 must be an approx force resulting from polar affinities resisted ; but this 
 is but barren generality. Can I find out what is polar attraction in psy- 
 chical nature, either in the external world in ourselves ? [It is very 
 simple : we receive the psychical elements untruly from nature, because 
 we perceive appearances ; because subjective elements are in our appre- 
 hension. An inverse relation of the mental to the physical seems over- 
 looked : the mental life advances not by increase of this ' vital ' relation 
 but by more and more complete expulsion of subjective elements.] 
 
 Each life, or living system, large or most minute, produces its function 
 by dying. Each body physically dying, produces its function in the in- 
 organic force produced by its decay : this is a nutrition produced in the 
 inorganic life of the world, wh is also an organization ; and there is no 
 loss of life really, for the life of the world includes both. It is a part 
 of the transference of life from inorganic to organic and vice versa, wh 
 is constantly going on. It is a sublime idea ; this great universal life is 
 a life that varies its forms only and proportions, never itself or its 
 amount. Such as God produced it first it is, and ever is. It is one 
 life, absolute and perfect, then and ever since. A sublime composure 
 rests on the picture ; it helps towards the idea of creation itself, a life 
 that undergoes internal changes but itself changes not. Thus we best
 
 213 
 
 conceive Nature ; a great living unalterable whole body and mind ; 
 of whose life all life is part, and our life also : whose functions are the 
 results of these continual changes ; she not existing for these but these 
 for her as means to ends and purposes far beyond our ken. Thus man 
 may see Nature how must God see her ? 
 
 It is a curious idea those people have who object to anything because 
 it is merely a theory : that a theory wh is old and received has a dif- 
 ferent sort of footing is less a theory than one that is new : e. g. is 
 it not as much a theory that function causes decomposition, as that the 
 decomposition causes the function ? Nay, if we saw rightly we should 
 know that that the old theory, that wh first 'appears,' must certainly 
 be reversed before the truth is known. There is a radical error here : 
 mind consists as much of facts as body ; mental physiology is as much a 
 question of facts as physical science ; the affinities, laws, reactions of 
 ideas are as much facts in nature as those of things. 
 
 Is it not thus : the physical world begins with the inorganic and pro- 
 duces the organic ; The psychical world begins with the organic, and 
 produces the inorganic. But organic and inorganic equally living. 
 
 Surely it is a grand instance of organic wrong relation, or effect before 
 cause, this putting of the physical before the mental world. The physical 
 world is first in order of cognition, as the effect always is ; this is a vital 
 relation, this of mental as result of physical. And see how we get, in 
 the progress of science, ever larger and larger wrong relations put right ; 
 or organic structures made inorganic : thus the organic psychical universe 
 is developed produced by the mind. 
 
 The seeing that the psychical is the cause of the physical, is function* 
 facts taking their relations by their own affinities ; and it is very striking 
 how these true relations have been anticipated, and yet not quite truly, 
 as if some functions were in advance of others. How characteristically 
 vital is this psychical organic arrangement of effect before cause. Just 
 exactly the opposition to the affinities. 
 
 That the physical world is an effect, or result, of the psychical appears 
 well in the fact that it is motion in least resistance, wh is a mere defi- 
 nition (as I saw) a mere law or mode of my own mental passion. "When 
 the physical world is understood it is seen to be a mere result of mental 
 passion : all axioms are merely forms of thought and the physical world 
 is but an axiom, one axiom in various forms a product i. e. of our 
 mental passion : e. g. That all motion is vibration is simply stating a 
 way in wh we think. The laws of matter, and matter itself, seem to be 
 something apart from modes of thinking only while they are 'mysteries,' 
 wrongly and organically seen. "While matter and its laws seem to be ar- 
 bitrary, self-existing things, that might have been created any other way 
 (we and our minds remaining the same) of course it cannot be seen 
 that they depend upon the mental passion ; but as soon as it is seen that 
 matter and its laws are mere axioms, or things that are, simply because 
 we cannot think any other way things indeed that lie wholly in our 
 thought and simply express it we perceive the true relation. We see 
 the physical universe as living, or as life, because, and as a result of, the 
 life of the mind ; it is the mind's life that causes the life that appears in 
 physical nature. 
 
 Surely it is strictly the case, that what appears to us to be nature is 
 not really nature. Is not this also a ' nutrition ' '? Has it not a moral
 
 214 
 
 meaning ; that tho' at first it seems natural to us to do what we like 
 self-indulgence, sin this is not really so ; this is as the phenomenal is. 
 Interpretation is ever the translating of the unknown into the known ; 
 to see each not-understood thing to be the same as something wh is un- 
 derstood wh I saw long ago, and wh is indeed is my only way of 
 seeing anything. Here seems a proof of the absolute unity of nature. 
 I suppose the very first thing we perceive or understand is the thing 
 the type of all ; our perception or knowledge is ever of one fact, and all 
 our advance in knowledge consists in seeing in many things the same 
 ' one fact.' Our successive interpretations are giving to our essentially 
 one knowledge a wider and wider extension, but knowledge is ever one. 
 The first knowledge, the first thought, the same as the last, as all. The 
 nutritive mental life, the error, is the variety : function is always one. 
 
 The spiral form should surely be discernible in all art, and all art 
 should represent ' the whole,' or nature, in the same way as music does. 
 I think I see the spiral in the Drama ; the vibratile motion, first to one 
 side then the other, and in the last the poetic justice, i. e. the union of 
 ideal and real : like a five-fold leaf ; one pair of leaflets, two pairs, and 
 then an union of the two, two in one. [Here is evidence that dicho- 
 tomous division is polar. .] 
 
 Aug. 15, 1856. There must be the nutritive and functional passion 
 also in Art [as indeed in everything wh is life, i. e. everywhere J : I con- 
 ceive I have been wrong in representing that art is now in the ideal or 
 functional stage it is surely in a nutritive period ; altho' unconsciously. 
 Mendelssohn's music is nutritive, Mozart's functional, and Handel's 
 eminently. The nutritive forms of art, altho' not truly art, are yet ne- 
 cessary for it ; they also are part of nature. They exist for the function. 
 As I have seen from another point of view, nutrition is wrongness ; a 
 right wrongness. Nutrition is done by talent ; Function by Genius. 
 Genius and talent are function and nutrition ; male and female. They 
 are a vibration ; make up the life, [approx and divergent] together con- 
 stitute the 'whole,' the ideal, neither can be without the other. Talent 
 is as indispensable as Genius ; there can indeed be no Genius without 
 first the talent, as no function without first the nutrition. Now here is 
 a hint to me as to the universal nature of nutrition ; nutritive music as 
 it agrees well with intellectual nutrition, viz. as an unfolding of nature, 
 so by its character of expressing and imitating nature it suggests a general 
 character of nutrition. Genius goes right ; talent goes wrong ; it accom- 
 plishes wonders, but it is wrong, that is its essential, nay its necessary 
 character ; just as nutrition consists in a wrong relation of the elements. 
 They must be held apart and in opposition to their ' affinities,' or else 
 there is no life. So talent ; if it does not arrange its materials in oppo- 
 sition to their true affinities, there is no life, no power for action, no 
 scope for Genius. Nutrition for its own sake is bad ; it is making a 
 means into an end. It is in truth like gluttony. Happy will be the 
 next functional musician : how large resources he will have, how high a 
 nutrition to serve him. For the functional passion is always the same, 
 but differs thro' different nutrition; and so ever greater. Each suc- 
 ceeding function, if it be a complete expression of the nutritive stage, 
 exceeds and excels all former because life ' developes.' The individual 
 may not be greater, but his circumstances compel a greater utterance.
 
 215 
 
 Nutrition is new materials wrongly arranged. This is the spontaneity 
 of Genius : it is like function, permitted. Its individual character simply 
 takes off or neutralizes the ' resistance ' wh causes the elements to be 
 wrongly grouped. The man of Genius is opposed to the ' vital ' resist- 
 ance wh retains the elements apart : this is his dislike, his wonderment, 
 at those false relations ; he cannot have them so. He says, Things go 
 so ; they must be so ; they are so : that is his reason for his action, his 
 opinion, his music, his mode of painting, his social or political organiza- 
 tion. The nutritive man on the other hand -the man of talent thinks, 
 reflects, labors, discriminates, observes, experiments, put things as he 
 thinks will be be best. 
 
 The ideal wh the man of Genius has produced the man of talent ap- 
 plies to nature, gets new facts, discriminates them, tries to arrange them 
 consistently with this former ideal wh cannot be ; it is resisted there 
 being too much ; therefore they are carried again into ' divergent ' re- 
 lation, i. e. vital relation ; constituting thus the higher nutrition. Thus 
 the trying to arrange new facts in conformity with a previous theory or 
 ideal is the digestion, the functional (chemical) process wh precedes and 
 causes the nutrition. The nutritive man takes new facts and digests them ; 
 he tries to make them undergo a chemical process, a theoretical arrange- 
 ment, wh the previous mental life resists ; .. they assume other relations 
 opposed to their natural polar tendencies, wh is nutrition. The new 
 facts will not conform to the old theory, or the old ideal ; the effort to 
 make them, resisted, constitutes the new nutrition ; i. e. the man of 
 talent arranges them the best way he can, but always with reference to 
 the old theory ; the facts demand a new and higher theory or ideal ; the 
 man of Genius comes, as a stimulus, and lets the facts [or sounds, &c.] 
 arrange themselves according to their polar tendencies, i. e. rightly or 
 ' naturally ' and there is a new and higher theory or ideal wh includes 
 at once the old theory and the new facts, and so it ever goes on. 
 
 It is not consciously for the sake of the function or ulterior and 
 higher result that Genius demands the functional arrangement of the 
 elements, but simply because that seems the right. He ' sees ' that they 
 are so : the functional result the higher and boundless meaning sur- 
 prises no one more than himself; nay, it is very possible that he is not 
 himself aware of it. This is how painters and musicians, even poets 
 doubtless, may not mean by their works that wh others see in them. 
 The higher meaning is the function ; a thing as little thought of by the 
 producers as by any others, and only perceived by the producers if per- 
 ceived at all as by others : i. e. perceived as a result, not aimed at as 
 an end. To suppose it, wd be like supposing that the muscles of the 
 hand, in undergoing chemical change, designed to grasp, 
 
 (2/8/62. To go to another subject from this point: may one not 
 find proof of our untrue consciousness of the falsity and inadequacy of 
 our feeling of ' ourself ' in the feeling we have of the separate sexual 
 relation ; our feeling ourselves, and being, practically, only male or only 
 female. And so ' no marrying in heaven ' ? ) 
 
 Nutrition in Science and Art also is well called ' assimilation ' : it 
 presents the elements to us as Nature does, viz. in organic combinations, 
 with their polar tendencies resisted, but with this relation modified to 
 correspond with the life of the artist ; assimilated by and to him as it 
 were. As says, ' Art is nature presented in a human point of view,'
 
 216 
 
 i. c. nutritive art is so. But the inversion here is curious : in fact the 
 very work of art is to present to us nature without the human element 
 in it ; i. e. more than it is to our consciousness or experience. For our 
 natural perception and feeling is of nature with man it 'from a human 
 point of view.' 
 
 Does not the nutritive art represent organic nature well suiting with 
 its appearance of 'design.' May not this become a clear perception? 
 
 It is the office of Art, as of Science, to represent Nature, not as 
 we see her, nor even with the impress of our own minds, our own life, 
 that is upon her ; but as she is in reality. 
 
 The fugue writers unknowingly have been presenting to human eyes 
 the idea of the universe. They are almost confined, too, to sacred music, 
 as if to G-od must be offered His own works, not man's : not beautiful 
 and expressive music, but fugues wh He has made. 
 
 In true functional art it seems to me that beauty is not an end, nor 
 even an essential means, nor essential in any sense ; the work is done 
 because of the necessity of the thing itself, and no more for the sake of 
 beauty than for the sake of the meaning. Nay, surely works wh perform 
 the very highest function, are the most amazing and overwhelming, are 
 often not strictly beautiful in themselves at all. 
 
 Does it not seem as tho' the act of our spirits our power were not 
 to originate action at all [we do not produce either motion or thought 
 that were to create] but only to modify, direct (by resistance), God's 
 action ; viz. either the physical or mental world. The prerogative of 
 the Creator it is to act, solely and alone ; of and by Himself, with no 
 other or precedent action. It is the prerogative of human spirits to act 
 in or on this action of the Divine spirit, but they do not add to it, they 
 do not originate action ; that wd be to originate ' things ' or ' minds.' 
 They work in it. or operate upon it, they need a ' substratum ' for their 
 actions, wh is God's act. But the reality and moral character of their 
 act lies in its spontaneity ; they are not actions, but Beings, who can 
 take part as it were in God's act or not, as they choose. Since the action 
 of a spirit consists very greatly in resisting nature, must not the motive 
 exert a ' force ' upon it ; how else is the resisting an exertion of power ? 
 
 Surely this is why one great part of the spirit's action is the resisting 
 polar attractions; the resisting instinctive passions. Thereby and 
 thereby only is produced Life. The spirit resisting ' passion ' generates 
 spiritual life. This is self-control: resistance is the source of life. 
 How often we regret that we cannot produce life nor restore it when it 
 is gone. "We think that wd be a glorious power, a prerogative like the 
 Divine. It is so ; and it is ours. God says to us, ' Create life if you 
 will : do as I do.' What could He more ? how, being God, could He 
 less ? The universe is life, and God creates it by His holy action. We 
 by holy action may create life too. Here is the proof that the creation 
 is God's holy action : it is so for it is life ; and life we by holy action 
 may produce. By self-control we generate a spiritual life. Here is 
 reality ; in this God shares with us His own divinest power. The great 
 idea, thus, of this life-producing resistance, is moral resistance : that is 
 the root ; that is at the basis of it all. Thus nature appears to man as 
 life arising from resistance, because his true life arises from resistance. 
 All works into all. And why Nature shd tempt man to evil is no longer 
 [Spirit.
 
 217 
 
 a mystery ; Nature tempts not man alone Nature is one universal 
 temptation ; but never yielded to. 
 
 I noted long ago, and with surprise and doubt, that the great work of 
 the spiritual Being of doing right was the resisting or controlling 
 polar affinities, i. e. instincts. This is exactly the vital force or nutri- 
 tion. This also is the meaning of sentient beings in a state of unhappi- 
 ness ; this is a resisting of polar affinities, and necessarily a nutrition. 
 Does it follow hence that the punishment of Sin is a nutrition ; a pre- 
 paration for a function ? 
 
 Can it be that Sin also produces a life, viz. by the suffering that en- 
 sues from it : thus its function a transitive vibration ? moral life from 
 self-control, suffering from self-indulgence : these respectively the con- 
 tinuous and transitive halves of the vibration. Possibly : but this suf- 
 fering is not a life to the sinner ; it is a life in God's universe ; his sin 
 also produces a function there, but it is death to himself. What is it to 
 the corpse of a man that his death produces vital ' heat ' &c. in the uni- 
 verse : he is dead. Sin is no loss to God ; but it is ruin to man. 
 
 With regard to how spirits are connected with human bodies and minds, 
 consider whether spirits so influenced by God's action as to perceive it 
 as matter (or as a material and psychical universe), wd not necessarily 
 seem to be united to a human body : whether this human body and mind 
 does not simply express their necessary mode of relation to the Divine 
 action ? Are the human body and mind simply the full expression of 
 the fact of God's action : it is such ; humanity simply represents it. 
 Certainly it is^not arbitrai-y but necessary, in the same sense that all 
 Nature is so. This God's holiness demands. 
 
 If our hearts are crushed and done violence to by the evil that is in 
 the world, so are the elements wh constitute our bodies, crushed and put 
 wrong : if individual men thus suffer and are thwarted and cast into 
 the wrongest positions, so are individual atoms. We are truly but atoms 
 in a great living frame, and we endure consciously, and as suffering, the 
 vital wrongness. Here is the unifying of an old atheistic doctrine with 
 piety, Also our natural feelings at sight of suffering and evil are in no 
 wise to be checked or uprooted by philosophy. These also are a part 
 of nature, and to be cultivated, directed, made life-producing. 
 
 All the wrongness in the world is a vital, nutritive, wrongness, except 
 Sin ; and that wrong is the passive effect of a polar attraction, wh re- 
 sisted, wd make life. Sin is not a vital wrongness ; that arises from 
 controlled passion, sin is uncontrolled passion it is death. If there 
 were no passion, no polar attraction, there could be no resistance: we 
 are Jree because we act by motives. These are not opposed, but one. 
 Motive is the very passion we have to control. There could be no life 
 if there were no passion by control of wh it is caused. It is our 
 yielding to this passion, obeying these motives, uncontrolled by sense of 
 right, that is Sin, and forfeits the life. In truth wd it not seem that our 
 spiritual life, our capacity for spiritual action and enjoyment, is actually 
 formed here by our power of controlling passion ? the force wh is in 
 passion, when resisted, not being annihilated but becoming the vital 
 force of the moral life. 
 
 How long I pondered over metaphysical, social, moral questions, and 
 in vain ; until a solution came from physics. The secret of physical 
 life it is that gives the clue. And there is a moral for me here, for it
 
 218 
 
 was in the path of duty that I found it, of daily business. I had given 
 up ambition, and sought only to do my work. 
 
 I see again how to be holy is to be natural. God, in nature, produces 
 life by controlling passion, and He says to us, Do as I do : by controlling 
 passion produce life. He says this to us by our conscience. All these 
 ' senses ' the sense of beauty, the sense of truth, the sense of right 
 are as it were Nature speaking in and to us ; Nature asserting herself, 
 showing us what Nature is, leading us to be or do like her ; this is their 
 meaning. All passion shd be controlled, even the best, for sin does not 
 consist in the kind of passion indulged in but its indulgence without the 
 right resistance. All passion, as being God's creation, is legitimate and 
 good. And surely also, only by such control can any tendencies effect 
 the best result. 
 
 To prove that sin is unnatural is surely to prove exactly that man is 
 ' depraved.' If to act right is to act out our nature, then is man ' cor- 
 rupt ' ; vh is not a discouraging, but a cheering doctrine. It is truly 
 unnatural not to supply the moral resistance and act rightly ; because 
 the resistance exists in nature only because it is right. It is not in na- 
 ture by any other ' naturalness ' than that wh exists in our own case, 
 viz. that holiness demands it. Is it the ' nature ' of a man whose leg is 
 broken to have a broken leg ; is it not against his nature, and is not that 
 the very mischief of the thing? The very bitterness of man's lament- 
 ation is, ' It is my nature to be holy, and I am unholy ; ' just as the sick 
 man's is, ' It is my nature to be well, and I am sick.' If you wd know 
 tvhat Nature is, be holy ; then she lives again in you : you comprehend 
 her. To do right is to have knowledge of nature by sympathy and ex- 
 perience, wh is the only true knowledge : knowledge is not an external 
 perception, it is comprehension an union with and making the thing part 
 of ourselves. Others may know more of their own sensations and ideas, 
 may be able to tell wonderful and beautiful things respecting the laws 
 wh human thought imposes upon 'phantasmal matter,' but of the real 
 fact they know the most who most sincerely do the right. The universe 
 is a right deed, and all right deed is one with it. To know what nature 
 is, rightly control your passion, and you feel her in your inmost heart : she 
 is that wh you do. The joy that is in nature is the joy that is in our 
 hearts from purity and right affection ; the life that is iij her the life 
 that flows from self-control ; her mysterious powers the vigour the heart 
 gains from regulated passion and steadfast deed. 
 
 Should not my view of nature conduct me farther than to this moral 
 significance of science ; shd it not conduct to a Christian one ? It shows 
 the evil, brings into readiness to receive the remedy : but does nature 
 speak more directly of the remedy ? Let me beware of laying any bias 
 on my thoughts and perceptions from theological preferences ; so surely 
 as I rcish to see anything in nature I shall go wrong. 
 
 Not only is every whole threefold, but every part considered as one, or 
 as a whole, is also threefold. We can no more have absolute non-triune 
 unity than we can have length alone without breadth and depth. May 
 I find in a necessity for threefold-ness in way felt existence a reason for 
 the characters of space iu the phenomenal ? 
 
 I conceive the idea of time past, present and future has no more re- 
 ference to spirit than that of length and breadth. The spirit is, and 
 there is an end ; neither now nor then. There is an absolute ' Being,' 
 [Spirit 5.
 
 219 
 
 who is not susceptible of these relations any more than of relations to 
 space. It is or is not : there is no ' is now,' or ' -was ' or < will be.' May 
 it not be that time bears the same relation to mind that space does to 
 body ? As matter exists in space, so mind exists in time : matter and 
 mind alike being phenomenal or unreal : as the phn of the motion of 
 the sun around the earth involves certain ' ideas ', conditions, forms of 
 thought such as a sphere of wh the earth is the centre wh when ve 
 understand that the motion is a phn only and not real we perceive to be 
 a*lso not real, but purely inventions of the mind. A phn involves certain 
 conditions, and while it is regarded as existing we must consider these 
 conditions as existing also as necessary forms of thought ; but the con- 
 ditions are only relative to the phn and cease of course when the phn is 
 referred to its right ' cause.' Space and time are like the conditions in- 
 volved in a real motion of the sun around the earth. 
 
 The mind also is a phenomenon and Time its condition. The fact is 
 the spirit : body and mind are effects of something relating to it. The 
 spirit is the conscious Being. Body and mind alike, in all their extent 
 and forms, are effects of God's action on the spirit. Now space is the 
 condition for the phn matter ' Time the condition for the phn ' mind.' 
 Have not cause and effect a similar relation to the spirit ? Cause is 
 really only spiritual ; it belongs to spiritual action alone. 
 
 Does not our sense of truth consist in our demanding the right resistance 
 in relation to thought ; just as the sense of right is in relation to our 
 ' action.' Thus the intellectual life like the moral is produced by the 
 application of right resistance, determined by sense of truth, to thought, 
 or intellectual passion. But here is the difference : the sense of truth 
 not only bids us supply the resistance but itself supplies it ; this is God's 
 doing : but in respect to conscience we only feel we ought, and whether 
 we do or not depends on ourselves. 
 
 That the mind also is a phenomenon ' as the body is mind a ' sub- 
 jective passion ' even as matter gives the inductive proof of that wh I 
 have before seen as necessarily true ; viz. that that the mental and phy- 
 sical universe are God's act ; that the only real Being is Spirit. It is 
 not the ' spirit ' that thinks, or lives the mental life. The spirit is greater 
 than the mind, wh is a phn resulting from passion in it ; even as the 
 body is a phn resulting from passion in the mind. It is not the mind 
 that lives for ever, but the spirit ; not the mind the ' phenomenon ' : that 
 shall disappear like the phn of matter. The Personality, wh by its sub- 
 jective passion has perceived an ' external ' mind wh is moral, holy or 
 unholy that is the reality of the man. How it exalts the spirit to un- 
 derstand that the mind itself results from it, as matter from mind. Long 
 ago I saw Thought was not spiritual ; it belongs too closely to the Brain, 
 if for no other reason ; it is in fact a material phn. 
 
 Mind and body are the external perception of an effect produced in 
 ourselves by quite other cause the means by wh we are to learn the 
 real cause wh acts upon us : just as the motion of the sun is an external 
 perception of an effect produced upon ourselves by a quite other cause, 
 and designed to teach us what that cause is. There is a real external 
 cause acting upon us, in each case, but this we do not perceive ; of course 
 we do not, we can perceive nothing but that wh is in ourselves : percep- 
 tion is feeling. But the externality of perception arises from our con- 
 sciousness that we do not of ourselves produce the passion in ourselves.
 
 220 
 
 Thus we necessarily perceive as external a passion in ourselves ; and the 
 final cause of this is that by this perception of phna we may learn the 
 real cause wh has acted on us and produced that passion wh constitutes 
 the phna. See in Astronomy : it is of course our own motion that we 
 ' feel,' hut knowing that we do not produce it in ourselves we perceive it 
 as external, and by induction interpret it. Science as a whole is an in- 
 duction of phna in the same sense ; viz. motions [for all physical passion 
 is motion] in ourselves, perceived as external causing us to learn their 
 real cause God's spiritual deed. And this revelation to us of the true 
 cause of the passion in ourselves is the function. Each ' function ' in 
 science is such a revelation of a true cause as opposed to a phenomenal. 
 
 Berkeley was in error when he spoke of God's action on the mind ; 
 mind being no more a reality than matter. Hume was right. One sees 
 the reality of the spirit of the man because of the non-reality of the mind 
 and body. 
 
 "We do not grudge the material universe to cease if mind remains, a 
 passion in wh at any moment may reproduce it ; nor should we grudge 
 mind to fail and cease if the spirit remains, a passion in wh, at God's 
 will, reproduces it. God's action on our spirits is these phna of matter 
 and of mind : then surely God's action on the spirit must ever be pheno- 
 mena, and why not such phena ? Is here the truth of the resurrection of 
 the body ? God's action on our spirits will surely ever surround us with 
 an universe : it must be so. Heaven shall be so far like earth that we 
 shall have bodies, God's action producing in us phenomena as now : but 
 seeing God directly in all, it shall be truly heaven to us. Surely the 
 whole difficulty found in the resurrection of the body lies in the figment 
 of a real matter. 
 
 Surely I may find the reason of the phna being such as they are i. e. 
 of our perception of matter and of mind. This is the problem : surely 
 it must be solved by ascertaining from the phna what is the actual cause ; 
 not only its general nature but the exact mode of its operation. For 
 that is what the phna are designed to teach us ; and they do so because 
 they depend upon that actual cause ; the peculiarities and details of the 
 phna upon the special characters of the cause. 
 
 A phn is ever an illusion because the fact wh is perceived must neces- 
 sarily be in us, and the cause which produces this fact or passion in us 
 cannot be a phn ; cannot be directly perceived, being external to us ; yet 
 that cause is the reality wh we think we perceive, wh we wish to ascer- 
 tain, wh it is the object or function, of science to ascertain. Thus it is 
 that science is a spiritual and not a physical thing, in its own nature. 
 Its object is reality, i. e. spiritual deed ; the true cause wh is ever 
 spiritual. To tie it down to physical things wd be like confining astro- 
 nomy to the apparent motions. 
 
 These deepest questions of metaphysics are the very essence of sim- 
 plicity, and will become the most familiar of ideas. Any ordinary 
 amusement in wh a passion in ourselves causes us to perceive something 
 that is not, will show the essential point that a phn is a result of a sub- 
 jective passion, and that its use is to reveal to us the unperceived 
 cause. 
 
 The passion in ourselves is the phn ever : when it is produced passively 
 in us from without we perceive an external phn : when we are conscious 
 of its being produced from within we perceive an internal phn.
 
 221 
 
 This question, whether the external things perceived are the cause of 
 the subjective passion, or the effect of it, is the same question, whether 
 function produces chemical change in us, or is the effect of it. The 
 putting the external thing first is exactly the idea, of putting the function 
 first and getting thereby utterly at a loss. Is not this true the percep- 
 tion of phna is the function, the subjective passion the chem change ; thus 
 involving the idea of a living machine. This clearly applies to the 
 mind, but how to the spirit ? 
 
 Is not this the function, the revelation of the cause of the passion in 
 ourselves : the perception that the phna depend on a subjective passion 
 answers to the decomposition wh causes the ' function,' viz. the peaception 
 of the cause. In Astronomy when the Epicycle theory fell by its own 
 weight, what was seen was that these various motions depended on a 
 motion of our own; but that was not the ' function,' the function was 
 the perception of the cause of such motion, viz. the motion of the earth 
 such as it is : a transference of the idea of cause from the phn to the 
 true cause : a change of vital force into functional force. I have also 
 exactly experienced this in myself. When I saw all nature was motion 
 in least resistance, I perceived that the external phna were really sub- 
 jective, i. e. were a result or expression of a passion in myself. This 
 was their coming together by their own tendencies ; but this was not the 
 function : it left me unhappy and dissatisfied. The function was my 
 perception of the true cause of the subjective passion in God's holy 
 action. 
 
 The organic condition of our mental food then consists in our per- 
 ceiving phenomenon as cause ; i. e. as the cause of our mental passion. 
 In fact the phn is not so much the effect of our mental passion as that 
 mental passion itself; so that when we think of the phn as really per- 
 ceived, i. e. as the cause ef the mental passion, we really think of the 
 mental passion as without a cause as cause of itself: and it is the phn 
 and the mental passion as it were coming together and uniting into one, 
 wh causes the necessity for the introduction of a new cause wh is the 
 function. It is not so much that we take an effect for a cause as con- 
 ceive something as cause of itself. By the*play of the tendencies of the 
 assimilated phna this idea of their being the cause of our mental passion 
 is excluded, and so a true cause for that mental passion is revealed to 
 us as the function. 
 
 When we know thus the true cause of our perception of matter of 
 the ' apparent matter,' then we shall find it avail for us as a guide. It 
 will teach us how to direct our spiritual course when we see that it is a 
 spiritual fact. 
 
 Why the senses deceive us is simple : a passion is produced in us, of 
 course by a spiritual agent ; nothing else can act, or ' produce passion,' 
 at all. This passion in ourselves we of course perceive or are conscious 
 of, but we know we do not cause it ourselves, i. e. we necessarily refer 
 it to a cause not in ourselves ; but the passion is all that we are conscious 
 of; what .-. can we suppose existing external to us to cause it ? how 
 should we know what to suppose except that of wh we are conscious ? 
 It is impossible that without having in some way learnt of something 
 else we shd be able to conceive of anything but of that of wh we are 
 conscious. Therefore of course we refer that wh we are conscious of 
 the ' passion produced in us as external to us. This is the outness of
 
 222 
 
 our perceptions ; this the deception of our senses. It is as when we are 
 moved "without knowing it, and see an external motion. 
 
 Now our reference of this passion in ourselves as external is due to 
 our idea of cause: we know it must have a cause .*. we regard it as a 
 phenomenon : i. e. the idea of cause is the force wh causes the externality 
 of our perceptions. The idea of cause in fact. is the vital force wh carries 
 the phn and subjective passion wh are truly one into divergent rela- 
 tions. But when these are seen to be one when by their own ' weight ' 
 or affinities they fall together the idea of cause is excluded there, it 
 cannot exist any longer as the force wh maintains the divergent relation 
 between the phn and our subjective passion ; therefore it must exist in 
 another form ; because the idea of cause [wh is to mind as motion is to 
 matter ?] cannot be annihilated : so, influencing our mental organization, 
 it produces a function ; i. e. presents to our perception the true cause of 
 those phna. 
 
 If this physical world arise from a passion produced in us, it becomes 
 of the gravest moment to us to know what is this passion, and whence, 
 and to what end. Its meaning most directly concerns ourselves ; it is no 
 longer a matter of curiosity but of deepest necessity for us to know. We 
 cannot but ask earnestly what act is it that produces in me this passion 
 that I perceive as this great universe : what act, whose act, and why 
 exerted thus on me ? 
 
 The use and glory of knowing a phn to be an illusion, i. e. a passion 
 in ourselves consists in this, that it reveals to us a true cause of the 
 passion, instead of an illusory or apparent one. It is all gain and no 
 loss. The phn remains, just as full of value, use, enjoyment, as ever it 
 was ; and added thereto we have a true cause of it, an entirely new fact, 
 or series of facts, equivalent in amount to the phna and of incalculably 
 greater value. 
 
 Are not mind and matter the two halves of the vibration wh all passion 
 must be ? God's spiritual act, limited by the human spirit, becoming 
 passion or vibration, is mind and matter, i. e. this phn ; or passion or il- 
 lusion. But still remain two unsolved points ; 1st, why the special re- 
 lation of each spirit to its 6wn mind and body and to others ; and 2nd, 
 what is the relation of mind to matter, in what way is the physical world 
 a passion of the ' mind ' ? Does it not seem as if the form of the spirit's 
 passion was time [mind] ; the form of the mind's passion, space, 
 [matter] ? 
 
 There is another proof that the thing perceived cannot be the true 
 cause of the perception, viz. that it is the law of our mental life to 
 learn causes from effects ; this is the organic nature of mental food that 
 effects precede in our cognition causes. Therefore the things we directly 
 perceive are not the causes of perception. In supposing this we have 
 supposed an inversion of the universal law : that we directly perceive 
 a cause, wh we never do, but only by its effect. The legitimate argument 
 wd be, the thing perceived seems to be the cause of the perception, .-.it 
 is not. 
 
 What is the cause of that passion in ourselves that constitutes our per- 
 ception of the external world ? If it be replied, < the things we perceive 
 are the cause,' the answer is twofold the metaphysical, wh has been partly 
 given long ago, and does not avail to produce conviction : and a more 
 efficient one that the phna themselves do not admit of that construction :
 
 223 
 
 that Science proves the external world to be the result and not the cause 
 of the passion in ourselves ; or rather itself to be that passion -whereof 
 we ask the cause. 
 
 As we may truly say that the motion of the sun is a pasesion in our- 
 selves rather than an effect of it, and that it exists only because and 
 when it is perceived, without denying the reality of anything what- 
 ever, so we may justly say the external world is a passion in ourselves, 
 and exists only because and when it is perceived, without denying the 
 reality of anything. For each phn there is a real cause, not only ad- 
 equate to, but often infinitely exceeding, that phn wh is one of its 
 effects. 
 
 Here also is a proof, if such be possible, of the authority of our con- 
 sciousness of free-will ; of our actual origination of our acts ; because 
 whatever is done in us all our passion we perceive without us. And 
 this view is confirmed by the experience of our mental and physical life. 
 For our minds and bodies also originate, not actions, but phna ; and 
 when this is the case we perceive that these do originate within, and do 
 not thereby perceive an external phn. When the cause of any passion 
 in us is without us i. e. is not ourselves we are aware that it is not 
 ourselves, and perceive, not indeed the cause, but an external phn. It 
 is only those passions wh do originate within us that we perceive as 
 within us. Therefore when we are conscious that a moral deed originates 
 within us, it does so originate. 
 
 It is only by the body that we perceive at all, at least so far as we 
 know ; everything coming to us by the portals of the senses ; all intel- 
 lectual and moral facts are also physical in some form. Every fact 
 three-fold : moral, mental, physical. 
 
 Phna are the passion in ourselves, and by them we discover the cause 
 that is operating on us. In the nature of things we cannot directly 
 perceive the cause ; and this idea of cause wh we apply to the phna, is 
 the vital force wh renders them organic : because when it is discovered 
 that they are not cause, this idea of cause still remaining produces the 
 function of discovering the true cause. The idea of cause, then, is the 
 force in the intellectual or scientific life ; what is the force in the emo- 
 tional or esthetic life ? The existence of cause in matter and mind 
 stamps them as passions of the spirit or agent, or causer. 
 
 The body coming first in the mental and spiritual development is one 
 instance of our necessity of seeing phna in inverted order. 
 
 The three-fold motion, the spiral motion, of the earth three vibra- 
 tions at right angles [besides its daily revolution] what does this indi- 
 cate in the absolute reality ? Is it not an illustration of the universal 
 three-foldness ? Do not the three senses of beauty, truth, and right 
 correspond to matter, mind, and spirit ? 
 
 The phna when they fall into their right (or natural) relations, in 
 respect to our present science, show all nature to be motion in direction 
 of least resistance, i. e. a form of our own thought, or subjective ; and 
 this produces the function of revealing it to us as God's holy action. 
 This action does not consist in the producing that impression, nor is it 
 designed specially for that object ; its doing so is as it were incidental 
 merely. It is a great Deed enacted for ends of its own, but our relation 
 to wh affects us in such a way that the perception of the universe 
 results.
 
 224 
 
 Astronomy seems to represent all science in miniature ; is a type to 
 show us the whole. The problem submitted to us, is the cause of the phn 
 [as a whole]. That is the object of science, of mental life ; what is the 
 reality wh causes the phenomenal. This is the problem of astronomy as 
 of nature, and worked out first in astronomy, just as in science now. 
 The means by wh it is solved are the same in both ; viz. the arrangement 
 in causal relations wh are quite false, but by means of them the true 
 cause is shown. There is some deeper relation here. This idea of cause 
 is the source of a power wh effects all the ' organic ' arrangement of the 
 mental elements, yet is there really no such causal relation among them. 
 The phna do not really cause each other, but depend on a common cause 
 the operation of wh is on us. 
 
 There is surely a parallel to this in [the life of] mathematics. The 
 object is to find the unknown value; but this is done by first observing 
 the phna and assimilating them, as noted, and then by noting the relations 
 wh exist between themselves until at last the true value appears. Is 
 not this true value parallel to the unknown real cause wh is revealed by 
 having unreal relations of cause among the phna ? 
 
 Strictly it is not the mind that thinks, or feels, the mind is thought ; 
 as it is not matter that moves, but matter is motion. It is the spirit 
 that acts and is acted upon ; all else is phenomenon : all that we ' per- 
 ceive ' is action on our spirit. The ' cogito ergo sum ' applies really to 
 the spirit : a better form, I think, wd be ' Ago ergo ego ' I act, there- 
 fore I.' 
 
 It is clear that the ' mind ' is not we the ' I ' or the man : it deve- 
 lopes ; we remain the same : it is one ; we are many. If the mind be 
 the man, then certainly a man is not an individual, for there is as clearly 
 a human mind as a whole, as there is the mind of a single man. 
 
 Berkeley was partly right and partly wrong. As if it shd be affirmed 
 that the sun's motion is merely a motion of ourselves ; but when the 
 cause of that was asked, it shd be replied that it is God's direct act upon 
 our bodies or minds : that whenever we seem to see the sun move God 
 has acted on our bodies so as to move them, or on our minds so as to 
 produce such a perception. The Tightness of one part of this statement 
 wd not induce us to receive the other. 
 
 The problem is : given the phn to find the real cause ; and to help us 
 to solve it, is given the conviction [true absolutely, but misapplied, con- 
 stituting the organic condition of our mental food] that the phn is a real 
 fact altogether independent of ourselves. This conviction is given us 
 attached to the phn ; the work to be done is to detach it from the phn 
 and attach it to the cause. And the means is by observation and the- 
 oretical arrangement to produce an organization wh shall yield the true 
 or real cause as its function. This is indeed the one task of science ; in 
 each detail as well as in its aggregate. It is in truth the mental life, 
 and constitutes, as life does, each minutest part as well as the whole. 
 Life comprehends the whole and is comprehended in the least ; it com- 
 prehends all things and each thing comprehends it. But this problem 
 of discovering the real cause apart from ourselves is a process of life : 
 and the same is shown in mathematics : there is there the nutrition and 
 the function. 
 
 The real cause is the end, not the beginning ; it is to be elicited as a 
 result of interpretation, not used as a means of interpreting. Kature is
 
 225 
 
 aft unknown inscription wh we have to interpret. It is like a map given 
 to a child to arrange. He has a long process to go thro' but at last the 
 pieces of wood are no more such to him, but one mental fact the idea 
 of the map or picture. 
 
 Berkeley's doctrine tho' 1;rue in one aspect, has been necessarily re- 
 jected ; the error clung to has been less harmful than the error he wd 
 have substituted : the belief in a real matter is a vital wrongness ; the 
 other wd have rendered impossible a true knowledge of the reality. 
 
 Berkeley's view, again, makes God's act wh produces the perception of 
 the material world arbitrary. Here is an indication of the parallelism 
 between his view and theirs who hold God's special action for certain 
 material facts, and general laws for others. And there is a deep con- 
 nection between the two views, a connection far enough from being de- 
 signed by those who hold creation to be arbitrary, but one based on the 
 nature of things. Those who affirm the phn to be arbitrary agree with 
 Berkeley in affirming the act of God wh causes our perception of it to be 
 arbitrary ; i. e. that it is in fact an act of God upon the mind. They are 
 Berkeleians against their will : or rather, Berkeley's view is only a cor- 
 rect and logical statement of theirs. The only way of avoiding Berkeley's 
 conclusion and yet holding to reason, is to affirm the universe to be a holy 
 act of God, and .*. in every detail necessary. 
 
 All nature appears to us as a chain of cause and effect because it is a 
 spiritual act ; holiness is the sole cause : cause ever being spiritual. 
 Wheresoever cause and effect exist, the reality of that is spiritual. That 
 throughout all our passion, of whatever kind, there runs unexcludably 
 the conception of cause, proves that all our passion is really spiritual 
 passion : mind and matter in all their forms subjective passion of the 
 spirit. Just as that from wh we cannot separate the idea of space is 
 material, and that from wh we cannot separate the idea of time is mental, 
 so that from wh we cannot separate the idea of cause is spiritual. 
 
 Thus again it is ' not although but because : ' the material world is not 
 a spiritual act although it consists of a chain of physical causes and 
 effects, but because it is so. 
 
 It is clear how with this view all difficulty about the free agency of 
 man disappears : how completely one is armed against all materialistic 
 attacks. The phenomenal views are necessarily wrong in order to be 
 right. Phna are marshalled in vain against the spiritualist banners 
 .they are all our own troops, not our enemy's; their hostile aspect is the 
 proof of their loyalty. 
 
 Are not other sciences now in a similar state to astronomy before the 
 subjective and objective motions were distinguished ? This made the 
 old system of the heavens so complicated, the regarding as entirely ob- 
 jective that wh was partly objective and partly subjective. Is a similar 
 separation to be made now in respect to the universe ; is it from our pre- 
 sent point of view only partly subjective, henoe the complexity of the 
 present scientific ' theory ' 9 ' 
 
 One source of the difficulty in really feeling the subjectiveness of the 
 material W-prld, is the peculiar relation of our own body as a part of it: 
 T.ke external world is truly external to our bodies ; this is merely a re- 
 gion among phna. So that the real externality of the external world 
 is maintained by spiritualism in every sense in wh it can be asserted, or 
 
 even conceived. 
 
 \ . ..... .,
 
 226 
 
 Tho mysterious point is in what respect do these bodies (and. minds) 
 of ours, wh we partly consider to constitute its, differ from the phna wh 
 constitute the 'external worlds.' There is a real difference here. And 
 why is it only by these phna - our bodies and minds and apparently by 
 our body only, immediately, that we are brought into relation with the 
 great fact of God's action wh constitutes those ' external worlds ' ; the 
 body and the mind being also part of these external worlds respectively. 
 It is one act of God that constitutes all, but what is our special relation 
 to one body and one mind ; wh however are themselves only part of a 
 great humanity ? 
 
 May it not be, as we see the sun's motion by a subjective motion in- 
 deed, yet not immediately produced by God's act but secondarily by mo- 
 tion of the earth (speaking now phenomenally) ; so may it not be that 
 we in some measure perceive the universe by a subjective passion indeed, 
 yet not directly produced by God's act, but secondarily by some thing to 
 wh the whole human race bear a common relation, and by wh they are 
 influenced in common (as by the revolution of the earth.) If this be so 
 may it not be ascertained ? And tho' in fine it must be true that all is 
 God's act, yet may it not be that from our present point of view we see 
 subjective and object ire phna together and undiscriminated, and that we 
 have to discover a cause of subjective passion common to the whole race 
 wh will give the true interpretation of many phna, but will still leave a 
 residuum ? altho' considering how far the conception of passion in least 
 resistance goes towards including all things, and how clearly this is sub- 
 jective, there does not seem much scope left for a residuum. 
 
 The analogy of astronomy wd suggest that there may be some great 
 ' passion ' in the psychical universe of wh humanity as a whole, by virtue 
 of its special relation to certain elements of the psychical universe, par- 
 takes in a particular manner : some psychical passion affecting all human 
 minds in a manner analogous to that in wh the earth's motion affects all 
 human bodies. From this would result of course such a perception of 
 ' facts ' (i. e. of material universe) as we have of sidereal motions by 
 virtue of the earth's motion : and like it it might consist of two parts- 
 one subjective, one objective absolutely un distinguishable in our percep- 
 tion itself, but to be distinguished by a discovery of the subjective 
 passion deduced from the phna : the great mass of our perceptions of 
 the phna probably being subjective, and giving proof of a subjective 
 passion the nature of wh may be learned from them ; but some objective, 
 these forming the exceptions and irregularities under our present point 
 of view. 
 
 Should we think then, that all in nature that is not really and naturally 
 reducible to passion in least resistance, is objective : i. e. in relation to 
 the particular subjective passion wh I have deduced from the phna of 
 science, and wh is expressed in the formula that nature is passion in 
 least resistance, or passion directed. All facts not included in this, if 
 there be any, are to be regarded as not reduced to the subjective point of 
 view. But can there be anything beyond God's holy act ; or have I pre- 
 maturely made this ' interpretation ' of the subjective passion ? Does 
 not the original act producing the passion, seem to be the only thing ex- 
 cluded from passion in direction of least resistance ? That of course 
 cannot be ' subjective ' in us. 
 
 There is another view of the ' life ' of reason as distinguished from the
 
 227 
 
 ' inorganic ' passion of instinct it is this false idea of cause : the idea of 
 cause, is the ' vital force ' ; this is the distinction of reason from instinct. 
 This idea of cause, wh is truly due to the spirit, and wh beasts .-. have 
 not, occasions organic reason in man, as distinguished from the inorganic 
 instinct of brutes ? Nor does this oppose instinct rising into a certain 
 kind of reason by failure ; it may become a kind of constructive life 
 without the idea of cause. Animals indeed connect facts with conse- 
 quences and act accordingly ; perhaps they have what some wd allow to 
 us a perception of sequence, but not of power. It is the universal idea 
 of power wh marks all our life [physical and psychical] as spiritual. 
 
 All passion must be life ; as and because it must be vibration, for vi- 
 bration is life nutrition and function. Therefore all failure, all wrong- 
 ness, must be nutritive ; must conduce to a worthy function. All except 
 sin, and even that doubtless must be nutritive in God's universe, though 
 death to the sinner. Thus an unbounded optimism, or one bounded only 
 by the right limit the conscience is seen to be the simplest and the 
 soundest philosophy. 
 
 The facts of our life seem to conform to the idea of the human spirit 
 influenced by God's act : its own passion necessarily referred externally 
 perceived as phna ; necessarily also vibratile, as nutrition and function ; 
 and each as many vibrations : i. e. just such as mind and body. [Why 
 our own mind and body and the external world ? do these also bear a 
 vibratile relation to each other : is ' humanity ' the function of the uni- 
 verse, as a nutrition ?] 
 
 Is not .. the union of physical and psychical mind and body a 
 polar union ; are not mind and body wedded ? 
 
 As Emerson says, Man is already fallen when he asks ' shall I live for 
 ever ? ' The question the Bible raises is, ' Have I life ? ' and shows us 
 how we may obtain, and having obtained have absolutely, the spiritual 
 life that we have lost. It speaks of a future state but this is the future 
 of the body. It is striking also that no more distinct terms in reference 
 to duration are used with respect to the life of the saved than to that of 
 the lost : in fact as it is a spiritual life and death that are the subjects 
 of the revelation, time is not an element of the case, and the Bible has 
 excluded it. 
 
 This is the true symbolism of nature, that nature itself is a result, a 
 form, of the spiritual passion wh it symbolizes. There is not a relation 
 of analogy, but an identity ; as the poets affirm, saying more truly than 
 they know. Nature does not illustrate and resemble the spiritual 
 passion, nor the life of nature present an analogy to spiritual life ; but 
 nature is spiritual passion, her life a spiritual life. The reality is spi- 
 ritual, only disguised by a thin veil of phenomenality, and designed for 
 the very purpose of revealing the reality to us : for that very purpose is 
 given to us our inexorable conviction of her reality. The reality of her 
 is real ; that is what we have to discover : and we discover it, of course, 
 by first discovering the subjectivity of the phna, this leading us directly 
 to the real cause of the subjeetrfe passion. 
 
 Our mind and body are ' passion ' only as phna, they are really God's 
 act ; one with that act of His wh constitutes the universe ; what the 
 universe is, they are. The ' passion ' that constitutes phna is only God's 
 I act influencing a creature. 
 
 Surely it is no fancy that we can understand the advantage of our
 
 228 ' 
 
 perceiving as external, or phenomenal, that wh is really sittjectirc. Sup- 
 pose we were conscious of the motion of the earth ! and surely it is the 
 same in our perception of the external universe. That externality gives 
 it order, adaptation, enables us to study it. The reality in truth is 
 simply too large for us ; therefore a phn is given us ; made for us, like a 
 toy or a diagram for a child, that by studying that he may be able to 
 comprehend the fact. Hence the mistake of supposing that we shall 
 never be able to understand nature, that goes with the hypothesis that 
 nature is the reality. Nature is the model or diagram wh we are to un- 
 derstand, made with special reference to our faculties, and designed for 
 this end, that by understanding it we may gain a conception of the reality. 
 Nature is not ever to be mysterious but simple and plain, fully compre- 
 hended and known ; then and then only has she served her chief 
 design. 
 
 I like the idea that the oneness of nature is like the oneness of the ap- 
 parent sidereal motions, due to its being subjective. And see, the great 
 mass of the universe is passion in direction of least resistance, but there 
 are a few exceptional facts, viz. those of free and moral agency. The 
 uniform is phenomenal, the exceptional are real ; and the reality of the 
 entire phn is the same as the exceptional. The phn itself is one of such 
 apparently exceptional realities. 
 
 How striking thus the significance wh the exceptional or moral facts 
 in the universe acquire : what stamp of reality rests on them as distin- 
 guished from all else. How futile the attempt, how mistaken, to reduce 
 them into conformity with the phenomenal. In fact they remain while 
 all else vanishes. All the facts of nature resolve themselves into a sub- 
 jective passion ; but these moral facts, wh are not facts of nature, acquire 
 thereby only a new and deeper meaning, and become the basic facts of 
 a new and larger science. [Just as did those heavenly motions wh were 
 not due to the motion of the earth.] 
 
 But this question arises : if nature be thus uniform because it is the 
 result of one passion in ourselves, how is it that it appears so various, 
 and the uniformity only discovered by so much research ? We may be 
 BUre that the cause of the apparent variety is also subjective. Now, is 
 it that the subjective passion tho' essentially one is also varied, assuming 
 many forms. This may be : the subjective passion in least resistance 
 branches out into exactly corresponding results with those ' phna ' wh 
 consist of the same ; or the subjective passion may be comparatively 
 simple, but the phna may be viewed too separately at first. Consider, 
 for its bearing on this how the motion of the earth round thq sun is a 
 spiral is not its daily revolution also in spiral form ? So our subjective 
 passion must also be spiral, in such sense as can be predicated of that wh 
 is not motion : i. e. it must be equal and opposite passion coexisting in 
 three directions. And from this ' spiral ' subjective passion surely arises 
 the spiral form of nature : motion the phn is so because the subjective 
 passion the reality is so. 
 
 Comte and Berkeley agree in rendering the mental food inorganic by 
 excluding the idea of cause from among the phn. Berkeley indeed re- 
 tains it in reference to the original cause of the phna themselves ; but 
 by banishing it frojp. observation renders it useless for function. Both 
 present to us inorganic, 'decomposed', substances for digestion if we 
 like to eat them ; but Comte presents us only the chemical materials ; 
 Spirit, 29.
 
 229 
 
 Berkeley at least gives us the chemical materials and the heat or other 
 force wh they have produced in decomposing. Those also who introduce 
 God's direct act as the only cause of certain phna as the origination of 
 living species take a step in exactly the same direction. So far they 
 present us inorganic materials instead of true food. It is strange there 
 slid be a real correspondence between these and Comte ; but the agree- 
 ment is certain and clear : both exclude the idea of cause from among 
 phna. If these TOG first assimilated and the chain of phenomenal causa- 
 tion accurately traced, then when they ' decompose,' and the idea of 
 causation is excluded from among them, they still effect virtually the 
 same function they reveal God's act, but now in a higher and more 
 worthy form. . It is a human function, and it reveals God's holy act. It 
 is the holiness that is the clement added. This they forego who maintain 
 special creative acts the holiness of God's act wh constitutes creation. 
 They little think what they sacrifice ; how their zeal for God, not accor- 
 ding to knowledge, takes from our perception of His act its highest value. 
 Nay, surely, if God's creative act be not a holy act, then it is itself but 
 a phn and has a cause. 
 
 To suppose -an arbitrary creation, and God specially doing certain 
 things, deprives us of the very thing we most want to know, viz. the 
 cause, the nature, of God's act. The beauty, power, wisdom, nay even 
 the beneficence, are as trifles ; we know nothing while we know only 
 these ; the fact, the reality that is of true concern for us, is the Holiness. 
 Least of all can we afford to forego causation in the origination of organic 
 life: that is the fact most adapted to reveal to us what God's act is. 
 
 Now this -must also hold in smaller instances. Assuming arbitrary 
 causes instead of tracing phenomenal ones is trying to live on inorganic 
 food. 
 
 The supposition of God's special creation of living species is a striking 
 instance of familiarity blinding us. Truly propagation from like parents 
 is less easy to comprehend than development of new, but we are familiar 
 with that and think it is ' natural ' ; God need not act ' directly ' to pro- 
 duce an offspring, as He must to produce the first ! it is one of the most 
 marvellous instances of enslavement to the familiar wh science can pre- 
 sent. As development takes place even in utero, i. e. from external re- 
 sistance, so must development of species ; wh brings us again to the idea 
 of a limit. Have I not now a better conception of development : before 
 the limit of each species is reached the polar or sexual attraction pro- 
 duces only reproduction ; when this limit is reached this same sexual at- 
 traction produces new species, because of the external resistance ; but the 
 instinct wh leads to it is the same as the sexual instinct, and the process 
 essentially the same as that of sexual reproduction. Probably animal 
 development is now at an end ; man being the full development, the 
 perfect condition of the animal world. 
 
 If it be the case that every function is a nutrition i. e. the force wh 
 the functional change sets free must be a resistance to other tendencies 
 does it not follow that seeing God's act as the cause of our subjective 
 passion must also be such a nutrition ? Is not this the truth that cause, 
 like force, is really a phenomenon, also applying only to mind as force does 
 to matter, and not existing relatively to God. God's act is not the cause 
 of our passion but rather is it. And to that act itsfclf the idea of cause 
 not apply : that God is causeless is the lesson of science itself. Wheresoever
 
 230 
 
 the idea of Cause exists there is life, nutrition, and .. wrongness of 
 relation, and tendency to ' function.' 
 
 Space, time, and cause are conditions of matter, mind, and created 
 spirit. 
 
 "WTiat a dignity is cast upon the ordinary processes of physical life, 
 upon eating and all the animal functions and enjoyments, when -we see 
 what they truly are one with our highest conceptions of truth and 
 
 piety. How sad, especially in such a man, is R 's contrast of means 
 
 and ends of life : if the means of life be low, then there is nothing 
 elevated. "We must learn to see aright, and cast around these mis-seen 
 ' phna ' the halo of reality. 
 
 It seems difficult to understand how, if the mind itself is a phn a 
 passion it can ' perceive ' ; how there can he passion in, or of, a passion : 
 hut this difficulty is apparent also. [It can he so to our experience. ~\ 
 Things or bodies also are only phna or passions : I have seen, indeed, 
 that they are only motion ; yet they can be acted upon and ' re-act ; there 
 are passions in them. 
 
 THINGS BELIEVED iff THE NINETEENTH CENTTTBY. 
 
 1 That God acts directly and indirectly. 
 
 2 That there is a real matter, independently of the mind. 
 
 3 That there are real efficient material causes. 
 
 4 That there are necessary and contingent truths. 
 
 5 That life is a special and peculiar thing, unlike all other things. 
 
 6 That there are specific properties or powers of matter. 
 
 7 That there are many different ' substances.' 
 
 8 That there is an ' universal gravitation,' or that all matter as such 
 
 attracts. 
 
 9 Also a special chemical affinity. 
 
 10 That plants and animals assume their forms by an inherent and 
 
 specific tendency. 
 
 1 1 That matter and motion may have imposed on them once for all 
 
 arbitrary or non-necessary laws which they will continue to obey. 
 
 12 That nature derives its spiritual meaning from ourselves. 
 
 13 That the ' laws of nature ' are in nature, and not in the mind. 
 
 14 That until about the time of Bacon the ancients went quite wrong 
 
 in their science. 
 
 15 That in very many instances, relating both to matter and mind, the 
 
 human intellect has reached the extent of its powers. 
 
 16 That white light consists of two or more co-existing motions. 
 
 Science and Art are one. In each case a man sees, and must reproduce 
 what he sees. I could not let these simple views of nature remain 
 unsaid. That wh a man sees he must also make. I daresay this is the 
 secret of many of the active instincts of animals : it does what it sees ; 
 just as every child of Genius does, by necessity of its own nature. 
 
 Wonderful the inexhaustibleness of nature and of man the unfathom- 
 ableness of God's act and the boundless properties of His creative power 
 in human nature. It really seems as if nature had been nearly explored 
 and all things stated : as if there were but little to be done that was 
 really new and not in some sense or other a repetition of what had been 
 [Miscellanea, 1.
 
 231 
 
 done and said before. Yet I find the world absolutely new. Everything 
 has to be said, as much as if nothing ever had been said or written. 
 Former literature and science are rather the means by wh nature has 
 been made new than hindrances to its becoming so. So in Music. To 
 us it seems as if real originality in music were impossible : so immense 
 is the extent and variety already achieved we cannot conceive of any 
 music essentially new. But let the man arise, and music is so new to 
 him that it seems as if all music had yet to be written, and that wh now 
 exists will be no more a bar to his writing ceaselessly new music than if 
 he had been its first inventor. Nothing has yet been said articulately 
 that I care to say. My one object will be to cheer the disconsolate and 
 fill the doubting with faith: limitless, unbounded faith and trust, that is 
 the true wisdom for man. 
 
 I might say, in reference to nature being such as it is to us by reason 
 of our perception : we gaze at nature thro' our tears ; therefore it is that 
 we see her spread out in these varied and changing hues. It is one pure 
 white light that shines around us, even God's moral character. Our body 
 with its five [or seven, or more] senses is a prism thro' wh we see the 
 one light, and find it many ; till a true science teaches better and bids us 
 recognize in these many colored phna one perfect, or holy, action.* 
 
 In respect to Beauty is there not a certain proportionate resistance wh 
 to us is most beautiful ; and does not this correspond, in some way, with 
 that proportion of resistance, direction, or control, wh we need to main- 
 tain over our own passions to make them right. Surely the esthetic 
 faculty has a paralellism to the conscience ; each demands a certain re- 
 sistance or direction to passion : the holy is the beautiful. Our moral 
 sense, as our esthetic, demand, passion to be resisted in a way that is 
 beautiful or right. So the esthetic faculty guides our constructive 
 operations as our conscience our moral deeds. 
 
 Have I noted clearly enough that it can be no explanation of any fact 
 in the universe to say that God did it. That is equally true of all 
 things. When we have that assigned as the cause of a fact, we 
 may say, ' Yes ; that I knew before. But God's direct actions have this 
 characteristic to us, that they form a chain of causes and effects, and I 
 wish to see and prove that this is God's direct act by seeing its cause.' 
 That is the end and object of science, really tho' unconsciously to make 
 men see that everything is God's direct act, i. e. everything except their 
 own moral deeds. This is accomplished by revealing all as a chain of 
 causes and effects, and now as passion in least resistance, i. e. passion 
 directed self control, or holiness. This is the true end of science an 
 end how beautifully predicted in the beginning ; for it began with re- 
 ferring everything to God's direct action, and it ends by the same : the 
 primary instinct and the affirmation of the cultivated intellect are the 
 same. Man kneiv at the first that Nature was God's act : his work in 
 science, tho' seeming often opposite, has been to discover how ; and to 
 see it intelligently as a fact. And such as the whole work of science is 
 such are its parts : .science progresses ever by taking more and more 
 facts wh are attributed to the direct act of God but not proved to be so, and 
 showing them to be such by including them in the chain of causation : 
 
 * ' Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, 
 Stains the white radiance of Eternity.' Shelley. [Note by printer.]
 
 232 
 
 This union of law of cause and effect, with God's direct action, is an ex- 
 cellent example of polar union of real and ideal. 
 
 True poetic metaphors read to me now not like metaphors but mere 
 common sense literal truth. 
 
 Do we not see how nutrition consists in the arrangement of the elements 
 wrongly (in so far as that word may be used, i. e. with relation to our 
 perceptions) in the moral world ; where the nutrition is the permission of 
 injustice, wrong, cruelty, and suffering. So the ugly is the nutrition of 
 Art ; the false the nutrition of Science. The Life is the union of the 
 ugly and beautiful, of the false and true, the evil and good. That is the 
 ' whole.' This ultimate life will infinitely excel our poor ideas : our 
 idea of beautiful, true and good, wh does not embrace, but excludes, the 
 ugly, the false, the evil, is not a whole at all : that is function without 
 nutrition ; it is inorganic. The true ideal, God's ideal, the real, is to ours 
 as life is to the unliving. 
 
 I unite, polar- wise, the two opinions about woman : at once how the 
 female is the inferior [nutrition inferior to function] and yet woman at 
 least on a par with man ; for woman in respect to mind is male. The 
 question as to the superiority of the sexes is thus as broad as it is long : 
 man is male and female ; woman female and male [physically and men- 
 tally respectively]. Thus the two are united into one, and we need never 
 again fear, on woman's behalf, to admit either the theoretical or the actual 
 inferiority of the female. The ' female ' mind is the logical ; the male, 
 the instinctive : the ' sex ' of mind inversely related to that of body. 
 Not absolutely indeed ; but when we meet with a woman with a ' female ' 
 mind we call her masculine. Man's mind is perpetually producing ova as 
 woman's body is. 
 
 I conceive that every one who keeps an honest heart finds at last that 
 God has a great work for him to do ; but generally I think he finds out 
 also, at the same time, that this is the very thing he has been doing all 
 his life : perhaps not in his external activity as determined by circum- 
 stances, but that internal activity wh he emphatically has been engaged in. 
 
 I cannot admit that my views are rightly to be called theoretical, still 
 less abstruse. If it were supposed that the light were the cause of the 
 sun's rising, wd it be theory to maintain the reverse : if it were supposed 
 that the motion of the piston caused the expansion of the steam, wd it be 
 abstruse to alter the relation ? Is not the wrong opinion in these cases, 
 tho' phenomenal, most theoretical and most abstruse ? 
 
 I perceive a parallel (interesting to me) between the presentation of 
 nature to us in inverted order effect before cause and the mode in wh 
 my own tendency is to present my views viz. effect first ; i. e. putting 
 forward first the last result and not the process by wh I arrived at it : the 
 proposition and then the proof, instead of going thro' the order of my 
 own thoughts and showing first the evidence. Thus naturally arises mis- 
 conception : the view is thought to be a theory first conceived and then 
 supported by facts. And the analogies are misconceived as if the new 
 view were thought of from them, instead of its unavidably suggesting 
 them. Now first to show the evidence and then the result, according to 
 the course of my own thoughts, wd avoid this ; but is not the other 
 natural ; the 4 organic ' relation fit for mental food, that the effect should 
 appear first.
 
 233 
 
 Any man who has a clear idea can say it clearly, he cannot say it 
 otherwise indeed, it will say itself. A clear idea is one that a man can 
 clearly express, no other is so : the only thing that can be only obscurely 
 stated is an obscure impression, or a feeling. It is not language that 
 embarrasses us, nor words that fail us ; words and language are only too 
 good for us, too far ahead of us. When a man has a truly clear idea, 
 what he finds is rather that he has all his life been saying it without 
 knowing, than that he is unable to say it now. It is indeed probable that 
 the only clear idea is one that has been clearly expressed. 
 
 How the way to discover truth is to have patience and to look at all the 
 facts ; not to be hasty in finding out resemblances and analogies, in fact 
 not to look for them at all, nor use them to explain the facts, but let the 
 facts point out and necessitate the analogies. The only real way of seeing 
 the unity is by thoroughly appreciating the diversity. 
 
 Are not transcendental mathematics, as it were, the organic form of 
 mathematical life ? is it not the development ? I think it must be : it is 
 1 passion ' and not things ; is not vibration involved in the idea of fluxions ? 
 See the doctrine of 4 limit ' too : and mathematics assumed this form, by 
 its previous form reaching its limit ; it is a true development or * replace- 
 ment.' I am persuaded there is the entire history of Hfe in this history 
 of mathematics, if I could trace it. 
 
 The causes of evil can be prevented from doing evil only by turning 
 them to good ; they cannot be excluded, but must be included. [The 
 tendencies e. g. wh lead to bad forms of religion.] And does not this 
 apply most importantly to the causes of disease. They exist, and are 
 powerful, and must therefore produce effects : this cannot be avoided. 
 They cannot be annihilated, nor can they be surely and efficiently ' guarded 
 against ' this is the exclusive system wh is unnatural they must be uti- 
 lized. This is a necessary deduction from the fact that all wrongness in 
 nature is nutritive. How does this apply to malaria ? It cannot be pre- 
 vented from causing disease but by making it do something else ; or by 
 making the cause of malaria do something else than generate it. This 
 turning the causes of disease to good use is the true preventive medicine. 
 
 In general we may say, wherever there is an evil there is a ' force ' ; wh, 
 being a force, may be turned to good, nay, must be turned to good if it is 
 to cease producing evil. Should we not find it largely true indeed that 
 all the forces wh at present or ever produce good did produce evil, until 
 caused to produce good ? Does not all good thus spring from nutritive 
 evil, at least all but the lowest forms, even as life developes and continues 
 by nutrition ? Surely evil being nutrition, there must be equal nutritive 
 wrongness for all the Tightness. This is only a form of life. As nutri- 
 tion is mother of function, so is evil of good. Every force or power first 
 produces evil wrong relations, nutrition before it can produce function ; 
 and each function is a nutrition -each good an evil for a higher 
 function. 
 
 All our benefits and advances of civilization arise from causes of evil 
 turned to good. Here the Peace movement is at fault : they seek to put 
 down war, but to succeed they must turn the causes of war to good effect. 
 The error of materialism, seeking to put down or annihilate superstition 
 is an universal one ; the failure to see nutrition in natural evil. Even 
 moral evil is to be eradicated only by giving a good direction to the forces, 
 or passions, wh produce it.
 
 234 
 
 I will never believe but tbat all these violent cosmical forces, volcanoes, 
 &c., may at last be neutralized in their evil effects by being turned to 
 good ; what a source of power, an enormous available force is in them, 
 if we only were their masters ! The necessity is to remember always 
 that wherever there is an evil there is a possible, yea a designed, source 
 of good. Some may be beyond our power to turn to use, but surely there 
 will be very few. Nature is given for our dominion, and shall bo en- 
 tirely subdued. 
 
 There is another point of view from wh the necessarily nutritive cha- 
 racter, or goodness, of all natural evil may be regarded : that natural 
 evil is the result of force, wh is God's act, and the phenomenal source of 
 all possible good. We overlook so much, in everything, this nutritive 
 character of evil and wrongness : our idea is only to put things right as 
 fast as possible; we wd have no organic state, no nutrition .-. no func- 
 tion and no life. We shall doubtless see reason to rejoice that the evils 
 of the world were not removed as fast as we wished. Our hurry to have 
 all evils put right is just like Comte and Berkeley banishing prematurely 
 the idea of cause. But how great must be the Being who thus uses 
 human beings as atoms in a living frame ; how glorious that function of 
 wh the nutrition is wrought out by tortured bodies, aching hearts, and 
 crushed and ruined souls. 
 
 It is a glorious thought that wherever there is an evil there is a force 
 capable of being turned to good. What a joyful prospect . arises even 
 even out of the prevalence of evil ; what capability for advancement 
 formed by depths of abasement. There is no lack of power, that is cer- 
 tain : the amount of the evil testifies to that. 
 
 And this view is sanctioned by the fact that nature is our dominion ; 
 ours to know and comprehend ; ours to rule and use. Nothing phenomenal 
 is too great or too difficult for us ; the phenomenal by its very existence 
 owns us Lord. It is the means, by comprehending and by jasing wh, we 
 are to make our nearest approach to the reality wh is in truth infinitely 
 above us. It is a sad error to think ourselves unable to master nature. 
 We are like children frightened at our own shadow : 'tis not the shadow 
 that is the mystery but the light that casts the shadow ; 'tis not the 
 projection of our own passion the phn that shd be the mystery, but 
 our passion's cause wh lies in God alone. 
 
 The object of nature is to reveal to us God's act, even as our shadow 
 reveals the light. I like this comparison i how unlike is shadow to 
 light, yet is it only a result of light acting upon us ; it is indeed but a 
 negation, yet how real a thing it looks to us. The phn, or nature, is 
 our own shadow ; caused by the light of God's divinity wherein we live 
 and have our being. It is that wherein God is hidden from us, and yet 
 revealed : our shadow shows us first ourselves ; and then points us to 
 the light wh causes it. 
 
 All force is vital force, and exists only as restraining affinities, oppo- 
 sing tendencies, i. e. causing nutrition or wrongness. Higher objects 
 wh are the functions are obtained only by means of such vital restraint 
 of tendencies. It is a wonderful thought that opens thus; that all 
 natural evil [surely also all the effects of sin except upon the sinner 
 himself] is nutrition, and only by its existence is the life of the uni- 
 verse maintained. And this nutrition must be, or there can be no func- 
 tion ; the organic elements [the evil] must be assimilated and produce
 
 235 
 
 the organization, or the life and the function are sacrificed. We must 
 undergo the evil, if we wd attain the good. To attain the sentient good 
 the happiness we must accept the sentient nutrition the pain. Here 
 surely is the true view of pain ; the function indicates it. 
 
 Our efforts to avoid pain, or suffering, especially self-denial, are again 
 like attempts to live on inorganic food ; we sacrifice the function. How 
 largely we see already this necessity and use of pain ; of toil, of self- 
 denial, of painful formation of good habits, not only in the moral world, 
 but the physical and mental. In the intellectual world what but self- 
 denial, painful toil, gives power ? 
 
 These things are not only compatible, but one acting out our nature, 
 and due self control : they not only may be united but cannot be sepa- 
 rated. Nature is at once passion in least resistance and due self control : 
 and so should man's life be. 
 
 Thus again : Nature is absolutely good, not alike? there is evil, but 
 because. The evil is good. For, as God sees, nutrition is not evil : that 
 arises from our relation. Is vegetable or animal nutrition evil to us ? 
 yet it is just what exists in what we call social evils. Nutrition is no 
 evil if the function be worthy of it. 
 
 I like this view, that sin tho' death to the sinner constitutes part 
 of the nutrition, the vital wrongness, in the universe. It reconciles the 
 difficulty about God's glory in sin and permission of it. Sin is no loss 
 or detriment to the universe, and the moral treatment of spirits is simply 
 one with the whole course of nature. Everywhere uncontrolled passion 
 is death, but produces life : and so also in respect to the human spirit. 
 God's moral government is one with His creative act in nature ; and 
 this is clearly true, because His creative act is itself a moral act. 
 
 Nature teaches us the truth by showing us the very opposite j she puts 
 things plainly before our senses to teach us that all is a subjective passion 
 constituted by God's act. Does not the Bible do the same, teaching us 
 the real and true thro' a false appearance ? 
 
 How beautifully it appears : that cause being ever and only a 
 spiritual act, and in Nature .'. being necessarily GocCs act, Science, 
 seeking essentially after cause, is seeking after God. This is what she 
 is ever and directly doing ; tho' having to traverse so long a path, and 
 receiving so many phenomenal answers to her questions, she cornea 
 almost to forget herself and her real object. 
 
 How great must that reality be which is not, really, time or space, nor 
 existing in them j but wh produces the phna of wh time and space are 
 the conditions. 
 
 Surely the Bible, like Nature, presents to us a phenomenon, to reveal 
 to us, by the studying of it, the reality. The idea of salvation of the 
 soul the personal selfish object is the phenomenal view of the doctrine 
 of the Bible ; the reality here also spiritual : holiness spiritual life, 
 wh is holiness, is the fact of salvation. 
 
 "We are sure when we discover anything subjectively true, that nature 
 will not contradict it, and we interpret nature in conformity therewith, 
 and herein we*show our reverence to God and treat Nature as His work. 
 So when we discover anything scientifically true any truth in Nature 
 we are sure the Bible will not contradict it, we interpret the Bible in 
 conformity with it ; and herein show our reverence for God ami the 
 Bible as His work. Our ideal, and all we can learn of truth, are given
 
 236 
 
 us to interpret His works ; the Bible not less than Nature. Are the 
 Bible and Nature halves of one whole ? 
 
 We are punished for the dishonor we do to Nature ; till we rightly 
 venerate Nature, and God in her, we cannot even see the Bible aright. 
 "While we speak of Nature as evil and corrupted we shall have the 
 greatest difficulty in defending the Bible from the same charge ; for it 
 and nature are one, and we learn in the same way from both : viz. thro' 
 error. "We expect the Bible to give us, as it were, inorganic food ; but 
 God is too kind. The Bible means, as nature does, more than it wd be 
 possible for us to see in it immediately and directly, or by any means 
 save the same by wh we learn from nature ; and often quite contrary to 
 the apparent meaning. 
 
 Nor is there any argument against the idea that God should have thus 
 led us, even by the Bible, thro' error : look at facts : the Jewish Dis- 
 pensation and the long history since. How plainly we see the phn pre- 
 sented first to the Jewish nation. The Bible, as Nature, is a life and 
 the basis of a life. 
 
 To understand God and the Bible and spiritual things, wa should first 
 lay it down as a principle that nature, being perfect, is absolutely and 
 perfectly good, and that everything divine or good corresponds exactly 
 with it ; and then we shd give ourselves earnestly to study what nature 
 is, that we may know what that is wh is natural, and wherein sin is 
 unnatural. 
 
 It is only a ' nutritive ' wrongness that is natural ; and the nutritive 
 wrongness is emphatically passion controlled. Indeed, does not our self- 
 control often lead us wrong, i. e. into nutritive wrongness I have 
 noticed how people will not let themselves be right, or look at things 
 ' naturally.' Is not this the very type of nutrition ? 
 
 As for the greatness of the evils how glorious must be the function ! 
 we do not think of the evil of nutrition ; of the violence and restraint 
 done to passion, of baffled tendencies, but of the function. So what 
 shall that be in comparison with wh all human evil (save sin) shall ap- 
 pear to us as right and beautiful as is the growth of a plant or animal. 
 
 It is noteworthy that Nature consists in the doing of opposite things, 
 and in every variety of form ; there are opposites in everything ; nutri- 
 tion and function ; wh, however Apposite, are still really one : every 
 nutrition a function ; every function a new nutrition. How unnatural 
 are our rigid rules ! 
 
 Further, with regard to the nutritive character of evils : this view 
 cannot make us indifferent to them as evils, or induce us to slacken our 
 efforts to remedy them. It can [rightly] only give us vigour and hope, 
 and direct our activity in the best channels. For the remedying of the 
 evils is the function for wh they exist ; their evil to us and the necessity 
 we feel to put them right are the very ' tendency ' wh constitutes their 
 functional power ; the thing for wh they exist. To acquiesce in them 
 is death : they exist that they may not be acquiesced in, but put right, 
 to produce thereby a function. Our abhorrence of them and effort to 
 put them right is the proof of their nutritive character ^the reason for 
 wh they exist ; if we had not that tendency they wd never have been : 
 God does not create death. In a word, not to remedy them to the full 
 of (Mr power is Sin. This view makes us hopeful too ; we may be as 
 sure evils will be put right as that nutrition will be followed by function ;
 
 237 
 
 and with an effect worthy of them. And it directs our efforts : showing ua 
 the nature of the thing it shows us how to deal with it ; it is a life, 
 and must be treated as a life. The evils must he righted in the natural, 
 or functional, way ; not hy rash and arbitrary measures. Life must de- 
 velope : and the force too, the vital force wh constitutes the evils must" 
 exist ; cannot be annihilated ; is useless to be ignored : it must be 
 utilized. 
 
 "We must not look on ourselves as existing as if alone ; or in merely 
 a secondary relation to others, so that we shd do good according to our 
 power ; but as parts, as elements in an organization an organic body : 
 our design not for ourselves, but almost solely for our share in the uni- 
 versal life. 
 
 Cause is essentially spiritual ; and is not this, intellectually, the dis- 
 tinction between man and the brutes, that man has idea of cause, in the 
 sense of ' power,' as producing phna, brutes not. They probably have 
 idea only of constant sequence, as some persuade us is our case, and act 
 accordingly. Man is the only animal that can say ' therefore.' The 
 * reason ' in this sense, tho' a mental ' property,' is due to, and is founded 
 in, the spirit. This surely gives man his chief mental superiority, that 
 he is a spirit, and comprehends, by experience, causation [wh is only to 
 be comprehended by experience.] He is thus a citizen of an entirely 
 new sphere. Imagine him without the sense of cause ; he wd no longer 
 be a man, no longer rational : and how shd he derive the idea of cause 
 but from his own consciousness as a spirit ? Thus it is man's spiritual 
 nature that makes him man, raises him, even in mind, altogether 
 above the beasts. Sagacity, or use of means to ends, may be without 
 idea of cause; or the very humblest animal wh opens its mouth to 
 devour prey must have it. Only science, surely, or induction of causes 
 from effects, proves the possession of the idea of cause. Therefore man 
 only has science ; only a spiritual Being can. 
 
 This also agrees with man's reason representing the organic or living ; 
 the instincts of animals the inorganic. For the idea of cause makes the 
 organic food on wh man's mental life is sustained. He assimilates alto- 
 gether by the idea of cause ; it is the life. Moreover since the idea of 
 cause (or science) arises from the consciousness of acting [i. e. of moral 
 action] man is first a moral agent, then rational ; is rational because he 
 is a moral agent. Here the dignity of morals. 
 
 Can the mind of animals represent chemistry ; as the human mind does 
 organic life ? 
 
 Surely in the constructive and artistic forms of ' life,' the basic idea 
 is the same as in science, viz. that of cause or power : or is it thus : the 
 spiritual, or vital, element in the three worlds is respectively- 
 In the physical, that of power or ' force.' 
 In the psychical, ,, design or intention. 
 In the spiritual, ,, right or duty. 
 The idea of ' cause ' being common to all ? 
 
 The depravity of man does not lie in his tendency to evil, but in his 
 < tendency ' not to exercise the right control. This is where he deviates 
 from nature : this is spiritual. May it not be said that Nature cannot 
 be depraved, being necessarily passion in least resistance, and being 
 God's act. Again the existence of these tendencies (to evil as it is said, 
 i. e. to evil if not controlled) are not evil but necessary and good : they
 
 238 
 
 are the passion'to be controlled without wh there could be no life : in 
 Nature the same tendencies to evil, but controlled, so producing life. If 
 in man were tendency only to good i. e. passion needing and admitting 
 no control it were unnatural, and no life wd be. These tendencies to 
 ev^l are the source of life : the only evil is man's spiritual refusal to 
 control. 
 
 How simple it appears that all Being is spiritual ; all Beings agents ; 
 spirits alone created; spirits and spiritual action. 
 
 The Bible states the matter as it is Holiness is life ; Sin is death. 
 Here is the Divine simplicity. It was necessary to do no more ; nothing 
 perhaps can be added save to diminish the significance and force of the 
 simple truth ; it states the fact and leaves it. It is almost appalling in 
 its grandeur. And see : Life is action ; holiness is life, or action on the 
 part of the spirit ; viz. control of passion. Sin is death ; it is the spirit 
 not acting. Much as sin seems to be action, it is not ; it is the spirit 
 not controlling the passion. The passion is not the sin, it is good, the 
 element or material of the life itself. 
 
 It has been the want of a true science that has prevented hitherto the 
 right understanding of the Bible. Phenomenal or inverted views have 
 necessarily been taken because Nature was not understood, with wh the 
 Bible is one ; and by our understanding of wh we necessarily, whether 
 we will or not, interpret it. Hence the direct interest theology has in 
 the fullest and freest prosecution of Science. 
 
 This is the Bible doctrine clearly : Eternal life or death is holiness or 
 sin. But from these respectively flow happiness and misery, as we know 
 well, and this is more or less implied in various passages ; but these are 
 secondary merely. The gift of God is eternal life ; the wages of sin is 
 death. It is the present fact, not the future circumstance, on wh the 
 Bible seeks to fix our eye. 
 
 Those who have maintained the eternal life and death to mean the 
 continuing or ceasing to exist of the spirit, have been really in the same 
 misapprehension : the selfish view, the regard to result, instead of, as in 
 the Bible, the regard to the thing. Thus it is that the latter view could 
 not extensively supplant the former ; it was infected with the same dis- 
 ease and differed only in form. Both these views are unscriptural, as 
 putting most prominently forward as the gift of God, and the wages of 
 sin, not the fact of holiness or sinfulness, as the Bible does eternal life 
 and eternal death but some secondary result, virtually a reward or 
 bribe. How numerous are the passages in wh the words eternal life are 
 plainly used in such a manner as to show that they cannot refer to ani/- 
 thing future, but relate to the present holiness : ' This ia life eternal, to 
 know Thee.' This is not continued existence hereafter, but a present ap- 
 preciation and sympathy, a present holiness ; and so of others : the 
 eternal life and death are matters of present experience. The Bible is 
 one with the highest instincts of humanity. 
 
 That the current interpretation of the scripture doctrine makes religion 
 an affair of consequences, a calculation of selfishness, is an objection too 
 largely true, and I have felt it to be by far the most powerful. But see 
 how by understanding the Bible this reproach is done away. I am glad 
 to see it ; because men whose feeling has been most truly scriptural 
 viz. that the true reward of holiness is holiness have almost seemed to 
 be in opposition to scripture, and have had difficulty in making their 
 views appear conformable to its language.
 
 239 
 
 In the gradual development of the truth of tho Bible I sec a divinity ; 
 it is just like Nature, presenting to us first a phenomenal view with the 
 object of revealing to us the reality. Nature and the Bible throw a 
 mutual light upon each other ; this being the central thought of both, 
 that holiness is life : most plainly written in the Bible, but then per- 
 verted and obscured because not seen in Nature. A true understanding 
 of Nature restores its true meaning to the Bible. 
 
 The atheist by his assumption that the phenomenon is real, virtually 
 affirms it to be in the highest degree ridiculous to suppose that our sub- 
 jective passion can exist without a real cause. This is very interesting. 
 Why is it that to every one it seems so clear that our subjective passion 
 must have a real cause ? Is it not because of the intense consciousness 
 of cause in the spirit ; that it utterly rejects the idea of any passion 
 without an action. But the necessity for a cause of our subjective pas- 
 sion thus conceded, what necessarily follows when it is seen that the phn 
 is subjective is that the phn has a cause : i. e. it is the work, the act, of 
 God. Thus is supplied that missing link, the proof of the cause of the 
 universe as a whole, wh has been wanting in the argument for a God 
 from nature ; and wh I think ever must be wanting in all arguments 
 based on nature and matter, as a reality. As a phenomenon, it is full of 
 meaning, reveals infinite realities ; as a reality it is barren. 
 
 As animals without mind wd be inferior to plants [physically] ; so 
 man without spirit wd be inferior [mentally] to animals. It is the ani- 
 mal's self-moving power that gives it its superior beauty, so man's self- 
 acting power gives him his superior truth ; and just as the vegetable 
 world retains a certain superiority of beauty over the animal, so does 
 the animal retain a certain a certain superiority in truth over man, in the 
 exactitude of its instincts, wh man cannot rival. 
 
 How each of these spiritual elements is, as it were, ' Life ' or vital 
 force : the idea of real existence, or substance, and idea of beauty, as 
 well as of cause. They are first introduced wrongly, and gradually ex- 
 cluded, just as in the idea of cause ; causing first an advance in know- 
 ledge of phna, as the advance of physical science ; and 2nd, revealing 
 the real substance, real cause, real beauty. In relation to the idea of 
 cause we have seen this : now the idea of substance, or real existence, is 
 excluded in like manner ; giving first a truer phenomenal science, then 
 a perception of the subjective nature of the universe ; and thus revealing 
 the true substance or existence. It is the same with the idea of beauty, 
 becoming gradually truer and larger ; the idea continually excluded, 
 producing 'function' or truer ideals of beauty, developing Art just as 
 Science developes ; and then revealing the true and real beauty the 
 spiritual when the phenomenal is seen to be subjective : for it is the 
 object of the idea of beauty, as of that of reality, and of cause, to re- 
 veal the spiritual, and in the same way. But it waits for its true office 
 till the relation of the phenomenal is seen. In fact all waits on science. 
 [Just as all the ' functions ' wait for the development of the organic 
 life]. 
 
 Art talking about its concern with spiritual beauty is at present in 
 error. It must live and grow as science has. It is trying like Berkeley 
 to introduce the spiritual too soon, before the phenomenon has revealed 
 it. Art must be content at present to expand herself to the phenomenal 
 beauty, as Science to the phenomenal truth. But surely not with so long a 
 [Art, 9. Sept. 1856.
 
 240 
 
 course. Science has done the work once and for all ; she has labored, 
 and other forms of mental life will enter into her labors. 
 
 I see now on a higher level this wh I have before seen respecting Art. 
 As the function of Science is to reveal that Nature is a holy act of God, 
 so the function of Art must be to reveal that holiness in the actual facts 
 of Nature ; to show the holiness of Nature. All Nature is beautiful, 
 and beautiful because holy : for beauty truly is spiritual, and the work of 
 Art is to display this, but it must be done in Nature's living way, and by 
 no short cut. The phenomenal is God's road to spiritualism, therefore it 
 is man's. 
 
 "What course Art will take in showing the universal or absolute holiness 
 of Nature, one cannot s^y, but it must be so. When Science, or the mere 
 tracing of cause and effect, becomes thus spiritual, in the true sense of 
 moral, how can Art fall short ? It must have even a higher function, to 
 point out the holiness, not to our intellect, but to our heart. Art is truly 
 above Science : it is the nervous, the emotional system ; Science makes 
 us see the holiness of Nature, Art shall make us feel it. And Science as 
 the lower first attains its development ; Art follows and depends upon it. 
 
 An ideal beauty above Nature must be laid aside, and Art must sit 
 down to Nature accepting her as absolute beauty, and making her ideal 
 correspond thereto. It is not hard to see that there must result a com- 
 plete revolution of our conception, or rather of our feeling, of Nature 
 altogether. It will show Nature to be only phenomenal and the reality 
 quite different. But that is what we we want. In order to rise above 
 Nature we must first put Nature above us. We are truly above, no 
 doubt, and shall safely rise again ; but this inversion must be or we are 
 left in ignorance. 
 
 A sign how' perverted at present is the artistic spiritualism, is this, that 
 artists, &c., use the word ' spiritual ' for other ideas than that of ' holy ' : 
 spiritual means moral, and there is no idea of the spiritual where that of 
 holiness is not. It is just as Berkeley's spiritualism did not involve the 
 idea of holiness his Divine Act being an arbitrary one. 
 
 Of Poetry also as well as Art this must be true. So long as poetry 
 deals with an ideal beauty above Nature, it is in its infantine stage ; like 
 the science of the dark ages : not wrong absolutely ; this has been a 
 stage all the mental life of man has passed through and it is only right, 
 ,but it must pass. [Do Comte's three stages bear on this ?] 
 
 We err altogether in thinking the dark ages time lost for science : it 
 was, as I have said, the preparing of the instruments ; it was infancy 
 laying the only possible basis for manhood. So now of Art and 
 Poetry. 
 
 It is clear that this application of the ideal to Nature [or identification 
 of the ideal with Nature, instead of considering it as something else] 
 must produce an entire revolution in our apprehension of Nature ; this is 
 evident, because Nature as an actual material reality, is not ideally beau- 
 tiful, and if she is to be so regarded she must be seen quite differently 
 from her phenomenal appearence. But this foresight of such change is 
 an indication of the ' function ' of Art ; it is a revelation to us of our 
 power over Nature ; shows us beforehand that we only submit our- 
 selves to her in order to rule her ; accept the phn only to make it reveal 
 its secret. The phn being considered true in science, altho' false, at last
 
 241 
 
 reveals the true ; so the phn being considered beautiful, atho' ugly, must 
 reveal ehe beauty ; i. e. the reality wh ; is beautiful. The reality is 
 beautiful, tho' the phn is ugly : just as the reality is true tho' phn is 
 false : and . . in each case, in Art as in Science, if rightly prosecuted, 
 [the ideal and the phenomenal united] the ugly will reveal the beauti- 
 ful, as the false reveals the true. 
 
 In the same way, we must study the evil phn as good, and it will re- 
 veal its good reality. All said of error and ugliness applies fully to the 
 phenomenal evil i. e. the evil in Nature. If we say, Evil is really 
 evil, it is like saying, Ugly is really ugly a false appearance is a false 
 reality : we simply throw away the means of our life. We should say, 
 Evil is an evil subjective phn, produced by a gooy reality. Holding it 
 to be good, and studying it so, in all its details, mastering it phenomenally, 
 it will reveal to us what that good reality is wh causes us to perceive the 
 subjective evil. 
 
 I cannot but believe that human life may become glorious, beautiful, 
 and happy to a degree almost beyond our thought by the fulfilment of 
 the promise of such a Science, when thro' the false phn we see the true 
 reality ; thro' the ugly phn the beautiful reality ; thro' the evil phn the 
 good reality. Shall we not, must we not, be happier then : more con- 
 formable to nature ; yes better, without wh we cannot be more natural. 
 
 It appears at first remarkable that we shd have to learn to 
 believe the ugly to be beautiful, the evil good, as if we could only do 
 that by an effort, while we naturally believe the false, as perceived, to be 
 true, But I think it is not so. I doubt if we do so naturally believe 
 the false perception to be true : we do not now ; that is certain. Neither 
 did the early philosophers ; it is only that science has advanced farther. 
 Consider Plato's ' intelligible world,' as opposed to the real : it was by no 
 means so ' natural ' for men to think Nature all true when they saw so 
 readily that, according to their perception of her, at least she was partly 
 false. Doubtless they had just the same difficulty in believing Nature 
 wh they saw partly false to be absolute truth, as we have in believing 
 Nature, wh we see to be partly ugly and evil, to be absolute beauty and 
 goodness, And I believe those middle-age men had a similar repug- 
 nance to bringing their ideal of truth into identity with the partly false 
 Nature that men have now to identifying their ideal of beauty and 
 goodness with the partly ugly and evil Nature. But it must be done. 
 The case is strictly parallel. Science has done it first, and should thus 
 make it easier for Art and ' emotional philosophy.' It must have seemed 
 strange to these people to be told that all Nature was to be studied as 
 truth, and that all truth was in Nature, when they knew so well that 
 Nature was partly true (as it seemed to them) and partly false and 
 when they had been engaged all their life in separating the true in Na- 
 ture from the false, in representing the spiritual ideal truth above the 
 actual. What a descent it must have appeared to them, what a grovel- 
 ling in the low and the material ! Yes : the eating and the assimilation 
 are low ; there is no dignity in man while sitting at the table, there is 
 apparently utter idleness in sleep. But behold the Function ! it cannot 
 be without them. Naturally Art and Poetry wd not follow Science 
 while in her nutrition stage. Pious devotees as they were, they wd not 
 cease there rapt contemplation to partake with her of her profane viands 
 or he asleep like her upon an idle couch. But now, when they see the
 
 242 
 
 power she has gained, when they hehold what she can do, will they not 
 condescend to be like her ? "Whether they will or no, they nmst : Ma- 
 ture is too strong for us witness the pre-Raphaelite School. The most 
 devout ascetic geta hungry and takes a biscuit on the sly. Better to 
 give up praying and singing hymns altogether for the present. Dine 
 and go to sleep, and see what you can do in the morning. For all this 
 partial imitation of natare is no real advance : the theory wants recti* 
 fying. There is no life in art or poetry so long as they think the ideal 
 is above nature so long as they use the ideal to supersede and not to 
 interpret her. 
 
 There is another mode in wh the life may be foregone : not only by 
 holding the ugly and evil to be really so, but by denying that they are 
 phenomenally so. It is only because the evil and ugly appear, and are to 
 us, evil and ugly, that they can reveal the beautiful and good : if they 
 are held to be themselves good they cannot reveal any other good : it is 
 because they are held to be really good while phenomenally evil that 
 they reveal anything at all. If I know a thing to be good wh appears 
 to me evil, then I know it is not really as I see it, and I examine what 
 I see with a view to find out what the reality is. The evil to our per- 
 ception is as necessary as the good in reality. Therefore to deny ugli- 
 ness and evil as phenomenal wh be fatal to the life of art and morals. 
 We know that Nature is absolutely true ; when .. we perceive something 
 wh is false we study it till it reveals the true wh causes us to perceive 
 that false : and so of ugliness and evil. 
 
 We are rather misled as to the absolute beauty and absolute goodness 
 of Nature because Science is so much in advance. "We have forgotten 
 that Nature, as we pereeiue her, is at least as much, if not more, false, 
 than she is ugly or evil, "We have become familiar with the idea that 
 Nature is absolutely true ; and do not perceive that she is not absolutely 
 true in any other sense than she may be affirmed to be absolutely good 
 and beautiful ; i. e. on the basis that we perceive her wrongly. The 
 whole battle of the Induction system has to be fought over again. 
 
 Not only do the false, the ugly, and the evil phna or perceptions re- 
 veal true causes ; but the facts revealed by these are the important ones. 
 The mental life of man consists in the wrongness ; it is the nutrition. 
 Of infinitely more importance is it to know the reality of the false, evil, 
 ugly phna, than anything we can learn from all that we perceive true, 
 beautiful or good. In Science it is and can only be a false perception 
 that can reveal to us anything higher or larger, nor can anything but 
 that wh we perceive as wrong reveal to us a higher good. To make our 
 ideal one with Nature is life, is nourishment : if we seek a beauty, 
 truth or goodness, above or independent of the phna we feed ourselves 
 on dust. 
 
 No reproach is cast on Art, even in its present form ; the pseudo- 
 spiritual in Art as in Science, tho' of course inferior to the true spirit- 
 ualism, is yet excellens in itself and absolutely necessary as a stage in 
 progress. This cvltivation of the ideal, this training of the faculties, 
 is a necessity; one without wh all future labor wd be thrown away. 
 Indeed the importance of this work may be judged by the time devoted 
 to it. How long Science remained in that pseudo-spiritual, a priori, 
 state, forming its ideal of truth. And Art must have time for forming 
 its ideal ; it is the key wherewith to unlock Nature. This is the work
 
 243 
 
 of the genuine pseudo-spiritualism : the a priori Science, the ideal- 
 above-Nature Art. 
 
 What is artistic assimilation ; the art-equivalent of ' cause ' ? 
 
 Science in revealing the spiritual reality of the entire phn showing 
 that Nature is not a materiality but a holy Deed takes no new course, 
 but does merely what she does ever and from the first, only acts out 
 her nature.' 
 
 The special attention of Science is given to those things that are not 
 understood, or that are false to us. Science has an ' appetite ' for the 
 phenomenally false ; it is her organic food : but this has only been 
 since she has been herself organic. So the pre-eminent business of Art 
 is with the ugly, to make it reveal its beauty as Scienne makes the false 
 perception show the real truth. Emphatically the concern of Art is 
 with the phenomenally ugly as of Science with the phenomenally false. 
 We see this respecting Science now, tho' before it was not seen at all, 
 but just the reverse, and men of Science turned away from the pheno- 
 menally false as artists do from the ugly ; and as of course they must 
 have done, believing Nature was really partly false, as artists believe 
 Nature is really partly ugly (and so of evil also.) Art is not given us 
 to amuse ; to please us with that wh looks beautiful ; but as a means of 
 interpreting the phenomenal, and discovering the real beauty of that 
 wh looks ugly, and thereby the higher beauty of all. Art if it will be- 
 come phenomenal, cannot rest until it has made the whole phn really 
 spiritual ; as Science, when it became phenomenal, could not. Physical 
 beauty itself must be seen to be not rightly beautiful, in order that it 
 may reveal the moral. 
 
 Will it not be glorious, this future of the world when Science, Art, 
 Philosophy and Poetry shall join in showing to man that Nature is a 
 Divine and holy deed ; its truth, its beauty, its good, all spiritual ; and 
 revealed by perception of false, of ugly, and of evil. When ugliness 
 and evil shall be to us only as the ' illusions of the senses ' are ; i.e. to 
 our sense of beauty and of good as wrong perceptions are to our sense 
 of truth : the means only of revealing to us, bringing at once and of 
 course before our minds, the higher, larger beauty and goodness, which, 
 except by them, we could not know. 
 
 To affirm the absolute beauty of Nature is at once to affirm that it is 
 not material, because the material universe is not absolutely beautiful and 
 cannot be. Has not this, partly, kept Art back and prevented us from 
 identifying the ideal with the actual : she has waited for Science. But 
 when Science also affirms matter not to be a reality, the way is open for 
 her ; and for poetry also, in the affirmation that Nature is absolutely 
 good, altho' phenomenally evil. 
 
 And what a new world thus opens before us what untold, unthought 
 of treasures of beauty and good lie hidden in the ugly and the evil ! It 
 will re-create our world for us to ' interpret ' them. I thank God there 
 is so much ugliness and evil so many illusions because each one of 
 them is the voucher for a beautiful and good reality, as each illusion of 
 the sense in Science is evidence and voucher for some true scientific fact. 
 I clasp evil and wrongness to my heart, and love them by anticipation : 
 they are life ; they are God's tenderest love ; and He says to me in them 
 ' Look my child, and tell Me what I am doing ; 'tis painful to you at 
 first, but you will love it when you see it.' By faith I see it even now,
 
 244 
 
 my Father ; and love it tho' unseen because Thou doest it. Blind and 
 ignorant children that we have been that we wd not look to see what our 
 Father does, but turned away our eyes, calling it ugliness and evil be- 
 cause it affects us painfully. Yet is this ideal-above-Nature Art right, 
 as a step ; nor is this vain attempt to rise by our own ideal up to God, 
 really in vain. Sad indeed wd be a phenomeral Art, or Science, or 
 Poetry if it had not first been hallowed by the upward flight toward the 
 throne of God. Once having learnt to see that the ideal is in truth Di- 
 vine, Science, Art, Poetry can descend safely to identify it with phna 
 wherein the stamp of Divinity seems almost lost ; once having soared 
 the soul will soar again. Therefore the false ideal precedes the true. 
 God's is too large for us at first ; uuninstructed by the teaching of the 
 fancy we shd never comprehend ths glory of reality : as a boy is taught 
 by toys to deal with the reality of life. 
 
 How is it that the three ' spiritual ' elements ' wh we do not ' perceive ' 
 viz. real existence [or substance], Power [or cause], and Rightness 
 [or Beauty], still constitute so essential a part of the phenomenal, give 
 it its entire character as a phn indeed. Is here some further indication 
 of the really subjective nature of the phn itself? Is it not that the phn 
 is a moral fact, produced by power, or an agent, on a real Being ? thus 
 the phn, embodying in the ' illusions ' of substance, cause, and beauty, 
 the essential spiritual elements, has its adaptation to reveal the 
 spiritual. 
 
 Our repugnance to the false, evil, and ugly constitute our very life 
 i. e. our functional power. This is the representative of the tendency 
 to return to ' chemical ' relations in the particles of the living body, 
 without wh it wd not be living. By this the function is performed ; the 
 false, evil, ugly, are made to reveal the true, beautiful and good. There 
 wd be no Science if we did not hate the false ; no Art, if we did not 
 hate ugliness ; no emotional life if we did not hate evil. The false, evil, 
 ugly phn or perception, are the ' nutrition ' ; constitute the life ; give 
 power for the function. Ruskin embraces the ugly in so far as it can be 
 made subservient to phenomenal beauty ; this is grand : but it is not the 
 right idea of the function of Art. 
 
 Art is the Science of the beautiful ; and Science the Art of the true : 
 a scientific view is a picture a representation of Nature ; also each is 
 equally a poem, and equally music j all constitute one. 
 
 Science and Art have done, like other children, in their childish pe- 
 riod, only that wh they like. It is the mark of manhood to know that 
 the important things to do are not those wh he likes, but rather the op- 
 posite. He has to do his work, against his inclination. Science has set 
 herein a noble example, and by mere instinct of advancing years ; seeing 
 indeed some reward but not knowing at all the best. Nor can it be 
 known : how. can the youth who quits his play and sits down reluctantly 
 to business know the best results that will ensue : the place among 
 men, the home, the power that he is creating for himself. He acts for 
 immediate ends, he gains respect, he gets a little money to spend, and 
 so on. But what he does is incomparably more than these, tho' he little 
 thinks of it. So Science set herself to her weary phenomenal task like 
 a good boy leaving school : she saw a new scope for her activity ; she 
 saw immediate useful ends to serve, and she has had her share of these ; 
 but she does not foresee God's design for her. The thing she was
 
 accomplishing, to wh all theifc were as nothing, she did not know ; nay 
 she can hardly believe it when it appears. See too how habit becomes 
 second nature. This experimental course wh Science was so loth to 
 enter upon has become so pleasant, or at least so usual, by long custom, 
 that it is hard for her to do anything else ; or even to believe anything 
 else is to be done. Even the weaknesses and errors of men display 
 themselves in the larger human life. And I believe that this universal 
 humanity this universal life of Science, Art, and the general activity 
 of man wh I see live, grow, develope, like any other living thing, is 
 equally a living creature, and constitutes a member of a family of such. 
 And farther, that this universal human life, as a living creature, consti- 
 tutes as it were the body and mind of some higher spirit : that we are 
 the elements, the particles, wh make up some higher living form ; the 
 instruments of some spirit even as our body and mind are of our 
 spiritual selves. Thus we are parts of the great life : thus our error, 
 evil, ugly, are nutrition ; thus our attainment of truth, beauty, good, 
 thro' these, are functions ; and in the organization we compose effect 
 objects far above our conception or design. 
 
 How the men of the old pseudo-spiritual science must have scorned 
 the idea of a science wholly material or phenomenal, founded entirely 
 upon nature and observation. They had been diving into essential being, 
 talking of deep ' spiritual ' reality. The mere phenomenal must have been 
 distasteful in the extreme. We cannot wonder that the struggle was so 
 long. Perhaps the greatest apparent degradation of the human mind, in 
 the whole history of humanity, is that abandonment of a real or spiritual 
 science to take up with a purely phenomenal and natural one. Yet in- 
 stead of a descent it was a rise no less than infinite, as we see now. 
 Science, the phenomenal, stands amazed at her own revelation of 
 spiritualism, the real. [Was this change in the attitude of Science a 
 figure of the incarnation of man's death ?] 
 
 Science and art are wedded to the phenomena : it is a polar union ; 
 first aversion, then love. But here is an inversion again, as so con- 
 stantly : Nature is the Bride of the Soul ; but Science and Art are the 
 Bride of Nature. 
 
 Is not the idea of beauty like that of cause wh by its exclusion pro- 
 duces function ; because if it does not exist in respect to one ' element ' 
 it demands the introduction of another, wh it is its function to reveal. 
 
 Is there not a sort of indication of a spiral, or returning into itself, in 
 this inverse relation of polarity, as that nature (the phn) is the Bride 
 of soul, yet science and art are as maidens wooed by the phn. And see, 
 in this resisted wooing is the life, the higher function ; even as love rises 
 higher because of modesty. This cultivation of the ideal, teaches the 
 true meaning, leads to the right use of the phn ; even as the pure as- 
 pirations of the maiden after a higher good than love causes love to be 
 a higher good than she aspired to. Might there not be a picture of science 
 or art wooed by the phenomenal : surely some of the Greek fables em- 
 body this. As man is male and female, and woman female and male, so 
 is nature to man both female and male, and v. v. 
 
 The phenomenally false, ugly, evil, represents a truth, good, beauty, 
 wh includes us, and wh . we can perceive only by a subjective passion. 
 Those true, good, beautiful ' facts,' of wh we ourselves form part, can 
 only be i % evealed to us as false, evil, ugly, phtui : but then these facts in
 
 246 
 
 wh we are thus involved on the very things we onght to know, and 
 most require to know. This is deep philosophy in Emerson : the ugly 
 things and evil are those of most import to us. It is of eminent con- 
 cern to us to know what are rat and mouse, and what to us ; of more 
 concern than all Rome's imperial splendors. And still more, ichat are 
 hug and flea ? Are these low mean accidents in creation ? It is an im- 
 pious thought eternal holiness demanded them : no less than the 
 infinite holiness of God acts in them, shines thro' them noiv, and we 
 must see it. These are a part of the infinite, the absolute, heauty and 
 good ; a part essential for us to know, without knowing wh we dream 
 idly of goodness and heauty. It is a worthier problem than ever artist 
 yet undertook, for it is real not phenomenal like the heauty of sunset 
 or a lake. 
 
 "We say with the poor Israelites of old to man, ' speak thou to us, hut 
 let not God speak to us lest we die.' Alas ! the sad mistake God's 
 * words are life : ' for they are spirit. But life is a painful, tearful, 
 striving, failing, desolate, discontented thing : we do not like it, we 
 fear it, we think it death and say again : ' speak man to us ; lest we die.' 
 "We cling to the ' ideal,' to the human ; and dread to plunge into that 
 great ocean of the phenomenal wherein God's voice alone is heard. For 
 He speaks in thunders and lightnings flash from His eye : He utters 
 His voice when sorrow chills the heart and forms of horror affright the 
 soul. In illusions that he wilder, in anguish that overwhelms, in loath- 
 some shapes that terrify, God speaks ; and we in our folly sa'y ' Let not 
 God speak to us lest we die.' But we grow wiser at last, and, weary of 
 man's empty words, athirst, and finding only hroken cisterns, we hrace 
 ourselves to our solemn task, and say, ' Let God speak to us, that we 
 may live.' Then we apply our lips with resolute and trustful heart to 
 the hitter fountain ; we grasp with shuddering yet undaunted hand the 
 abhorrent fact, and say ' the cup the Father giveth me to drink shall I not 
 drink it ? ' And we prove that the words He speaks to us are spirit and 
 are life The fearful or the sad phn reveals the joyful fact, the false and 
 ugly evil melts into the holy. 
 
 In the true, good, and beauty we are concerned as elements, in the 
 phenomenal as spectators or enjoyers only. 
 
 In the phenomenal God reveals Himself to man. This is, as it were, 
 their common ground. It is God" s act and man's passion : at once 
 Divine and human : here God meets man and here man may meet God. 
 The phn is the effect on us of God's act : as it is the effect on us we may 
 know it ; as it is God's act by it we may know God. But (?) in order to 
 learn God's act from it, we must eliminate from it that wh we supply : 
 viz., substance or real existence, cause or power, beauty or ugliness : 
 these are not in it ; these are spiritual, and without these it resolves 
 itself into what it really is God's holy act. 
 
 We perceive at once that the words real false contradict themselves. 
 But equally so do the words real evil or real ttgly, if we regard them 
 aright. To say that we see a thing evil or ugly in nature, is to say in 
 reality that we see it wrongly. This arises, in fact, from our sharing in 
 the life of the universe. The wrong relation in the vital relation. 
 
 That which is seen falsely is also [as seen] ugly and evil ; i. e. if it 
 were as it is seen it would be ugly and evil : not less certainly that wh 
 is seen ugly or evil is [as seen] false.
 
 247 
 
 Science errs continually by inventing that which is not ; and it is put 
 right by dropping these inventions : but in fact we cannot omit these 
 inventions really and heartily until we do see the truth ; the two things 
 are one. Surely art has to go thro' such a course of inventions. For 
 what are the ' inventions ' of science but contrivances for seeing the false 
 as if true ; for making the phn, wh is untruly seen accord with [our 
 ideal of] truth. This is exactly the ' assimilation ' arranging elements 
 in accordance with our ' life.' So art when it rises to be phenomenal 
 will introduce inventions for making that which is seen as ugly accord 
 with [our ideal of] beauty, this will be our ' assimilative ' art. 
 
 Any real science rests on this foundation ; that there is no real 
 falseness in nature, but that when there is a false phn there is a true 
 fact at the bottom of it. So any real art must rest on this : that there 
 is no ugliness in nature, but a beautiful fact is at the bottom of it 
 
 The higher and so higher ideal of art and science, arising from the 
 interpretation of the phenomenal, is the development of life, parallel 
 to, indentical with, the development of physical life. 
 
 The history of art ' art considered as a phn 'comes within this 
 domain of science : everything indeed lays universal hands on every- 
 thing. When art has become a woman grown she shall retaliate ; 
 laying hold of science and showing that she comes within her domain 
 not less. 
 
 Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites seem to me to have their instincts 
 right but to be forced to go wrong because science has been yet unde- 
 veloped. Science teaching a real matter, art could not assert an 
 absolute real beauty : because this is at once to deny a real matter. 
 The ugly must assume a new aspect in the eyes of art when she can 
 regard it as an effect produced on us by an absolute beauty. Instead 
 of seeing any longer in the ugly less of the Creator's love, man shd see 
 in. it if it were possible more of that love. At least he may see the 
 indication of a larger manifestation of it, one too large for us directly 
 to perceive : the secret of a beauty tnat shall make all things most 
 beautiful ugly to him, and cause him to cry out for the real beauty of 
 that wh now so satisfies his sense that he seeks not beyond it [this is 
 essentially the same as the subsequent preception respecting the use of 
 pleasure]. 
 
 Do we not prevert our taste by the effort to see the ugly as beauti- 
 ful ? that always sets us astray. Trying to make as much as possible 
 of the ugly appear beautiful is the very opposite of the true advance of 
 art, wh is rather to make the beautiful appear ugly ; as the true advance 
 of science is to discover that to be false wh we have held to be true. 
 Is not Ruskin, then, though in all honour, the pre-eminent champion 
 of false naturalism : a trying to make the ugly seem beautiful, instead 
 of making it reveal the beautiful, the first being a necessary step to the 
 second. 
 
 Do not Turner's last pictures stand manifestly out as illustrations of 
 art seeking to reveal the beautiful cause of all phna ? 
 
 The idea of beauty and of truth are spiritual elements ; are indeed 
 the idea of right a spiritual attribute alone applied to the physical 
 and psychical worlds. And, as being spiritual they do not belong to these, 
 cannot in either find their ' realization.' Therefore they by means of 
 the physical and psychical reveal the spiritual ; they return, as it were 
 whence they came.
 
 248 
 
 It is striking first -we use the beautiful, the phenomenally true to 
 interpret the phenomenally false, then the phenomenally false when in- 
 terpreted to interpret the phenomenally true. 
 
 First we interpret the life above as by the life beneath; then the life 
 beneath by the life above. For as we interpret, more and more comes 
 to require interpretation. Thus, at first, we divide nature into two 
 portions, the inorganic and organic, or unliving and living, and first 
 get a certain knowledge of the unliving, wh we use to interpret the 
 loving. Then when we have interpreted this, we use this again to in- 
 terpret the unliving, and see that the whole is life. 
 
 Surely art will advance as science has done ; by nutrition and 
 function , first by making the ugly appear beautiful ; and then by 
 letting it reveal the beautiful wh constitutes it. And this will continue 
 as in science, making more and more phna wh now appear beautiful to 
 us appear not so, until the entire phn being seen to be unbeautiful will 
 reveal the real or spititual beauty. This is the ' function ' of art from 
 the first, unforeseen by us but not less to be worked out by us. And 
 it is [as in science] only a renewal of its childhood. 
 
 How beautiful appears that childish instinct to believe and to admire 
 everything ; it is not a childish folly, it is the instinct of humanity to 
 trust in God, and God honors it : makes it the great, the only instru- 
 ment of revealing to man the really true, the really beautiful. Only 
 those who trust Him so implicitly as to believe all His work absolutely 
 true and beautiful, will God conduct to a true knowledge of Himself. 
 Knowledge can only come thro' trust and love ; and cannot be when 
 there is not perfect sympathy. He cannot know God, who is repelled 
 by any part of His work as false or ugly ; thinks He could make a 
 really ugly thing or do a false or evil one. 
 
 Surely for this reason in part was the Bible given us, that we 
 might see God to be perfect love, while the phenomenal reveals Him so 
 slowly, and we take so long to learn that it needs to be interpreted. 
 
 Consider it again morally. Nature is God's spiritual act ; i. e. either 
 holy or sinful. If holy, surely absolutely good and beautiful, if not so, 
 then sinful. Again; the facts of nature prove it holy : it is passion 
 duly controlled ; passion in direction of least resistance , and .*. not 
 arbitrary. In a word, it is life ; and life is the result of 
 holiness. And in fact do we not know that God cannot really do or 
 make the evil or ugly. "We say evil and ugly things are necessary for us, 
 for our descipline, that we may know and choose good and beauty. 
 But for this end it is only necessary that they shd appear so to us. 
 Nay, except by being truly good and beautiful they wd fail of their 
 end. "We deal by our children as God deals by us. The control we ex- 
 ercise over them is an evil phn to them ; but it teaches them the most 
 beautiful and excellent of all realities self control. Nay, this very 
 control we exercise over them is the beautiful reality of self control in 
 us. "We surround the child with good which he more or less perceives 
 as evil ; i. e. as disagreeable. And have we supposed that God cd not 
 cause us to perceive disagreeable things without really condescending to 
 do evil and ' create ' ugly ones ? We see in children how the 
 phenomenally true, beautiful, good, is life beneath us, the phenomenally 
 ugly, evil, false, life above us or including us. 
 
 As Ruskin affirms that we shall never appreciate the full beauty of
 
 249 
 
 nature, BO have men of science been affirming that we shall never 
 know the full truth of nature. Yet how strange it is. Never know 
 the full truth and beauty of a phn, or effect upon ourselves ? I think 
 man had better have been left without the power of knowing at all, if 
 a phn is to be above his comprehension : why should he be mocked so ? 
 But indeed it 'cannot be : the words show it ; he must comprehend the 
 phn, because he does 'comprehend it. It is altogether a thing in him ; 
 an effect on him, must be so. To say he cannot ' comprehend ' it is to 
 say a part is greater than the whole. 
 
 But indeed, so far is it from being the case, that we shall never ap- 
 preciate the beauty of nature : the very end of and object of our seeing 
 beauty in nature is that she may reveal a beauty above her. As we 
 can not only know all the truth of nature, but know by that very 
 means she is herself untrue a phenomenal presentation to us of a 
 different reality so we can not only appreciate all the beauty of 
 nature, but in doing so shall learn that she is herself unbcautiful, and 
 is only a phenomenal presentation to us of a very different real beauty. 
 
 The word nature has to be rescued from the misconception by wh it 
 is applied to the phenomenal, and to be consecrated to the reality 
 alone ; while the word phenomenon waits to do its service, as explaining 
 the effect on us, or that wh is perceived. Indeed, the popular usage, 
 tho' at first appearing partly opposed, is really quite on this side. 
 Wherever the difference is pereceived between the true and the phen- 
 omenal, it is ever the true that is considered as nature, and not the 
 phenomenal. 
 
 With regard to deformities, they appear ugly to us and evil, but wo 
 consider them with reference to the individual organization in wh they 
 occur ; and not with reference to that large organization wh they con- 
 tribute to form. Life ever consists in such ' deformity ;' i. e. in re- 
 sistance to tendency ; and deformity is nothing else : a deformity is a 
 failure to attain the result to wh that individual organization tends ; 
 this failure is the result of resistance to such tendency, and .. 
 nutrition, by definition. All nutrition is the result of resistance to 
 tendency of an organization ; for nature exists entire in leasts the 
 ' atoms ' of which we conceive our body to consist are as truly organiza- 
 tions as these bodies themselves. The nutrition of our bodies consists 
 in the ' deformities' of these organizations, their failure in fulfilling 
 their tendencies ; it is the very same thing on a different scale. The 
 deformities of human beings make up a higher life. This surely is the 
 true view of the imperfection of all created beings ; they are not im- 
 perfect because matter is a clog, a chain upon the spirit, and does not 
 admit of perfect workmanship, even in hands of Omnipotence ; but 
 they are the elements wh constitute a life. We are the particles wh 
 go to form a higher organization, and .. our tendencies are resisted, 
 our ' passions ' fail of their full accomplishment, as those of living 
 structures ever do ahd must, .'. it is that our passions and tendencies, 
 thus resisted for the time, effect & function by their operation, and man 
 accomplishes, in all he does, a higher end than he conceives or desires. 
 Thus it is God honors us ; not placing us upon a barren throne, but 
 using our bodies and minds as living stones to build His temple of the 
 universe, even as He will our spirits, if they too be ' living ' by the 
 holy influence of His grace, into the spiritual temple of His Son.
 
 250 
 
 The good result of this distinction of things into good and evil, &c., 
 is this : that the former gives us an ' ideal,' the latter reveals the real. 
 "We cannot do without either. The former gives us the key, the latter 
 the object to interpret. 
 
 At a Concert, Sept. 17, 1856. In nutritive music, the music is first; 
 in functional music the meaning is first. In the former we trace the 
 meaning of the composer; in the latter we hear the meaning of the 
 sounds. In the nutritive (theoretical) music, the sounds reveal the 
 meaning ; in the interpretative music the meaning as it were reveals the 
 sound : the music is the ' phenomenon ' in the former, and reveals its 
 cause ; viz. the idea of the composer : the meaning is the ' phenomenon ' 
 in the latter and reveals its cause, viz. the sounds, if we trace its 
 cause : in the former our perception is of sounds ; in the latter of emotion 
 or meaning. The effect is ever the phn ; and in the nutritive, the music 
 is the effect of the idea ; the idea produces the music : in the functional 
 the music produces the idea ; the idea is the effect of the music. 
 
 Mendelssohn, as an instance, produces nutritive music : and the 
 essence of the thing consists in gathering up sounds from nature 
 [perhaps not beautiful as we hear them], and arranging them so as to 
 appear beautiful. The titles of so many of his works proves this, e. g. 
 ' The Calm of the Sea and Prosperous Voyage.' He gathered together 
 his ' impressions' and arranged them into beautiful sounds. This is 
 nutritive music. But this is not the function of music ; the function of 
 art is not to express but to reveal the beautiful ; even as it is the func- 
 tion of science not to express but to reveal the true. "We see this better 
 in respect to science than to art ; we perceive at once that to express 
 our idea of truth in relation to or by means of the phna is not the idea 
 of science at all, but to find out and make the phna disclose their truth : 
 wh they do by being gathered and so arranged, first, as to express our idea 
 of truth. As an ingenious scientific theory shows us the man who formed 
 it ; but a true interpretation of the phna shows us only a fact and nothing 
 whatever of the man who discovered it. There is nothing of him in it ; 
 it is simply true, he was obliged to see it so. 
 
 The relation of the theoretical and interpretative science is well 
 illustrated by Ruskin's parallel between the true and false griffin. 
 But Buskin regards the false griffin as simply evil, not seeing that that 
 false griffin or false-griffin-hood in general is the parent of the true, 
 even as nutrition is parent of function ; and not foreseeing that the 
 future will regard our pre-raphaelitism, in spite of its scrupulous 
 phenomenal accuracy, just as we do that false griffin, not indeed with 
 that aversion which Euskin feels thereto, as absolutely bad ; but with 
 a respectful reverence, as bad for the sake of good. The false griffin is 
 merely a phenomenal, ' experimental ,' or theoretical griffin ; the man 
 collected the phna and arranged them so as to appear to him beautiful, 
 i. e. assimilated them. He could not do anything else no man can ; 
 but I know quite well how the true griffin came. There was born an 
 interpretative man who looked at the said false griffin, and as he 
 looked he marvelled, and said to himself, ' Could any man ever have 
 made a griffin so ? I shd thiuk the teeth wd be such, the ears so, the 
 neck, the claws, the body, thus and thus ; and this is what he shd be 
 doing.' Then he saw the griffin, but not before ; he saw it when it was 
 done, as we do ; it was revealed to him fy/ the, phno, even as it is revealed
 
 251 
 
 to us. I wd venture to be sure ho did not see it until after he had 
 made it with his bodily hands. Interpreters do not first see, and then 
 do ; but first do and then see. The meaning, the idea, is the result, 
 not the cause of the fact. The physical world is first right, then wrong 
 [or wrung'} ; the psychical is first wrong, then right. The inorganic 
 world, by passion in its rightness, becomes wrong, and ever more and 
 more wrong to the highest organic forms ; the psychial beginning wrong, 
 becomes ever more and more right until it arrives (or shall arrive) at 
 the full rightness as before any vital wrongness had arisen. Thus the 
 physical is nutrition, the psychical function : they are polar thus. As 
 we may say the physical is ' theory,' the psychical ' interpretation.' The 
 psychical the interpretation of the physical. And here words help us, 
 and show us we are right by tendering their aid ; for do we not say. 
 Science is the interpretation of nature.' And we should say it equally 
 of art, poetry, philosophy ; they are only yet immature. Thus the 
 physical and psychical universe make up a living whole. 
 
 The mental life advances (or developes) by more and more elements 
 being arranged ' rightly,' up, as it were, from organic to inorganic ; the 
 physical world advances (or developes) by more and more elements 
 being put ' wrongly,' from the inorganic to the organic inversely re- 
 lated : clearly the two halves of a vibration. But there is more to be 
 seen here, some sort of necessity that is dimly before my eyes : how in 
 mental life the ' wrongness ' of the nutritive arrangement consists in this 
 that the elements are otherwise, i. e. in our seeing them wrongly ; and 
 how in physical life the elements are forced by their tendency to become 
 right into wrong and more wrong relations. There is an idea here if it 
 wd reveal itself. Observe. 
 
 A man cannot ' interpret ' nature if there be no theory. The 
 interpreter can put right that wh has been put wrong, but only that. 
 The man of genius is not super-humanly endowed, as he must be if he 
 cd do what he is supposed to do ; i. e. look at things in nature as phna, 
 and see them truly. He looks at things as ' assimilated ' or put into 
 organic relations by men, and affords the stimulus. ]S"or is it his faculty 
 to observe, 1 in the ordinary sense of the term ; i. e. to eat : he repre- 
 sents the act. 
 
 So here the meanings of words fix and define themselves when our 
 ideas are true and clear. How the words ' theory ' and ' interpretation ' 
 fit each other, and enable us to dispense with adjectives. A theory is a 
 false phenomenal or view ; an interpretation a true one : one word suffices 
 instead of two. But not only this, the words imply much more respect- 
 ing the false and the trile ; they involve a whole philosophy. And 
 besides, the false, as we now understand it, is by no means one with 
 really or absolutely evil ; the false also is ' absolutely ' good. So far 
 we have succeeeded in excluding the idea of absolute evil from nature. 
 The ' false ' is seen to be really good ; in like manner, before very long, 
 we shall see also the ugly and the evil to be really good ; i. e. nutritive, 
 a part of life, and .. absolutely good. 
 
 The pre-raphaelites seek the very opposite from that wh is to be done, 
 but this is the only way to achieve it. "We want an interpretation, and 
 they give us the most opposite of all things, a theory ; just as, when 
 we want a function, God gives us a nutrition. 
 
 It will be a blessed peace that will prevade the world, when we have
 
 252 
 
 learnt that good and evil, right and wrong, in nature, and .-. in mental 
 nature also, are only the two processes which make up life, alike indis- 
 pensable, alike to he honored, loved, and used. Our powers of 
 opposition and of hatred have been trained by the opposite ideas, to be 
 employed in another sphere. Understanding error as nutrition, and each 
 truth as only basis of a higher nutrition, we shall advance not more 
 slowly but more rapidly and wisely, man's business is to represent 
 nature, i. e. to bring again to his consciousness that wh is the real cause 
 of his passion. To make the real the phn. And this is done so naturally 
 by applying to the phn conceptions that rightly belong only to the 
 reality ; these, viz., of (absolute) beauty, truth, and good. By an 
 evident necessity, if we identify the qualities of the real with the phn 
 we must make it give place to the real ; we shall ' present again the 
 real ; ' i.e. 'represent nature.' All wh, the words have been waiting to 
 express. See how the words theory and interpretation correspond with 
 phn and reality. 
 
 Does ' imagination ' in Art answer to ' interpretation ' in Science ? or 
 does not the word imply too much a direct seeing ? 
 
 I perceive that the Tightness of music is identical with the rightness of 
 thought ; we must think in a certain way or our thought is bad, just as 
 music can only have certain relations. Now the rightness of thought 
 depends on its being in direction of least resistance, .. that of music 
 must be so also ? and thus I shall find out more when I can see that 
 the laws of harmony are [as the laws of beauty of form] but ex- 
 pressions of motion in least resistance. Thought also, as well as the 
 physical universe, thus is music ; vibration, not subdividing but 
 uniting. 
 
 Man sees nothing that he does not say.' I perceive science, phi- 
 losophy, art, that wonderful impulse to ' represent ' nature, wh is so 
 specially evident in the artist, but is equally the fact of all our mental 
 life, is the child's instinct to say what it sees. I have noticed this in my 
 own children ; whatever they see or think of they say ; before they do 
 anything they say it. That is the primary idea and use of language, as 
 a means and form of our own mental life ; not to communicate with 
 others, that is a secondary application. It is clear we must ' represent ' 
 [or say] that wh we are, wh we ' understand,' or are the substance of. 
 
 Now incidentally, as our mental life thus is, and consists in, a repre- 
 sentation or re-presentation of nature ; so, certainly, does our bodily. 
 Our physical nature is a ' saying ' or ' representation ' of nature ; all 
 life indeed is so ; i. e. of physical nature. And the human body, as the 
 ultimate development of the physical life, is a complete representation 
 of nature : that to which the mental life tends, but inversely. 
 When our mental life atttains to be a perfect representation of nature, 
 then will it not have attained to the stage of manhood ; a perfect 
 ' saying ' or representing nature ? At present surely the mental life is 
 of a grade much below the human. This indeed is the idea of organic 
 bodies ; they are expressions or representations of the physical world, 
 and correspond in all their organs, uses, &c. And do not the various 
 forms of the mental life correspond to the bodily senses life is the 
 expression of inorganic nature : and .-. there exists that perfect and so 
 wonderful adaptation. And Art and Science are the organic psychical 
 life. This is a case in wh the psychical reveals the physical, as
 
 253 
 
 primarily, and in so many cases, the physical reveals the psychical. 
 
 There seems to be one way in wh the unheautiful phn already reveals 
 the beautiful reality, and that is man's most distorted works revealing 
 the beautiful working and development of the human mind. So that 
 when we look at the ugly we no longer perceive the ugly altho' we see 
 it, but perceive by its means the absolutely beautiful. I have long ago 
 seen in so many cases that human errors and follies were among the most 
 beautiful of all facts ; that to account for or give the reason of anything 
 was always to show the good and the beauty of it. I have seen this 
 long before I saw that it was so because it is all life : that evil is nutri- 
 tion, and nutrition necessarily of absolute and equal goodness; all 
 except Sin. 
 
 Life always appears to us beautiful and good. It is a very synonym 
 for good, indeed but wherever we see a whole there we see life : there- 
 fore if .we saw the whole, we shd see it to be life ; i. e. absolute beauty 
 and good. Ugly and evil are not life ; types of sin wh is death. Ugly, 
 evil, false, mean simply that we do not see the life : they are phna of 
 wh we are unable to see that they are vital part of a living whole. 
 
 That our perception of beauty or the reverse is a mere matter of our 
 relation consider how the very same heavens may present a dull and 
 clouded noon to one observer, and to another a splendid dawn or sunset. 
 
 Sept. 26, 1857. tells me that Turner began as a pre-Raphaelite, 
 
 and went off at last into something no one can understand, and which 
 
 H- fails to explain : it is, not that wh is seen in Nature, and yet 
 
 something wh every (capable) person feels to be true to Nature ; truer 
 even than that wh is seen. Turner interpreted Nature : made the 
 falsely seen phn reveal the unseen truth. As every Interpreter must 
 do, he began nutritively, and then interpreted. I feel how it was done ; 
 I see Turner looking at his pre-raphaelite paintings, and perceiving that 
 the elements must go another way. ' Nature is not what she seems ' : 
 This is the basis of all our mental life : and when the truth is revealed 
 we see at once that it is the truth, and our not seeing it so weighs with 
 us not the least. 
 
 It is manifest that what Turner sought to do must have been to in- 
 terpret in the sense I have defined ; it is probable that many of these 
 attempts may have been mere experiments felt by himself not to be the 
 right thing. And once more his later interpretative pictures show their 
 nature in this ; that they consist in an effort towards oneness, or sim- 
 plicity : instead of a multitude of details he seeks to give all the details 
 in a generalization, as it were. 
 
 Art is the interpretation of Nature by the intuition of Beauty. 
 
 These two things make the revelation of the unseen truth : first the 
 perception that the theory is true to the phn, and cannot be made any 
 truer : 2nd, the perception that the theory will not do, but is manifestly 
 wrong and must be altered : it is obvious how these two perceptions 
 tog'ether make the phn reveal something different from itself. 
 
 The interpretation is ever simpler than the nutrition ; so we can use 
 it ; being simple we can start from it as the basis of a new nutrition ; 
 i. e. a new complexity. 
 
 We 'interpret' an eyesight the two objects into one, &c. before 
 we remember, perhaps before we are distinctly conscious, but the pro- 
 cess is the same. [And here surely is a good of babies not understanding
 
 254 
 
 language, or they wd be taught these things instead of finding them 
 out.] 
 
 Perspective must have been learnt from drawing ; and it shows the 
 oneness of all : the simplest principles of Art embody its highest end, 
 that for wh it exists and wh includes the whole of it. So universally : 
 the great whole exists in and is the same as each least part. 
 
 The painter puts color where he sees it, and the world exclaims ' It 
 is not right ' : but he says ' It is there ; you may see it.' The world 
 persists, meaning, tho' not able to say, ' It is your business to show us 
 why we see it there,' and some painter does show why it is seen there, 
 by causing it to be seen in his picture without being there. I hold to 
 Turner's latest pictures : this is their lesson that all we see is color. 
 Those paintings that put the ' things ' before us so plainly are not true, 
 they are ' theoretical.' 
 
 As I look on a painting I see that its calling is to make us see that 
 Nature is not really matter, but a spiritual fact wh thus appears to us. 
 By painting we are recalled (even already in part) to the ' reality ' of 
 Nature. Painting and Science both deal with the one question, "What 
 causes us to perceive the phenomenon ? Science for the head, painting 
 for the heart. It is the higher spiritual function they are destined to 
 achieve that binds man to the arts, altho' he knows it not. Nothing 
 he seeks in Art or Science is the real reason of his impulse towards 
 them, or can redeem that impulse from being unworthy, but a higher 
 end wh he cannot foresee or intend, because it is to raise him above 
 himself, to elevate his spiritual standard, wh nothing he can himself 
 conceive can do. 
 
 It is God's voice and not man's that I want to hear in Music ; and in 
 Science too, and in Society ; and in all human works indeed ; for in all 
 this best knowledge is to be attained. All man's works may and shall 
 express this higher meaning even human life. "We try to put society 
 right, to carry out our own ideas ; so long as we do this we shall cer- 
 tainly put it wrong, but thank God it will be vitally wrong : and in the 
 end it shall express a meaning beyond any thought or design of man, 
 or possible to man : an idea written there by God ; accomplished not by 
 our efforts but in spite of them, altho' by them only rendered possible. 
 
 Nature has no secrets wh she hides from him who knows that she is 
 holiness ; no love that she withholds from him who loves the holy. 
 
 Is not Beauty connected rather with the nutritive than the functional ; 
 and .. never an end to be rested in ? 
 
 The elements of our mental life surely have a real organic relation 
 independently of ourselves, just as the elements of our food have. "We 
 see things as ' things ' or * matter ' not solely by virtue of our modes of 
 thought : this wrong relation, this vital wrongness, exists independently 
 of our minds, as the vital ' wrongness ' of the vegetable exists inde- 
 pendently of the animals that consume it. But it is none the less a 
 vitally-wrong relation for all that, and it exists, in respect to our 
 mental life, external to us in the elements wh constitute our mental 
 food, or we could never have any mental life at all. If I could but 
 solve this, and see the real mental life the psychical life of Nature, 
 [as I see in some small measure her physical life] if I could but trace 
 the psychical vital force ! The universe we perceive thus in wrong, or 
 organic, relations, is really in such organic relations, and the force wh
 
 255 
 
 has put it so [I speak now of the psychical universe] becomes the mental 
 vital force the talent the capacity of our minds, by wh the nutrition 
 of our minds is effected, by wh the organization is. built up and the 
 functional power accumulated : by resistance, namely, to the affinities 
 of the elements of our mental organization, so that works of Genius 
 ensue spontaneously. 
 
 The human mind is the ' external world ' to Genius, the productions 
 of wh he seeks to ' interpret.' To say that a man has Genius is to say 
 that all he effects is truly and entirely the result of others' labors and 
 done by their power ; that he is merely a stimulus and owes his influ- 
 ence solely to his relation to an organization built up, and a functional 
 power accumulated, wholly by others. It is manifestly so : the dispro- 
 portion were else too vast. See how many men must labor and die to 
 produce the edifice wh Genius with one touch reconstructs. It is of 
 course because the power is not in him but in the elements he uses that 
 his power seems so great. To attribute the deed to him wd be like 
 attributing an explosion to a spark forgetful of the gunpowder. 
 
 A man of Genius virtually says to his age, ' If you will allow these 
 elements of Science, Art, &c. to arrange themselves naturally, you 
 will see something worth seeing,' wh something is the function. Thus, 
 that an animal body is like a machine that life is vibration, and is 
 shown in the pendulum, &c-, &c. all these analogies are really functions, 
 arising from allowing the ideas connected with animal life to arrange 
 themselves by their own affinities ; but, as ever, they appear to be not 
 the effect but the cause. It is interesting, this repetition in respect to 
 mental functions of the old error respecting the animal functions, and 
 for the same reason : the function first strikes the eye, at least it is apt 
 to do so. 
 
 See also in these ' functions ' an illustration of how the function de- 
 pends upon the ' organization,' i. e. upon our previous knowledge of the 
 facts relating to these things. So also with regard to Nature benig 
 holy action ; and further what was the meaning of the disappointment 
 I felt before this function took place, when I saw that 'motion in least 
 resistance was merely a definition, and did not see that it meant holi- 
 ness ? "Was it the force generated working gradually upon the mecha- 
 nism, overcoming a resistance ? 
 
 ' Things,' ' matter,' are to God's act, as the function is to the approx 
 passion wh causes it : we see the function first, long before we arrive at 
 the cause. So with respect to ' matter ' we are long in discovering the 
 real cause wh produces that phn. It is like the primary ' irritability ' 
 of a muscle, wh we had come to consider an ' ultimate fact,' &c. 
 
 Will it not generally be found that a man of Genius he in whom the 
 function takes place has carried nutrition to the highest pitch not of 
 amount but of quality ; that he has most clearly ' discriminated ' or vitally 
 arranged the mental elements, and hence the functional or approximative 
 element is so strong. 
 
 The men of Genius are sure to exist, yet they can occur only at inter- 
 vals. Genius must be waited for ; talent can be cultivated. Men can 
 always do something ; they can always observe : and this they must go 
 on doing patiently, assured that if they thus effect the nutrition the 
 function will not fail. They know that in due time they shall reap ; 
 but our experimental science BOWS aud sows away and never expects to 
 reap.
 
 256 
 
 Of course it does not want cleverness to see that wh is ; the talent is 
 displayed in constructing a theory of that wh is not, in erecting a great 
 superstructure out of our own invention : such as the present science or 
 the old epicycle-astronomy. This is the achievement: just to see the truth 
 is simple. As in physical life, the achievement is the construction of an 
 organ ; that it shd act when it is constructed is little. God has chosen 
 the weak things of this world to confound the mighty. 
 
 The man of Genius is the Interpreter the unifyer ; the bringing the 
 unknown into union with the known is interpreting. This is nature's 
 order of Interpreters (Bacon) or Connecters (Comte.) 
 
 How familiar and common-place to us are the facts wh threw into in- 
 finite delight those who first saw them ! How Copernicus's heart must 
 must have throbbed when the fact of the earth's motion, so indifferent 
 to us, revealed itself; and future generations will coldly take as matters 
 of course what the men of this glow over with delight. So when we 
 see the men and women in the streets, we little think how for each one 
 a mother has groaned and rejoiced. A man of Genius is the mother of 
 new life ; his the female part in the history of mind : his the throes and 
 toil, the exultation and delight. He gives birth truly to new life. The 
 man of talent does [inversely to their relation in themselves] the work of 
 the man ; exerts his own powers and effects his own objects. The man 
 of genius quietly nourishes unknowing in his own bosom, and feeds with 
 his own life, patiently, in sorrow and depression, too often amid 
 cruel taunts, his living burden; moving him sometimes to strange 
 fancies, unappeasable longings and restlessness, until his time is come ; 
 and then his proud eyes weep happy tears, as he folds tremblingly to his 
 heart the image and inheritor of his soul's life. 
 
 The cause of the difficulty in receiving the work of Genius is the 
 wrong position of the eye, as it were : people think they are seeing one 
 thing when in reality they are seeing another. They have not yet learnt 
 to recognize the universal human mind, wh performs functions, and of 
 wh the individual minds are but parts, elements, or organs or rather 
 perhaps I shd say the universal humanity as a living existence, of wh 
 individual men and women are merely the ' organic molecules.' so that 
 the functions of this higher ' life ' take them by surprise : they cannot 
 believe the function because they have not recognized the ' organization ' 
 and nutrition. They have not seen that all the labors of men of talent 
 constitute a nutrition, and produce one living organization with power 
 to perform functions. They have not seen in fact what they have been 
 doing; in other words that they have been acting instinctively ; accom- 
 plishing a higher object than any they had in view, In fact, men have 
 not seen that the human mind is a life ; just as they have not seen that 
 the whole the entire universe is a life. They look upon what indi- 
 vidual men do as isolated things. It is as if some Being with microscopic 
 eye shd watch and register the individual processes which constitute the 
 nutrition of a human body, without perceiving the bearing and meaning 
 of them ; shd see the various particles mutually reacting and arranging 
 themselves without understanding that all this made up an organization 
 and accumulated force. Of course he wd be astonished enough when 
 the function was performed. It wd appear to undo so much of that the 
 doing of wh he had been watching with so much interest and satisfac- 
 tion, and wh he imagined was done for its own sake, being, as he might 
 remark, beautiful, and so on.
 
 257 
 
 Life and Nature thus being opposite processes in boundless diversity 
 of form, and mental life equally with physical, what is for us to do is, 
 each his own work ; to obey his own tendency, but with special regard 
 for and appreciation of, their work, whose tendencies are opposite to or 
 unlike his own. We shd endeavour especially to appreciate that wb. is 
 opposite to our own tendencies but not ignore or do violence to our own 
 tastes or aversions. Let us dislike as well as like ; repulsion is not less 
 important than attraction. No doubt that wh we dislike is also good, 
 and we shall learn to admire more those who devote themselves to it 
 but we dislike it, that is a fact in nature to be turned to its full account. 
 We have an ' opposite polarity ' wh is one thing that gives us our value : 
 this that we dislike is most likely one thing in wh we shall have the 
 greatest influence, but our opposite polarity must be fully developed : 
 from thence the power comes. But by no means therefore shd we be 
 ignorant of what we dislike : that is to rob our dislike of its opportunity 
 of doing that wh shall transform it into love. 
 
 This is the 'greatness,' the prerogative of 'Genius' at least of that 
 wh developes or inaugurates a new grade not that it is great in respect 
 of absolute power, or nobleness, but that it contains and combines the 
 two polars ; the force and the resistance in one ; the sympathy or imagi- 
 nation, and the logic. The unipolar men may greatly surpass him in 
 quantity or power ; but he is larger in his grasp, ' comprehends ' some- 
 what that both of them exclude. The higher grade of life is not the 
 two developed and complete lower, but only two potential, perhaps less 
 in total amount than one of such lower ones. [No.] 
 
 But after the development comes the free growth and expansion : 
 what restraint, discomfort, binding down before ; then what freedom, 
 what joyful, easy stretching to grasp at and embrace all things. After 
 development, expansion ; i. e. nutrition ; i. e. theory : ' false ' basis for 
 new interpretation. 
 
 Will not the fact with respect to the parentage of Genius be found to 
 be, not that they have had necessarily very clever father or mother ; but 
 that they have included both forms of the mental life the logical and 
 the imaginative. For that is the essential point in Genius, that it 
 unites the two polars : and have not the parents in every case given 
 these two elements ? a man of Genius unites in himself his father and 
 mother. So he ' interprets ' because he has at once the sympathy and 
 the resistance. 
 
 Does not the invention of Gods of Idols before the knowledge of 
 the true God, illustrate the law ? Is not that like work of Talent ? 
 are not all the hypotheses of Theory ' Idols made with hands,' and 
 must not this come first ? "Without such exercise of the human faculties 
 on the subject how were revelation of the true God possible ? 
 
 Sept. 2, 1856. Nature necessarily arises from the limit. It cannot 
 be infinite if infinite, no resistance, no vibration, no variety. The 
 variety is from the limit. The infinite must be absolutely one. 
 
 The organic body is one with all physical nature, its life and consti- 
 tution in all respects the same as that of the inorganic world, tho' ap- 
 pearing to us so different. So the organic (animal) mind is one with all 
 psychical nature, endowed e. g. with individuality and power of acting, 
 but as real an identity with the inorganic mental world as in the case 
 
 T
 
 258 
 
 of the body. Mind and matter are vibration, co-existent and co-extensive ; 
 wheresoever there is the one there is the other. Each physical fact or 
 tiling is equally psychical, even as action and resistance are equal and 
 opposite. Is there an equally intimate dependence of our body on our 
 mind as of our mind on our body ? It is important to notice that we 
 perceive (directly) not things but facts, because facts are entirely psy- 
 chical. ' Things ' and everything connected with matter are purely 
 matters of inference, showing thus the entire dependence of the material 
 world on 'mind.' 
 
 Surely Nature is one because knowledge is one. To comprehend any- 
 thing is to have it in us one with our own central ' thought.' Surely we 
 ' comprehend ' nothing but axioms : comprehension is of one fact, at once 
 primary and ultimate. As I have said of life ; comprehending all and 
 comprehended in the least. Our comprehension is of life : our minds 
 being life we comprehend life. This and this alone we understand or 
 know. To understand a thing is for it to become one with us. The mere 
 accumulation of ideas and theories nutrition is not truly knowledge, 
 in fact it is error, wh is opposed to it : it is a mere preparation for it. 
 Knowledge is the result of interpretation or function wh is always one, 
 however various the nutrition or assimilation or resulting organization ; 
 the functional process has ever an absolute oneness. In short we know 
 a thing only when we see that it is merely a form of our own thought 
 our own thought being ever and necessarily one. 
 
 The conformity of all our senses, the constant impression produced, is 
 due to the fact of organization, and our forming part of one universal 
 organization. 
 
 The truth is, instead of our seeing anything being evidence of its 
 reality, that wh we see is certainly and necessarily not real, but an appa- 
 rent effect of a real cause : it is evidence of a subjective passion, the 
 cause of wh is the reality, and the nature of wh cause it is the office of 
 the phn to reveal upon the ordinary plan of learning causes from effects. 
 To affirm of any thing or fact that it is ' seen ' or ' perceived ' is to assert 
 that it is only phenomenal ; but not .*. that it does not indicate a reality : 
 that is the very thing it does do, by virtue of the principle of causation. 
 Its object and end is to show us the reality. Remember the two-fold re- 
 lation to us of the universe ; to our bodies, as subserving our physical 
 life, and to our minds : how much more essential the former seems to be ; 
 yet is this surely only a phn (a phenomenal view) for what is our life, 
 our body and mind, but simply one vibration produced on our spirit by 
 the Divine act ? when that ceases still remains the spirit still remains 
 the Divine act. These are eternal and have no relation to time. Still is 
 there passion in our spirit produced by the Divine act still do we live. 
 Our physical and mental life are but one form of the ever-changing phe- 
 nomenal passion, nothing is lost or ceases when that ends 'tis but a phe- 
 nomenal change that has taken place ; so the apparent primary importance 
 of the physical life is deceptive or phenomenal. And our bodily and 
 mental life is really as it were only one vibration out of the boundless 
 series of vibrations wh constitute the passion produced by God's action 
 on the spirit. This life is one vibration of the music produced in the 
 human spirit by God's action influencing it. Human spirits are like lyres 
 wh vibrate when breathed on by the wind, but the wind does not blow
 
 2.39 
 
 for them or in order to produce that music. And our bodies and minds are 
 one note of such music, wh swells and dies away, but only to be suc- 
 ceeded by another and different one. I perceive that people are puzzled 
 by confounding relations between phna with the view of the phn 
 as a whole : the relations of phna are not affected in any way by the 
 subjective view. Just as the sun's path among the stars is merely pheno- 
 menal yet as a relation among phna remains unaffected by the subjective 
 view of the sun's motion. It is only understood, wh surely is no 
 detriment. 
 
 All phna and phenomenal relations are real in relation to our bodies 
 and minds ; as real as they are. Things, qualities, time, space, are actu- 
 alities to our bodies and minds ; really affect and influence them ; these 
 are relations between phna. We are apt to think of the external world 
 as unreal in comparison with our own bodies and minds, but the relation 
 of the external world to them is not altered in the least. In fact the phn 
 remains altogether just as it was, only we understand it. Thus no alter- 
 ation is made at all in our common-sense treatment of phna, wh are as 
 ever in relation to each other, and our bodily and mental interests con- 
 tinue the same as ever. 
 
 As for the wonder of perception sensation, thought, &c. this is 
 the fact of organic mind ; and physiology, animal physiology, must afford 
 the explanation. Thus not only is the externality of the universe con- 
 ceded in every possible sense, viz. its externality to our bodies, but the 
 reality also in every sense in wh there is the least evidence or possibility 
 of it, viz. its reality in relation to our minds and bodies. [Not to speak 
 of how we are obliged to deny the conditions of both matter and mind 
 in relation to God, viz. time and space, and therein to deny their reality 
 in respect to Him. The externality and reality of the universe are phe- 
 nomenal relations and as such are to be fully maintained.] 
 
 It was a fatal error of Berkeley's to make the mind a reality in relation 
 to the external world as phenomenal ; thus he denied the reality of the 
 external world in an inadmissible sense. The mind being also a phn the 
 full reality of the external world is maintained in every sense except an 
 artificial one that might possibly be asserted by controversialists but cer- 
 tainly rests on no possible evidence even of the least conclusive descrip- 
 tion. It is real in relation to men's minds and bodies ; that is all they 
 know or care to maintain, and that is true. The question is, What are 
 it and our minds and bodies also ? and this is the question of questions 
 for all, tho' disregarded ; it is the ' Know Thyself' 
 
 Is not the abstract ' matter ' even phenomenally unreal I 
 
 I want clearer ideas respecting the subjective passion wh constitutes 
 the material world. It appears reasonable that the subjective passion 
 must be like the phna, e. g. a motion of us causes us to see motion in the 
 heavens a subjective revolving motion produces phenomenal revolving 
 motion ; so there must be a similarity between the mental passion and 
 the things perceived. Now it is true that Nature is motion in least re- 
 sistance, and this reveals the reality, viz. a holy act. But Nature is only 
 intellectually motion in least resistance : she is perceived as things : I want 
 to know how it is that our subjective passion causes us to see these, why 
 does passion in least resistance present to us these forms wh we do not 
 perceive to be such passion, but wh hide from us that fact. What is the
 
 260 
 
 subjective passion, and why, that causes us to see things is it these very 
 things in another form ? I think the first step towards solving this ques- 
 tion must be a nutrition an accurate observation of the phna themselves. 
 We must first distinguish clearly what it is that we perceive ; separate 
 the true perception from that wh is matter of inference or habitual asso- 
 ciation. In the strict sense can it be said that we perceive ' things ' at 
 all ? One question wd be, why our passion is perceived as -motion ; and 
 again why, being perceived as motion, is is perceived as things or effect of 
 motion rather than as motion itself [motion being perceived only second- 
 arily as motion of things^] Also, our idea of motion is based and derived 
 from that of matter ; motion is perceived only as of things ; is conceived 
 only as the passion of matter. Suppose space be the 'form of thought,' 
 and motion .-. the necessary form of the passion? hence all results : the 
 material universe follows necessarily from conception of passion in space, 
 viz. motion. [Does not mind follow necessarily in the same way from 
 conception of passion in time ; for in lapse of time are there not involved 
 mental properties perception, sensation, thought ?] 
 
 Still the question recurs : Why are space, time, cause, the forms of the 
 thought, of that subjective passion wh constitutes the physical phn, 
 and all co-exist therein ? 
 
 The perception of things is a matter of inference and reasoning our 
 direct perception is only of motion. So is it not in some sense also a 
 matter of inference and reasoning that motion produces ' things ' ? Is it 
 thus : that the idea of cause produces idea of time : time of space : and 
 then that these reveal each other inversely space, time ; time, cause ; 
 just as the phenomenal effect reveals reality or cause? 
 
 The study of causes is truly only the study of that which always goes 
 before ; thus the study of Essences is, properly understood, only that same 
 thing : the ' essence ' truly means only the invariable antecedent ; as such 
 the study of essences is not only proper but necessary and is indeed the 
 only science. But there lies a just objection to the ' study of essences ' 
 as it has been put forward, viz. as opposed to the study of phna, which 
 latter is the only true and real study of essences. But to what is this 
 false direction of thought due? simply to the conception of real as dis- 
 tnignished from phenomenal ' things ' it is part of the ' real matter ' 
 system. To study the phna is to study the essence ; because [physical] 
 Nature is ' essentially a phn there is nothing more in her ; her work is 
 to reveal the subjective passion and her cause. The position assumed [by 
 Comte, &c.] .*. in respect to the study of essences is partly true and 
 partly false ; essences are an imagination and it is no sacrifice to give over 
 the search for them. All is passion, and the ultimate cause, the inmost 
 nature of any passion, is to be discovered only by tracing the sequence of 
 passion of wh it forms a part, i. e. by understanding the phna. We have 
 invented essences i. e. as existing in or connected with phna the true 
 essences are the (spiritual) cause of the phna. Comte both denies and 
 admits too much : virtually he admits that there are essences in nature by 
 telling us not to seek for them ; he denies spiritual or real essences by 
 denying or attempting to deny causation. See how the idea of cause is 
 practically 'mixed up with and rests upon the idea of Time it is that wh 
 invariably precedes ; yet not (see Whewell) exactly in time, but co- 
 existing : in fact it is phenomenal, as we must see if we wd avoid confusion.
 
 261 
 
 But this connection of cause with time, as of ' force ' with space (?) is 
 suggestive. 
 
 Just as in astronomy everything is regarded wrongly until it is known 
 that the apparent motions have a subjective origin and that the true motion 
 is the revolution of the earth ; so in relation to Nature : science, meta- 
 physics, all is regarded wrongly until it is known that the universe is the 
 result of subjective passion and that the reality is a spiritual and moral 
 act of God. Then there may be much we do not know but we regard 
 things in the right way ; whereas while the phn is thought to be real the 
 more we know the more wrong is our view. Just as afi astronomer can 
 say nothing about anything to any purpose until he has first pointed out 
 that the phn is subjective and depends on the motion of the earth, so 
 neither can I until I have first pointed out that the universe, physical and 
 psychical, is a phn, subjective and caused by God's spiritual act on our 
 spirits. 
 
 It is quite a wrong course to apply the subjective view partially. All 
 is subjective, and .'. all relations are unaltered. Material things are not 
 real and physical cause unreal : the causation is as real as the things. So 
 of time. The universe does not exist and time not : time is real to 
 the universe, including our bodies and minds. 
 
 It is striking that we not only do not directly perceive the motion of 
 the earth, but we only perceive the effect it produces on us (our own 
 passion) by means of other and external objects. We perceive not our 
 own original passion but a passion in us produced by the effect of other 
 bodies affected by that subjective passion. Is there here anything par- 
 allel to the relation of the external world to our minds and bodies. Do 
 we perceive the original passion in us only by means of the' effect of 
 other phna influenced by that passion ; these other phna being different 
 from the passion thus produced ? Is it not a vital relation, a threefold- 
 ness ? Observe, any passion produced on our bodies as a whole, equally, 
 is not itself perceived, but only by relations of other bodies ; as a motion 
 of our entire bodies is only percived by motion of external bodies ; but 
 a partial passion in us is perceived as such. Can this have any bearing 
 on the relations of the phenomenal to us : some entire passion wh is only 
 perceived by external objects ? 
 
 The whole phn, and everything connected with it, is a continuous chain 
 of passion ; we interpose ' things ' wh exist of themselves and not as part 
 of such a chain : this is the error of matter or essence and the cause of 
 the wrongness in the search after them. Yet is that search also right, 
 for it causes us to find, not essences, but passion ; phenomenal causes 
 and completes the dynamic chain. But now comes the question why 
 and how do we come to see thus wrongly, and introduce these solid 
 masses into that wh is a fluent chain ? This is the great deception of 
 the senses : it is vital ; and like all man's life has its cause and origin in 
 his spirit : as his spirit being cause causes him to introduce the idea of 
 cause into phna, wh is not there, so his spirit being existence causes him 
 to introduce the idea of existence into phna wh is not really there. 
 Surely this is parallel ? 
 
 There are presented to us in Nature a series of passions only ; we by 
 virtue of our spiritual Being introduce the ideas of cause and existence ; 
 and thus perceive just such an universe as surrounds ns. Metaphysicians
 
 262 
 
 agree in admitting that it is only ' force ' or motion (i. e. passion) that 
 we perceive or that really affects our senses, just as they agree that we 
 perceive only a succession of events and phna and not true cause : .-.it 
 is clear that the idea of real existence (substance) like that of cause is 
 introduced by ourselves, and plainly, I think, by virtue of our spiritual 
 Being. They are ' facts,' attributes wh belong to ourselves, applied to 
 our perception. This origin is very simple, and almost necessary. It is 
 proof that Nature is a passion primarily of our spirits. As it is 
 only an effect upon ourselves that we can perceive, so surely it is only 
 in accordance with our own Being that we can perceive it, viz. as real 
 existence and as involving cause. How else can we perceive, or what, 
 except according to our own Being ? It is thus by the introduction of 
 these spiritual elements that Science becomes a spiritual thing and re- 
 veals to us spiritual realities. It is remarkable how firm is our convic- 
 tion (instinctive) of the real external existence of that wh we do not 
 perceive, viz. cause and substance. It shows that it is not our perception 
 alone which causes us to believe in the material world ; that wh is not 
 perceived being if anything more firmly believed. I see now that the 
 attempt to exclude the idea of ' substance ' the ' abstract matter ' from 
 Nature, is like the attempt to exclude cause. Thus comes the great de- 
 lusion of real matter ; the great vital or organic state or relation ; from 
 the spirit, as life ever does just as the vital state from the idea of 
 cause. 
 
 Now I see also how space, with idea of real existence, gives us 
 things or matter but whence the idea of space ? 
 
 The spirit of man must influence, and paramountly influence, all the 
 man. His spiritual nature must of course determine all the facts wh 
 relate to him ; all his powers must depend on and be regulated by that. 
 Man is such as he is in relation both to mental and physical actions 
 mainly because he is a spirit. The fact that he is, i. e. that he is a 
 moral agent, makes him what he is. 
 
 Is not this our threefold mental life in relation to the world ? 
 
 Substance Cause Beauty 
 
 Constructive Intellective Emotional 
 
 Muscular Secretive Nervous 
 
 Comte does not see with all his opposition to ' Essences ' that the en- 
 tire error is that of real existence or substance, and that in maintaining 
 the real existence of matter he is committing himself to all the falseness 
 connected with essences : the two are the same. He has not emancipated 
 himself from the trammels of the old metaphysics ; the chains are still 
 on his hands, but he does not feel them because he does not move his 
 hands. 
 
 "We know now that a passion may be a passion of another passion, 
 e. g. effect of magnetism on light ; this effect of magnetism, wh is what we 
 perceive, and by wh alone we do perceive that magnetism is a passion of 
 or in a passion, is a motion of a motion, wh is very simple, being 
 indeed the ordinary fact of composition of motion, wh is what all phy- 
 sical nature is. The material universe is a composed motion of boundless 
 complexity ; i. e. precisely a complex passion of passion : [certainly if 
 there be fluxions of fluxions this may be passion of passion to any 
 extent.] Thus first we perceive that some ( things ' axe passions of other
 
 263 
 
 * things * ; then that all external things are passions of our bodies and of 
 our minds. Then we see that the universe of matter and mind is a 
 passion of our spirits, produced by a spiritual act. [All this is one 
 course of science ; simply science going on in its accustomed and ne- 
 cessary course. 
 
 "When we understand how simple refraction of light is, does not the 
 idea of an inherent and primarily different refmngibility of various rays, 
 seem strange ? Yet was this conception Newton's ; and moreover it has 
 been accepted by almost all mankind since his day ; it has even with- 
 stood the introduction of a dynamic view of light : showing that the 
 views a man entertains are determined by his place in the universal life, 
 not by himself by the power, vigour, accuracy, of his own mind. Man's 
 body and mind are instruments merely of Nature part of her life. 
 The real man is the spiritual agent only. But such a view as that of 
 refrangibility of rays, from such a man, is truly instructive, as to the 
 part played by man in science : -how when the nutrition is complete, 
 any man may effect the function ; when the nutrition is to be effected 
 any man, even of vastest intellect, must be content to say the wrongest 
 things to utter views wh shall seem to weakest intellects of future 
 times remarkable for inappropriateness. But they make the life. 
 
 The seeing the origin of the ideas of substance, cause, beauty, &c., in 
 the spirit, helps us towards a better understanding of the part really 
 played by the brain in thought ; also to the real meaning of the saying 
 that nothing is in intellect that is not first in sense. It is true and not 
 true. The mind indeed is wholly derived from and one with the psychical 
 universe ; but the spirit is not. Substance, cause, beauty, are never 
 in sense at all, nor possibly perceived ; therefore not in mind. Not being 
 perceived, whence are they ? They prove in man something beyond 
 mind wh is derived from sense. 
 
 In no respect is it more necessary to perceive that the human mind 
 is part of nature, and .-. God's act, than in writing the history of the 
 mind in the whole or in any of its parts, and in nothing more necessary 
 to remember that to ' understand ' is to comprehend or have sympathy 
 with. No explanation can be other than worthless wh represents any 
 part of God 's act as bad. To give an account of any phn in the history 
 of the human mind as being mere confusion, error, evil, is just as it wd 
 be to give such an account of some department of physical nature. 
 Science wd indignantly reject it the science of the physical : but the 
 higher science of the psychical puts up with that very thing. Above all 
 things such a science of the mental such a mental physiology needs 
 to be < converted.' 
 
 Can diseases of the mind be otherwise comprehended than as absolutely 
 good in themselves, being part of God's holy act and constituting an es- 
 sential link in the ' directed passion ' that constitutes the universe i. e. 
 all that does not involve Sin [wh is passion undirected] ? And as this 
 is the case with diseases of the mind so must it be also with diseases of 
 the body. These cannot be understood save as parts of the universal 
 and absolute good. In order to have a really true pathology must we 
 not extend our view, and regard diseases not as they affect the individual, 
 and are thus evil (phenomenal) but as parts of the universal motion in 
 least resistance, and .-. absolutely good and essential portions of the
 
 264 
 
 including life ; as being nutrition, and as so constituting an organization 
 in wh their relief or restoration to health produces function. I like to 
 think of this. To understand diseases we must see them and learn to 
 trace them, to know them in all their details, as part of the uni- 
 versal life, as motion in least resistance i. e. as good and not as evil. 
 Then we shall have discovered the reality wh constitutes or causes the 
 phn as evil ; the real good wh produces the apparent evil. Then we 
 know the causes of disease ; then we can treat them can prevent, surely, 
 when we see them as parts of a higher life. For then we can have con- 
 trol over the force wh induces them, and can perhaps turn it in a direc- 
 tion making it produce good to us instead of evil. We must learn to 
 see in the causes of disease and in the very processes of disease a part 
 or phase of the life of nature the absolutely good life. Thus and thus 
 alone we can understand disease ; and by taking part in that larger life 
 can so direct the passion that it shall cease to effect evil on us, by 
 causing it to effect good for us. This is the true treatment and preven- 
 tion of disease. Thus it is the reality of natural evil is ever good ; 
 we only understand it when we see it as good. 
 
 The phenomenally false or evil or ugly is an effect produced [sub- 
 jectively] on us by a fact wh is true, good and beautiful. And the life 
 consists in this : that we know and are sure that the reality is true, 
 good, beautiful ; but at the same time perceive that the phn is false, 
 ugly, evil. Therefore the phn, by study and thorough comprehension 
 reveals to us the reality, and in successively expanding circles. I like 
 this idea of disease as evil phn, and all false, evil, ugly phna as diseases, 
 i. e. evil effect on us produced by absolute good, beauty, truth ; and that 
 these constitute the nutrition of alife an opposition to tendencies, .. felt 
 as false, evil and ugly. It is in relation to us that these exist, and these 
 feelings of ours merely represent, or are, that very tension or tendency 
 to change of state wh exists, and is the source of power, in the living 
 body or ' machine.' 
 
 That we shd perceive a real matter or substance (or things) where 
 there is none, instead of being strange is in truth the most natural of 
 things, i. e. most perfectly in accord with all our experience. It is the 
 simple carrying out of our uniform mode of perception. 
 
 It is striking that that wh is phenomenally true or phenomenally 
 false may appear just the same to us, e. g. the apparent motion of the 
 sun and of the moon ; showing in how very subordinate a degree the 
 phn our subjective passion is immediately related to the reality ; yet 
 can the cause be ever truly discerned by study and ' comprehension ' of 
 the phenomenon. 
 
 There is no reality that is not moral. It is a glorious future for the 
 world when all 'the phna shall be so comprehended as a moral reality, 
 and this moral interpretation be given to all the works of the human 
 mind. Goethe's poetry e. g. wh represents the phn so marvellously, wh 
 constitutes so wonderful a nutrition, shall flash out in its true significance 
 as moral, and all his accurately recorded and depicted facts shall fall 
 into their right places, revealing the absolute and universal holiness wh 
 constitutes the universe. 
 
 Is not here a sufficient solution of the existence of natural evil, phy- 
 sical and psychical ; all except Sin : 1st. What it is ? It is the nutri- 
 tive portion of life : a vitally wrong or organic arrangement of the
 
 265 
 
 elements an arrangement in opposition to tendencies or affinities, and 
 .. so far as it affects sensitive creatures, painful or evil. It is the result 
 of the ' vital ' force. 
 
 2nd. How it is ? It exists thus as evil because it is a phn (an effect 
 on us) of a passion in wh we take part ; a passion that carries us as it 
 were with it. It is part of a life of wh we also are part, and .-. it is 
 perceived wrongly ; this wrong perception being nutritive, and in rela- 
 tion to sensitive creatures evil or painful. 
 
 3rd. Why it is ? Like all nutrition it exists for function. Evil is, in 
 order by producing organization and storing up force (or tendency to 
 change) to produce the conditions of a function that could only exist by 
 its means : and the reason why so much evil exists is because the func- 
 tion demands it. The explanation and justification of the nutrition (or 
 the evil) is that the function is worthy of it. This is the point to look 
 to, and this it is that we do not believe. The deeper, darker, and more 
 fearful the evil, the more glorious the function : be the evil bad as ever 
 it may, the function shall vindicate it and show it right. Function ever 
 does, and ever must, correspond to the nutrition ; and physical evil, not 
 being sin, must be capable of being compensated for, justified, yea so 
 overwhelmingly overbalanced by its results, that we shall no longer 
 dare to call it evil but shall name it life. This shall be. 'Tis evil to 
 us ; dark, terribly unrelieved, because we are engaged in it, and cannot 
 see it rightly. Evil in Nature is like false in Nature, an illusion of the 
 sense : evil indeed to us, and therefore life because evil : but not evil in 
 itself. If there were less evil, God's act wd be less. 
 
 Further, in addition to the fact that evil is nutrition, and produces, 
 and exists, for function, it is to be considered that it produces, besides, 
 innumerable, incalculable, spiritual and moral benefits that for us with 
 spiritual or real evil, the discipline of natural or phenomenal evil is ne- 
 cessary and invaluable. Blessed love of God, that by the evil of a phn 
 expels the deadly real evil that affects the spirit. Loving ministers, 
 that come around with sharp swords to slay, not us, but the death that 
 is within us. This is infinite, this is Divine ; but this is beyond and 
 above the direct function of the evil, considered as nutrition. It is a 
 phenomenal nutrition, a phenomenal function, and the phenomenal func- 
 tion alone wd have sufficed but God does more. 
 
 I speak not coldly, with stoical indifference to pain, or hard unsym- 
 pathy with suffering. I shudder at the thought of the things that are 
 daily done and suffered on this earth ; my blood runs cold within me, 
 and horror as of death seizes upon me : but I believe in God. I know 
 that not one sigh is wasted, not one pang endured in vain. I understand 
 it, for I could do it I think I could. I think I could let the world's 
 loud sob of anguish rise thro' unnumbered ages to my patient ears : I 
 think I could see the last sin sinned the last wrong borne the last in- 
 nocence crushed and suffering weakness outraged. I think that I could 
 do it, and behold meanwhile pestilence and famine, burning heat and 
 pitiless cold, earthquakes and storms, do their work of destruction. I cd 
 do it, tho' with bursting heart and anguish not to be controlled : even as 
 I say now, 'Thy will be done.' 
 
 I think too evil must ever be nutrition must be until life ends : but 
 not the evil wh is now ; new nutrition and ever on a higher level ; but 
 still nutrition : each good becomes an evil, as each function is again
 
 266 
 
 nutrition. We long for no evil; but this is man's ideal. No Sin is 
 God's. 
 
 I do not affirm that evil is good because of its good effects, &c., but 
 this that the phn wh we perceive as evil is an effect produced on us by 
 a fact wh is in itself good as the false motion of the sun really is the 
 true motion of the earth. 
 
 In what I have said I have not referred to sin. This is no part of 
 natural evil ; it is spiritual. But this is what I incline to think : that 
 sin is no real evil, except to the sinner. To him it is death ; but the 
 evil which results, except to himself, is nutritive, a part of the life of 
 the universe. Thus sin and the evil which ensues is no loss to God, 
 nor is He dependent on sin for His glory, The difficulty that has been 
 made of that question disappears. The soul that sinneth it shall die. 
 But the passion wh is thus controlled and produces phenomenal evil, is a 
 part of the great passion wh constitutes the universe ; and wh is life. 
 Our sin cannot make good action evil cannot prevent ( passion,' wh 
 must and ever does take direction of least resistance, from constituting 
 thereby an organization wh fulfils a worthy function. The life of God's 
 universe though it embraces not sin, embraces its external effects. 
 Mortality, or death even the self-inflicted death of the transgressor 
 is swallowed up of life. 
 
 Here is another instance of the wonder of words. Motion in least resist- 
 ance must result in organization, in perfect proportion and adaptation of 
 parts, all being an expression of the same resistance. Wheresoever 
 anything considered as a whole is result of passion in least resistance, 
 that is an organization. But arbitrary passion does not provide organ- 
 ization . Arbitrariness it is which excludes life. God's act is not 
 arbitrary, it is holy : passion in least resistance, excludes arbitrariness. 
 The most familiar physics exhibit the deepest spiritual fact, that God's 
 act is holy, and not arbitrary. Life is the passion wh results from holy 
 action. 
 
 I think I perceive now the difference between our perception of 
 < nature ' and that of an animal. The animal perceives without the 
 conception of substance, cause (i. e, efficient cause), or beauty ; i. e. 
 without the spiritual element : of real being, power (to act), and 
 Tightness (or holiness). With a little reflection, I think, one may 
 place oneself in the position e. g. of a dog, remembering that we must 
 conceive nothing that we do not perceive. That is the point. It is our 
 conceptions, above and beyond that wh is perceived that makes us 
 rational : this is the cause of the failure of our instincts, the reason we 
 go wrong instead of right, like the brutes. It is because we perceive 
 wrong ; for the performance must correspond to the perception. The 
 brutes perceive nature as she is, one, .. their instinctive actions corres- 
 pond to nature are perfectly true to her, as they must be in fact. 
 But as soon as man introduces the spiritual elements and becomes 
 rational his perceptions no longer correspond to nature, and .*. his per- 
 formances do not. It is not beautiful : this is the mental life of man 
 as I have seen. And here again the proof that life is ever the result of 
 spirit. Man's possession of a spirit gives him a living or organic mind 
 (as compared with the brutes wh have inorganic mind), because it 
 makes him perceive nature wrongly : his spirit, as it were, being the re- 
 sistance the source of life, the cause of development, of growth.
 
 267 
 
 "We need not wish not to perceive tho phn falsely, for then there 
 were in us no spirit. Is not the justification of our using material- 
 meaning terms for all ideas this : that the material is but a mode in wh 
 we perceive the real (viz., the spiritual), and the pyschical. 
 
 Do the animals if without conception of cause perceive the world 
 as external at all ? With them is it not necessarily sensations and re- 
 actions ? And, if no perception of substance, can there be perception of 
 motion, as motion ? 
 
 Look at the wonder of that word * force ' ; what is its common use ? 
 Ever that of violence nay, it is even used sometimes for the worst of 
 all violence. See the instinct of humanity that nutrition is violence 
 restraint ; ' force ' is the vital force ; it is ' life.' Science can find no 
 other term to use. It is felt to be the right one. For vital ' force ' it 
 wd be quite consonant to say, vital ' violence.' There is an infinitude 
 of meaning in it : the vital force, nutrition, is just that wh we mean by 
 
 force in our ordinary life. Dr. objected to my view of the universe 
 
 as a 'limited plenum,' the question ' "Where is it? ' This objection ap- 
 plying however only to the ' limit,' not the plenum. The answer is that 
 this supposes a real matter, the material universe, as a mental passion, 
 is nowhere. But another answer may be found in time, wh we know to 
 be limited ; being only because it is limited. Yet we do not think it 
 any objection to say, ' When ' is it, i. e. the universe. It is nowhen, 
 being in eternity. 
 
 In science, art, and philosophy, there is this polar union (or real and 
 ideal) ; phna are not true, good, and beautiful altho' false, but because ; 
 because false, &c., as phna they are true, beautiful, good realities. 
 
 With regard to our perceptions of things or real matter, note that re- 
 sistance, wh is that wh especially suggests to us this idea, is really only 
 force ; it' is so by definition : that wh resists (motion) is force. Is there 
 not some sort of parallelism between our ideal senses and the three 
 elements introduced by and from ourselves into our conception of the 
 universe; those, viz., of substance, cause, beauty? 
 
 I now see how this great mystery of a perception of our external world, 
 as real, true, causal, or beautiful, comes to pass : 
 
 Physical passion, with real being, is matter ; 
 ,, power, is cause; 
 
 ,, Tightness, is beauty. 
 
 Eesistance, which is what is perceived by touch is physical passion or 
 * force,' the introduction of real being into relation with that, so easily 
 gives us the origin of matter or substance ; and equally clear are the 
 others. Now the result of our seeing this, appears beautiful to me. 
 First look again at astronomy ; when we see the motion of the sun we 
 perceive in our minds our own motion and the motion of the earth wh 
 carries it. This is because we understand astronomy. So with the 
 understanding of science ; it will be given us, that when we feel sub- 
 stance, we shall perceive in our minds our own spiritual being ; when we 
 trace cause we shall perceive in our minds our spiritual power to act ; 
 when we see beauty or ugliness we shall perceive in our own minds the 
 indication of moral quality in our own actions holiness or unholiness. 
 The phn will be to us a phn alone no longer, but a revealer of spiritual 
 truths : nor alone respecting ourselves will it reveal to us these truths ; 
 it will bring to our own consciousness our own spiritual being, power,
 
 268 
 
 character, but not that alone : it "will show us? also an act upon that 
 being, effected by such power, involving and expressive of such 
 character. The phn thus reveals to us two things our own spirituality, 
 or moral being, and God's spiritual act, or moral act upon us. This is 
 surely no stretch of the imagination, no Utopian theory ; it is mere 
 common sense and ordinary reason. It is much less apparently im- 
 probable than that in seeing the motion of the sun we shd ' perceive ' 
 the motion of the earth bearing us with it ; wh is now so familiar that 
 we cannot recollect the time when we ever thought anything else ; and 
 to think anything else wd appear to us most unnatural. 
 
 Real ugly or real evil are truly, tho' we do not yet quite perceive it, 
 as much a contradiction as a real false : real ugly e. g. wd be passion 
 not in least resistance. So natural evil must be a phn wh appears to us, 
 not to be result of passion in direction of least resistance ; i. e. it is not 
 so in relation to the elements or phna we take into regard. "We look at 
 too little and do not see the real resistance, the real organization or life. 
 It is precisely deformity, wh is as much result of passion in least re- 
 sistance as any beauty ; but we do not see the resistance and suppose 
 another. In fact it appears to us arbitrary, i. e. not holy. And when 
 we come to evil, the phn itself suggests this idea ; the evil looks as if it 
 were not holy, i. e. arbitrary or result of passion not in least resistance. 
 Thus we come to apply it to a word scarcely appropriate to anything 
 but sin, in which the right resistance is withheld. 
 
 We are not so much conscious of our real being as perceive it, just as 
 we are not conscious of our motion when we are moved, but perceive it 
 by means of external objects seeming to move. So we perceive our real 
 being by the external passion seeming to be real being. It is that per- 
 ception that first suggests to us the idea ; by that means alone do we 
 come to perceive our own. 
 
 It is not so much nature, as theories, that are interpreted ; and this 
 shows the real subjectiveness of the phn, that the interpretation of our 
 'theories' (wh are certainly subjective), is the truth of the phna. 
 Does not this mean that the phn itself is a theory ? The fact of per- 
 ception is the construction of a theory ? 
 
 The phn has to reveal nature ; and this it does by means of our 
 spiritual conceptions of cause, beauty, good, making us form theories (to 
 bring phna into harmony with our idea of these), i. e. assimilating them 
 to our life. Thus we form organization ; these spiritual conceptions are 
 source of the whole. They are the vital force (as I have seen in relation 
 to science that idea of cause is vital force). 
 
 Theory is man's truth. Interpretation is God's truth. The theory 
 bears the impress, expresses the condition, the life of the being who 
 makes it ; the interpretation is simply what God does. Thus the 
 epicycle-astronomy (wh is ' theoretical ') shows itself at once to be man's 
 work. It cd have been made only by a being in man's condition. But 
 the ' interpretation ' has no mark of man about it so far as it is true ; 
 granted the phna of earth and sun, and any being in any part of the 
 universe wd see it, and say it, the same. There is exactly this difference 
 between theory and interpretation every where. In art (in music, 
 painting, poetry), in philosophy (in morals, metaphysics, politics), as in 
 science, the theoretical expresses the man ; the interpretative expresses 
 only the fact. Man speaks in the one ; God speaks in the other. And
 
 269 
 
 this is in fine the difference between the false and the true, the ugly 
 and beautiful, the evil and the good. The one is man's, the other God's. 
 Man's view and God's reality of one and the same phn. I say the 
 phn is evil ; the reality indicated by that phn is good. Here is the 
 thing : the epicycle-theory is false, the motion of earth is true. The 
 phn is a ' theory,' the reality an interpretation. 
 
 I find this distinction between nature and the phn to go to the very 
 root of the matter. And the ' interpretation of the phn ' to embrace all 
 human life, in all forms of performance. Thus I conceive the practical 
 getting rid of evil and producing good, all efforts of philanthropy and 
 improvement, are, rightly considered, but forms of interpreting the 
 phna, making evil produce or ' reveal ' the good. And see how it also is 
 done ; viz., first by theory, then by interpretation. First, ever the 
 effort to make the phn ' appear good,' i. e. to remove directly the evil; 
 but the end, and the only one possible, is to make the evil produce a 
 higher good : it is evil and must be interpreted ; the force that caused it 
 must be used and made to produce a function, a higher life. As I said 
 before, the only way really to remedy evils is to make the force wh 
 produces them (the vital force, as it always is), produce a good. The 
 theoretical efforts to remedy it are nutrition only they make wrong- 
 ness more wrong but their good is that they result in an organiza- 
 tion whereby the function is effected. Evil must be interpreted ; i. e. 
 must produce or reveal God's good. Thus the practical life of man is 
 one with his psychical or mental life. The doer has one life with the 
 knower and feeler. 
 
 Again. This perception respecting nature and the phn gives me the 
 word (as the idea), for the ' corrupt or evil nature ' of man. And since 
 this is spoken of there is a reason for its being so, and this reason must 
 be shown. , Is it not this : man is phenomenally evil. He is so as a 
 part of the universe, wh is also phenomenally evil. I mean, his body 
 and mind ; not his ' nature ' evil any more than other nature is evil ; 
 not the reality, but the phn. Man's ' nature is evil, just as ' nature ' is 
 evil, i. e. phenomenally but not really. The whole case is expressed 
 here. These evil < tendencies ' of his, to which the term ' evil or de- 
 praved nature ' is applied, are phenomenally evil ; it is not to be denied 
 that they are so. Man's body and mind are phna, and correspond thus 
 with all other phna, but being as all nature, God's Act, cannot be, as all 
 nature cannot be, really other than absolutely good. In nature, as in 
 man, exist these tendencies to evil ; the very same ' passions,' and just 
 as evil. But man is evil in a sense in wh nature is not, and here is the 
 point. Man and nature are alike phenomenally evil ; but man, unlike 
 nature, is really evil too. Man is a depraved spirit ; that is his real 
 evil his nature is not corrupt ; that is God's incorruptable 
 and ever holy deed his spirit is corrupt. He refuses to direct aright 
 his passion ; in which he is unlike nature. Passion duly controlled is 
 life ; and all is life in nature. Passion uncontrolled is death. Thus sin 
 is death, for sin is the refusal rightly to control passion. Man refuses 
 to be one with nature, and therein sins and dies. Thus also we see that 
 sin is not action, but inaction ; in strictest sense, it is death and slavery. 
 Sin is a phn, an appearance, no reality. It is but death ; the refusal to 
 act, or be, for being and action are one. 
 
 Further. Have I not thus arrived at this : That man's right action
 
 270 
 
 is rightly to be called the ' interpretation of the phn ' or rather of na- 
 ture ? Is not this what God calls on man to do by his sense of right, 
 as by his sense of beauty, truth, and good ? Practical holiness is 
 practical interpretation of nature ; and this is life. In science, art, 
 philosophy, God interprets ; in holiness, man interprets. In holy action 
 man reveals the reality, the truth of nature ; reveals it, re-presents it, 
 shows it again, as it is, a holy deed. This is man's task to re-present 
 nature. To act again the holiness that constitutes her. 
 
 This I may say about the use of analogy in science, &c. : That it is 
 interpreting the great by the little, the little by the great ; it is inter- 
 preting alike that wh is too great for us, and that which is too small for 
 us, by that which is on our level. This I use the pendulum wh is under- 
 stood, being on my level, to illustrate life wh is too small and the solar 
 system which is too large. 
 
 Nature is of like passions with ourselves. Her passions, or ' passion ' 
 rather, is her life, as ours are our life ; but only if duly controlled. 
 Nature a holy deed in its origin, interpreted by man's holy action is 
 thus again a holy deed in its consummation ; re-presented in and by man. 
 Man represents or interprets nature when he acts right. This is the 
 true lesson of science, of art, of philosophy : that we, as part of na- 
 ture, interpret or represent nature when and in so far as we attain to 
 truth, beauty, good. It is the symbol to teach us that we, as spiritual 
 beings, only then interpret or represent nature, when we attain to and 
 do the holy. This is the function of humanity, the function of the 
 universe ; the holiness of man, the end for wh as a phn it exists. The 
 phenomenal universe is the nutrition whereby is to be achieved as 
 function the holiness of man. The force wh constitutes the great 
 ' passion ' of the phn is a vital force, and exists only that it may re- 
 appear in the function as a higher life. The phenomenal developes into 
 the real, the physical and psychical into the spiritual. Thus the 
 ' passion ' wh constitutes the universe, as it is a spiritual passion in its 
 origin, becomes a spiritual passion in its end. Thus God gives life to 
 our spirits ; gives us, as it were, of His life. His act becomes our act. 
 In this sense the universe exists for man the material and psychical 
 universe, i. e. not nature, but the phn. It is God's act on man ; that is 
 man's share, so to speak, in that infinite deed of God, wh constitutes 
 ' reality.' This phenomenal universe, with its vastness, its infinitude 
 of beauty, and unfathomable skill, is that little part of the infinite 
 deed of God, of the real universe of holiness and love, wh man can ' con- 
 pTehend.' This is the effect of infinite holiness upon his spirit. If our 
 spirits become larger or capable of more, more still shall be given. 
 
 It is our capacity of receiving that alone limits God's gift ; from us 
 arises that limit to His act, wh evokes the phn, and makes His action 
 life. 
 
 Nature thus becomes holiness in us ; but she becomes so only because 
 she is so : nothing becomes, or can become, aught but that which it is. 
 Nature is God's holy act, .-. she offers herself to us as the willing instru- 
 ment of ours. Only so indeed have we any part or lot in her. She will 
 subserve our holiness ; as the phn indeed she exists but to that end. 
 But only to our holiness will she be subservient. An outcast from 
 nature is the sinner ; yea, being not. Just as life rejects the dead, as a 
 living body casts off" a slough, even if it be a portion of its inmost
 
 271 
 
 being, so nature rejects sin. Her right hand she will cut off, her right 
 eye pluck out, if it offend, and cast it from her. No ties can bind her 
 to the unholy ; no artificial bonds unite unholiness to her. What 
 bosom shall shelter him whom his mother hath cast off? Stern, unrelent- 
 ing holiness of nature ; stern, because the very fact of love that cannot 
 be more loving ; unrelenting, because mercy's self, and to relent were to 
 be severe ; inexorable holiness, that sayest to us, ' Now Is the accepted 
 time, and now is the day of salvation/ teach us to hearken to thy 
 voice, and live. When we can find one living frame that retains within 
 it, as a part of its being, a structure that is dead, then we may think of 
 hoping that some good may fall to us in sin. 
 
 [From this I see secretion, or excretion rather ; it is all casting off of 
 sloughs. ?] 
 
 Music is a phn ; and in this I may instance right music at least. 
 It appears arbitrary ; as nature does, as if it were a mere succession of 
 creations, for no reason but that the Creator chose, or as carrying out a 
 design He entertained ; but it is really necessary, passion in least resist- 
 ance : rightness necessitates it, as holiness necessitates the universe. 
 
 I see quite well that every phn must be also a theory. As, in point 
 of fact, also, every theory is but the construction, as it were, of a fresh 
 phn. There is a great point here in this identity of phn and theory, 
 more than I can see altogether at present. It is not clearly a theory that 
 the pendulum moves from side to side ; yet it is exactly the fact seen 
 that, and nothing more. Just as clearly is it the interpretation of the 
 fact that the motion is down and up ; wh, however, is not seen, for in 
 all cases the apparent motion is from side to side. Now I perceive more 
 respecting the relation of nutrition and function in mind, theory and in- 
 terpretation. Is it not that they are both subjective and not real : 
 whether our science expresses our own conceptions or fancies, or our own 
 sensations, it alike expresses ourselves and not nature, and consists in 
 inventions utterly unreal. The true science is the union of these two- 
 conceptions and sensations together : sensations interpreted by concep- 
 tions, reveal the true or real. The phn is theory. Think of this : the 
 result of our passion, a passion produced in us, ' done by us,' and 
 expressing ourselves ; produced by a reality quite different and only re- 
 vealed by interpretation* 
 
 We need not be in a hurry to interpret. Let us go nature's way to 
 work, and here be willing to 'have theory first. If we cannot see the 
 reality of anything, let us make it the likest way we can ; and so by our 
 blind guess another mail shall see. I prefer to see or to interpret ; but 
 I have not the slightest objection to make a theory when I can not. 
 
 Notice we cannot say, make an interpretation ; if we make it, it is 
 not an interpretation at all ; but indeed a theory. Nutrition and func- 
 tion are equally honourable equally dear to God in truth they are one, 
 each function is nutrition, each nutrition a function. Surely as the mental 
 life advances we must get beyond all that has preceeded. Will it not 
 be a good sign for literature when Shakespear is found fault with. Yet 
 on the other hand, the functional, on whatever level, retains an ever- 
 lasting value ; it is ever one ; altering not ; its affirmation is ever the 
 same, however different the form of speech. Ever it is the putting 
 right. Successive functions may be higher, they are never different. 
 An interpretation being true is true, for ever ; nor can it lose its
 
 272 
 
 truth in its place, however much may be added to our knowledge. If 
 there be no real sun nor earth, none the less is it true that the earth 
 goes round the sun, and not the sun round the earth. Nutritive people 
 revile interpreters at times, but man soon reverses that judgment. 
 
 A theory results from smaller interpretations. As all nutrition is result 
 of function, so all theory the result of previous interpretation. Several 
 little interpretations make up a theory, wh then is the phn, and false 
 like the phna, and is interpreted like them. So each interpretation, 
 however large, still goes to make up a theory ; it is one element cf a 
 nutritive arrangement, and goes to make an organization, and to furnish 
 conditions for new interpretation. This is the true view of a theory ; 
 it is an organization, this glorifies it ; takes from its error all shame. 
 
 Does or does not my spiritualism involve the denial of real sensation 
 in animals ? There is a matter that wants clearing up in this. The the- 
 oretical or experimental science (as ours) and the a priori or ideal science 
 have this in common (wh may account in part for both involving so 
 many inventions or chimeras) ; viz., that each takes too limited a view ; 
 regards only one part of nature, and seeks to make a complete ' theory ' 
 by means of that alone. Hence the necessity of introducing ' inven- 
 tions ' elements of its own, to make up what it fails to embrace of 
 nature. 
 
 In respect to the ideal or a priori science, this is manifest, but it is 
 equally clear in respect to the modern, if we consider. For tho' this takes 
 in, in theory, all nature, it regards each part, each division, apart and 
 separately ; treats it as isolated : thus falling into the very identical 
 error of the old, wh isolated a part of nature for separate (and sole) 
 consideration. 
 
 The individual men of science do the same now that the body 
 did then. But, in idea, the old science was the truer, for they 
 argued, rightly enough, that if they understood one part they understood 
 all, and they acted thus accordingly ; viz., first trying to understand 
 one part by itself (as we do), they then sought to explain the whole 
 by it. 
 
 Their error was not seeing that in order to understand truly any part 
 they must first understand the whole, wh cd only be by investigating 
 the whole. Of course they were wrong ; but not less wrong are we, 
 who, like them, think we can understand one part by itself, without 
 having the true idea that they had, that if we understood a part we 
 shd understand the whole. Thus I see the essential oneness (under 
 apparent oppositeness) of the ancient and modern science, and see how 
 it is that both involve the introduction of so many unreal conceptions, 
 inventions, or chimeras. And also how it is that Bacon's very work 
 need now to be done over again ; viz., to teach science to leave off 
 theorizing and make inductions ; i. e. to put many things together and 
 see what they mean ; to learn from nature. Yet there is a real differ- 
 ence between observing and forming theories. They are respectively 
 taking food and assimilating. The old Science was an assimilating, 
 and so the present : essentially one in another view. 
 
 Interpretation is not to be proved does not admit of it the idea is 
 a mistake. It is a fact, and requires to be seen ; must be seen to have 
 any evidence ; can have no other evidence than to be seen. It is our 
 familiarity with the theoretical that makes us ask for proof of the
 
 273 
 
 interpretation, wh either is or is not an interpretation ; and there is no- 
 thing more to be said about it. Theories require proof, for this reason, viz., 
 that they are false, they are not the thing itself, but assimilated to our 
 ideas, and require evidence from without, to be shown to be conformable 
 to our ideas, &c. But the interpretation is a thing revealed, is not 
 conformable to our previous ideas, but appeals to a higher standard, 
 viz., that of self-evidence it rests on the facts. 
 
 I believe the aggregate physical and psychical humanity, this ' human 
 mind/ to wh science and art, &c., belong, the universal mind wh thus 
 lives from age to age and developes, while the individual mind remains 
 the same ; the aggregate human ' body ' and human ' mind ' form the 
 body and mind of a spiritual being, of wh thus our bodies and minds 
 are the ' elements ' or particles ; and our imperfections and sufferings go 
 therefore to constitute the ' nutrition ' of his ' frame.' 
 
 It is very simple : this universal ' mind/ which we see to be ' thought,' 
 or ' passion/ alone only needs to have the conception of ' real being ' 
 supplied to it to be a living being, as we suppose our own mind and 
 body, wh are in truth equally only passion. And on the other hand, I 
 believe the ' particles ' of our bodies and minds to be individuals like 
 ourselves. I do not say bodies and minds of spirit, nor in what way ; 
 but I conceive of them as being as truly living creatures as we are. 
 
 And now I perceive whence and how time and space. These are con- 
 ditions of the limit, result necessarily from our limited being. Finite 
 spirits must have bounds, limits, as it were, .'.time and place, therefore 
 motion, extent, and matter. Thus I have arrived at why extent and 
 matter. It is very clear however how the conceptions of time and space 
 are, as it were, inseparably connected with, and clearly results of, our 
 limited finite being. 
 
 Infinite divisibility of matter is merely indefinite divisibility of 
 matter. The line wh is used to illustrate it cannot be infinitely pro- 
 longed, but only indefinitely being a line it cannot be infinite, as matter 
 cannot be, nor time. It is a misconception altogether ; material and 
 mental things exclude infinity ; there are such at all only by the limit 
 furnished by ourselves : they involve limit because they depend on 
 limit. As for the infinite series whose limit is two consider that it 
 merely means surely that we should never come to an end, but what is 
 the ultimate fact of it. It strikes me that there is some analogy to the 
 abstract terms here : the using a term for an abstract < mountain/ e. g. 
 or only for all conceivable mountains ; in the one case it is ' infinite/ as 
 it were, in the other ' indefinite.' 
 
 If we conceive this universal mind of man, wh we see to be ' passion/ 
 to be passion of another ' spirit ' (and what passion is it, if not ? it is not 
 ours as individuals ; but being passion, it must be passion of a spirit, 
 there is no other * being ' for it to be passion of ultimately) ; then we 
 see at once how it is and must be a living mind to such spirit his 
 mind ' indeed. And I perceive that this not only may be so, but must 
 be so ; being passion it must be passion of a spirit really, whatever it 
 may be phenomenally. And this spirit is certainly not any human spirit. 
 It must be the spirit of whom the universal mind is the ' mind.' So 
 our mind is such an universal mind, consisting of many subordinate 
 minds. Indeed it is all involved in what I have long seen, that each 
 comparatively great vibration consists of many little vibrations ; i. e.
 
 274 
 
 each life consists of many lives, for vibration is life. It is all involved 
 in this, and it is not only each great life, for the ' infinite 
 divisibility of matter ' teaches us here that there is no life so small 
 that it does not consist of many. 
 
 How wonderful is the attraction of the phn for man, Is it partly as 
 being indeed his own passion, himself, that he thus loves ; partly polar 
 attraction, as indeed all attraction is and must be, like the physical for 
 food wh consider the mind attracted to facts as the body to food. 
 
 That great discovery of the earth's revolution, wh perhaps is the 
 proudest monument of human genius, is just the same thing as a child 
 in a carriage, who first thinks that the trees move, finding out that 
 he moves, and .-. that the carriage moves. Humanity advances 
 like a child grows. I^ow shd we not let children, or rather cause them 
 to find out that their seeing objects move may mean that they move ; 
 shd they not be led to form a theory and see an interpretation here by 
 their own powers. Do we not throw avay means of educating them by 
 .telling them so much. Consider how it must appear to an infant as it 
 is carried and tossed about, what an unstable world it must live in. 
 This is worth thinking about. And how the animals I take it an 
 animal must rather see the world move when it runs than be aware that 
 it is running. 
 
 How beautiful an example and type of the resistance arising from 
 sense of right is modesty, a very type of nutrition, the life-giving 
 resistance. And see this is the resistance in relation to one special 
 matter ; it is to be traced doubtless in many parallel special forms 
 but modesty an eminent one and perhaps because it relates to the 
 sexual polar attraction in its special relation to ourselves, yet it is one 
 with all resistance to or control of polar attractions. And why so 
 especially in the female ? This also an universal fact, and must be traced : 
 it is the nutritive (female) that especially resists the attraction. The 
 great fact of nature is this sexual love. 
 
 Consider : In physical the female seeks, and resistance is especially 
 of male, e.g. planets and sun ; in psychical the male seeks, and resistance 
 is of female an inversion. 
 
 The sense of the ludicrous also has a deep meaning. See its basis 
 in nature, and even ludicrous natural forms. It must depend upon this 
 sense of right, and consists in a perception of its violation. But, some- 
 how, the idea of evil, or ugly, or false, wh are painful, gives place to 
 that wh is pleasant. I think perhaps it is a sort of perception that we are 
 deceived in thinking it really evil, ugly, false : that it wd be so if we 
 were not up to it ; and designed to teach us that evil, ugly, and false are 
 not so really, wd not be so if we were 'up to them.' In a ludicrous 
 thing we rehearse, as it were, the business of life interpret phna ; see 
 that that which looks like one thing is quite another. 
 
 I am somewhat right here. In a riddle we perceive at once that the 
 false is an illusion, and our pleasure is in seeing how (the pleasure 
 indeed of Science). "We are amused to see how the false looks like the 
 true, altho' we know it is false. For observe there is nothing ludicrous 
 in such things if, or so long as, we are deceived by them. And grave 
 and serious errors become good jokes when we see them. This is the 
 philosophy of the ludicrous. There is more in the ludicrous than this, 
 however ; this is a step towards it.
 
 275 
 
 It is clear how theory is first formed, and must be and interpretation 
 afterwards. And this interpretation may take place spontaneously by 
 increase of nutrition, i. e. by mere increase of the tendency resisted, 
 or by stimulus wh diminishes relatively the vital resistance. This latter 
 surely instanced by instruction, suggestion, teaching, &c., and such in- 
 fluences. In mental life our vital resistance first resists the passion of 
 the elements, assimilates them into theory, then this resistance is over- 
 come, and a new life developed. The interpretation being passion of 
 those elements unresisted, but thus producing new nutrition. 
 
 It is so in every thing in art, in music, e. g. In the theoretical 
 music, the composer's mental life resists and causes nutrition, then 
 this excluded, causing function. So in thought, &c. 
 
 Now, bad theories are those in wh this law of least resistance is not, 
 or appears not to be obeyed or embodied. A theory that is accordance 
 with direction of least resistance, according to our mental life, appears 
 true or good to us ; one that is not so appears bad or false ; hence 
 theories alter and improve, according to the mental life of individuals, 
 being still theories, and those men cannot see an interpretation whose 
 vital resistance is still too strong. This is exactly what I find the 
 difficulty men have in seeing my views, viz., of life, consists in their 
 own previous ideas, to wh they tend to assimilate all. Their nutritive 
 passion is still too powerful to permit the function ; especially is this 
 the case in respect to the theological bearings of Science : the best men 
 have their scientific ideas arranged in conformity with their religious 
 views, not bigotedly, but in a way that has cost them much trouble 
 and thought, and that seems to them satisfactory and beautiful. There is 
 a great vital force to overcome there before function can be, and strong 
 simuli are needed in the shape of arguments wh need not go to prove the 
 interpretation, but merely tend to diminish the power of that vital force 
 to show that these arrangements of their ideas are not so satisfactory 
 after all. I see this is what one does in an argumentative paper re- 
 specting an interpretation: apply stimuli to overcome the vital resistance 
 of other men, and cause them to permit the function. 
 
 N.B. We perceive fallacy or error in that theory, or attempted in- 
 terpretation, which appears to us not to be passion in least resistance. 
 
 Now we may either see that there is indeed a violation of motion in 
 direction of least resistance, or we may be in error not seeing the resist- 
 ances. A theory may be ugly to us, though truly beautiful, simply 
 because we do not see the resistances. When we are made to see these 
 then we are convinced, or when we show them to be as we think, then 
 we ' prove our point.'' This is all of argument, showing what is thought 
 in direction of least resistance different men see different resistances, 
 and so on. A theory is ' true ' as a theory, i. e. is a proper nutrition, 
 when it is really such as results from passion in least resistance, the 
 resistance being our previous ideas : when the new facts are arranged 
 thus in relation to these ideas that is a good theory, a beautiful 
 nutrition. But a man with a better ' life,' larger or clearer previous 
 ideas, comes, and introducing a different resistance, makes a better theory, 
 or as the same man's ideas grow, his life rises, he makes better and 
 better theories : all still theories ; and as the nutrition thus rises, so 
 does the tendency to and capacity for function rise also. The best 
 scientific men have strongest vital force most powerful hold of the
 
 276 
 
 theoretical views ; especially those who are of the nutritive order by 
 nature as well as practice. It is not enough to show the interpretation 
 to be good to be an interpretation in fact, this is really demonstration ; 
 but it does not avail for the nutritive men. It does not overcome that 
 * vital force ' wh resists the ' function ' in their case. 
 
 It is necessary not only to show the interpretation to be good, but 
 also that it is better than their nutrition. To apply such a stimulus as 
 their vital force shall succumb to, at the same time as, by showing the 
 interpretation, the affinities or tendency to functional change is in- 
 creased. But it is only at first that an interpretation wants any other 
 arguments or proofs besides the fact of itself. After the lower nutri- 
 tion, or vital force, is once overcome, the interpretation reposes on 
 itself, simply as a fact, like any other fact. It suffices to show it, 
 viz., that the phna are naturally arranged that way: so e. g. with 
 regard to the revolution of the earth instead of motion of sun. Our 
 knowing is itself life ; .-.it is that we only know the one thing, viz., 
 life ; and whatsoever we know we see to be life. It must be so [this ia 
 the reason of the universal phenomenal life]. 
 
 The entire work of Science appears before me in the illustration of 
 unravelling a tangled skein of thread (and as of Science, so of Art, &c.) 
 All life is there the nutritive, the functional all the cautions and 
 methods are represented. Observe, e. g. : a tangled skein is tangled or 
 obscure and wrong only in relation to us \ it came so by no accident. 
 It is absolutely right so, as part of the life of this world, being result 
 of passion in direction of least resistance. (2.) We must start with 
 the conviction absolutely assumed that it can be disentangled (viz., 
 that nature is all true, good, and beautiful). (3.) "We are patient 
 not in a hurry do not assume we know mope about it than we do 
 only want just to see how it is. (4.) "We never on any account 
 apply force to pull it is the worst of all things we simply examine 
 gently how it is. (5.) Our object is to see how it really is but if 
 it be anything of a tangle we cannot do this directly. What we have 
 to do is to make a theory of it to arrive so at a representation. We 
 make it or put it according to our idea of the thing, i. e. we lay the 
 various threads out one by one in clear and distinct relations the best 
 way we can see, according as the thing appears. Then this theory at 
 last reveals the real case we interpret it. But the theory, or 
 phenomenal view, or assimilation, comes before. And first indeed the 
 observation the taking food : first we look and observe what and 
 where the various threads are (observation) then we arrange them 
 according to our ideas and their appearances (theory) then we see 
 how they really go (not putting them at all), but they putting them- 
 selves, as it were, in opposition to our way of putting them, 
 (interpretation), wh reveals to us the fact of the matter and the 
 tangle is unravelled. It is a life with its three stages. We first lay 
 the threads one by one as it seems best, then put them right one by one, 
 and the whole thing flashes upon us when and because they are put 
 right. But we do not first see how it is and then put the individual 
 threads right, the truth of the thing is revealed to us by means of our 
 putting the individual threads right ; and the point to notice is that a 
 putting them wrongly, but in such a wrongness as to be conformable to 
 our ideas, precedes necessarily precedes the putting them right.
 
 277 
 
 Things or ' elements,' in any sense, can be put wrong only by force 
 that is very clear (the vital force indeed) ; force alone resists tendency. 
 Now, what is that force wh causes us to take phenomenal views to 
 perceive indeed to perceive phna ; to see falsely or wrongly ? It is 
 as I have noticed : a perception, or a phna, is itself a theory, and there 
 is some force which makes it. An investigation is wanted here ; our per- 
 ception is not a passive thing, but an actual nutrition, a putting wrong. 
 Therefore, if perception of phna be a theory or nutrition, the force at 
 work in it must result from some function or opposite process, result be 
 of tendency, or interpretation. Just as I know that physically wherever 
 there is vital passion or nutrition, there is, or has preceded, chemical 
 passion. This perception of phna is truly forming theory ; and just 
 as each new function or interpretation forms or constitutes a new theory, 
 so is it previous interpretations, wh constitute new phna. Our per- 
 ception of phna as phna (not knowing them to be otherwise than as 
 they appear) is ever result of previous interpretation. "We interpret, 
 and then perceive by virtue of force so generated, producing new theory 
 or nutrition. A theory is an arrangement produced by our ideas. An 
 interpretation is an arrangement (effected by inherent tendencies) wh 
 produces our ideas. I am perfectly conscious of the difference in my- 
 self ; one is a work an effect ; the other is a passion permitted ; done 
 in us, not by us. 
 
 Surely Imagination refers to an arrangement produced by our ideas 
 It means what we see, not what ' is revealed ' to us ; what we see in 
 them or of them truly ' see ; ' not what they show to us, wh is not 
 in them at all. There is something in that theoria or ' seeing ; ' it relates 
 to the phn. So does imagination, as being also ' seeing.' The inter- 
 pretation lays hold on something higher than the thing itself not the 
 phn, wh can- be seen, but a meaning wh it must reveal. The artist 
 means by imagination a seeing the phn an exact and full phenomenal 
 view seeing to the heart of ' things,' i. e. phna. The interpretation 
 is a thing wh art has no name for, because it does not yet include the 
 thing itself: it is seeing beyond the phn something that is not to be 
 seen, and .. needs to be revealed. 
 
 Is not the essential falseness or ' wrongness ' of theory this, in one 
 sense ; that it regards that wh is only a part (the phn, viz., whatever it 
 may be), as complete in itself; treats it as a whole. Interpretation 
 shows it as a part of a larger whole. Theory is diversity! ; nterpreta- 
 tion unity. Now this surely has many relations and parallels in life, 
 for limit to knowledge is source of error ; because whenever a part is 
 regarded us a whole and we always regard each ' unit ' as a whole 
 it is regarded wrongly, i. e. nutritively; or constitutes a theory. 
 Further, we see how interpretation is emphatically ' induction ; ' con- 
 sists in seeing one thing to be the same as another or others. Shows, 
 in a word, how unification of things is interpretation or function ; and 
 how theory is < discrimination,' &c. Theory is merely a statement of 
 phna consistently with our ideas ; in fact, is the phn. 
 
 When I say that nature is God's act, I do not mean that the phn 
 is God's act, but that the phn reveals a reality, wh is God's act, and 
 wh is the only and true reality of the phn itself (as earth's motion is 
 to sun's motion). The phn is the effect upon us, and the effect on us 
 ever depends more on us than on the cause wh acts on us. The effect of
 
 278 
 
 the cause is determined more by the condition than hy the cause itself, 
 and we constitute and present the condition wh causes God's act to 
 produce the phn, viz., the universe : just as we are the condition wh 
 causes the revolution of the earth to produce motion of sun, wholly 
 and altogether ; there is no natural relation between these two apart 
 from us. So I say that a horse is God's act not as a horse but that 
 the sole reality indicated by the horse is a divine act ; the phn or horse 
 being solely the result of our being and relation to this divine act. And 
 further, that as the nature of the motion of the earth causes the motion 
 of the sun to be such as it is, and is expressed in its motion indeed, so the 
 nature, and emphatically the holiness, of the divine act causes the phn 
 to be such 'as it is, and is expressed in it- We understand the relation 
 between the earth's revolution and the phenomenal motion of the sun, 
 because we know the facts and their relations, especially the motion of 
 our bodies producing phenomenal external motion. So to understand 
 how it is that God's act produces the phenomenal universe by acting on 
 us (producing passion in us), we have to learn more about ourselves and 
 our relation to the phn. This will reveal the cause or holy act wh we 
 want to know : when we can understand better ourselves, or the condi- 
 tion, we shall be able to trace the cause from the effect by means of the 
 condition. This is the point we must know more of ourselves, and 
 what perception is, and how effected ; how and why passion in ourselves 
 produces phna ; and thence what act causes it. Partly I have solved 
 this seeing it to be spiritual, or moral that our perception or phn de- 
 pends wholly on spiritual elements. It is very simple. Nature is God's 
 act, the phn the effect an us. I can conceive hardly of anything clearer 
 or less needing explanation. Always the phn has a reference to us. 
 ' Phenomenally ' means ' in relation to us.' 
 
 Why is it that ' real being,' or ' substance,' is supplied to some 
 motions and not to others ? Is it not first applied to all, and only 
 generally excluded as science advances, e.g. material light, heat, electric 
 fluid, &c., and even solid cycles and epicycles in old astronomy, wh 
 moving, carried sun and stars with them. The substitution of force or 
 passion partially by Science, instead of matter, as in light, electricity, 
 &c., is precisely the same as substitution of idea of passion in us pro- 
 duced by act of God, for the real material and psychical universe. 
 There is just as little difficulty in the complete as in the partial work 
 the substratum still remains, and the idea simply accords with the facts 
 and expresses just that wh is ; in a word, it is an interpretation, 
 simple and self-evident. By-the-bye the necessarily vibratile character 
 of passion, seems to render a little comprehensible how the universe is 
 and must be of that two-fold character material and psychical i. e. 
 "vibration, these being the two halves of a vibration. 
 
 Those inventions wh constitute theory are necessarily chimeras or im- 
 impossible, because they are attempts to make parts wholes, or appear 
 as wholes (we insist on regarding every thing as whole). Surely there 
 is, as it were, pre-raphaelite Science assimilation proceeding function. 
 
 It is rendered very clear by our knowledge respecting our physical 
 senses, even if it were not a self-evident fact, that the phn, or what 
 we perceive, is not that wh really exists but the effect produced on our- 
 selves. Take, for instance, a railway train in motion, wh seems to 
 move fast or slow according to its distance, i. e. according to the arc
 
 279 
 
 described on our retina in a given time. Or again, a stereoscopic 
 picture, wh is two flat pictures, or one picture in relief according to 
 how it is- looked at. Who having looked only thro' a stereoscpe wd be- 
 lieve that the reality of what he saw was two different flat pictures. 
 Just so with us and the reality of the phn. The confounding of what 
 we perceive with that wh really is, is one of the most obvious errors 
 when we can first contrive to look at it naturally : just disembarrass 
 ourselves from pre-conceptions, and we see that it is contrary not only to 
 logic and sound reasoning, and even to common sense; but emphatically 
 opposed to common experience. "We have only to act in philosophy 
 as we act in daily life, and be aware that in philosophy also as well as 
 in matters of fact and in our daily life, we perceive one thing while 
 another really is, and that from wh we perceive we are to learn that 
 wh is, and act accordingly. "We have not indeed to learn to be 
 philosophers, but to leave off being philosophers, and apply to phil- 
 osophy or views of things in general, the same common sense and 
 practical experience that we have long learnt to apply to ordinary 
 matters. In one word we have just to give up theories, or rather to 
 let them fall, such as e. g. that we perceive things in a certain way 
 because the things really are so ; a theory wh our every sense (including 
 our common sense) every minute repudiates and disproves. But now 
 arises a curious consideration : interpretation reveals a fact, truth, a 
 phn ; e. g. in astronomy. We now perceive in the heavenly motions 
 the revolution of the earth ; it is in a true sense, I think, become a 
 phn to us, but in what sense is it an effect upon ourselves, and how 
 produced ? 
 
 The inverted image of the candle reveals to us the true candle, be- 
 cause we have before interpreted that phn ; and when we see such an 
 inverted image it so immediately suggests to us an upright candle that 
 we truly perceive the latter. Now we have only to understand that 
 our perception of the candle itself is just such a fact as our perception 
 of the inverted image that it is not the real fact, but an effect wh is 
 to reveal to us a real fact. "We have to learn how the material candle 
 is produced that is all. We shall learn that soon, and see as clearly 
 that a material candle is only a phn revealing a reality as we do re- 
 specting the shadow. 
 
 Science has explained to us about the shadow ; science has to 
 explain to us, and will very soon, about the thing. Perception indeed 
 cannot be two different things, sometimes of phna, and sometimes of 
 realities ; it is absurd ; we know it is of phna and not of realities 
 sometimes, .-.we truly know (but we do not see it) that it is of phna, 
 and not of realities, always. This is the task of Science seeing a 
 phn to find out the reality ; and for this purpose the tpiritual intuitions 
 of truth and cause are given to her. Again, we may carry the series of 
 ' phna ' further let the inverted image be again reflected in like 
 manner, and now the consequent upright image only be perceived ; now 
 the problem comes again ; from the phn discover the reality : this is 
 more like the work of Science (and all mental life, art, philosophy also) ; 
 first is discovered the inverted image ; this we take again to be real, 
 but again we discover from that the true reality. Observe in this last 
 case, the phn wd be good (right) but it wd first reveal an evil (inverted) 
 that wd reveal a true, upright, or good. Art sees beauty ; but it has
 
 280 
 
 first to make this reveal an unbeautifal ; then this unbeautiful reveals 
 a true, i. e. a real or spiritual beauty. This succession of phna with wh 
 Science deals each found in its turn to be false is just like such a 
 succession of reflections. Phna are symptoms, and ever require to be 
 interpreted. Nay more, not only are they very apt to suggest a wrong 
 idea, but always seem of an essential opposition to the real fact. The 
 symptoms in disease, are ever passions effects of force ; and at first 
 suggest to our minds the idea of force, or increased nutritive passion 
 (i. e. passion of divergent character) ; thus in tumours we see increased 
 growth, in inflammation 'increased action.' Here I seem to have 
 arrived at one of the deepest views respecting perception and the ex- 
 ternal world. For these symptoms (or phna) are due to and indicate or 
 reveal a fact the very opposite, viz., decomposing passion in the body, 
 the opposite of the divergent force, and wh is the ' fact ' or disease. 
 Not only symptoms of disease, but all functions, are divergent passions, 
 or forces, produced by, and revealing (if we cd interpret them) a reality 
 or fact the opposite, viz., a decomposing, a permitted or approximating 
 passion [and revealing this, surely also reveal thereby the life wh pro- 
 duces them]. Now, just such are the phna of the universe : symptoms, 
 divergent passions or forces, operating on us, but produced by the 
 opposite passions in fact ; viz., approximative, wh they reveal. 
 
 It is the functions of nature that produce passion, i. e. that we per- 
 ceive ; but these functions are the effect of approximating passions, not 
 seen, nor to be seen save by the force they reproduce. But in respect to 
 Science, wh is interpretation (as of symptoms of a disease) or knowledge of 
 the organization in wh they take place, our concern is not with them, 
 but with the approximative passion they reveal. Every force that affects 
 us in any way whatever (physically) arises from some equal approxi- 
 mative or permitted passion -decomposition or partial death in nature : 
 (we see it, e. g., in heat and light), and life from chemical approxima- 
 tive passion : and in the organic life of mind equally as in that of body 
 the approximative passion in nature is controlled by our life. This is new 
 clearness of perception ; the psychical elements are truly attracted inde- 
 pendent of our consciousness. We only perceive the tendency wh is in 
 them ; and our forming theories, &c., by spiritual elements of cause, truth, 
 beauty, is just the same as physical vital resistance. Our perceptions of 
 nature from approximative passion in nature, is just as force or passion 
 is produced in some particles of living body by approximative permitted 
 passion death in others, just as death of one organization gives life 
 to another. 
 
 See the parallel also between onr perceptions as derived from function 
 in nature, and our life as also therefrom derived ; with this difference, 
 that in one case the elements are taken into the body, in the other only 
 passion is produced in the body. Thus I perceive perception : and how 
 well it agrees with the view of universe as passions or organizations of 
 spirits. In fact we thus interpret nature by ourselves ; and pathology 
 has revealed it. It is the death of nature that we perceive or shd per- 
 ceive by these phna. But this death, producing function, reveals to us 
 also the life. 
 
 This approx passion in nature producing divergent passion in us is 
 simply vibration ; showing us to be part of the great life. Now the 
 approx passion in nature produces the force wh affects us, and which ..
 
 281 
 
 we may say we perceive ; but it causes perception in us by so operating 
 on our organization as to cause a functional passion therein it neutral- 
 izes our vital force. 
 
 I shd like to trace the how and the why in all this : all the seemingly 
 opposite things will be found to be truly one. As, e. g. that we truly 
 perceive external passion, and yet only that wh is in and depends upon 
 ourselves ; we ourselves being part of and one with that wh we perceive. 
 This is why our perceptions, wh are most evidently wholly subjective 
 and dependent upon our own organization, yet do truly represent the ex- 
 ternal world. "We see at once that we perceive things as they are when 
 we see that we ourselves represent those very things we perceive that 
 any decomposition within functional limits in the optic nerve produces 
 sensation of light ; yet does the optic nerve truly cause us to perceive 
 light. [Consider the many cases in wh in our physiology there is so 
 striking a control exercised over our ' passion ' ; and discriminate the 
 spiritual control from the mental and physical.] Consider also how the 
 inherent limit to passion (from limit of spirits ?) causes ever organization 
 or life. 
 
 Surely the opinion that there is wrongness in nature and that there ia 
 no wrongness in nature, are ' polar ' opinions ; respectively female or 
 actual, and male or 'ideal,' nutritive and functional, with all the other 
 terms for polarity ? This links itself again with what I have seen before 
 respecting that polarity of thought and development by polar union. 
 This development of thought consists in an union, or making one, of the 
 actual and the ideal. This is just what I have seen as constituting the 
 vitalization of science (and art and philosophy) making the ideal one 
 with the actual thus a polar union. 
 
 Our practical science mechanics, &c. have been hitherto merely em- 
 pirical. For mechanics is like medicine : making forces which produce 
 evil to us produce good to us. In an eclipse of the moon, what 
 we physically see is a ' thing ' a great black body in the heavens ; but 
 what we think of or ' perceive ' is a passion an astronomical motion wh 
 brings us directly into relation with the principles on wh nature rests. 
 Now this is just how we shd be related to the whole of nature. 
 Whenever we see a thing, that wh we physically see shd be quite sub- 
 ordinate and merely suggestive. We shd think of or perceive the passion, 
 wh it represents to us, and thereby and therein the action wh constitutes 
 it. All ' things ' shd take us at once in thought and real perception up 
 to the reality the spiritual act. There is nothing chimerical, unattain- 
 able, or even difficult in this. It is the most natural thing, that wh it 
 is emphatically the nature of man to do, wh he continually does more or 
 less ; and ever more as his knowledge advances. It needs only to know 
 the reality ; to think of it and perceive it in the phn is then a necessity 
 of our constitution. This is the glory of astronomy that it pre-enacts 
 the mental life of man. When we see clearly that things are motion, 
 that motion is spiritual passion i. e. a spiritual act it will be the sim- 
 plest, most unavoidable thing, to perceive in ' things ' a spiritual act. 
 
 The confounding thought with consciousness confuses and renders un- 
 intelligible all metaphysics. The psychical universe is God's act as is 
 is the physical ; and perceived by Beings, i. e. by spirits ; and the phy- 
 sical and 'psychical exactly correspond, being one ; and surely the indi- 
 vidual body and mind exactly correspond also. We can understand
 
 282 
 
 the individual mind also by the light of the body. It is an ' organization ' 
 one with and derived from the external universe (psychical) and by 
 passion in least resistance, acted on by the external psychical world, as 
 the body is by the external physical world : but that wh is ' perceived,' 
 or the ' thought,' &c., being truly functional passion in it, of its own, 
 and determined by its ' organization ' as the functions of the body. The 
 relation of the body to the external world and to the spirit exactly ex- 
 presses those relations of the mind. Our thoughts or ' mental passions ' 
 wh we perceive or are conscious of, are just the same as our bodily func- 
 tions wh we similarly perceive, and both resulting [from previous 
 tendencies resisted. 
 
 The view of mind as unconscious puts instinct in its right place. The 
 vital processes of wh we are entirely unconscious are strictly to be called 
 instinctive, and all the actions of animals belong to that same category, 
 being equally unconscious. The instincts of animals, commonly so 
 called, and the vital processes wh are regarded as merely physical, are 
 one and the same ; the instincts must be interpreted and understood by 
 the vital passions they constitute a life in the same way. So our mind 
 is consciousness of instinct that is all. 'Instinctive' passions, the 'physical 
 life,' perceived ; just as our physical consciousness or sensation is 
 * physical life ' perceived. 
 
 I think we shd use the word soul for the correlative of body the 
 approx passion, of wh the material universe is the divergent : the psyche 
 of the Greeks. Even as I say, the physical and psychical ; and in the 
 Bible, body, soul, and spirit. Body (or matter) and soul constitute the 
 vibration alike the universal and each minutest. This is better than 
 the word ' mind,' which can with great difficulty and feeling of forcing 
 be disassociated from consciousness. I must leave the words mind and 
 mental in their connexion with consciousness, and .-. confined to man, 
 and speak of what is much more natural, the brute or animal soul, wh 
 wh has long been used apart from consciousness. So there is the soul of 
 the world ; and all in nature wh, if result of conscious action, we should 
 refer to mind, design, &c., is rightly set down to the soul (anima mundi) 
 this is the unconscious mind the counterpart of matter or motion. We 
 are conscious of or perceive our souls as we are of our bodies. There is ' 
 an embracing of old doctrines here also poetry in the words (as in the 
 use of the word ' passion ' for all physical ' action.') 
 
 As each vibration consists of a produced and permitted half, so must 
 it be with the great vibration wh constitutes matter and mind : the 
 characteristic of the psychical passion must be that it is permitted, takes 
 place by a pre-existing tendency, needs no force to produce it. The psy- 
 chical is the physical, or Nature, returning to God the physical a forcing 
 into wrong relations (a nutrition). The mind is the necessary return ; 
 the passive passion wh occurs when not prevented, and yet again surely 
 effects function reproduces the force. 
 
 The first great vibration was as all others : and mind or mental passion, 
 .-. exists necessarily as the fall of a weight after it is lifted. How 
 this is to be seen is interesting : the physical and psychical universe 
 are one vibration surely in a great chain the physical from preceding 
 permitted passion, producing the force ; the psychical permitted, repro- 
 ducing the force, and passing on into another ' produced.' Thus see how 
 the psychical necessarily results from the fact of Nature.
 
 The true philosophy is sure to say again whatsoever has ever been 
 rightly said for it is Nature's self and must endorse all things, hut it 
 will say them more truly and especially it will show each thing to he 
 the same as its opposite, e.g. self-control and acting out one's nature. 
 
 Surely there must be something in this that the body and mind of 
 each individual has pre-existed is the same passion that has been before 
 in other forms. Can there be here any bearing upon the pre-existence 
 of souls ? Again As there is really no time or succession, each man's 
 body and mind constitutes one special form of an ever present passion : 
 or rather not so, regarded as a body and mind. It is a body and mind 
 only inasmuch as it exists in time. Consider this with respect to direct 
 and special creation as of first specific forms. How can we consider such 
 a plant e. g. as made perfect at once, not growing with lapse of time ? 
 There is no real time in either case no time to God. How can we con- 
 ceive God as causing by some special mode of acting what we call time 
 to be wanting in any particular case. We confound realities with hu- 
 man phna. What can be gained by such a difference in what sense is 
 the one act more direct than the other ? 
 
 Consider the sexual union is the type, or fact, of all permitted pas- 
 sions of all that takes place from attraction ; and the resulting gener- 
 ation or production of new life the type of all produced, or upward, 
 passions. It is vital passion from decomposition. The fall in every vi- 
 bration is the sexual union the rise, the new life. Now observe : the 
 permitted passions in the body are the causes of all our perceptions, but 
 I conceive that it is the passions produced by these that are the imme- 
 diate causes of perception or that of wh we are conscious. It seems 
 like the permitted physical passion becoming produced psychical (?) 
 Speaking now of the consciousness of the physical passion or of sensa- 
 tion itself is it the permitted passion or the produced one that we are 
 conscious of ? I incline to the latter : we ' perceive ' the function, not 
 the decomposition that causes it. 
 
 Surely is it not thus That Science is related to the physical, Art to 
 the psychical (body and soul of the phn respectively). And are there 
 not three parallel forms in each 
 
 SCIENCE. ART. 
 
 Mathematics ^ fMusic 
 
 Physics (in largest sense))- -j Painting (Sculpture, &c.) 
 
 Metaphysics ) (Poetry 
 
 These being, length, breadth and depth ; and neither Science nor Art 
 complete or actual (' a thing' or realized) save as including all three. 
 
 The tendency of a plant to the light all animal and vegetable tend- 
 encies indeed all physical tendencies, every form of attraction, is well 
 and truly called love, and made one with our passion or ' emotion.' Be- 
 cause this physical ' tendency ' is the very thing wh constitutes our emo- 
 tion ; we being conscious of it. The perception or consciousness of this 
 identical tendency or force constitutes the conscious feeling, we therefore 
 rightly attribute our own feelings, sensations and desires, or ' passions ' 
 to all things : the identity is true and real, the only difference lies in 
 the consciousness. Our love is the very fact of polar attraction, as before 
 shown. The peculiarity is in our spiritual consciousness, and this 
 spiritual consciousness applies only apparently to the passsions wh exist 
 in the body and mind of a spirit as a whole. This is interesting to
 
 284 
 
 note, because all animals all nature form bodies (and souls) of spirits ; 
 but these spirits are not conscious of what takes place in them indivi- 
 dually, but only of the passions in the organism as a -whole. Even as 
 we are only conscious of those passions wh affect our bodies and minds 
 as wholes, not of those affecting the elements as particles, save as the 
 whole is made up thereby. The same is true of all other passions as of 
 love : and observe, thus all our ' passions ' (conscious passions or conscious 
 life) are repeated in respect to all the particles or elements of our 
 frames. 
 
 Perhaps part of the felt cogency of the conviction that the simplest 
 account of any natural facts must be the true one, lies in this : that if 
 it were otherwise the man who invented the simple view wd excel the 
 Creator in intellect. Take Copernicus e. g., he wd have been more than 
 divine if he had discovered a way by wh the phna of the heavens might 
 have been more simply effected than they were in fact. This is the 
 explication of the relation of theory and interpretation ; viz. that that 
 wh really exists is the very last thing we discover, for this simple reason, 
 that it is not that wh we perceive. We perceive of necessity an effect 
 on ourselves ; perception is consciousness, wh can be only of that wh is 
 in ourselves. The entire intellectual process is this from the given ef- 
 fect upon ourselves to find out that wh really exists. From this point 
 it is simple ; theory is a grouping of our perceptions, or effects on our- 
 selves interpretation the exchange of these for the fact external to our- 
 selves : and why also we cannot by direct observation of nature perceive 
 that wh really exists this giving us only effects upon ourselves. Thus 
 comes the mental life. And can I see how physical nutrition and func- 
 tion correspond with the mental (theory and interpretation) how nutri- 
 tion is parallel to the perceptions, or effects on ourselves, classified and 
 arranged by idea of truth, &c. ; and function to the interpretation or re- 
 jection of the fictions and perception of the fact. It is plain how each 
 interpretation is a perception, i. e. a new life, or nutrition the basia for 
 a new growth. 
 
 I see now the sense and tightness of that apparently odd idea of 
 Miiller's of the mind being divisible : e. g. in those animals that are so. It 
 is quite true : i. e. the psyche, the conscious being, is one indivisible 
 the key is the unconsciousness of that mind ; its complementary relation 
 to matter. With regard to the unconsciousness of brutes we must not 
 overlook the evidence from the instincts of plants, wh are to so great an 
 extent parallel. 
 
 The doctrine that ' Nature abhors a vacuum ' is precisely the same as 
 the modern doctrine of tendency to specific form. And the latter like 
 the former is subject to most puzzling anomalies and limitations, if we 
 wd only have the sense to learn from them. Difficulties and anomalies 
 are only sign-posts kindly erected to show us when we are wrong. The 
 essence of all these chimeras is the attributing to ' Nature ' a spiritual 
 attribute power, viz., the power of acting. What sets them all right 
 is to recognize practically the axiom that every natural fact or event 
 must have some immediate cause on wh it directly and passively depends, 
 and wh cause it is the very business of science to find out. The idea of 
 a direct act of God suggests itself here, and well and rightly : it is the 
 very idea, but presents itself in a wrong, viz. a partial, form. It is ex- 
 cluded, to a pious mind, by the fact that physical proximate causes can
 
 285 
 
 be discovered for so many things, and .. since these are all God's direct ' 
 act, that action of God must coexist with and be embodied in such phy- 
 sical causation. Thus we are directed to such a mode of regarding Na- 
 ture as shall find it to be at once an universal physical necessity and 
 God's direct act wh is the view I suggest. 
 
 Motion or matter or the physical world becomes passion in the 
 spirit, being perceived by us, .. it is that and nothing else. 
 
 Our Science is rotten to its very core in its doctrine of ' properties of 
 matter,' such as an inherent ' refrangibility of light.' So an universal 
 gravitation also, and almost all its other principles or ' conceptions.' 
 They are the very wrongest way of looking at the matter : they involve 
 the attributing to matter ' spontaneous action ' ; properties are powers of 
 acting only a spirit can have properties. Nor is it anything but an 
 error to think the case is mended by saying these ' properties of matter * 
 are, or are expressions of, the will or force of God. This is an attempt 
 to cut the knot, wh ties itself again for ever. It is doubly wrong ; it is 
 unscientific and irreligious ; it banishes God from the present where alone 
 He is of any use to us, morally ; it introduces Him into the past in a way 
 that is only baneful to us intellectually. The very idea of matter is 
 that it is a constant series of passions : one force in many forms, each of 
 wh must be resolved into a preceding ; and the truth of this series of 
 passions the reality of it is God's Act. 
 
 The necessity of the study of facts, observation and investigation of 
 Nature as the basis of knowledge, is very simply seen upon my views. 
 For the great ultimate question, the source of all knowledge and the end 
 of all enquiry, is, What is God's act ? what is God doing : i. e. what ia 
 the cause of the passion in ourselves ? But it is clear that the only road 
 to this knowledge is by ascertaining what is that passion in ourselves, 
 i. e. what are the 'phenomena.' Two things and two alone constitute 
 all knowing, and the means of learning what God's act is 1st to observe 
 the phna, 2nd to interpret them or deduce from them their cause, i. e. 
 the fact or reality. I have said that the human emotion is the truth of 
 things ; e. g. the ' modest ' violet ; because it is only so that we know 
 the ' passion ' : but is it not otherwise ? e. g. we perceive our physical 
 passions also the weight, i. e. the attraction of our bodies ; but this is 
 embraced in such language, as we might describe a rock as ' staggering 
 under its own weight.' It is all right alike, physical and psychical pas- 
 sion so expressed. 
 
 Does not the supposition of a real matter at all, involve the attributing 
 to it spiritual or active powers ? I doubt if the two can be disassociated 
 by any possibility, and that a real matter that is not an agent is incon- 
 ceivable some property or power must be ascribed to it. Inertia is 
 none. Thus I come again to the point as self-evident, that Being and 
 Agent are one and the same : nothing exists that does not act. [And .-. 
 the sinful or unacting spirit is not ? ] 
 
 This, then, will be the problem : given the instincts, to deduce the 
 perceptions. "When we have ascertained the true relations between our 
 own perceptions and instincts, we may probably be able to do the same 
 for other animals, and infer their perceptions from their actions. It is 
 probable, I say. But we must be careful to separate in our own case 
 all that is spiritual or moral, all that is truly active ; reducing ourselves 
 for the purpose of scientific investigation, to the condition of the 

 
 286 
 
 alone. Perhaps the special instincts of some animals may arise in 
 part from a limited capacity of perception ; they may be acted upon by 
 much fewer stimuli than we, and really perceive only those things to 
 wh they have special instinctive relations. Are not the external 
 instincts all a reproduction of that wh is perceived : the artistic instinct ? 
 Is not the scientific instinct, the necessity of putting our ideas right, a 
 type of all instincts, and may I not thus trace out the nature of all in- 
 stinct in myself : and especially by aid of the very similar instinct in 
 some people of putting things ' tidy ' or in order about them, wh latter 
 instincts I conceive to be clearly dependent upon and regulated by 
 perception : the different perceptions lead to different necessary, i. e. 
 natural, and instinctive, actions. How the animal instincts all tend and 
 are subservient to the maintenance and reproduction of animal life. So 
 the physical instincts polar tendencies of inorganic bodies are sub- 
 servient to the production and maintenance of life. Chemical affinity 
 (wh is the great instinct), is the origin and source of life. So the 
 mental instincts are the origin and source of mental life, or reason. There 
 is a complete parallelism of inorganic, organic, and mental instincts. 
 
 Let us see in what sense instinct is a polar attraction, in what sense, 
 that is, finally. It is not true, as I have supposed, that if man had 
 been perfectly holy, his instincts wd have been perfect like the animals' ; 
 the failure of his instincts is essential to his intellectual life. He errs 
 because he is a ' living soul.' By this origin of intellectual life, the 
 constantly renewed instinctive passion, is the origin and source of the 
 living intellectual passion; there is no requirement of a special in- 
 tellectual force, as there is not of a special vital force : the metaphysical 
 problem is simplified in the same way as the physical the only force 
 or passion to be accounted for is the instinctive in the one case as the 
 chemical in the other, and this is an easy problem. Man's actions also 
 are instinctive, and this is a glory ; they rather rise to the dignity of 
 instincts than, as he fondly imagines, are above them. For the essential 
 character of an instinct is that it accomplishes more than is designed, 
 wh man's actions also do. Nor losing herein any of their dignity as ra- 
 tional, for man designs none the less because he accomplishes more. 
 And, indeed, to go back to the deep root of it, all passion is instinct also 
 in this sense ; for all nutritive passion produces ' organization,' all ap- 
 proximative passion results in function. [This latter is simply conversion 
 of force, and rests upon the fact of continuance of force.] Thus chemical 
 union is an instinct, inasmuch as besides the union of the two particles, 
 a function, e. g. heat results : chemical decomposition is an instinct, for 
 the decomposition forms part of the ' organization ' of the universe. 
 Thus both nutritive and functional passions possess this character of 
 instinct, but it is best marked and most manifest to us in the functional, 
 the function being indeed the higher end that is served. What we call 
 '* instincts ' are usually functional passions, though nutrition itself is 
 thus ever a function, a higher end served by ' nutritive ' approximative 
 passion. But the production of ' organization ' by divergent or nutri- 
 tive passion is not immediately sought, and is also a higher end. Thus 
 every passion is instinctive the approximative and the divergent both 
 attain an unsought end. So it is in human passion : the work of 
 Genius is emphatically instinct, and produces a function entirely un- 
 foreseen. The work of talent seeks a single isolated end arrangement
 
 2S7 
 
 of Certain facts, but in doing this fulfils the higher and unsought end 
 of constituting part of the organization and functional power of the 
 ' mind.' Human mental passion thus retains the higher end of instinct, 
 altho' failing, and constituting a continuous vibration or organic life. 
 [This is organic life continuous vibration or as the term is confined, 
 continuous chemical vibration ?] How good the word ' instinct ' is : how 
 it shows us the passion to be the very result of the particles, the ele- 
 ments themselves : ' instinct ' is a capital word for functions resulting 
 from approximative passion in elements of mind or body. 
 
 "What an absurd supposition it is that such animals as those moving 
 cups on the duckweed feel, or perform their functions with consciousness 
 and design ; but if not, the entire point of the unconsciousness of beasts 
 is conceded. Again, the supposition that animal instincts involve con- 
 sciousness, knowledge and design or ' sensation,' certainly proves too 
 much ; it involves too much (knowledge and reason) and on this account 
 also must be abandoned, it wd involve in some cases surely the possession 
 of moral spirits. But Instinct becomes wonderfully interesting and in- 
 structive on this view of it. They constitute a life they are a function, 
 a divergent' passion produced by an approx, itself permited by previous 
 divergent passion. The instincts of animals are a true life, parallel to 
 organic life. And see, organic life is itself a function the function of 
 an organization. Here is a beautiful field to trace out : the necessity, 
 the causes, of instincts, and how particular instinctive passions are the 
 same as the vital organic processes. How the particles in living bodies 
 (and indeed throughout nature) do the very same as animals in their in- 
 stincts in short the parallelism of the instinctive passions wh form the 
 living body and the animal instincts : e. g. the ants in Africa forming 
 themselves into a raft to cross streams what is this in physical pro- 
 cesses ? it exists in the formation and development of the body and in 
 inorganic nature too. So true is it that the only knowledge is sympathy : 
 that even sin cau only be understood by sympathy, i. e. by like passion. 
 How could a being without passions such as ours ' comprehend ' crime : 
 murder, if he were never angry, or j ealousy if he had not loved ? Is 
 there not even a legitimate inference as to the Divine Being here, and to 
 His knowledge of us ? And think too how knowledge always goes with 
 and induces love. That God knows us altogether is a certain assurance 
 that He loves us. 
 
 Nov. llth, 1856. This has struck me respecting logic. The logical 
 faculty helps thus : Every one has certain basic or fundamental ideas (in 
 accordance with wh, more or less, he arranges all his conceptions and 
 views). Now if a man have not logic he can arrange his views incon- 
 sistent lywithout feeling them to be so, and . . can rest satisfied, looking 
 at subjects as he likes, seeing them all under the glow of his favourite 
 moral imperfections, as e. g. of God's goodness and "wisdom, and not 
 perceiving that his opinions are more or less inconsistent with such 
 general idea ; hence he is eloquent, active, can talk and interest, and in 
 a word, be ' charming.' Indeed, 'imaginative' men are very much 
 characterized by this deficient logic, and poetry involves it [as yet]. See 
 Mr e. g. ' The world is holy :' not perceiving the illogicalness of calling 
 a thing ' holy.' Hence I think, in a great measure, the weakness of 
 poetry, and that class of thought. The poets do not perceive the 
 illogicalness, but practically the world feels it, and even to the best of 

 
 288 
 
 us, such thoughts seem to be a thing apart from the real and actual 
 World ; we call it * imagination,' meaning fiction. [As indeed, in a high, 
 noble (i. e. a vital) sense it is. And, by-the-bye, surely imagination 
 altogether, as Euskin defines it, is the vital introduction of fiction, pre- 
 paring only for the function.] Now, the logical man is very different; 
 to him it is necessary that his conceptions shd be really consistent ; 
 hence he is ill at ease ; does not know what to believe, does not find 
 that he can ordinate all facts and phna under any such beautiful basic 
 idea, is .. at a great disadvantage; cannot speak, has no beautiful 
 things to say, finds poetry mystify him, has no brilliancy, is a 
 mere dull, useless simpleton. But his turn comes for thus it works 
 the illogical man rests content ; the logical advances. "With patient toil 
 he arranges his ideas consistently ; but then he finds that they require 
 another basic idea, by his logic he overthrows the fundamental concep- 
 tions, and introduces one consistently with wh all the phna may be 
 arranged; making thus an absolute advance or development in 
 knowledge. The logic works to and fro, as it were, vibrates. It is a 
 lever by wh he overthrows his own basic conceptions. I have the image 
 of stone-work in my eye : he first lays a rest for his logic, then by 
 means of that, as with a lever, upheaves his own firm standing ground. 
 He gets ' revelation ' in fact that is he interprets. I seem to arrive at 
 this (tho* it appears strange to me) : that logic is emphatically the in- 
 terpretative faculty. Logic puts right the ideas arranged theoretically, 
 or in vital wrongness ; and by that means reveals or ' inducts ' the new 
 basic idea or general conception, i. e. the function ; or in Science the de- 
 velopment, the new and higher life. [For development is truly a 
 function ; it is the functional divergent, or vital, passion, as it were, 
 retained within the individual, instead of transmitted externally that 
 is all.] This seeing that the ' elements ' (of any theory, &c.), ' must go 
 so; ' this instinctive putting right, and so 'revealing,' i. e. interpreting, 
 is in truth the logical faculty. The interpretation is emphatically 
 logical. I think this must be so. It is a happy dignifying of logic. 
 This ' logical faculty ' is simply that instinctive perception of truth or 
 right relation. And here is the relation of logic and imagination : they 
 are polar, the old approximative and divergent, male and female. Imagi- 
 nation is nutrition, theory, fiction; logic the function, interpretation, 
 exclusion of the fiction or vital force. Thus imagination is the nutri- 
 tive, the theoretical, the converse of it is the logical. Here shd be the 
 love between them. Imagination and logic are man a^id wife one ; the 
 blessed parents of truth and mental life. [This agrees strictly with 
 Euskin.] The logic cannot be without first imagination ; but imagina- 
 tion exists for logic. Without poetry can be no facts.' 
 
 "What a strange divorce and unnatural hatred it is that has existed 
 between imagination and logic, or rather, not unnatural, but only that 
 natural aversion between boys and girls, wh I have noted so widely, and 
 wh is the precursor of the marriage union. But how wonderful it seems 
 that I shd find the logical faculty to be emphatically Genius. How 
 oppositely we usually think ; but it is so. The gift of Genius is to ex- 
 clude fictions, to permit the elements to assume right relations logic. 
 [Boys, at a certain age, have just that same contempt for girls that 
 logical men have for imaginative.] Mozart wrote music logically ; and 
 so of all interpreters. It was very clear in Copernicus, that he treated
 
 289 
 
 astronomy logically. Imagination is theory, after all. All this 
 is merely the old common sense and instinct of the world that 
 imagination and strict reasoning shd be united. Logic works first for- 
 wards on the phna, then backwards upon the ' stand point.' My own 
 logic has worked thus : I never could see that the facts of the world 
 agree with God's skill, wisdom, and goodness, as the ' idea of the world.' 
 Accordingly I worked ' logically ' upon the phna, and then my logic 
 worked back again, revealing to me a different, higher, and truer ' idea ' 
 of the world, viz., that of holiness ; revealing it by the interpretation of 
 the phna, or rather, of the imaginative theory of them. And this 
 holiness, wh has been revealed to me as the ' fact ' of the universe, is 
 not a fiction, but genuine, real, and logical holiness, viz., the holiness of 
 a deed. It has been said before, imaginatively, i. e. fictitiously, the 
 world has been called a ' holy thing, 1 
 
 This surely is somewhat of the analogy between the physical nutrition 
 and the mental : the fictions introduced in 'theory' (mental nutrition) 
 are the vital resistance in the physical body. 
 
 Logic is suffering the elements to arrange themselves as they wd be 
 without any force imparted by us (for resistance is force or passion). 
 The one is introducing ourselves ; the other withdrawing ourselves (or 
 our ' vital resistance '), and necessarily in this order : we can perceive 
 no phna without thus introducing ourselves. (See Whewell : the twofold 
 character of perception.) 
 
 I have observed that there are three things in life the vitality, the 
 form, and the functional power. This same three-foldness exists in all 
 things, and the recognition of it and treating separately the three ele- 
 ments, probably wd be the best way to clear up difficulties in almost all 
 cases. Just as every ' thing ' has length, breadth, and depth ; and we 
 should be entirely puzzled if we did not recognize them if we did not 
 recognize in the apparent surface the element of depth : regarded as a 
 surface it wd be impossible and quite unintelligible. We see the length 
 and breadth the recognition of depth gives us the thing. Therefore we 
 have two eyes : that we may see depth, i. e. see things, not surfaces. 
 This is a great fact : in every sense we must look with two eyes to see 
 the depth, or ' substantiality.' Mentally also we have two eyes. ' Look 
 with both eyes.' Does not the unification of two opposites ever depend 
 on the looking with both eyes ? Head and heart, the two polar mental 
 tendencies ; for do not the two eyes represent these polar mental pas- 
 sions (imagination, and logic, I may say) ? They are right and left ; and 
 the two halves of the body are polar. Thus the two different [and in 
 one sense opposite and complementary] images, seen by the two eyes 
 respectively, represent the two polar views of any subject ; as seen by 
 the two classes of minds wh I have before spoken of [the < logical ' and 
 the ' emotional '] those who adopt right processes, and those who stick 
 to right results. And the true thing is seen, mentally and physically 
 alike, by the putting together of these opposite views ; wh gives a true 
 view wh includes both. To this idea belong all the old expressions 
 about two views of a subject, the tale of the two sides of a shield, &c. 
 The human race learns thus to put the two mental views together, just 
 as the baby learns to do with the two pictures seen by the two eyes. 
 This appears widely : if we do not see the true relation of the depth of 
 a thing, how erroneous our view ; adding the depth to the surface as
 
 continuous with it and in same direction misrepi*esents the object entirely. 
 Now this is the very type of error : e. g. in the earth's orbit we look at 
 the depth as part of the length, /. see it wrongly. Now the depth re- 
 presents the function, and our error is ever to make the function one with 
 the nutrition ; calling both ' vital action.' Our error is not distinguishing 
 the depth as depth, i. e. not looking with both eyes. 
 
 This is partly the use of analogy. All things present the same real 
 facts or ' passion,' but this appears in many forms : one subject will pre- 
 sent certain relations clearly, others obscurely : another will present 
 clearly that wh is obscure in the former, and so on. Now when we have 
 in hand any subject in wh certain relations are obscure, we refer to ano- 
 ther in wh they are clear to show us what they are, and then we can trace 
 them in the obscure presentation. But the right use of analogy is a gift. 
 The requisite point is to seize in the analogy that wh is essential and per- 
 manent the fact and not the form : wrong analogy is transferring the 
 form ; right analogy, the fact . 
 
 In every case, every form of thought or class of knowledge, it is ne- 
 cessary in order to grasp or know the phna, preparatory to interpreting 
 them, to introduce fictions, wh not only are not, but cannot be, true. 
 Such were the epicycles, &c. Nor can these fictions be excluded until 
 the phna are thus grasped and assimilated [as Berkeley tried to do]. 
 They are necessary in their place as necessary as life. The introduction 
 of the fictions is not development ; it is expansion of the existing life. 
 The interpretation is the development or rise to a higher form of life. 
 
 So L and even Swedenborg are not advancers ; they are the expansion 
 
 of the present, not the introduction f the future, tho'they subserve and 
 are the means of it : the reaching the limit of any one life being the 
 means wherely its development is effected. Still they belong not to the 
 new but to the old. 
 
 Is Poetry female to Science is poetry female 1 I think so : as imagi- 
 nation is to logic. But also embracing both polar forms, as each polar 
 form ever does. I think Science and Poetry are polar, because I have 
 found them one. 
 
 This is striking to me : that as development in physical life is result of 
 pressure, or restraint, so the mental development is result of restraint also. 
 The logic that prevents so much believing and saying and expansion 
 that is it : it cramps and confines the passion, concentrates it ; causes two 
 to be in the compass of one [2 in same time, as in physical life 2 in same 
 space.] This is as I have seen : both physical and mental development 
 consist in the union of two polar opposites into one. The theoretical or 
 imaginative man is discursive, expansive ; finds room for all his mental 
 passion, runs into many forms, has unimpeded growth but this is in- 
 compatible with development. The logical man, who is cramped and 
 confined, prevented from running into any forms of belief and feeling wh 
 are inconsistent ; he, supposing he has the passion, developes puts two 
 together and makes one higher. Thus in both physical and psychical life, 
 pressure or restraint determines development, i. e. under suitable condi- 
 tions. The passion must be present and sufficient, and the restraint of 
 the right sort, and so on. And again development often arises, not 
 from external restraint or pressure, but from a pressure generated and 
 belonging to the individual itself. So also in mind, the logic is the self-
 
 291 
 
 generated pressure. ' All development takes place in a uients.' So in 
 mental development, sometimes surely there is external restraint wh is the 
 uterus ; either strictly, as of a mother, or figuratively as of external re- 
 sistances ; sometimes the self-generated restraint, as of a caterpillar in 
 the chrysalis, &c. But the resistance or pressure is no good without the 
 vital passion, of course. The logic is useless "without the sympathy ; it 
 is the shell without the life or imagination. No men are so limited and 
 stationary as the merely logical. It is the having the passion that con- 
 stitutes the theory or imagination in its full extent, but under a logical 
 pressure, that produces the development. The sympathy is the force, the 
 logic the resistance ; but both must be. Here is what I have seen before 
 as the elements of advance in knowledge 1st sympathy, 2nd logic ; the 
 3rd, or knowledge of facts, is merely the feeding, and is involved in the 
 sympathy. See thus how men of Genius are female ; they supply the 
 resistance : but it is strange that logic is parallel to female. 
 
 The logic without the sympathy is the shell without the internal life. 
 
 Here is what Mr. L says about creeds, and his simile of the lobster 
 
 casting its shell. The religious feeling is the force, the creed the resist- 
 ance. And thus also comes religious development development yet not 
 change ; essentially the same in all the changes of form. Religious 
 feeling without creed is like imagination or theory without logic : creed 
 without the feeling, like logic without the feeling (the sympathy) the 
 two produce the development of the religious life; even to casting off (?) 
 the particular resistance. For it is ever so : the ' uterus ' or its analogues 
 are escaped from when the development is complete. Their use and end 
 is only the production of such development. Logic is only good for de- 
 velopment of mental passion, for raising its grade ; yet logic ever has its 
 place, just as resistance has. The resistance remains just as perfect, tho' 
 any particular resistance is escaped from ; so mental passion is always 
 equally under the rightful dominion of logic, even when logic has done 
 its immediate work of developing or raising grade : equally under the 
 rightful dominion ; but not practically, for as the infant wh has been de- 
 veloped in the uterus grows freely unrestrained after birth, so after the 
 development of a new grade of thought the theory or imagination works 
 freely unrestrained by logic, and must do so until that limit also is reached. 
 [And this same process also exists in the embryo, as I noted in the al- 
 ternate growth and development in utero, with successive expansions of 
 the uterus itself. It is one process, for in truth the universe is an embiyo 
 developing."] 
 
 Further the interpreter, as such, rather puts old mental passion into 
 a new form than introduces any that was not before ; the imaginative or 
 theoretical man it is that says novel things. The interpreter puts right 
 what has been said wrongly, it has ever been so in the past. It is so with 
 me. I do but say clearly and consistently what others have felt and 
 tried to say before. And here is some injustice in fame, for she dwells 
 on the interpreters alone, comparatively ; yet all their passion was others' 
 before it was theirs, and the imaginative men might complain and say, 
 ' that is all mine ; I said it before.' True, but you said it not aright. 
 The poets have ever said the world is a spiritual fact, but they have said 
 it with a vital wrongness, illogically and by fictions. The interpretation 
 of Science says it rightly, by excluding fictions and logically gives the
 
 292 
 
 very fact, not the phna ; and .-. science reaps the praise of that which 
 poetry has done. Although hereafter, I believe, the praise shall be more 
 equally awarded, the part played by the theoretical be more justly re- 
 cognized, and function no longer exalted at the expense of nutrition ; 
 nor nutrition loved for its own sake in opposition to function. I see 
 how it is that those that speak most for receiving the new cannot yet 
 really receive it any more than others. They think they hold the new, 
 whereas it is only one polar form of the old ; the truly new, the devel- 
 opment or higher grade is inclusive ; the falsely new, or polar, is opposed. 
 The one denies its opposite ; the other embraces both the opposites and 
 makes them one ' of twain making one new man.' Even as the Gospel 
 embraces the opposites of law and love, obedience and freedom, and was 
 truly new ; a development, at once fulfilling and abolishing the Law. 
 So is ever development, mentally, religiously, physically not a progress 
 of one, but a union of two. "Wonderful is this view of Love as force ; 
 Law, &c., as resistance : parallel to sympathy and constraint, imagination 
 and logic. I mean in giving the female polarity to the logic and law ; 
 so beautifully making both to be both. 
 
 The logical and the imaginative men alike are one-sided, alike cannot 
 receive (i. e. at once and instinctively) the development. They are op- 
 posed, partial ; each is a half taking itself for the whole, and cannot at 
 once perceive that the new the development is the ' marriage ' for wh 
 they are designed and destined. The Law cannot see that it is honored 
 and fulfilled, the Love cannot endure this fulfilling of the Law : the 
 Logic cannot endure this embracing of the Imagination, the Imagination 
 revolts against the subjection to Logic. So it was and must be : the 
 only thing is to show it ; then those who can see it, will. 
 
 I have not done this new arrangement of ideas, nor conld have done 
 or dreamed of anything like it. It has done itself ; nor could any man 
 be more astonished at the result. 
 
 'Theory/ 'imagination' are good words: 'seeing/ forming 'images,' 
 they are the grasping the phenomena. 
 
 What I want to find out is, in what sense this logical conversion of 
 action corresponds with the physical, in respect to its being motion in 
 direction of least resistance. What is the parallel to this character of 
 motion, in relation to thought. What is it that may be affirmed of 
 thought in the same way and with the same bearings as that it takes 
 direction of least resistance, is affirmed of motion. What is the nature 
 of thought from wh all mental facts flow, and wh may be given as the 
 expression or cause of them all. It must be something involved in the 
 very fact of thought, essential to it, part of the definition. 
 
 The mental world repeats the physical world. Our mental sensations 
 correspond to our bodily sensations, and there must be senses in the 
 mind corresponding to our bodily senses ; a mental hearing, seeing, 
 feeling. Our mental sensations are like our bodily, being actions in our- 
 selves, and thus it is that all minds will not work rightly. A man 
 born with a scientific tendency, i. e., who must have his ideas in right 
 order (or 'tidy'), seeks first to arrange them upon the basis of logic, 
 hence he is all for argument, ' carries out his principles,' in the meta- 
 physical stage ; afterwards he learns better, and comes to have regard 
 to truer and wider relations ; not neglecting logic, but using it. 
 
 It is very clear that logic is thought in direction of least resistance j
 
 293 . 
 
 and the resistance is opposite thought, i. e., primarily, as the primary 
 resistance to motion is opposite motion ; but not only opposite physical 
 or mental passion, but as any motion or tendency to motion wh is in- 
 compatible with a given motion may be resistance to it : as we see 
 under the form of cohesion, wh is the usual form of physical resistance. 
 So in respect to thought ; not only truly opposite, but any incompatible 
 thought becomes resistance, and the ordinary resistance to thought 
 surely is mental cohesion. 
 
 Thought takes its way in the mental world among the existing results 
 of thought (or mental things ? ideas), just as motion does in the material 
 world among the existing results of motion. The parallel is com- 
 plete ; physical and mental cohesion are the (general) ' resistance ; ' 
 though there may be also dynamic resistances from other dynamic 
 passions in either case. And the action itself is either merely propa- 
 gated, as inorganic motions, or is, in a secondary sense, originated, viz., 
 by previous restraint, as in machines or living creatures ; in both cases 
 parallel : and man, in addition, subjected to the control of the spirit, 
 both body and mind. How good, in this sense, is the use of the word 
 ' consistency ; ' how closely connected its physical and mental significa- 
 tion ; it is that wh resists, and thereby directs motion. That wh yields 
 readily to motion or thought, in any direction, has no consistency. The 
 principle of contradiction [as it is logically expressed], wh ' determines 
 all our judgments,' i. e. the entire course of thought ; what is it but a 
 form of the axiom, 'passion takes direction of least resistance.' 
 Cousin says, it ' constitutes a part of the essence of all being, and no 
 being can exist without containing it.' While our knowledge is limited, 
 it seems to me, that true views must necessarily have false logical conse- 
 quences : this indeed is one reason of the two polar opinions. 
 
 Our Science is polar to the old : ours is imaginative or theoretical ; 
 the old, logical. We cast off logic and look to phna ; introducing any 
 ' fictions ' that will enabls us to ' grasp ' them. Just as the imaginative 
 in theology ; the true development is the union of both. The experi- 
 mental Science was not truly the new ; it was only the oppositely polar. 
 The final, the new the larger grade can never be the opposite of 
 anything [except of sin or not being], because it involves both. That 
 wh is ' opposed ' is certainly partial, or polar, and must be united be- 
 fore development can ensue. The woman sprang out of man : first the 
 logical or male; then from it the phenomenal, or imaginative, the 
 female. Then offspring from their union, or truly new development. 
 And here becomes apparent the truth of the * instinct,' that true gen- 
 eration involves union of male and female, as opposed to gemmation. 
 To true development of the * new generation ' sexual union is essential, 
 and no life is maintained without it. 
 
 The new theory must ever be rejected of the many; they are either 
 male or female, but the unifyer is both male and female in one [i. e. of 
 that grade], and neither will have him ; he is not suited to them. His 
 kingdom is the future. The new development appeals to those whose 
 mental life is not fixed, whose opinions are unformed, to the com- 
 paratively ignorant but powerful, and to the new generations. 
 
 Surely it is to the Scotch metaphysicians (the ' common-sense school ') 
 that we owe the absurdity of our perceiving things as they are. What 
 a nonentity this statement is ; (just like 'nature abhors a vacuum.'
 
 294 
 
 Nothing is said, only the 'phn' asserted in a round-about mystified 
 way ; and, in fact, it involves that the cause and the effect are one and 
 the same, i. e. that a thing is the cause of itself. 
 
 How each form of mental passion in the history of man appears to go 
 to an extreme to an excess before it is succeeded by the opposite, 
 e. g. the extravagant logic before Bacon, the equally extravagant phen- 
 omenalism of our own day. Is not this like the ' surging up ' of motion 
 against the limit that throws it back, and makes it return on itself. And 
 consider how these returning motions interfere, i. e. sometimes increase, 
 sometimes altogether destroy, sometimes alter. Cannot we trace the like 
 in the mental life : for the interference, tho' it may destroy wholly or in 
 part the original form of passion, only alters its form ; it still exists 
 (and surely at right angles). Is there not a parallel to this in the forms 
 of a nation's (and of a man's) mental life : One form of passion reach- 
 ing its limit, returns, interferes, destroys that form, but produces in its 
 stead another ? Can Art, Literature, Science, be such different forms ; 
 produced sometimes by such interference ? I think it likely. [Consider 
 B. 's remarks about the mental life of England and Italy.] I say logic 
 reveals its limit, and returning, by interference, destroys logic, but pro- 
 duces Art or Literature, and so on. 
 
 The interworking of the force and resistance is wonderful. One man 
 has the force, another the resistance. The true advance is by marrying 
 them. So man first thinks one thing quite absolutely, and extremely ; 
 then just the opposite : then, if he can put them together, he has some- 
 thing worth having. Observe also, that resistance also is force : The 
 male is approx., producing divergent; the female is divergent, pro- 
 ducing approx. both are both (as noted long ago, in respect to mind 
 and body) ; the difference is in the order of sequence. 
 
 Is the imagination the divergent force wh produces resistance to the 
 approx passion of logic ; will not permit the completion of that approx- 
 imation ; refuses to be shut up in such a narrow conclusion ; makes this 
 approx passion produce more life, more nutrition ? ' There is more of 
 it ' ; for it is the presence of more that thus resists chem passion re- 
 sisted by chem passion. [See before]. 
 
 As all divergent passion, all nutritive and vital, involves and depends 
 upon preceding approx must not all imaginative men possess also the 
 approx antecedently wh I have given as the distinction of Genius. It 
 is a fair objection; but I think the distinction I have drawn between 
 logical and imaginative as unipolar, and of Genius as embracing both, 
 must be held correct ; and the name of Genius be confined to those who 
 strictly develope or raise the mental life to a higher grade. The act of 
 interpretation involves this, or I think should be held to do so. Inter- 
 pretation is the function retained, made continuous ; nutrition and func- 
 tion constantly succeed one another on the same level in mental and in 
 physical life, but it is Genius only when the function is made to be de- 
 velopment. 
 
 This union in one of the sympathy or force and the logic or resistance, 
 is well seen in Copernicus. He is the type of a man of Genius. The 
 Epicycles were the imaginative or theoretical the nutrition and these 
 set logic at defiance. Others saw the logic, e. g. some laughed at the 
 epicycles : Copernicus embraced the phenomenal or imaginative and the 
 logical as well, and made them one in the motion of the earth. The
 
 295 
 
 epicycles were pure imaginations, typical ones ; pure fictions, yet true to 
 the phna, going to the heart of them. Now how can I find the parallels 
 in astronomy to the mere speculation, and the mere accumulation of 
 facts ? It is interesting to note that the life of astronomy, its functional 
 power, or power to reveal the motion of the earth consisted in the in- 
 troduction of the fictitious epicycles. The epicycles were seen hy the 
 men who invented them, doubtless ; even as imaginative fictions are now ; 
 hut not /. were they men of Genius, only true men. All genuine ima- 
 gination must be thus passive all talent, I mean ; because it is produced 
 by other force. What is the setting about things to make them as we 
 think they shd be acting by rules : what physiologically, I mean ? 
 
 When I assert that the universe is 'passion in spirit,' I do really as- 
 sert that we perceive that wh exists. Thus, viz., What we perceive is 
 clearly passion in spirit ; viz. passion in our own spirit in ourselves. 
 Therefore I assert that that wh we perceive(as the universe) is that wh 
 really exists, viz. passion in spirit ; i. e. that we perceive that which 
 exists. This so-called common-sense argument, that we perceive that 
 wh really exists, is wholly on the spiritualist side in its only possible 
 signification. 
 
 About our perceiving real material things how can it be said, when 
 we perceive a bright disc a foot in diameter, that we in any sense per- 
 ceive such a body as we know the sun to be. It is manifest that these 
 material things from first to last are mere hypotheses wh we invent as 
 the only wav by wh we can account for or represent the phna. They 
 are exactly parallel to the epicycles things inferred to make the effects 
 on us intelligible and graspable ; there is certainly nothing more in 
 them. All our scientific representations of Nature are constructions of 
 epicycles, and nothing more. We infer or invent all these ' things ' 
 and motions, or vibrations, &c., as means whereby we can represent the 
 phna, or conceive of them as true. And their use is that of the epicycles 
 exactly : they do represent and place clearly and exactly before us the 
 phna, but only that so the phna may reveal to us the fact. E. g., the 
 doctrine of Light so many vibrations and so small and so compounded, 
 is exactly like the doctrine of so many epicycles of such size and rela- 
 tions. The phna demand those inventions, but they are mere inventions, 
 and will disappear when they have shown ihefact, just as the epicycles 
 did : based all on the false notion that what we see really exists i.e. 
 that that wh is in us is without us, and the cause of itself. 
 
 Further it is only motions that we perceive and never anything else. 
 Even as in astronomy, the substance is inferred ; just as men saw the 
 heavenly motions and inferred solid epicycles. Our seeing the sun is as 
 truly seeing a motion, as our seeing the sun move round the earth is 
 seeing a motion. The question is really the same in each case, and only 
 apparently differs. Thus it is : We see certain phna wh, supposing 
 them to be the reality, the true external fact, require a sun such as we 
 suppose ; but this is just as when the phenomenal motion of the stars 
 was seen, wh, being supposed real, or the external fact, required the 
 epicycles such as were supposed. The truth being that the phna, wh 
 require a sun, are no more the real fact than those wh required the 
 epicycles ; in short, that no phn can be a real fact, and nothing that is 
 supposed, in order to account for and represent any phna as real, can 
 possibly be true or really exist.
 
 296 
 
 I begin to have some faint conception also of how this ' theory ' of a 
 material universe shall reveal the fact the spiritual fact ; shall show 
 us what that act of God is wh is the reality. The exact phna, the 
 attraction of the sun and relation of the planets to it, the material 
 dependence of the various elements and forms of life in nature ; all 
 these shall show us their cause their signification. It will come bye 
 and bye ; tho' I do not see it yet. I see the road to it, viz., a strict 
 adherence to and most careful examination of the phna and theories by 
 wh they are expressed. Even as the earth's motion was and could be 
 only discovered by such study of the phna, and theory of the epicycles. 
 It looms upon me faintly the poetrv of Nature. How the sun attracts 
 all to it ; gives life to all ; how all life tends to the Light. So moral 
 life to moral light : even surely as he who doeth right, or liveth, cometh 
 to the light. Surely such thoughts as these tend to the great interpre- 
 tation that we seek. And moreover, it must be sought surely in the 
 imaginative writings, in the putting right of them. But this must not 
 be done by effort, it must be seen. It is not that such spiritual facts are 
 like the material phna, but the material phna are result of the spiritual 
 fact. Swedenborg's idea seems to be essentially the true one though 
 wrongly put, viz. as believing the phna real, and .-. the more wrong 
 from his Tightness There is such an effect produced on me, i. e. such a 
 phn as requires the hypothesis of a Sun, a solar system, a material uni- 
 verse ; or again, of my own body and mind, to enable me to grasp it : a 
 phn which can so only be presented to my comprehension, accurate ob- 
 servation of wh leads to those conceptions. [This is just as the accurate 
 observation of the heavenly bodies led to the conception, necessitated the 
 conception, of the epicycles.] Now the question is, what is the fact thus 
 indicated, what is the true or real cause of these phna ; not of the con- 
 ceptions, they are altogether wrong and must be rejected but of the 
 phna wh can thus only be presented or conceived as real : the ' phna,' 
 i. e. the sensations, the changes in us thus perceived. "Why seen as 
 life : why as motion in least resistance : all this will be clear bye and 
 bye. Why all these particular phna exactly so and no other way why 
 requiring to be considered in space and time, &c. ? Shall I not find this 
 question repeat the history of astronomy ; perhaps first a partial inter- 
 pretation, as the Ptolemaic, then like Copernicus find a general fact wh 
 accounts for some universal phn ; afterwards find particular phna not 
 included in that, and needing again a phenomenal induction. 
 
 Nutrition exists for function, not in the sense of the decomposition 
 the approximation but only as the new divergent passion or nutrition. 
 Nutrition exists for function in the sense of existing for a new or suc- 
 ceeding mitrition. Life is given for life, exists for life. In the mental 
 life the nutritive putting wrong, or theory, exists for function, but not 
 for the mere putting right, that is of no value ; but only for the new 
 nutrition, the new theory wh results. That is the object or end of each 
 theory : a higher theory, or nutrition of another kind. It is interesting, 
 this general view the entire oneness in opposition, and perfect mutual 
 subservience. The putting right our ideas is nothing worth, only as it 
 reveals to us new conceptions of truth, new phna ; and leads us into a new 
 world, a new life. 
 
 Mr. P did not ' think it likely ' that a great deal shd be seen at 
 
 once. This is just an illustration of the rapid growth in earliest life or
 
 297 
 
 infancy, i. e. of the new life ; the slow growth of the adult, and the 
 difficulty those who are familiar only with the latter have in com- 
 prehending the former. As now, we cannot understand how languages, 
 how the earth, &c., could have rapidly undergone the changes we can 
 trace in them. The new life grows like a child ; hence the apparent 
 power of Genius. 
 
 It is wonderful that all our great Science, of wh we are so proud, 
 ehd be desined to fade away and disappear like the epicycles ; remem- 
 bered only as what wd be if the phna were real, and as what revealed 
 the fact. Yet remembered admiringly, as monuments of human skill j 
 and gratefully, as without them the fact cd not have been known. 
 
 Is not the German mind the logic or ideal, the English the phen- 
 omenal or imaginative, or real ; the English force, the German resist- 
 ance ? Yet the development comes from England ; so it comes from the 
 mother in physical life. 
 
 As the truth of astronomy is inconceivably greater than the phenom- 
 enon the epicycles so conceive how great that truth is of wh all our 
 Science, all the glorious conceptions of astronomy, all the marvels of 
 physiology, are only the phenomenal view. The epicycles are the re- 
 presentation of the paltry effect upon us ; for paltry we may call it 
 by comparison, even as the ancient astronomy was paltry. How glorious, 
 passing all attempts at imagining, must the fact of the universe be. 
 That fact wh shall swallow all the facts and theories of Science and 
 show them to be mere chimeras, representing the boundless heaven in 
 wh man is a minutest speck, as a petty vault of wh he is the centre. 
 For that is the fault of our present Science as of the old astronomy, that 
 it puts man in the centre instead of as a casual fragment. The old 
 astronomy, and our Science too, is many distinct circles instead of one 
 spiral. Our modern Science wh thinks itself the new and true, and has 
 no idea of being superseded, is simply polar, just as the imaginative or 
 phenomenal theology, &c. ; it is not a development or rise of grade in 
 respect of the old ; the theory or imagination united with the logic. 
 It is like theology throwing off creed. 
 
 About transitive and continuous vibrations : A falling stone and heat 
 resulting must be taken together. If we take the fall alone, we leave off 
 where no end ; if the heat alone, we begin where no beginning. So also of 
 spirals, they are transitive and continuous also, and in one form or other, 
 universal : continuous in earth's motion ; but every possible motion is a 
 transitive spiral, for every motion is three motions at right angles ; and 
 all motion also is vibration. Therefore all motion is three vibrations 
 at right angles, i. e. true spiral. For there is in nature no motion that 
 does not involve length, breadth, and depth. This is as true of motions 
 as of things. Consider the complexity : how every motion is accompanied 
 by an opposite while it takes place, and is succeeded by an opposite when 
 it ceases ; doubly vibratile, and each of these opposites is similarily ac- 
 companied and succeeded the simplicity and complexity of nature. 
 
 Talent absorbs force ; Genius re-produces force and passes it on. It is 
 continuous and transitive again. Thus it is, he whose work is the result 
 or expression of his passion has no exterior force. He whose passion is 
 the result of his work has operative force. Take a painter, he has a 
 passion, a conception, he expresses it in a picture very well : when he 
 contemplates it he sees the re-presentation of his passion, he admires it,
 
 298 
 
 delights in it, &c., accordingly ; but the picture can only be admired' 
 &c., by others also ; it has produced no passion in him, much less in the 
 beholders. But another painter paints by instinct, by his nature ; he 
 has no conception or passion to express, but he must paint so, and as he 
 paints, behold his picture reveals to him something he had never con- 
 ceived, nor could, and produces in him an overwhelming emotion or 
 passion. This picture has power in it, it is a functional picture, a force - 
 producer, and it excites passion and emotion in beholders. It does for 
 others what it has first done for the author. The thought that moves the 
 thinker will move the hearer too, and only that : not the thought that ex- 
 presses or is produced by a passion, but the thought that produced a passion. 
 So Goethe is a nutritive poet. His thought produced no passion in him, 
 and it produces none in others. And so of every case here is the root 
 of the matter. I do not say that the nutritive men are not deep feelers. 
 I do not speak of them, but of their works. I say that they absorb the 
 force of passion as nutrition does ; and that the force can only be repro- 
 duced by just inversing that process. But the force of Genius is only 
 the force of talent thus reproduced ; first the nutrition, then the func- 
 tion, and only then. [By-the-bye, the logical people who will 
 have the function without the nutrition, they correspond with Berkeley, 
 little as they think it, and just such was the old pre-Baconian science. 
 Just such indeed are many things.] The men who produce this nutritive 
 imaginative forceless work, must indeed be men of deep feeling. The 
 work expresses or is the result of feeling or passion ; passion is the only 
 force ; the powerlessness of it arises from its being the result and not 
 the producer of passion. "We only need to understand this, to see the vital 
 relations of different men, and we shall put them to their right uses, 
 and not find fault with them for not being other than they are. We do 
 not look for work from the growing child, but we reverence the child 
 not less than the hard-working man ; the latter produces and the former 
 does but absorb force ; true, but the force-absorber is but the force-producer 
 of the future ; he grows that he may work ; nay he may be of greatly 
 higher order than the present force-producer, and be destined to a work 
 greatly more noble. So in the development of the animal tribes, each 
 lower one produced the force wh was absorbed into the higher. The 
 lower is the force-producer, yet the force-consumer in its weakest, most 
 useless form, is altogether higher and nobler. "We must be content. 
 Both force-producers and force-absorbers we want, and of different 
 grades. 
 
 All things, all men, all thoughts, all motions the universe indeed 
 is divisible into the two classes of force-producing and force-absorbing ; 
 this is the great distinction : that is to say, all is vibration ; for these 
 are precisely the two valves of a vibration ; i. e. all is life, or nutrition 
 and function. The universe vibration or life : may we not say, a vibra- 
 tion, a life. Then, if < a life,' whereof ? 
 
 I see the mental life of the individual man now, having arrived at 
 that thro' the universal mental life, by an inverse process to that of 
 physical science, wh proceeds from the smaller to the larger. This is 
 as it should be. 
 
 So, each mental life is vibration, yet is each indeed unipolar on the 
 whole, as each body is ; male or female, men of Genius and men of 
 talent ; yet each constituted by a life, equally of talent and of Genius.
 
 299 
 
 Thus each individual life is a complete vibration, and consists 
 itself of many subordinate vibrations, yet is each only half 
 of a vibration. The cork-screw spiral represents it, consisting 
 of two vibrations at right angles; but in its length, wh is chiefly re- 
 garded, only half a vibration. So a man's life consists of vibrations (at right 
 angles in two directions), i. e. as concerns his own individual life, but 
 as a male he is half a vibration of wh woman is the other half : the vibra- 
 tion does not return on itself in that direction, as it were, but exists in 
 another form ; and the necessity of two sexes, and equality of the two, 
 is this necessity of every passion to be vibratile. Each male must have 
 female as each approx must have divergent, &c. Then, in those cases 
 in wh polygamy is natural or the reverse, the one individual of the one 
 polarity must be truly equivalent to many of the other. Or may it be 
 that the oppositely polar motion to that wh is in excess assumes another 
 form altogether, not in that species of animal ? The work of talent 
 the nutrition is ever man's ideal ; it is what he thinks fit and likes, 
 and has his smallness. The work of Genius ever represents nature, the 
 human is excluded (the fictions). It is taking God's ideal for ours, 
 giving up ours for God's. Thus Genius is so passive : it is not the man 
 who does the thing, it is by no force of his, the thing is done by its 
 own tendencies, its own restrained forces as of a living structure ; 
 and the doing of it produces force or passion. This is proved by the 
 fact that he is passive, it is done thro' him ; but no effect is without 
 equal force, and what force .-. but that wh is in the thing itself, viz., 
 the force which put it wrong, the vital force or talent, and wh is repro- 
 duced by the work of Genius. It is this restrained tendency in the 
 * elements,' the ' structure ' itself, that causes it to be his nature, his 
 necesity, to do what he does. It is the functional passion alone produces 
 force or passion, and it has power on others because it first has power on 
 the ' author.' So in the physical functions, the decomposition, operates 
 on external nature, but only because it first operates on the organization 
 of the individual man ; this is the type of it. The physical effect of 
 the decomposition in the organism is the passion produced by the ' work ' 
 in the man of Genius. So his love produces love. Love is functional ; 
 it is passion produced by a change in us, a permitted passion from 
 stimulus. It is not the result of our force, or passion, or design. It is 
 a thing done in and not by us. It is a work of Genius. Love is the 
 work of Genius; the force-producer, .-.it rules the world. It is the 
 type, the fact of power. Love and power are one, for the polar attraction 
 is love, and that attraction or tendency is the sole and only power. 
 God's power, .*. is His love. The two terms are one. Love is passion, 
 the universal passion is love. And perhaps the term passion wd be 
 better confined to this tendency wh is love, the effect of passion, the 
 nutrition, having another name. After all does not the nutrition represent 
 selfishness, wh retains the function, love wh gives. Function is the giv- 
 ing of life for another life self sacrifice. Consider what M says about 
 Adam, the man, willingly giving up his life : the idea also of Genius 
 wh gives its life, puts its life into its work, imparts its force. But de- 
 velopment is the retaining of the force in the individual, the selfishness. 
 Tho' then the male gives its life entirely for the female. 
 
 In development the male entirely* decays, gives all his life to 
 the new being, not only a little, as in reproduction; the male dies
 
 300 
 
 wholly, and all its life is embodied in the female ; thus two lives in one 
 space (or matter). Yet is the selfishness in nutrition only phenomenal ; 
 nutrition exists not for itself. In woman and in Genius psychically is 
 this giving life for other life, the love. How wonderful in this respect 
 is the passage, ' Without shedding of blood is no remission of sins.' 
 No life imparted except by sacrifice of life, nor restoration of life 
 to the dead. So also interpretation is the exclusion of all that belongs 
 to ourselves, to man ; phenomenally .*. the highest. 
 
 It is beautiful how the perfect development and unity, or exact 
 mutual adaptation, of all the parts both in mind and in the body flow 
 from the law of least resistance : how each least portion or element de- 
 velopes or grows until the resistance is greater than in some other part, 
 and so on, while each .*. receives its precise share in the vital energy ; 
 and has its exact correspondence to all the rest. The difference between 
 passion-producing and passion-absorbing thought may be well instanced 
 in Shakespeare [who, by-the-bye, so especially used other men's ma- 
 terials] . Others had had passions had expressed them in their conceptions, 
 Shakespeare simply saw the conceptions because they would come so, 
 but the conceptions he thus saw moved him to intense passion, .-. the 
 fire that burns in his words and sets all our hearts in flame. In 
 nothing is the distinction more plain than in poetry. The poet who 
 draws direct from the phn is passionless, like Goethe, nay, he is not 
 true to nature, but only to the phn, and forms a theory. . The poet 
 who interprets the theory, and thereby is filled with emotion, not only 
 excites deep passion but is true to nature, to the fact that causes the phn. 
 No emotion in me led me to produce my view of Science, but my passive 
 and unavoidable interpretation of Science filled me with emotion. Is 
 it not the case, that a man of talent is sure to do his work ; a man of 
 Genius may or may not, according to circumstances, it depends on whether 
 he is brought into relation with the nutrition, he is merely a stimulus. 
 It is very doubtful if Shakespeare wd have written any plays if he had 
 not read and been disgusted with the old ones. 
 
 I must think what that spontaneous power is wh is so marked in 
 many people of producing from their earliest years. 
 
 The resistance in the earth's orbit is now at right angles. It is a 
 ' tangential ' motion. So is not resistance (at least, that resistance 
 wh is truly passion and not merely like the cohesion of a resisting me- 
 dium), ever at right angles; are not the polars, in short, at right 
 angles rather than opposite ? Even as the motion of the pendulum is 
 turned at right angles. Does not all oppositeness come from such 
 turning at right angles, and by same means returns upon itself again, 
 as the earth's orbit does ? There is a deep meaning in the resistance 
 turning at right angles, and the turned passion being then a 
 resistance. 
 
 The logic of the question is admitted to be with Berkeley. But 
 right logic does not lead us \vrong ; it is only when the premises are 
 wrong, and the use of logic is to help us to get the premises right. 
 Logic by leading wrong reveals a wrong premiss. He developes who 
 at the same time abides by logic and embraces the right result, the 
 imagination. He gets his premiss or fundamental conception rectified, 
 rises to a higher grade. He who can logically say, ' the world is holy,' 
 knows it to be a spiritual act. He who, holding the world to be a 
 Metaphysics, 228. Nov., 1856.
 
 301 
 
 thing, yet says (imaginatively or illogically), it is holy ; and he who 
 logically denies the world to be holy because it is a thing, represent 
 halves, the two opposites that flow from the false premiss, that the 
 world is a thing. 
 
 Is not the psychical force, emotion ; the function, the production of 
 emotion ? So all things, all ' mental phna,' are stimuli to mind, pro- 
 ducing functional passion, and thereby emotion. Rather, I conceive 
 there must be three mental functions ; emotion being like the nervous wh 
 is more or less common to, involved in, and controller of all. What 
 are these mental functions. What are the various forces produced by 
 Genius. What the parallels to the voluntary and involuntary functions, 
 the conscious and unconscious (of the body). 
 
 The work of Genius produces phna, i. e. passion ; it is a functional 
 passion : only the functional (decomposing or permitted) passion is a 
 phn. Nutrition (or the work of talent) is not a phn. And the phn 
 in physical life, is cause of passion, of emotion. The phna or im- 
 presssion on our senses, and these alone, are the producers of passion in 
 us. Here is a parallel to be marked out. Talent is, as it were growth ; 
 Genius, like the impressions on our senses, or stimuli to function. 
 These stimuli are either internal or external. 
 
 Nutrition also, or talent, must have this parallel, I presume ; as it 
 were the spontaneous nutritions, and the nutritions due to special forces. 
 
 It is so absurd to think of what individual men can do as their doing. 
 It is as if in respect to the functions of a living body we hd think of 
 the doings, powers, talents, of particular particles. 
 
 The want of a right dynamics renders our philosophy utterly corrupt. 
 "We think and speak as if force could commence ; as if some passion cd 
 be that was not a re-production of some that was before : as if in 
 development each new life must not be again : the next in order below. 
 
 Our thought runs through a course precisely parallel to that wh the 
 physical world has gone through, and it is thus that it re-presents it. 
 All thought is common-sense, i. e. mental passion in least resistance, 
 but it is perpetually going wrong, into absurd forms and ridiculous and 
 hateful conclusions ; i. e. because of unseen, unconsidered passion in- 
 fluencing it. These wrong forms correspond to the lower forms of deve- 
 lopment in the physical world, ugly, monstrous, hateful. The develop- 
 ment at last will give the perfect manhood. In the lowest forms of 
 physical life all was equally motion in least resistance ; i. e. equally 
 true and beautiful, tho' not so to us. 
 
 Genius takes the force of all into itself. The force is not its own ; it 
 is the force of Nature. All the force there exists, for all has produced 
 nutrition ; and Genius reproduces it makes it apparently its own 
 passes it on and gets more : represents not human power but the power 
 of the universe. Talent represents the power of a man. There is so 
 much force and so much result, and there is the end so far as that man 
 is concerned. 
 
 Ferret out this false dynamic presentation : ' The deposit comes and 
 destroys the tissue ' whence, what becomes the deposit ? So of higher 
 animals : What becomes the higher life ? The successive creations of 
 animals supposes this : an addition of new force, more power to the 
 world, but not more matter ; more passion in same matter. This in- 
 volves the absurd separation of the matter and the passion, &c. Then
 
 302 
 
 has become of the force that has constituted the extinct life ? 
 
 Consider how what we call our perceptions by the senses are them- 
 selves interpretations, and must come thro' Theory too. We interpret 
 the impressions of vision into an object at a distance, but at first we 
 must have thought quite differently respecting them ; we must have had 
 a theory wh when we found it was wrong, revealed the truth. What 
 we call the outness of sensation, and set down for an intuition, must be 
 altogether an interpretation. So our instinct of substance ? And yet 
 again are our intuitions of cause and effect, and so on, truly interpret- 
 ations. For observe, it is rather the character of an interpretation to 
 be self-evident and necessary : so the interpretation, ' motion takes di- 
 rection of least resistance ' is. Time and space and cause are interpret- 
 ations like that ; for a genuine interpretation is absolute and self-evident 
 in relation to those phna to wh it applies. It is superseded by others 
 larger, but in its own sphere it ever remains absolute and necessary. I 
 can trace one necessary and universal truth : viz. the least resistance 
 doctrine, thro' its theoretical stage. I must try and trace the others wh 
 we have come to look on as intuitive : try, e. g., to begin with the 
 outness of our perceptions. 
 
 Man, physically, is functional works, transmits force, [throws him- 
 self out of himself] ; but mentally, he retains his force ; is nutritive, 
 selfish. Woman, physically, is nutritive retains her force ; does not 
 perform physical work : but mentally, is functional gives ; is loving, 
 throws herself out of herself. This is the relation of male and female 
 man ; the physical and psychical are complementary in the individual. 
 Genius is mentally functional, or giving, like woman ; i. e. is in relation 
 to the race, as woman is in relation to the individual. As a woman 
 wishes to live only, and to be utterly used up, for her family and friends, 
 so a man of Genius wishes in respect to the human race. As a man 
 wishes to subordinate others to his uses, so does Talent wish to make 
 humanity subservient to him. 
 
 Since knowledge is sympathy, and since false, ugly, evil, are wrong- 
 ness from absence or deficiency, i. e. not in Nature but in us may we 
 not say that our perception of false, ugly and evil is always defective or 
 imperfect sympathy. This will do up to a certain point, but now whence 
 come our making truer and better, wh is an essential part of nature ? 
 
 Our right action makes us living ; we being particles, elements in the 
 whole, and by living ourselves .-. contributing to the life of the whole. 
 If we forego our life, die, that is like the dying of portions of our bo- 
 dies i. e. disease. But there is a right decomposing, wh is not death 
 or disease, but function. We produce life for ourselves by right action, 
 in order that we may have power for function the function also right, 
 and living, and life-producing ; and these permitted passions in us, when 
 holy or living, surely are the functions of the greater life. 
 
 It appears rather to me that the theories we form to grasp the phn 
 the ' hypotheses ' are ever truly impossible and involve us in paradoxes. 
 This is the characteristic of them ; the means in part by wh they are 
 overthrown and caused to perform their function. As I conceive that 
 interpretations have ever a character of necessity and universality, i. e. 
 in relation to those particular phna ; but an interpretation of one group 
 of phna is a theory with respect to another, i. e, to a larger ; and the 
 very conception, wh is self-evident and necessary in one point of view,
 
 303 
 
 becomes paradoxical and impossible in another. So were the epicycles : 
 are not such space, time, and cause ; and ' matter ' too ? necessary for 
 the phn, but impossible. And does not this characterize such interpret- 
 ations, viz. that they imply a series of events, or the existence of some- 
 thing wh demands a beginning and yet cannot have it a limit, which 
 cannot be ; as in the series of causes, succession of time, limit of space, 
 &c. With this category I think I must include motion in least resist- 
 ance ; it is as absolutely true, and yet as impossible, as time and space, 
 and that everything must have a cause, and like them it goes back to a 
 beginning that cannot be. In fact these interpretations are themselves 
 phna that require to be interpreted, and the theories formed to grasp 
 them and render them conformable to our intellect as real, are just as 
 chimerical as those of wh they are the interpretations. This is the 
 hopefulness, the joy of our intellectual life. 
 
 Is not the idea of cause correlative in some sense to that of time ? 
 Of everything that exists in time we may, and must ask, What was it 
 before ? i. e. we ask the cause ; and again, What will it be ? it neither 
 originates nor will end in time. So of space : we ask, Where was it 
 before, where will it be ; it neither originates nor ends in space. Surely 
 because it is not really in time or space at all, but only phenomenally, 
 or in respect to the effect on us. So also motion in least resistance, 
 wh is only another form of ' succession of causes,' is phenomenal, is 
 only effect on us, and is related to time and space. In truth the entire 
 conception of a vibration at all is phenomenal arises from relation to 
 us of something, that is certainly not vibration. The phn is not a fact, 
 but a form of thought,' as space and time and cause have been termed, 
 wh thus come into the strict category of phna. So again phna are 
 functional, and emphatically .. result of interpretation. 
 
 A phn is ever, and as such, a result of interpretation ; even as I noted 
 that most probably the outness of our senses was thus agreeing with 
 the result before obtained, that interpretation ever produces a new phn. 
 The evidence of external existence is not supplied by the phna, wh are 
 functions of the mind, or subjective, but by the existence of the mind 
 or man itself; which must have come through, and constitute part of, 
 such an external existence or world. Even as the existence of a mate- 
 rial external world is not proved by the bodily functions, wh are sub- 
 jective, but by the existence of the body itself, wh involves the existence 
 of an external somewhat from which it is derived. 
 
 I have represented the polarity in one respect with the vibration com- 
 plete, in others under the form of a spiral here the idea of the rect- 
 angular relation comes into wider, indeed universal, bearing ; thus a man 
 is vibration of nutrition and function, surely in two directions at right 
 angles ; but in relation to the race he is approximative or functional. 
 Every unipolar must be represen table by a spiral ; and there are ever 
 three vibrations in all things ; two complete and one incomplete (?) 
 and the union of the two corkscrews makes up a complete vibration, but 
 then unipolar in another direction at right angles ? &c. The complexity 
 of Nature from the multiplicity of these threefold vibrations, over and 
 over again in same ' thing ' : each subordinate vibration itself consisting 
 of three, and these polar ; and so again. What constitutes the ' right 
 angles ' in respect to mind ? Trace the universal three-foldness in these 
 directions, and how all mental passion may be resolved into three at 
 right angles.
 
 304 
 
 In Science the phenomenal or theoretical view may almost be charac- 
 terised as the Mw-dynamical, or as commencing with the passion in ques- 
 tion, without regarding it in relation to that wh produced it or its pre- 
 vious form [or succeeding ?] The interpretation is the dynamical 
 refers the phn to its cause. 
 
 Now what is parallel to this in Poetry, Art, &c. the dynamical 
 poetry, &c., as compared with the phenomenal : dynamical meaning 
 causal. Observe : the passion-producing thought ever gives a new phn, 
 viz. the cause vh it reveals. This phn .-. appears as a phn, not a theory ; 
 simply new, quite unexplained and apparently inexplicable ; wanting a 
 new theory to afford its explanation, and .-. unwelcome in science ; sub- 
 stituting a new and entirely unaccounted for, ungrasped phn for an old 
 and familiar one, wh ' theory ' with its fictions had seemed to explain to 
 superficial minds ; or wh had been set down as ultimate and inexplicable 
 because theory failed to explain it as theory ever must fail to explain 
 anythtng, or it could not lead to interpretation. 
 
 In physical science one and the same ' force ' may carry out the nutri- 
 tion and then act as stimulus to the function. So in very many respects 
 I can trace nutrition and function, as parts of a greater function or in- 
 terpretation ; first making a theory on any point on wh the theory is 
 not complete enough, then interpreting that, and getting an ' element ' in a 
 new and larger theory, wh thus is rendered more interpretable We 
 must hold fast to the dynamic view in mental physiology nothing is 
 done without an equivalent expenditure of force. Genius does things 
 without force only because it does not do them, as the fall of an uplifted 
 body needs no force to do it. 
 
 The problem of the material universe is, What produces in us the 
 effect of motion in least resistance what is the fact of wh this is the 
 phn, the cause of wh this is the effect ? My answer is, It is an infinite 
 and holy act of God, with wh we finite beings are in relation. Therefore 
 the effect on us, being limited by our limit, is necessarily vibration, from 
 wh all results by the laws of vibration. 
 
 Is not the produced passion ever the producing turned at right angles ? 
 always arising from resistance to the producing, wh is necessarily a turn- 
 ing at right angles ? In the pendulum and in a falling body producing 
 heat, alike, the motion is turned at right angles. 
 
 I think I have an insight into the nature of that general idea of 
 succession, wh includes that of time, cause (and space) ? Surely it 
 arises from our conception of ' things,' wh, as being ' things,' must be 
 successive. Now, the conception of 'things' is due to the vibratile 
 character of the passion in us. 
 
 Here is a marvel : The approx, or functional passion, wh is the per- 
 mitted, is also the right the type of the holy, again showing us how 
 holy action in us is permitted action, in truth, i.e. God's act through us. 
 So sin is the resistance to God's action : ' Ye do always resist the Holy 
 Ghost.' Our right action is our life. Our sin the world's life. God is 
 no loser by our sin ; only we die. Our right action, in some sense, a 
 functional action, at once permitted and controlled. God's act 
 permitted, our passion controlled ; hence our life. Our passion made 
 to become our spiritual life by a resistance wh is God's act permitted 
 by us. Sin is our passion uncontrolled, working our spiritual death 
 for want of the control of God's act, wh we resist. The resistance to
 
 305 
 
 passion is ever itself a permitted passion. The resistance rightly seen is 
 a functional passion, i. e. it is a force, and .-. must be produced by a func- 
 tional passion. So, when passion is not resisted, this is because some force 
 wh would have resisted it, is itself resisted. Even as we resist God's 
 act when our passion is uncontrolled. And this thro' all the endless series. 
 
 The question of animal consciousness may be tested also in the em- 
 bryo, wh is a living creature performing animal ' actions,' or in the 
 embryonic corpuscles of the actinia, wh Dalzell describes as ' living and 
 acting animals.' Have these corpuscles sensation and design ? [How 
 plain it is that design, i. e. conscious design involves spiritual will ; con- 
 sciousness itself indeed. There can be no ' ego ' without the ' ago.'J 
 
 I must think of Dr. G 's view, that the properties of matter exist 
 only in relation to other matter, e. g. anything absolutely alone wd have 
 no weight. And here observe how it follows, that the universe as a 
 whole, being thus alone, can have no properties, no weight, no anything ; 
 i. e. is nothing, does not exist. The material universe cannot be, by the 
 very statement involved in it ; as matter it is nonentity, and properties 
 also are impossible. How amusing it is that we have been calculating 
 the weight of portions of the universe, but that the whole universe can 
 have none ; how clearly it shows that we have been deluding ourselves 
 with words, and that the universe is passion only, i. e. the effect of 
 action ; viz., God's eternal act. The mere existence of other matter cd 
 not give properties to that wh had not such, only by action on it ; but 
 then wd there not be capacity for being acted on 1 I do not want to say 
 the universe is non-existent, but that it is not matter, ~\i is passion; having 
 always and in itself the properties of passion, without relation to anything 
 else, passion being capable of being acted on, as shown by Faraday, &c. 
 I think this absence of properties, except in relation to other matter, is 
 but another view of one force in many forms, shows succession in space, 
 and .. also in time ; i. e. that each thing is a passion wh previously existed 
 in another form, so involving the idea of cause. It is the one force in 
 many forms ; cut off the other forms, or indeed any one, and it is gone. 
 For each thing's properties are determined by all that exists, and it partly 
 ceases to exist if anything be annihilated. The thought is valuable in 
 this respect. 
 
 How much may be made of tumors : all nature is re-presented in 
 them, all nutrition, all divergent passion (as all approx in inflammation). 
 Gemmation surely takes place, in part at least, by a similar process, not 
 a mere out-growth but one determined by a special approx passion or de- 
 composition. So that the process is truly sexual after all (?) a partial 
 decomposition, as in case of a tumor. 
 
 Consider again, how chemical union produces a divergent or nutritive 
 passion, virtually a life. Think also of those chemical unions wh produce 
 cold, in wh force is absorbed ; a nutrition in approx direction, as it were. 
 Now, with regard to light also, must we not consider interference as a 
 polar union, and producing a nutrition, viz., the heat or chemicity, &c., 
 wh represents the ' destroyed ' luminous vibration. And in this sense 
 also the colors correspond to chemical bodies : the production of color 
 thus a kind of marriage, union of male and female of like kind : and 
 what is the putting together again and producing from them white light ? 
 also in some sense polar union. And darkness produced by perfect 
 
 w
 
 306 
 
 interference, is it not development, complete union of two halves into 
 one different the male and female wholly lost in or passed into the 
 child ? In reference to this consider also how mere shadow or absence 
 of light appears to be a thing. Is there not something like this in cer- 
 tain unions : perfect neutralization and great production of heat, &c.; the 
 resulting compounds being truly rather like the darkness than anything 
 else : representing absence of passion. (Is water such ?) 
 
 Attraction is proof of opposite polarity. What then is the 
 polarity wh causes cohesion, or attraction of like particles to form crys- 
 tals ? I must think of this : an opposite polarity in same ' species,' 
 whence ? 
 
 The first in each new mental grade is Genius, or male : from it pro- 
 ceeds female [theory, divergent passion on that grade] and thus a series 
 of male and female, destined to become of yet higher grade. And so 
 the man of Genius being thus male has a corresponding femality, and 
 is, as I have said, the woman of the race, even as woman is mentally 
 male. Consider the successive developments of the mental life of hu- 
 manity ; in how short a time, yet apparently of much importance. Is 
 it that the mental development takes place more rapidly, or that the 
 physical development occurred much more rapidly than we suppose ; or 
 lastly that the mental developments hitherto have been but slight and 
 merely initiatory, and that an enormous course of development is yet 
 before us. 
 
 This is a great distinction between theory and interpretation not in 
 the use of analogy by either, specially or exclusively but that Theory 
 is made by means of analogy. Interpretation shows itself, and the ana- 
 logies appear afterwards, are shown by the interpretation, not used to 
 arrive at it ; indeed they cannot be, since the interpretation is not sought 
 for or produced at all. Those views wh are attained by thinking and 
 by the aid of analogies are Theories, and necessarily such. Analogy is 
 the means, the only and necessary means, by wh theories are formed. 
 The fictions inti'oduced are analogies (or something not far from this), 
 this use of analogy is the assimilating, conforming to our own life, i. e. 
 making it like what what we knew before. This is a test, I think un- 
 failing, for the two : In Theory, a class of phna are made like another : 
 in Interpretation, they are seen to be in a certain way ; and then it is 
 seen that this is the same as another group under a different form. 
 
 "What is Whewell's ' Introduction of the Appropriate Conception '? is 
 that at all an interpretation, or is it not ' theory'? yet it seems to be not 
 by making like but by separating. It is discriminating [i. e. nutrition] 
 yet not exactly by analogy, altho' it must almost be so, because we 
 cannot think save by that wh is known ; and assimilation is bringing to 
 our previous mode of thought. Analogy produces theory, is produced 
 by interpretation ; just as force produces nutrition, is produced by func- 
 tion. The analogy answers to the force. This is very interesting : 
 theory is analogy-using ; interpretation is analogy-producing. 
 
 The phn wh we call Nature is not greater but less than books. Na- 
 ture needs books. Both are phenomenal ; truly express man, not directly 
 God (i. e. so far as one can speak thus at all) but books in the highest 
 way i. e. human thought. There is therein introduced something 
 added from humanity [Ruskin's ' imagination'] By them Nature (the 
 phn) is interpreted ; by them we rise^rom it to the reality they are a
 
 307 
 
 rise : teach us to sec it ; as re-presented there the phn is nobler. E.g. 
 the phenomenal sun is a small disc ; the (book) theoretical, imaginative 
 sun an enormous and truly glorious globe. The former exists in our 
 sense, the latter in our thought; both however only phenomenal , or ef- 
 fects not facts, (tho' it is curious how the word ' fact ' means ' effect.') 
 So our daily life shows the same continually, how greatly the theoretical 
 exceeds the sensuous. Therefore the glory of the Bible it is the in- 
 terpreter of Nature. "We err when we exalt Nature invidiously against 
 books : the mutual subordination it is we ought to recognize. 
 
 ' De non apparentibus, et non existentibus eadem est ratio.' "We may 
 safely leave out of our philosophy all concern of a vacuum ; e.g. in laying it 
 down as a practical fact that every motion is a vibration, as of course it 
 is in a plenum. The plenum alone is to be considered. 
 
 The theoretical (or imaginative) sun, the sun of science as distin- 
 guished from that of sense, is the result of the interpretation of the 
 theory founded on the phenomenal sun or sun of sense ; i. e. it is a new 
 phn on that level the level produced by that interpretation. Thus : 
 the phenomenal sun gave rise to a theory (the epicycle) ; this interpreted 
 rendered necessary altogether a new conception of the sun, wh then was 
 the 'phn,' the mental phn, as what we 'see' is the physical or sensuous 
 phna : again, a theory, wh when interpreted by Newton, gave yet ano- 
 ther conception of the sun, wh is now the (mental) phn. The phn 
 being ever that wh is inferred as necessary to produce the passion in us 
 wh constitutes the interpretation. In other words, the phn is the fact 
 revealed by interpretation, and revealed, as I have noted, by the neces- 
 sary idea of cause. The phn must be because the passion in us must 
 have a corresponding cause without us, 
 
 This is the essential idea of a phn not exactly a theory, but the basis 
 of one ; theory being the examination of the phn considered as real, and 
 its assimilation, &c. Now this is a great step : the new fact revealed by 
 interpretation is the cause of the passion in us, i. e. that wh we take for 
 the cause of it. So God's holy act is a phn, viz. a fact inferred from 
 the interpretation of the physical world into motion in least resistance. 
 It is the basis of a theory again to result in interpretation. [See the 
 parallel to animal life, especially the occurrence of assimilation or nutri- 
 tion and of polar character, on new grade : and I perceive because of the 
 limit ; the wrongness thence and the polarity.] 
 
 That is not the absolute truth Is it possible for man ever to arrive at 
 a knowledge of reality : since he can only know effect apon himself. I 
 cannot accept the negative conclusion ; it depends iipon what that self is. 
 His ' self ' may be such that finally the effect on himself may be such, 
 and may be preceded by so much previous and preparatory knowledge 
 and learning, as that he shall from it truly gather the reality. In fact I 
 hold that man's education now by material things, and through the great 
 course of intellectual development, is designed to teach him, to enable 
 him to know the reality truly to interpret this effect upon himself. It 
 is not hard to understand that this may be. Already we have learnt 
 without difficulty to refer many phna to their true and unperceived phe- 
 nomenal causes or facts, and I believe this is the type of our referring 
 finally the phn to to the reality, i. e. not perfectly of course,Abut truly. 
 This is worth a good deal of thinking of. In general it strikes me that 
 when we refer to spiritual and moral facts we have reached the domain
 
 308 
 
 of reality, and that when we can truly, see nature to be moral or 
 spiritual we have risen above the phenomenal ; the phenomenal has re- 
 vealed to us the real, in a way very imperfect, doubtless, and destined 
 to endless rectification and expansion in relation to our comprehension, 
 but still real : the phn and reality become one. 
 
 But to return, I have now the idea of a phn : it is that wh we infer 
 (by the intuition of causation), as the ' external ' cause of the effect on 
 us, wh we perceive. This introduces a great bond of unity, for this is 
 the first phn and the last. The things we see about us ere we begin to 
 philosophize are that ; the last result of philosophical analysis is that ; 
 and so all intermediate conceptions. [A phn may well be called a 
 ' conception ' in one sense.] Here is the bottom of this idea of outness 
 in the senses ; not any primary fact at all, but only one form of a process 
 of our mental passion, every where traceable and clearly to be understood. 
 By-the-bye, this intuition of causation must be mental passion in 
 direction of least resistance : consider it so ; I think I see it : from 
 our own consciousness of being ' cause,' or acting, it follows that we 
 cannot think against the idea of cause. So can I trace the other 
 intuitions, as being merely thought in least resistance. Let me try. 
 
 Now, these phna of the senses are basis for theory, as all other 
 phna are ; and do not theories themselves consist in the arising of new 
 phna in the same way from idea of cause, as our perceptions increase ? 
 i. e. the effects on us become more numerous from our observation. [It 
 is so trace how this corresponds with nutrition from taking food.] I 
 think 'phna ' are ever produced by interpretation, and .-. also the first 
 phna, or mere perception of things. This is true ; but in a proper sense 
 every phn is a result of interpretation, in the sense of being the result 
 of a passion-producing process. A passion-producing process in us ever 
 causes us to see a phn ; reveals to us a phn, I may say : it must do so, 
 because, there being an effect on us, the intuition of cause necessarily 
 furnishes the phn or ' external ' cause. Then our primary perceptions, 
 the things which, without thinking, we perceive by our senses 
 (thro' the operation of the intuition of cause, wh constitutes their 
 ' outness '), correspond with the things wh we perceive by interpretation ; 
 because interpretation, as I have seen, corresponds with God's act or 
 nature. God's act or nature produces on us the primary effect, or causes 
 us to perceive the primary phn. Interpretation, wh is nature over 
 again, causes us to perceive the other phna ; may I not call them 
 physical and psychical ? It is the identity between nature and inter- 
 pretation that causes the identity of effect in production of phna. This 
 identity I have before noted : that God's act is ' passion -producing,' as 
 our interpretative mental passion ; wh indeed is God's act still again 
 and again, ever more and more, causing the phn to be ever more 
 and more, until at last it enters the domain of reality and becomes 
 spiritual : the primary or physical phn remaining ever the same. [I 
 have before shown how the theory the nutritive passion, is phen- 
 omenally unlike or opposed to God's act, i. e. arising only from our 
 limit, and occasioning no phna as producing no passion, only a means 
 for producing the ever increasing passion, the ever enlarging phn, for us.] 
 
 The intuitions are perhaps better regarded as passion in least resistance 
 than as interpretations. Yet phna are in some sense theory, as produced 
 by intuition of cause, wh seems to be the essence of theory.
 
 309 
 
 The phn itself, unobserved, is simply the germ, the basis and commence- 
 ment of the new life, wh grows if nourished, and developes by interpre- 
 tations and polar unions of two in one. The theoretical sun (our sun), 
 is a phn produced by astronomical interpretation. 
 
 People think that philosophy can never be in itself influential on, or 
 regarded with interest by, the people generally. I am not so sure of 
 this, when philosophy is renewed. It was so of old, when it referred 
 to matters of universal interest, to the instincts of truth, justice, piety, 
 in a word, to Tightness. "Why may it not become so again ? I grant 
 the modern is not, and cannot be, but the reason is plain ; our modern 
 philosophy is nutritive force-absorbing, has no power in the nature of 
 things. But that wh I propose is functional, force-producing, and has 
 power, can work. Why shd I not believe that another working period 
 is coming for philosophy, that is is becoming again one with religion, wh 
 is the working thing. I do believe it, and will. True it is, that 
 people will not give up any of their avocations or amusements to hear 
 about natural science in form of facts. That they are wearied with de- 
 monstrations over and over again, of that wh wants no demonstrating, and 
 is less felt for being demonstrated God's wisdom and goodness. True they 
 yawn over Bridgewater Treatises, and only read on from a sense of duty. 
 But a philosophy that brings home nature to man's heart, and sees in 
 the universe the very passions that are agitating his own bosom, is 
 another thing. Whether they can find time and attention and love for 
 that, remains to be seen^ Why shd we prejudge so ? we always think 
 nothing can be but what we are used to. Absolutely all that our modern 
 philosophy has for the heart is proof that God is very wise and very 
 powerful, and, on the whole, rather good than otherwise ; and strangely 
 enough these proofs are made to consist in what we can understand. 
 Moreover, our philosophy and science have been not only divorced from 
 but almost ever opposed to religion never one with it, and it has 
 been .-. watched like a thief, and ever sought to be bound in new chains 
 as it burst the old ones. It has been quite taken for granted that it 
 will do harm to religion if it can ; and we profess to wonder that this 
 philosophy has no charms for human nature : mine is one with religion 
 again deals with the eternal verities in wh all men are always in- 
 trusted, truth, goodness, right, man's first and unfailing instinct. It is 
 only an artificial and temporary enthuiasm that can be get up about the 
 legs of a fly or the size of colored rays. 
 
 Abstract philosophy ' interpretation/ the answer to the question 
 ' why ' in its ultimate form, the moral why, was ever man's passion, is 
 now, and ever will be. This is re-introduced with all the added scope 
 and power of five centuries' nutrition. Our modern nutritive science has 
 been doing all it can to put it down and keep it from operating, and in 
 the main, tho' with hard struggles, it has succeeded, as indeed was right 
 and necessary ; but the passion, the tendency, is there still as ever ; be- 
 coming indeed more powerful the more it is opposed [as chemical affinity 
 does in nutrition] : it will have its way again at last, indeed the nutri- 
 tion exists only that it may, and that in doing so it may effect objects 
 higher than itself the function, that is, of Science. 
 
 There has ever been, even in the most nutritive periods of philosophy, 
 this passion the other way : is now now most when nutrition seems 
 most completely triumphant ; now most, in spite of Comte there is
 
 310 
 
 more of this functional tendency now than of the nutritive in the func- 
 tional periods of philosophy. In the Greek and medieval periods a 
 natural philosopher in our sense was unknown. To this universal pas- 
 sion I appeal, and I believe the appeal will be felt. Mature will assert 
 herself, and philosophy again become popular, as it must do whenever it 
 identifies itself with religion. 
 
 It is right to judge of the future by the past, but then we must take 
 the past in a sufficiently comprehensive sense, and must remember that 
 it includes many varieties, and especially two opposite passions or modes 
 ever and essentially. Also we shd remember that we do and must inter- 
 pret the past by the present, and are apt to see in it nothing but that 
 wh we have experienced in our own times. The tendency ever is to think 
 what we have attained final, when we cannot see beyond it ; and that 
 wh surrounds us as permanent. "We see in past history, in an altered 
 form, but our own passion ; and in the future foresee nothing more 
 forgetting that passion is of two opposite kinds as well as of innumer- 
 able varieties, and that vibration or constant alteration is an absolute 
 law. 
 
 Consider how the law of the inverse square is only an axiom, viz. the 
 uniform expansion, or distribution of force or motion : so the law of 
 least resistance. Is not every great advance always to or towards an 
 axiom, yet only to be obtained by induction ? Interpretation must be 
 analogy-producing, because it is ever a step towards unity. [Why is 
 theory produced by use of analogy so necessarily wrong ? j 
 
 In spite of the dogma so strenuously clung to of God being especially 
 manifested where no ' second ' causes can be traced, and of the objection 
 felt to showing the causes of anything God is supposed to have specially 
 done, yet how man's instinct compels him to seek them ; and how when 
 they are found, instead of excluding God, they are always used to shew 
 His ways and His attributes, His power and wisdom. All natural the- 
 ology rests upon our knowledge of second causes these alone are avail- 
 able for the purpose. Only then do we truly feel God when when we 
 can trace Him : only so could He shew Himself to us. Doubtless this 
 is one reason of our necessary conception of cause and perception of 
 causes in Nature : in order that we may realize Him. How absurd 
 then, to try and limit its application yet is this instinct too most ad- 
 mirable and excellent ; for what is it but the instinct that cause is only 
 God's act : it is the perverted operation of that true instinct under the 
 influence of the false conception of real physical causes. 
 
 Gravitation is not possibly a property of matter ; for if a thing exists 
 with no properties, how can the creation of another thing with no pro- 
 perties produce anyhow any attraction ? 
 
 What theory a man makes depends on what was in his mind before 
 may be anything ; but the interpretation, being produced by the tend- 
 encies in the thing itself, must be true. It is thus as Emerson says, 
 ' What is thus ' seen ' is authoritative, and the world calls it truth.' 
 
 All evil is nutrition : we are confused respecting that wrongness wh 
 is disagreeable to us. All wrongness, all nutrition, is disagreeable, is 
 evil, or opposed to tendencies of some beings, i. e. of some spirits. All 
 life, all organic life, e. g., is felt as evil by some; and the tendency, 
 the proneness to function, is ever and always, is nothing else but, that 
 wh we feel as tendency to correct the evil to put right the wrong.
 
 311 
 
 This passion of ours, dislike of wrong and tendency to put right, is the 
 very fact of the tendency to function. It is the human function, there 
 is no other nutrition and function but this ; conscious or perceived 
 wrongness or evil, and conscious tendency to put right. All nutrition 
 is felt as evil, all function is the result of conscious desire for good. 
 It is the putting things right ; as we put them right when we cannot 
 stand the wrongness any more. 
 
 C sees ohscurely the mental life : ' the first enunciation of the 
 
 meaning of the cranial bones was more result of inspiration of Genius 
 than of that labored process of reasoning by observation,' &c. ; i. e. it 
 was an interpretation, as every new idea must be, and forms the basis 
 for a nutrition or theory. Again, ' the same Genius led him aside into 
 the mazes of transcendentalism.' I see there are diseases (excesses) to 
 wh each form of the mental passion is liable. The Functional to tran- 
 scendentalism, barren deduction, and logic-chopping, as of middle ages, 
 mysticism : excessive decomposing change, and without nutrition or 
 new materials, surely inflammation ; not only not advancing but absolute 
 destruction, death, and disintegration, and only an unhealthy vital 
 passion aroused. The Nutritive tendency to mere accumulation of facts 
 over and over again, separate theories, and refusal of broad inductions 
 or interpretations ; Tumors (?) mal-assimilation, over-loading with 
 unassimilated materials, &c. This is very marked. Mysticism and 
 positivism are respectively functional and nutritive disease, and we 
 may here perhaps see a little of the use and Tightness of disease ; was 
 not physical development achieved by disease, and .so still. 
 
 Here I see a help towards treatment of disease also. For what pre- 
 vents the disease of the mental functional process, the excessive specu- 
 lation (mysticism), is the taking food, the regular and sufficient observa- 
 tion of phna, and correctly representing them, and more in proportion 
 to the activity of the function ; so for that physical disease, to wh this 
 disease is parallel, surely the remedy shd be ample and regular food. 
 Consider too how want of food produces decomposition and inflammation 
 in the body, as want of observation of phna the excessive and abnormal 
 interpretation in the mind. So, for the abuse of the excessive nutrition 
 [tumours and what else], both in body and mind, the remedy surely 
 must be ample exercise, sufficient functional process. 
 
 The inductive^ process, in its first and ordinary sense, leads to error, 
 that is to theory. It is gathering ' facts ' and seeing what can be made 
 of them ; how they can be connected as true (and always by the aid of 
 analogy), in fact, it is nutrition, and emphatically this is what Bacon 
 did ; set men on nutrition, his one idea was that. I do not think he 
 truly saw, or even foresaw, the function. 
 
 By Genius the fact is seen before the proofs : wh must be, for as soon 
 as we begin to apply proofs to an interpretation we are at once con- 
 structing a new theory on the basis of it ; i. e. I conceive, unless they be 
 merely negative proofs against the old theory, and tending to show that 
 the interpretation alone is possible. As soon as we bring positive proofs 
 or facts we are making theory. Consider, however, how it was that 
 Bacon gave the right interpretation of heat in his vintage. Did he 
 make theory and interpret too ? 
 
 I shd like to trace the life in mathematics : the nutritive and func- 
 tional in their various successions and mutual subservience, the develop-
 
 312 
 
 ment of it, in fact ; and especially how Newton interpreted the old ma- 
 thematics, and so discovered and made the new. I am convinced that 
 this was the process : so his dislike of Euclid, and also, wh is marked 
 and very valuable, his imperfect knowledge of the old, of details, &c. 
 Consider again, how mathematical figures, i. e. possible ones, may he 
 considered. Ellipse as diagonal with diminishing force ; the oblique 
 section of cylinder as diagonal without diminishing force, and so on. 
 Are all ovals in nature ellipses : have we not some without the varying 
 force sections of cylinders ? 
 
 The nutritive Science is essentially working with instruments, and 
 relying upon them as ours. The function, is man going back to common 
 sense and simply measuring himself against nature. Both are needed. 
 Bacon set men using instruments and relying on extraneous helps ; very 
 prominently he puts this forward. The old philosophy was man's direct 
 working, wh he especially argues against, but for wh the time is now 
 come again. That illustration at the commencement of the Novum 
 Organon has a wonderful depth of meaning, but more than Bacon said ; 
 he thought we shd work by instruments for ever. I must try and see 
 the basis of this parallel : why nutrition and theory is like working by 
 instruments or mechanical contrivances. Why function or interpretation 
 is like simple working with hands, as individual and unaided man. 
 How true it is of Genius, and how all that is said of it naturally follows 
 from this character : its insight, expression of nature, simplicity, &c. 
 [See Euskin or Turner.] And the mutual connection is evident : for 
 exertion of force we do need the mechanical aids ; we see it in our 
 physical labors clearly enough ; as Bacon says, nothing worthy can be- 
 come without ; but to allow the operation of resisted tendencies we 
 want none. These produce the force, not absorb it. It is clear now : 
 and why and how this self distrust of men, and reliance only on instru- 
 ments, and the self reliance wh characterizes Genius. 
 
 Can I see how Bacon's work was itself an interpretation, he too so 
 self reliant. His thought was interpretation of the wrong thought before, 
 clearly ; and could not have been without : for the abuse of the deduc- 
 tive method itself became a nutritive wrongness, wh led to restore the 
 phenomenal. Even as now the abuse of the phenomenal is a nutrition, 
 wh leads to restore the deductive. 
 
 It is quite a wrong view to consider that Newton wanted to use ma- 
 thematics, and .-. made them. The thing 'made' is simply seen 
 because it cannot be helped : its use follows after. This apparent design in 
 Newton's creation of mathematics will illustrate the apparent design in 
 nature. Newton did what was mathematically right, and behold perfect 
 adaptation and beautiful use. God does what is morally or spiritually 
 right, and behold the same effect. Consider what is our working from 
 design, to effect given objects, the consciousness of wh in our own work 
 causes us to think the same of God's work. Two things, I see, to be 
 said on this point. 1st That we thus work only in repeating that wh 
 has been already done ; reproducing what has already ' existed ' (i. e. 
 phenomenally), it is essentially an imitative process. Invention is never 
 accomplished thus, i. e. invention of the right : the first doing of the 
 thing is ever spontaneous, undesigned, in fact, a work of Genius, or 
 function. Now this, and this only, corresponds with creation. 2nd This 
 working by design, wh I have seen to be emphatically not corresponding
 
 313 
 
 with God's act, is the work of talent [see before] ; and this shows me 
 another character of talent work [theory or nutrition] that it is essentially 
 imitative, doing what has been done before, as it were, with design to 
 produce such a result. So, I observe it is produced by the aid of 
 analogy, producing again, in another form, what has been done before, 
 and, indeed, what now exists. Development involves essentially a 
 functional process, depends on it, is a replacement. This is excellent in 
 the mental life ; how Genius produces the new ; talent, never ; and how 
 .. the existing talent of any age never can receive the new work of 
 Genius. It is its nature to keep and to repeat that wh is : essentially imi- 
 tative. And see the proof of the sexual nature of development, i. e. its 
 dependance ever on decomposition and replacement. Replacement is 
 new theory from interpretation of a theory. 
 
 ' The world is a work of Genius,' true to nature, and .. of boundless 
 meaning. A saying of Genius, undesigned,^ unforeseen in its bearing 
 and its uses : said as creation was done rightly. It is wonderful how 
 nothing is natural, true to nature, but the undesigned work of Genius ; 
 all works of design or talent, all imitative works, are wrong or nutritive, 
 and want putting right ; and yet the phn is so also. Imitation is wrong : 
 here is the deep reason it is unnatural. Natural work is the work 
 wh expresses ourselves, the only right. Yet for us imitation, or design, 
 for the two are synonymous, is proper, even as nutrition is ; it is the 
 nutritive wrongness. We must work imitatively and originally by 
 design and spontaneously this is our life. By design we achieve our 
 nutrition, in spontaneous action we permit our function ; but the designed 
 or imitative work belongs to us only as creatures : this has no parallel 
 in God. See how little glory we ascribe to God when we attribute his 
 work to design, our own lowest form of working, and alas ! that alone. 
 
 Nutrition or wrongness exists only in the phn, not in the reality (fact 
 or deed), or nature. Do I thus approach the view that sin, or moral 
 wrongness, is inherent in the creature ; result of limit or deficiency ? 
 I do not think so ; there must be moral will, and .-. power. But I em- 
 brace thus whatever of possible idea there might be in that conception 
 of inherent defectibility in created things, as resulting from the original 
 nothingness. It is true, all phenomenal wrongness, or evil, is mere 
 result of creature's finiteness (defect). 
 
 That the phn cannot be real is proved by that very infinite succession 
 into wh we immediately plunge whenever we try to consider it so : for 
 it is plain all this succession has relation to us, and beings like us. 
 
 The proof of the reality of the cause of the phn is that all men perceive 
 the phn, i. e. of the universe. That is just as the revolution of the earth 
 is proved by the fact that all men see the sun go round. It is interesting 
 to study the nature of the uniformity of sensation : I suppose simply a 
 common nature, and common phenomenal relations. 
 
 To get a true conception of disease in every way we must look to the 
 decomposing process first. It ever starts there ; there must begin ; and 
 there our tracing of it. [Is not this parallel to sin being ever in want of 
 control of passion.] No diseased process can be rightly conceived except 
 by being traced to its origin in permitted passion. This is only looking 
 at vital processes in same way as at inorganic. The only right beginning 
 is ever in the permitted, force-producing passion or event ; we must 
 always begin there. It is the same as we must conceive of Genius first
 
 . 314 
 
 creation first. It is this that the original ' creation ' siginifies. For 
 the whole universe may be regarded as a divergent passion, and the 
 going back to God's creative act is it not simply (in respect to us) going 
 back to the approximative passion wh must have preceded ? In respect 
 to organic life and every thing connected with vitality, the way to see it 
 rightly is to begin with the approximative passion. Thus, in respect to 
 the individual life : it is not the nutrition and the function so rightly 
 that make a whole, as the preceding chemical decomposition (the ex- 
 ternal force in the food, &c.) and the nutrition. The function is the 
 beginning of a new life, a new nutrition. Thus regarded, organic life 
 becomes entirely conformable to our ordinary conceptions, with no pecu- 
 liarity. ' The head is screwed right to it ' ; and all the wonder of the 
 vital form and apparent completeness, and individuality, as well as its 
 functional power, become simple. I think also that chemicity will be- 
 come clearer by help of this view. 
 
 In respect to the origin of chemicity, it is a tendency to change 
 (polar union) like that wh exists in living bodies ; it is the result of 
 nutrition, and is to be traced to external approximating changes. The 
 chemicities, or divergent arrangements, are the parallels to the organic 
 bodies and forms. The chemical ' compounds ' have been regarded in 
 quite a wrong light ; we must regard them as simply resulting from the 
 polar union, and turn our attention to the force in its various rela- 
 tions, that will reveal to us how to regard chemical compounds. But 
 they are generally more or less vital, with more or less tendency to 
 union, e. g. explosive compounds. But these are not often produced by 
 chemical union, but by special contrivance, tho' still not un frequently 
 in nature, especially in the explosive gases. The fault to wh people 
 are so prone is to lose the relations of the force in the details, to look 
 at the things or events as existing in themselves ; theorizing and specu- 
 lating about them. The thing to do is to keep hold of the dynamic 
 idea, and persist in its appliance absolutely ; studying the individual 
 phna, ever in subordination to the dynamic conception. 
 
 Arbuthnott said, ' Respiration is the second digestion ;' what is there 
 so true about this ? It seems to me that the greatness of it is only its 
 being an unification, its recognition of the oneness. And that is the 
 way with all great thoughts, they are perceptions, right perceptions, of 
 the oneness under different forms. This never dies. This is Genius. 
 Talent invents different things, all like one another, and its work 
 perishes. Genius sees one thing in unlike forms ; and its work lives 
 for ever. 
 
 With regard to the necessary beginning and creation of the material 
 universe : The physical universe is the divergent half of a vibration, of 
 wh the psychical is the preceding approximative half. 
 
 Our necessary going back in the chain of causes to some cause ' cer- 
 tainly not mechanical,' as Newton says, is only our necessary percep- 
 tion and conception of all as vibration : we trace in the universe many 
 little vibrations, till we find the universe itself but the half a vibration, 
 and ask its cause. But if -we answer here, ' God made it,' we ruin 
 common sense, we undermine piety ; we confess, or rather display, our 
 own godlessness. That God made it, is as true of a needle as of the 
 universe, and can no more be given as the appropriate answer. It is 
 away from the matter altogether, and shows God has not been in all our
 
 315 
 
 thoughts, for the very question implies that we are speaking not 
 of real but phenomenal causes. Those causes we have heen tracing 
 through the universe ; and the answer is, that it always is the half of a 
 vibration. To give God's act as its cause in this sense, is to place God's 
 act on a level with phenomenal causes, and to show that we have been 
 considering them as real causes, or, in truth, as Gods [not wilfully or 
 sinfully , indeed, but blindly, i. e. nutritively ; for it is beautiful to see 
 how by these errors, knowledge, not only of Science but of God and 
 religion is attained]. It is only by such unending, unbeginning, sequence 
 of vibrations that God's act can be known to us, or conceived by us. On 
 finite beings an eternal act produces, of course, an unending, un- 
 beginning sequence ; and thus also, of course, a sequence of vibrations. 
 How can an eternal act in wh is no time and no succession, be grasped 
 otherwise, or conceived, by a being to whom succession and time exist. 
 An infinite succession is our view of the eternal. Thus it is very clear 
 how the ' endless ' succession comes about, and how utter an error it is 
 to place God's act at any part of such a succession. God's act is the 
 whole. The infinite succession is a mere re-presentation of the eternal 
 act. This then is done : we have God's eternal, ever-present act : right 
 for Science, right for piety, clear to common sense. The physical 
 universe is a divergent half of a vibration. [This is as I have seen 
 before under music, one note of a symphony.] We have an infinite 
 succession of vibrations of wh the physical universe is the half of one, 
 instead of this universe as the whole ; just as we see He has created an 
 innumerable succession of any given animals. [ remarked to me that 
 God ' will create a new heavens and a new earth,' as indicating a 
 succession of universes ?] 
 
 Now for the preceding approximating half wh has caused this 
 divergent half the physical universe of what sort was it ? This it is 
 not necessary to answer, but I think we may know something. For 
 observe : the psychical universe ' thought ' in its largest sense, I find 
 to be just such a half vibration, approx in relation to the physical uni- 
 verse, or polar to it: .-. was not the preceding half vibration similar to 
 the succeeding, was it not psychical ? Hence our ideas of the universe 
 as result of design, as exemplifying skill, wisdom, goodness. Or is not 
 the psychical universe thought rather the function of the physical ; 
 a new divergent caused by the approximative passion in it ? I must 
 think of this. 
 
 But now consider how beautiful a view is thus opened to me of the 
 universe itself : it is a divergent passion, i. e. a nutrition, i. e. a living 
 creature, or life. Hence called, and how well, ' Living Nature.' How 
 just and true that conception of nature (the phn) as living ; it is truly 
 so in strictest sense. Hence its functional power (its forces and 
 tendencies). What is the function of the phenomenal universe ? Is it 
 not to teach truth, religion, to spirits ? the little of it that we know 
 being the means by wh we know God. God's holy act is, as it were, 
 the function of Science ; passion in least resistance demanding this as its 
 cause. Now, is not this precisely the function of the physical universe, 
 and thro' the opposite polar passion, viz., the psychical ? I think I see it. 
 The physical universe, the nutrition or variety ; thought, or Science, the 
 decomposition or unity. The perception of God's holy act and the re- 
 ligious life, the function or new nutrition. Religion or knowledge of
 
 316 
 
 God is thus the function of the physical world, and not in us merely, 
 but in other spirits also (?) and in various grades, by various steps. 
 
 Consider all approx passion is truly sexual (or polar) union ; sexual 
 union is all permitted change, and it is ever the cause of, or produces, 
 the new life or nutrition. Also how this polar union is special, limited 
 to certain kinds ; like chemical affinity. [Is chemical union always 
 sexual passion, and peculiar like it, not general, every male for every 
 female ?] And how the sexual passion operates when the two are 
 brought into relation, like chem affinity. [For the two forms of passion, 
 
 the 'produced' and 'permitted/ Dr. suggests 'distension' and 
 
 perhaps ' recoil,' and they are good ; distension, excellent : also diver- 
 gent and 'convergent.'] 
 
 The physical and the psychical correspond with Talent and Genius : 
 .. when it is said that the world is a work of Genius, is it not saying 
 that a psychical preceded the physical universe ? 
 
 Genius is Instinct truly ; but, as such, implies a previous nutrition : 
 and by the bye, I see, a man of Genius rises to a higher grade, is a de- 
 velopment, an union of two into one. And here is the actual fact before 
 our eyes that development is accomplished by instinct ; it is so in the 
 psychical world by Genius. The man of Genius represents the potential 
 animals, two in one, whose instinct seemed to be their whole life as it 
 were, leading them to unite into one : this union being but the expres- 
 sion of the instinct of the race. For as I have noted, the man who rises 
 to a higher grade, does so by uniting in himself and making one the two 
 polars, the imaginative and logical, &c. the force and the resistance. 
 This rise in mental grade of the world's thought is parallel to the de- 
 velopment of the animal forms : it only occurs seldom ; but it is essen- 
 tially the same with all polar unions, with all instincts, functions, and 
 operations of Genius. The thing is familiar and common enough ; it is 
 only the scale that is unusual, and we think it different .'. from that wh 
 is common. So in respect to the development of animal races, the same 
 thing occurs perpetually throughout nature, but being rather large to 
 our eye, and we unable to see the whole and the relations, we pronounce 
 it incredible. "Wherever Instinct is, there is a life an individual .-. 
 < humanity is such ' ; .'.is such wherever is to be traced a wide instinct, 
 animal families, the animal world all nature in truth , for instinct 
 pervades nature in wider and wider spheres up to the universal. 
 
 A psychical or male universe, preceded and caused the physical or fe- 
 male ; even as the Greek or male psychical philosophy preceded and 
 caused the experimental, the physical science (ours) : it, again, succeeded 
 by a male or psychical a constant succession in both. Must we not 
 consider the male as first, ever : the force-producing. It is as perception 
 must precede theory. But observe, this is 'putting the instinct before 
 the nutrition what it shows is that there is no beginning anywhere ; 
 each half vibration involves a preceding opposite half. Yet in relation 
 to the psychical life it wd seem as if the instinct or Genius came first, 
 as in relation to the physical the nutrition does. 
 
 What will come of considering the ' succession ' as a succession of vi- 
 brations, instead of cause and effect ? I hope a great improvement in 
 accuracy of conception, and true understanding of the nature and origin 
 of things. Especially apply it to the mental : trace how each theory, 
 each nutritive operation in mind, depends on force produced by preceding
 
 317 
 
 interpretation, and each interpretation runs on into fresh theory. [All 
 our common perceptions now as of ' things ' are results of interpretation.] 
 
 Language, too, is a life ; first a nutrition, then a function ; first put- 
 ting wrong then putting right. Complete languages are results of in- 
 numerable interpretations of ways of speaking, and each such produced 
 new growth or increase, as ever. First isolated words, then better con- 
 nections, inflections, &c., and so organic growth. But in later times 
 another process apparently ; maturity and decay in ours yet this aiding 
 the mental life. It is beautiful to think how the necessity of saying 
 what we see is the force wh produces nutritive language, and it inter- 
 preted or improved, being seen to be wrong. 
 
 Consider the evidence of the phenomenal ' fact ' from its being per- 
 ceived by all : the evidence of certain relations of phna, that is of all 
 our bodies and external things. 
 
 In different places of the earth's surface different motions of the 
 heavenly bodies are seen (' specific ' forms of the sidereal motions) and 
 moreover they are visible, may be seen, whether any one be there to see 
 them or not, will be seen by any one who goes there. Yet do they not 
 exist at all, but a corresponding ' passion ' is produced in any man who 
 goes to such places. This is parallel surely to the different forms of or- 
 ganic and other bodies in different parts of the earth. In such places 
 such passions will be produced in us, such relations of phna. Now why 
 so ? This is the great question ; the answer to this will tell us what is 
 God's act, what its manner or details. Tho' the sidereal motions are 
 different seen from different places, yet are they all revolution. So all the 
 different things seen in different places are still all motion in least 
 resistance. 
 
 The psychical is organic, and becomes organic from inorganic, just as 
 the physical does. There is a living mind as there is a living body, and 
 just as all physical is truly living or organic so is all psychical. Animals 
 have organic minds as they have organic bodies, and it is wonderful to 
 watch a dog. Also there is exact correspondence between the organic body 
 and mind living minds as living bodies and in tracing the life of in- 
 organic nature, beginning with the nutrition and ending with the func- 
 tion, we find evidence of living mind, instincts namely, as in chemistry. 
 Man has a living body, as we know ; a living mind, viz. instincts. Of 
 these instincts he is conscious, and he has a power of self-control. This 
 makes him the man Instincts of wh he is conscious or wh he perceives 
 in himself (and wh instincts depend of course upon nutrition) and power 
 to control or direct them his reason. 
 
 Consider our relation to our own minds and bodies. Is not the spirit, 
 the man, in direct relation with the psychical rather than with the phy- 
 sical : the spiritual existence only appearing in the world as it were at 
 the climax or ending of the physical. For does it not seem as if the 
 physical universe fades away and decays as the psychical becomes : the 
 physical ceasing as it becomes the psychical, as it were. There must be 
 some such relation, as we know function results from cessation of 
 nutrition. 
 
 The mental life advances by perpetual succession of theory and inter- 
 pretation. The theory is an adult cannot grow : there is an end of it, 
 but each interpretation is a new germ. 
 
 Are not true and false, phenomenal only, existing only in relation to
 
 318 
 
 us, constituting the vibration and mutually dependent ? Yet is false 
 only the divergent half of the vibration ; due to the limit and the true, 
 the convergent, only is truly presentative of God's act. This agrees 
 with the idea of the physical universe as the divergent half the neces- 
 sary evil wh seems to pertain to matter. 
 
 The mutual relation of inorganic and organic : they are two halves of a 
 vibration, complementary. For see the relation of the inorganic 
 -world to the vegetable : it produces the divergent passion on which the 
 vegetable lives, to perform by decomposition the function of maintaining 
 animal life. The decomposition, the putting right of the elements, is 
 done by their own tendencies, but what the world owes to Genius is the 
 ' organization ' by wh the function is effected. This is necessary as 
 the animal to the vegetable ; the force is the vegetable's and the animal 
 is entirely passive, but the animal's organization is necessary for the 
 function. The part of Genius is not so little, nor its service so merely 
 accidental, humanly speaking This gives the bearing of the peculiar 
 endowments of men of Genius manifested from their earliest years ; 
 their organization and instinct shows itself, tho' it is only by means of 
 the work of talent that the function can be effected. Again, see how 
 Instinct is the characteristic of the animal creation and of Genius in- 
 stinct depending on organization. Further, as the animal is higher than 
 the vegetable, so is Genius higher than talent. Talent, and the veget- 
 able world, assimilate and put wrong ; Genius, and the animal world, 
 put right ; but by virtue of their organization effect a function in so 
 doing. But the vegetable world [and so talent also] does not prodcue 
 the divergent passion, it is by no power of their own. They only assi- 
 milate and re-present force pre-existing [viz. in the inorganic world]. 
 
 The man of science, or the artist who looks at Mature accurately, sees 
 much more than common men see. When he represents it (in theory 
 or nutritively) men say it is not like, altho' it is exactly that wh is before 
 their eyes. Yet are they right in saying it is not like, and refusing to 
 accept it that is the instinct ; that feeling causes interpretation. It is 
 wonderful that the exact representation of that wh is ' seen ' shd be so 
 felt to be unlike that wh exists. There is a great field here : why and 
 how. And the teaching people to think the theory like nature, making 
 them accept it for nature, is teaching wrong. The true teaching wd 
 be that it was true to the phn, and was meant to reveal nature or the 
 fact. 
 
 This is a three Inorganic, Vegetable, Animal. Is this the three ; any 
 two complementary to the other, as in the colors, making up the one vi- 
 bration Red, yellow, blue ? I think it. The one half vibration passes 
 into the other thro' an intermediate : e. g. the psychical universe ; theory, 
 Interpretation, or new [surely Father, mother, child, &c.] Is this it- 
 self the idea of a vibration : an intermediate process in the change from 
 one to the other ? The father is reproduced in the child, but through 
 the mother. So the past in the future, but thro' the present. A medi- 
 ator is wanted. So father, mother, child, are one : any two are comple- 
 mentary of the third ; and the mind demands it, as the eye does. Now 
 what is this third, intermediate, wh the vegetable world, or theory, re- 
 presents ? Can it be simply that the motion in each vibration is im- 
 parted to the next particle, as one rises the other falls, and vice versa ? 
 
 Talent (or a man of talent) has instincts as well as Genius. So ve-
 
 319 
 
 getables have instincts (as for food, light, &c.) as well as as animals. 
 But in talent and vegetable they are much less marked and extensive ; 
 they do not give the character as they do to Genius and animal. In the 
 vegetable, the object and result of all is the nutrition, the growth ; in 
 the animal, the instincts are for its functions. [Observe, in both the 
 instincts for food, &c., for nutrition ; in Genius superadded those for 
 function]. Also note Instinct ever in both is result of organization, 
 and depends upon a functional process. The idea of talent is nutrition, 
 as of vegetable. The idea of Genius is function, as of animal ; but in 
 each both processes go on necessarily together, but they are differently 
 subordinate. The vegetable world is to the animal as placenta to em- 
 bryo ; so talent to Genius. 
 
 Now surely can we see what the respiration is relatively to mind ; for 
 respiration is carried on by placenta, i. e. Talent. So also it is talent 
 that depends on light. This may be seen. All the interpretations of 
 talent are subordinate to theory ; all the theories of Genius subordinate 
 to interpretation. As, by animals, the inorganic forces are made, thro' 
 the medium of vegetables, functions with designs, &c. ; so the inorganic 
 psychical forces are made by Genius thro' the medium of talent into 
 psychical functions, even into religious passion, &c. Tho' placenta ap- 
 pears before embryo yet it is caused by previous conception, i. e. virtual 
 existence of embryo so animal must virtually have preceded vegetable 
 and been its cause ? So must not the instinctive (or perceptive? ) have 
 virtually preceded theory ? 
 
 The work of talent theory, the mental nutrition must arise from 
 resistance to psychical passion, the inorganic : even as the vegetable life 
 is from such resistance. This is talent : a resistance to the inorganic 
 psychical passion ; and this I think I can trace. Theory, observation of 
 details, and assimilation or phenomenal views, are produced by the mind 
 of the man resisting the psychical passion of the external world, and 
 assimilating it introducing a human element putting it by force into 
 conformity with his own life, and because there is in him already psy- 
 chical passion, already a life or nutrition. Talent is the vital resistance ; 
 and men of talent are as it were germs endowed with vital resistance, 
 wh grow by external force or passion absorption of materials and force 
 from without. Each germ having its own specific characters and in- 
 stincts, and developing into its own specific form, as a vegetable. Genius 
 just similar, but living upon the theories of talent and using them for 
 function, like an animal. Talent directly observes Nature this is just 
 the vegetable part : it forms theories, as vegetable forms organic matter 
 from inorganic. Genius can no more work from direct observation of 
 Nature without intervention of theory, than an animal can live on in- 
 organic food. All the beautiful relations that have been traced between 
 the vegetable and animal world are exactly applicable here. 
 
 Another respect in which Talent and Genius resemble the vegetable 
 and animal world, is this the animal has a phenomenal spontaneity ; 
 chooses, takes its own course, acts from itself; not only has an instinct 
 for its own food but seeks it out, perseveres in going to it in spite of all 
 obstacles. This is just Genius : it will not be controlled ; breaks thro' 
 all trammels and takes its own way; acts from itself and cannot be kept 
 from its -natural food.' It has also the sensibility of the animal; 
 knows griefs and joys, passions and emotions, in which the vegetable
 
 320 
 
 does not partake. For talent, like the vegetable, is passive grows as it 
 is influenced from "without uses the food that is at hand, or none ; 
 cannot go to seek it, has no internal impulse ; performs no functions, 
 but just embodies what force comes into it. Its impulses are not from 
 within but from without, tho' determined according to its nature or spe- 
 cific constitution or form. This is just what I noted so long ago, but 
 phenomenally, that men of Genius had instincts so strong that they cd 
 not be crushed, .. acting out their instincts they were Genius : but men 
 of talent were of less strong instincts, yielded to external influences, 
 and were .-. not of Genius. But I put effect for cause. True it is, the 
 men who act out their instincts are men of Genius, but not because they 
 do so ; but being men of Genius they have internal instincts wh they 
 cannot but act out (i. e. they are animal as compared with vegetable.) 
 [This is not a bad instance of a theory preceding an interpretation it 
 was a view true to the phn but wrongly arranged, viz, as seen, effect 
 first.] 
 
 The man of talent is passive, as the vegetable germ ; developes ac- 
 cording to the surrounding circumstances ; takes what happens to come, 
 (using some selection and growing towards proper food and light, and 
 so on) ; he becomes greater or less according to his original constitution 
 and the circumstances in vh he is placed [even his instincts produced 
 in him from without]. The man of Genius the animal is the active 
 one ; dependent on there being food for him, indeed, but by his own 
 spontaneous activity [phenomenal] seeking and obtaining it : resolved 
 on having what he chooses and by no means accepting what comes. And 
 the mischief is, that our arrangements are all for vegetables, so that the 
 self-icilled ' animal ' meets with no end of difficulties. People all say, 
 ' Why cannot yo be quiet and take what is sent you do this which is 
 around you : grow passively as we do.' It is not his nature. He is an 
 animal and must choose for himself ; must obey those internal forces 
 wh move his muscles whether he will or not. It seems very strange to 
 him ; often it seems that he must be very wrong. But nature is too 
 strong for all restraints, and he goes his own way after all, and men 
 when they look back say he was right. He cannot lie quiet in the earth 
 like a seed, or rest idly like a flower waiting for sun and rain, and well 
 content with that wh happens to come. He is working, and if he cannot 
 get his proper food he must starve. His instincts operate within him 
 whether he will or no, and he demands to live. 
 
 How strange it seems yet how true, how true to nature, that the work 
 of talent, done with so much effort, toil, and thought, shd be the mere 
 passive growth, the vital passion [as seen in the vegetable] ; that the in- 
 voluntary work of Genius the passive, undesigned, spontaneous insight, 
 shd be the functions the ' actions ' as we call them of the animal ; 
 productive of such effects, apparently the result of such exertion. Yet 
 so it is : the appearance of the contrary is the phn ; the corresponding 
 perception is the phenomenal view or ' theory,' this the ' interpretation.' 
 
 Again, see how the functions of vegetables consist, in great part, in 
 preparing food for man I mean the functional or decomposing processes, 
 e. g. the ripening of fruit. So in the work of talent, is there not often 
 a certain amount of putting right or interpretation fitting it for food for 
 the ' Interpreters ' ? "Was not Grove's Correlation Theory such a 
 ripening? and see the instinct wh leads animals to select ripe fruit,
 
 331 
 
 grain, &c., tho' others live on green boughs. I must see if this parallel 
 cannot be perfectly traced in respect to forms of vegetable life, seeds and 
 growth, &c., but much that is physical also has to be seen here. 
 
 He who developes the mental life, in whom rather it developes, unites 
 into one the imagination and the logic. But it does not need that he 
 himself shd have a great imagination ; he must have sympathy, i. e. ca- 
 pacity for receiving it, but the force itself comes from without. His 
 part especially is the logic, the resistance. It is like a seed ; in it is 
 the resistance wh determines the form, but the vital force is from with- 
 out [save just at first, and then as stimulus]. The seed has sympathy 
 with the external 'force,' and receives it into itself. This is the mean- 
 ing of the sympathy that is the first requisite for interpretation, or in- 
 deed for growth at all ; and the secret of it is having in it the same 
 passion the tendency to decomposition. Here we have the view of 
 Genius as nutritive, as forming a new nutrition, wh it also does : taking 
 in ' force ' (or the imagination) by sympathy and making it conform to 
 logic i. e. to its resistance and so raising it to a higher grade ? But 
 this also talent does : it represents the vegetable growth perfectly ; this 
 ' resistance ' is just what I have seen the introduction of the human 
 element to make Theory. Also it represents the assimilation of the ve- 
 getable by the animal : not so strictly, perhaps, the function ; as the 
 nutrition wh prepares for it. But it is a beautiful view wh thus opens 
 to us respecting sympathy itself. We said a plant or living creature 
 has sympathy with external nature and so lives on it, draws it into it- 
 self, makes it its own ; knows or comprehends it. It does this because 
 it has life ; because in it there is the same ' passion ' that is external to 
 it ; the same tendency to polar union wh is the ' force ' of the external 
 world. Thus only, by its own function or permitted passion, does it 
 come to comprehend or take into itself, the external. See this in respect 
 to mind : sympathy shows life ; and by a similar passion in us to that 
 wh is presented to us externally, do we comprehend or receive it into 
 ourselves. So man has sympathy with Nature ; the infant thus grows 
 up to be a rational being. There is in him a life, a functional tendency, 
 wh is one with the external [psychical] passion and causes him to ' com- 
 prehend ' or receive it. So I come to the point that we take Nature 
 into ourselves in our mental life ; starting from a function in ourselves, 
 or permitted passion, wh is one with her ; having a life and consequent 
 organization in wh thus is produced growth or nutrition, i. e. Theory : 
 giving rise to increased decomposing tendency, and thereby increased 
 growth, and afterwards true functional passions interpretations, which 
 however, in respect to mind, seem ever to be productive only of devel- 
 opment. Is not the mental life of man as yet only in the embryo stage 
 no external functions, only development ? Or is it not thus : that 
 what we consider external functions in relation to the body, are truly 
 only developments of the great life and organization constituted by 
 all. 
 
 Genius is a believer believes, trusts in himself; trusts in the future; 
 believes in humanity, in the goodness of Nature. In a word, he believes 
 in God. 
 
 I think I trace in Genius also a period of growth in wh the nutrition 
 altogether predominates, as in the vegetable ; the embryonic and child- 
 hood period : the instincts showing themselves indeed, but the passion
 
 332 
 
 being growth or nutrition in its entire scope : then, when he has reached 
 his maturity, the functional period, as such, begins. Hence the striking 
 changes in the history of men of Genius (see Mozart, Shakespeare, &c.) 
 The instincts manifested from the first ; but the interpretations or 
 functions performed only after a nutritive period ; and in this first 
 period, probably, the work done as if by talent ; with labor, design, 
 and thought. The purely nutritive, or talent, has not this great change ; 
 he developes, but his last is essentially the same as his first. I must 
 see all these interpretations in the mental life, and how each vegetable 
 life has its parallel in animal. Does not here lie somewhat respecting 
 the instinct for food ? The two worlds mutually support each other ; 
 the vegetable developes by means of the animal. Also, is not the 
 instinct for food, of animal for vegetable food of particular kind, polar 
 attraction of corresponding forms ? 
 
 I think there are two very distinct forms of Genius : one of develop- 
 ment wh is the basis of new nutrition, and corresponds clearly to the 
 nutritive ; the other, functional, in ordinary sense ; e. g. Shakespeare, 
 and those men in whom a form of mental life seems to culminate and 
 cease [as with Calderon too] an external effect produced ; the nutrition 
 in that form, ceasing. 
 
 The mental nutrition by talent is like the production of vegetable 
 life. Trace how the external passion produces force, wh becomes the 
 life in the ' germ,' the man of talent : then, the assimilation of theory 
 by Genius is similar, like nutrition of animal, and by a certain resist- 
 ance too ; but spending little force of his own on it, it is raised to 
 higher organic-ness, but by the force wh was in the food before [e. g. I 
 suppose part of the food gives up its life to raise to higher life what 
 is assimilated]. Can I trace this in Genius ? partly interpreting to 
 make better theory before he produces the interpretation. There are 
 two processes in the man of Genius : an assimilation by partial inter- 
 pretation of that theory, or of his owli ' tissue ;' then the true interpre- 
 tation, or function. This first is the nutritive stage I have noted in 
 Genius. 
 
 False, ugly, evil, wrong, are all phenomenal and correlative, have re- 
 lation to us only. They are nutritive, i. e. they are the passion in us 
 [opposite to the primary passion, wh is the type of God's act], arising 
 from our limit. For God's act is not vibration, but one and eternal. 
 
 What a solution of the mystery of the universe arises from the sub- 
 stitution of this thought of nutrition, for every form of evil. The 
 reality signified being ever and by all ; holy and sinful. But these are 
 merely being and not-being ; existence and absence, action and inaction. 
 But in us there is holy and sinful, and to us good and evil ; because it 
 lies with us to act or not to act, i. e. to control our passion or to yield 
 to it ; wh is, in truth, to will or to refuse God's act in us. Thus by 
 another road, we come to the proof that being is essentially moral, as 
 essentially conscious. 
 
 Why is it that misery, even phenomenal misery, physical and mental 
 suffering (apart from remorse), so continually follows sin ? Is it not 
 because all the conditions of the phn are arranged for life, and that the 
 dead sinner suffers even phenomenally from passion unconformable to 
 his phenomenal existence ? I have seen that pain is passion uncon- 
 formable to the given life ; so sin leads to such unconformable passion.
 
 333 
 
 How is it we punish to prevent and cure crime ; do we not by the fear 
 diminish the phenomenal passion, give a counter-passion [to brutes also] : 
 punishment has not a moral effect directly, only as by preventing the 
 crime, checking the passion by opposite passion, it prevents effects of 
 habit, and leads to reflection ? But a man is not the more holy because 
 by punishment, or the fear of it, he is restrained from sin ; that is en- 
 tirely a phenomenal fear. Yet from the effect of punishment holiness, 
 or love of moral right, may spring : and, even the restraint from fear of 
 punishment, has its value ; it leads to a reward, helps to place us in such 
 a position that we can see the loveliness of right doing : has similar in- 
 fluence to the restraint imposed wisely on a child before it has arrived 
 at a knowledge of good and evil. For the passion controlled gives life 
 always ; spiritual, if from a spiritual control ; phenomenal only, if only 
 from a phenomenal cause (as fear of punishment) : but still this latter 
 has its value ; it is mental life, if not moral ; and mental life is, at least, 
 as good as physical. It is like medicine or healing to the body. 
 
 It s8ems as if the physical were farthest removed from us ; that over 
 wh we have least power, of wh least accurate conception, yet is it the 
 inlet of all knowledge, source of all passion : why is this ? Is it not, 
 as interpretation or function is nearest us, yet, in relation to us, nutri- 
 tion must precede ? So the physical in relation to us, must precede the 
 psychical. We are organic ; and, in organic, the nutrition, the di- 
 vergent, is first : so the physical before the mental, as nutrition (in 
 living creatures) must be be before function. Thus, I suppose, the 
 physical sensation (as of light) would be the theory or nutrition ; the 
 scientific conception (of vibrations, &c.), the interpretation or function. 
 
 How well this idea of the especial passiveness of the animal, the func- 
 tional, agrees with the non-consciousness of animals. And the wonder 
 of the animal body consists in this ; not only its adapted organization, 
 but that the decomposition takes place either spontaneously or as result 
 of < material ' stimuli, in such way and part as to produce the adapted 
 functions : this is the wonder of instinct, and it is to be made out, I 
 fancy, much from the mental life, the instincts of humanity (genius). 
 
 It is all passion in direction of least resistance ; and the stimuli are 
 (external) parts of the same whole ; the external instincts are the 
 same as the internal, arise from relation to the whole, are parts if our 
 life ; .-. one explanation embraces both. 
 
 Consider how the resistance produces the nutrition. But this resistance 
 (in the germ, e. g.), is itself the same as the passion resisted, part of the 
 universal passion, wh constitutes nature ; the resisted passion and the 
 resistance are one, are alike God's Act. Now, does not this bear on our 
 moral action, our resistance or control of passion alike God's act ; God's 
 act in us, one with the passion resisted, part of nature. Thus, the 
 created spirit is, as it were, the will. Do I not arrive at this : that the 
 ' substratum,' the spirit in whom is this universal passion, is Will ? 
 that is the final ' essence,' or being, at wh I at present arrive ; and Will 
 unexerted is not ; but, as being Will, is necessarily conscious. 
 
 Again, in reference to instinct : as I have seen, the instinct wh 
 causes development, and wh is only a form of the same thing as the 
 sexual instinct, is connected with the arriving at its limit of the nutri- 
 tion or grade of life. So surely do all instincts have a similar condition. 
 Instinct arises from the reaching of limit [wh, producing the opposite
 
 334 
 
 passion, induces the polar union]. I shall be able to get hold of this, 
 and to follow it to its details ; even to seeing the reason of the order of 
 all. For look at instinct in its simple form (as in the simplest animals, 
 wh perform just one function over and over again ; a mere contraction, 
 e. g., or the beating of the heart) ; it is clear this is from reaching the 
 limit of the nutrition ; it is just as a tower of bricks falls down after 
 reaching a certain height. So the function the interpretation of 
 Genius when the * distension ' of theory has reached its limit, when 
 the human mind can bear no more, the approximative tendency over- 
 weighs the resistance ; it is just as the heart beats. Thus I have the 
 principle of all ' spontaneous ' instincts, for the most complicated 
 instincts are the same thing (many in one ?) : even as the most compli- 
 cated life is the one vibration, but manifold. Now, the production of 
 instinct by external stimuli, will come under the same form ; it is only 
 necessary to take in a larger whole, for is not the influence of stimuli 
 itself a kind of function, or instinct ? Thus how simple comes my view 
 of development by instinct from the reaching of limit. It is nothing 
 more than the beating of the heart, or the amusement of a child. It is 
 the constantly presented fact of nature, involved in the very idea of a vi- 
 bration, in wh the recoil commences as soon as the distension reaches 
 its limit. As for the form the union of two polar forms of the same 
 this is to be traced in the ordinary sexual union, and especially in the 
 unicellular plants where it is so simple, or in Genius the union of 
 polar opinions especially there, where the very same fact is presented 
 to us. 
 
 In regard to the ' three ' consider : the vegetable and animal world are 
 polar, these two make up a complete vibration ; the inorganic world comes 
 before, as source of the force. Is not this ever the triplet as it were, a 
 vibration and a half, in some sense ; the intermediate or divergent ? being 
 polar both to first and last. Function nutrition, function nutrition, in 
 interminable series, but the triplet is three, beginning from any one, yet 
 some relation to wholeness and unity. Is the spectrum a vibration and 
 a half? 
 
 Is not this an indication of the non-reality of succession or time, 
 that to make up a whole, past, present, and future must be in 
 one ; and see how polarity (oppositeness) is truly a rectangular relation 
 The passion reaching its limit turns, not back, but at right 
 angles, then again at right angles ; producing so length, breadth, 
 and depth, and thus a whole or unity. Length and breadth are at right 
 angles, or polar, but the depth is not only at right angles, it is at right 
 angles to both, and includes both length and breadth in itself. Even as 
 a child does father and mother ; is bi-polar. [This I have seen in mind 
 the new ' opinions ' from interpretation at limit, start in two forms, 
 are bi-polar.] So, the whole is two polars, and a third, wh includes 
 both, not repeating the first, but repeating the two. Here is light: 
 two polar colors, and a third, wh repeats both ; father, mother, child. 
 Now, I fancy yellow is the child, or depth. And this child, or depth, 
 is at right angles to both (in some sense, has polar relation to both). 
 Here is the unity ; and in mind very well seen : the polar forms of 
 thought, e. g. imaginative and logical. So that development also is in- 
 cluded in the ' one.' 
 
 Can I trace something of the child, or bi-polar passion springing 
 from the reaching limit, and consequent polar union of the two polars ? .
 
 335 
 
 The bi-polar child is the two in one ; the depth is the length and 
 breadth in one : and the bi-polar child is only the vibration producing 
 another vibration (wh is bi-polar), when it reaches its limit. The suc- 
 ceeding vibration is, of course, bi-polar ; it is reproduction if the 
 polar elements are separate, development if they are combined into one. 
 The former is the mere repetition of the vibration of a string, the 
 latter its division producing the octave ; and the reason of this develop- 
 ment is also clear. 
 
 Consider, the octave is really two notes in one ; for each octave note 
 represents the lower : tho' of half the size it is twice as rapid, and .*. 
 equivalent. The two octave vibrations are not the equivalent of one 
 lower, but of two. Thus, I see the three is ever two vibrations : two 
 polars, and one bi-polar, i. e. two ones. 
 
 Logic, like the vegetable, takes what comes to it : imagination, like 
 animal, seeks its food interchange of polarity. It is by the decomposi- 
 tion, or putting right of imaginative wrongness, that the function 
 comes. The imaginative is the force, the result of recoil. 
 
 In the difference between the vegetable and the animal lies the secret 
 of what I noted, that men rely on their instruments and cannot trust 
 their common sense ; they will not bring their manhood to bear on 
 nature. The former is the vegetable, or talent process ; the latter is 
 just what the animal does. He has a force in himself whereby he ' acts ' 
 on Mature. He brings himself into contact with it, and uses it ; the 
 vegetable talent is used by it. That is just the difference. The one is 
 a slave (to his formulas), the other is free. Phenomenally speaking, 
 one is the instrument of nature, the other her lord and ruler. The old 
 philosophers were animal ; mere lords in their way, and a right way for 
 their time. Bacon introduced the vegetable process again, and made 
 man her servant, ' minister.' In this alteration there is exactly presented 
 the mutual dependence and successive development of the vegetable and 
 animal world. The vegetable world wd never have been what it is but 
 for animal life, of course. In Bacon's day, the animal life had, as it 
 were, outrun the vegetable, and it was necessary that a development of 
 vegetable life shd ensue. Is it not just as the foetus and placenta 
 mutually influence each other, and develope (or grow) alternately ? 
 Thus, while the one is developing the other comparatively ceases to de- 
 velope. Shall I not be able to trace in the mental life the true relation 
 of the development of physical vegetable and animal, each producing 
 the other, but not becoming, in the usual sense, the other, even as pla- 
 centa and foetus do not : so, probably, animal life does not come through 
 vegetable at all ? 
 
 Now, in mind, the vegetable growth has gone as far as it can 
 without animal, has reached its limit ; and the animal development is 
 to succeed : also, the polars do not come strictly one after the other ; but 
 tho' essentially successive, co-exist ; the length is from the first turned 
 to breadth, and the depth comes immediately, and all go on together. 
 
 Consider the developments and functions of various parts of the body, 
 while the whole body continues, and is renewed in all its parts, yet is 
 gradually changing till it arrives at maturity ; it propagates, yet still 
 continues. Hree is the presentation of the life of the animal world as a 
 whole ; its developments and functions, yet continued existence and re- 
 newal, with gradual changes, up to maturity.
 
 336 
 
 It is striking that the conception "of a limit, as given in mathematics, 
 shd have been the great revealer of the phn, in spite of its illogicalness. 
 [In that is it not characteristically English ?] Can I not see even the cause 
 of this illogicalness also ; does it not wholly arise from the false conception 
 of a ' real matter ' ? It is illogical because it belongs to a higher grade 
 of thought : it is imaginative the truth, but illogical. Is not it like 
 saying, ' the world is holy,' when we think the world is a thing, wh 
 cannot be anything of the sort ? It goes to the heart of the matter, [but 
 by the introduction of fictions or chimeras], in spite of being non- 
 sense, and is the key to the universe, in spite of being utterly illogical ; 
 even as it is the true key to the world that it is holy. Illogicalness of 
 the right sort is the very best of things. If a thing is illogical and 
 yet felt to be true, and explains nature, there is a good nutrition there. 
 [So in our chimerical scientific doctrines, of vital force, specific ten- 
 dency, gravitation, &c.] So also in art; wrongness, yet if beautiful 
 and true to the phn, and explanatory or expressive of it, forms good 
 nutrition ; e. g. pre-Raphaelitism, Mendelsshon's music. This felt 
 ' wrongness ' answering to the illogicalness. It is a beautiful thought 
 that all phenomenal wrongness answers to illogicalness. This shows 
 how it is relative to us only ; to our existing life, not even to that wh 
 we may have afterwards, as we find ; and the false, evil, ugly, all have 
 with this ' illogicalness ' still their truth to nature, their practical use, 
 even their beauty ; showing thus their character of nutrition. 
 
 There is wonderful and glorious meaning in this constant reference to 
 infinity in the practical mathematics, the only mathematics true to 
 nature ; a meaning the more glorious on account of its illogicalness and 
 inconsistency. Does it not truly signify this, that the reality is an ' in 
 finity,' an eternity ? They deny space, time, diversity ; recognize 
 infinity, eternity, unity : ignore matter, and therefore give the laws of 
 matter. Even as I find in another point of view, that not holding 
 matter as real, I have all its laws in my grasp. Mathematics (trans- 
 cendental) are in truth entirely spiritualistic. Berkeley had a friend and 
 fellow- worker in that doctrine of fluxions, wh he attacked so vehemently, 
 if he cd have seen it. The world adopted the illogical ' matter,' the 
 the illogical fluxions, in spite of him. They had their work to do to 
 reveal a spiritualism infinitely higher than his ; as much as holiness is 
 higher than arbitrariness ; i. e. as being than not-being. For in truth, 
 spiritualism is dlnied by arbitrariness ; the spiritual is the holy : 
 arbitrary spiritual act there cannot be. Berkeley was even more illogical 
 (if possible) than the holders of matter and the adherents of fluxions. 
 An arbitrary act of God is almost more impossible than a real matter, or 
 a fluxion of a fluxion vanishing. Like the weakest of us, he affirmed 
 and denied in the same breath ; affirmed a spiritual act ; and, implying 
 its arbitrariness, denied it in the very affirmation. 
 
 I think it will be a glorious task, to investigate our spiritualistic uni- 
 verse by our spiritualistic mathematics. Mathematics has gone ahead 
 and attained the spiritualistic form, so much sooner than physical science 
 (physiology), that she has not yet had fair play : she has been hampered 
 and bound* down by the inconsistency between herself and the view 
 taken of the phn. When this also is seen to be and practically regarded 
 as the effect on us, spirits, of a spiritual act, then our mathematics 
 which is adapted to just such a view, is true to nature, so regarded, and
 
 337 
 
 embodies in itself the conception of eternity, wh we shall then have ex- 
 tended to the phn also our mathematics I think, will receive an 
 enormous accession of power and resources, and prove equal to the 
 grappling with problems wh now are beyond her grasp, chiefly, as I be- 
 lieve, because they are regarded as having to do with real matter, wh is 
 inconsistent with mathematics in their higher form. A glorious future is 
 before the mathematical world. A new glory even in store for Newton ; 
 his Genius not yet apprehended in its full lustre : a new glory for bun- 
 as the first man wh truly went through the phn down to its spiritual 
 (and .. eternal and one) reality. And see here another unification of 
 opposites ; of Berkeley and Newton : that was a polar opposition, 
 as all phenomenal oppositions are. 
 
 Mathematics is spiritual ; its idea being that of infinity or eternity, 
 and that in that infinity all opposites are one. One eternal fact or deed 
 is that wh mathematics recognizes, and now it is that wh Science recog- 
 nizes too. I believe that with this unification must come a great 
 simplification of mathematics ; and in its practical working too. That 
 a great many complicated and artificial mathematical processes will be 
 found to be unnecessary ; that an interpretative mathematics may arise 
 wh will give all and more than all its present results, by means incom- 
 parably simpler, and that to be a good mathematician will no longer be 
 a task above the power of all but a very few. Consider how much has 
 to be done in all mathematical enquiries now in conceiving the conditions 
 according to some material hypothesis of atoms, or so on. I cannot but 
 think that when it is seen that mathematics deals only with the laws of 
 thought, and that, truly expressing them, it is certainly true to nature ; 
 the entire bearing and scope of the Science will be renewed ; and es- 
 pecially considering the corresponding simplicity of Science, all reduced 
 to vibration from limit and passion in direction of least resistance. 
 
 Man thus gives laws to the phn by study and observation of it, because 
 the study of the phn is truly the study of passion in himself; and 
 the laws of this depend of ourse upon himself. But it reveals a reality 
 wh is wholly independent of him, and to wh he does not give laws : 
 the law of wh is Eight, and wh .-. produces in him a passion of wh all 
 the laws are indicative of right. 
 
 Are not the English the nation of Genius [ ? because of the mixed 
 blood, the union in one of imagination and logic, from Celt and Saxon J 
 
 It is the nutrition that ever demands the self-control, the resistance : 
 even in our nutritive science how we see it what work, what toil it is, 
 what self-denial it involves, what a constant check upon the tendency to 
 speculation; resistance to 'premature generalization ' this tendency 
 being surely the tendency to polar union. And the reason why it is 
 mischievous when premature is that it takes place before the organization 
 is perfect, the nutrition mature, so that no function can arise from it ; it 
 hinders nutrition. Yet the hypotheses that are so useful in directing 
 enquiry are of the same character, but they are partial decomposition, 
 wh increase nutrition. The nutrition, in mental life and physical alike, 
 depends upon perpetual decomposition ; even in assimilation this is the 
 case, as well as in digestion : even as the nutrition in the vegetable is 
 produced in part by the decomposition caused in its leaves by light. Is 
 not here the parallel of this influence of light upon plants the decom- 
 position subordinate to the nutrition wh it produces, the same as the hy- 
 potheses (the interpretations ?) subordinate to nutrition, or observation
 
 338 
 
 and phenomenal views of nature ; subordinate to the organization of the 
 inorganic in the psychical -world. But then what is the light, what the 
 external stimuli to the decomposing changes ? Light is perhaps the 
 great stimulus to function in animals also. What is it that produces 
 alike hypotheses subordinate to nutrition in theoretical, and interpretation 
 in interpretative ? Here is a help : the interpretation, the function, is 
 emphatically seeing we always say so. Theory is made by rule ; the 
 interpretation is simply seen : a functional change induced by the influ- 
 ence of light, directly in vegetable, indirectly and thro' organization in 
 animal. Here is the clue : the ' seeing ' shows effect of light but what 
 is the light, what in the inorganic psychical world ? 
 
 Men of talent, the observers and makers of theories, do just this : 
 they make the inorganic psychical world, organic. 
 
 I have said that Bacon set men to eating and drinking ; also that he 
 commenced a period of vegetation. Both true : is not here a parallel 
 between nutritive force of animal in relation to its function, and of ve- 
 getable to animal ? Further, may I not say truly that he set men to 
 sleep, as the period in wh nutrition is accomplished. Truly men are 
 asleep now in respect to Science, in so far as any exertion of their active 
 powers is concerned. Sleep is excellent and necessary, and most abun- 
 dant in results, but not to last for ever ; and what other proof is wanted 
 of its being time to wake but that the disposition to do so exists ? Now 
 Science is asleep ; not that Bacon directly sent her to sleep, be set her 
 to eating, and the sleep followed, the torpor and inaction of all functional 
 exertion. [Yet earnest work of another sort ; earnest, laborious work of 
 resistance and vital action ; just what is now, resistance to interpretation 
 or decomposition, and sedulous assimilation or production of phenomenal 
 views, i. e. grasping of phna.] Bacon set men to observe, but never 
 contemplated their sinking into mere observers as they have become : 
 no severer condemnation of present science is possible than his works 
 contain he designed men still to retain and use their functional capa- 
 cities. He did not see that in the necessary*course of life sleep must 
 follow eating. But it has come ; and who shall blame humanity 
 because in its history, also, night succeeds to day and repose follows toil ; 
 or who despair, but those who think that because a man sleeps he shall 
 never wake again. 
 
 In the mental life the exertion, is in the nutrition wh is effected spon- 
 taneously or unconsciously in the physical ; and the functional wh costs, 
 or seems to cost, us exertion in the physical is performed unconsciously 
 and spontaneously in the mental. [We bring our minds to go to sleep 
 when weary and have a certain pleasure in it, but the true enjoyment 
 and happiness of life is in function.] Here again how wrong is the phe- 
 nomenal view, nutrition is ever the result of exertion of force, function is 
 permitted. Does it not seem as if the psychical were most truly per- 
 ceived by us, most as it is : the physical presented to us nutritively, 
 effect foremost ? There is much in this : the psychical is just an inver- 
 sion of the physical, a putting it right. I must think much here ; how 
 this is vibration. And see, our knowledge begins from the physical and 
 must ; i.e. it must begin by distension, by nutrition. There is something 
 wonderful in this : we begin with effect, and that causes and constitutes 
 the nutrition, the opposition to tendency. Cannot I by this clue find 
 out in some way more about the vibratile relation of physical and psy-
 
 339 
 
 chical ? The physical is the nutritive ; i. e. the passion wh results from 
 the limit to former passion. The physical, or phn, is truly the effect of 
 the psychical (as I have seen) the effect from the limit, the psychical 
 passion limited and turned at right angles constitutes the physical or 
 phn. The psychical .-. is as it were the direct effect of God's act on us, 
 the immediate passion in us ; the physical the opposite passion resulting 
 from it owing to the limit : thus the phn is the result of our mental 
 passion [wh is what Berkeley says ; matter is passion in mind, or 
 idea.~\ 
 
 The phn is thus the nutritive passion in us the opposite or divergent, 
 resulting from limit to primary or psychical. But it is taken for cause 
 of itself (as I have seen) i. e. for cause of the psychical (cause of its 
 cause). We always consider the external phenomenal world the cause of 
 our mental passion, thought, or knowledge. So we learn cause by effect ; 
 we learn the mental passion wh is the cause of it, as from the upward 
 motion of the pendulum we learn the downward motion wh is the cause 
 of it ; and in both cases we have to supply the idea of limit a limit to 
 the downward motion of the pendulum, a limit to psychical passion. I 
 see this is the idea I want for my vibration that of a limit rather than 
 that of a resistance. The resistance is now interpreted into limit, and so 
 made one with mathematics. It is good that the world is so familiar 
 with this idea of a limit, by means of mathematics, [as I have said God's 
 act becomes life, or vibration by means of our limit] for nothing is more 
 familiar than a 'thing,' or conception, or motion passing into its opposite 
 thro' a limit ; e. g. the ellipse passes into hyperbola thro' a parabola : 
 two lines that approximate pass into divergent thro' a limit or prolnga- 
 tion to infinity. What a strange thing it is that the idea of a limit thus 
 links itself with infinity or eternity, even in mathematics. [Consider 
 the bearing of this on our ordinary doctrines of eternity, eternal punish- 
 ment, eg., how a thing prolonged to eternity becomes its opposite.] 
 
 The point to see is that in mathematics these two things wh become 
 one at a limit, or pass from one to the other thro' a limit, are truly polar 
 or opposite [polarity the only oppositeness], that they have the same re- 
 lation as the downward and upward movement of the pendulum, or of 
 the fall of a body and of heat, &c.. wh are truly polar however different 
 in form All true Science knows only force or passion. And see, this 
 becoming opposite passion thro' limit is truly the same thing as I have 
 called polar union becoming one only two forms of expression for one 
 thing ; one becoming the other thro' the limit is the same thing as the 
 two becoming one thro' a limit : the words differ, but the thing is the 
 same. So is not the polar union involved in the fact of vibration ; a 
 passion becoming vibration is the same as polar union ? By this unifi- 
 cation with mathematics shall I not find better the meaning of my rect- 
 angular idea ? In the physical world, as I have seen, all vibration or 
 becoming opposite by limit takes place by turning at right angles ; how 
 is this in mathematics ? consider the relations of the dimensions. 
 
 I wish I cd see why this physical half of the vibration, thus made 
 distension by the limit, shd involve conception of extent or space, and 
 . . of matter : in a word, why is it physical ? We learn the psychical, 
 we come to know it or be conscious of it, by the physical ; this is as we 
 ever learn cause by effect. We ever learn the downward, force-producing 
 half of a vibration, by the upward or produced.
 
 340 
 
 We learn by three steps. First the cause of the phn, then the cause 
 of the cause seen in astronomy, also in the sum total of science, that 
 our mental passion is the cause of the phn ; then the cause of our mental 
 passion, viz. God's holy act. Here surely is the three again : three 
 steps of causation constituting knowledge, making up the one true 
 knowledge ; and is it not length, breadth, and depth : the phn and cause 
 polar ; the cause of the cause bipolar development or depth ? I think 
 something is in this. Certainly cause and effect are polar, that is very 
 clear : [see in the upward motion of the pendulum caused by downward, 
 and by limit or condition cause, limit and effect] .-. also cause and 
 effect are at right angles to each other, and there is no end. Surely there 
 is no end because of the rectangular relation wh always demands or ne- 
 cessitates the third or depth, demands i. e. development ; for the idea 
 of depth is not multiplication but development development included 
 in the idea of the ' one ' or whole. [All the development of Nature is 
 the one act of God.] Note that the mental polars are also thus at right 
 angles : talent and genius, &c., logic and imagination ; and .-. involving 
 the depth or polar union. 
 
 Another idea reveals itself to me : we perceive the cause the true, that 
 wh corresponds with God's action by its opposite produced by the limit, 
 the limit presented by us. Thus it is that we can learn good only by 
 evil, truth only by error, beauty by ugly, &c. [Should I say, holiness 
 by sin is there not a deep truth here too ? may it not be necessary for 
 sin to be, for God to raise us so ?] Phenomenally, the evil or wrong must 
 precede the good or right ; and we think again, as ever, that here effect 
 is cause, that the evil produces the good [' infinite good from infinite 
 evil '] ; the fact being that as the psychical, by the limit in us, produces 
 to us the physical ; so the good the infinite good and right by the 
 limit in us produces the (phenomenal) evil wh has relation only to us, 
 and by wh we are made to be conscious of the good in all its forms. 
 Thus the progress. 
 
 "We are made conscious of the psychical by the physical ; or does it 
 seem to be so only ? in fact we only perceive the physical as we are con- 
 scious of the psychical. Another pleasant conception seems to come out 
 here : viz. as if there were a kind of reality about the psychical which 
 there is not about the physical ; the physical being solely in relation to 
 us, arising from our limit the form assumed by the psychical passion 
 (thought, the polar form ?) owing to the limit of it in us. But this psy- 
 chical passion, or thought itself, is in some sense the direct action of God 
 upon us ? And how developing ? how does it appear to us to be by the 
 observation of the physical that we obtain knowledge or thought ? 
 
 The mental life, the psychical world, bears such relation to the physi- 
 cal, as the motion produced in us by that of the earth has to the appa- 
 rent motions of the sun and stars ; the latter the phenomenal, the mere 
 effects of the former, yet so distinct before us and apparently so real, so 
 clearly seen and easily grasped and studied ; in fact the only means by 
 wh we know anything about that subjective passion, or by wh we can 
 learn it. Just so the physical world wh is the result of our psychical 
 passion is so real to us in comparison, so clear and easily grasped in- 
 deed the study of it is the only means by which we can know anything 
 about that subjective passion wh is its cause [what an inverse reading 
 of 'nihil in intellectu,' &c.]. 
 
 I see this ; that motion produced on our bodies causes us to perceive
 
 341 
 
 external motions, wh seem real, &c. ; passion produced on our minds 
 causes us to perceive external things wh seem so real. Our perception 
 of the difference between things wh are external to us and dreams and 
 illusions, &c., are from previous interpretations wh enable us to go at 
 once to the cause when we perceive a phn. And observe, it is quite the 
 natural operation of our minds when from a phn we have learnt the 
 subjective passion, and from that the cause of our subjective passion, to 
 go at once from the phn to that cause and to say of it that it is the 
 cause of, or even is, the phn. Thus in respect to the sidereal motions, 
 we do not note in our language that the earth's motion only causes us to 
 revolve. Just so are we apt to do, and I think we may rightly do, in 
 respect to the entire phn, and say of the physical universe that God's 
 act is the cause of it, or even that it is God's act. We do not thus deny 
 the fact that God's act directly causes passion in us, and only because of 
 its effect thus on conscious beings does the physical universe exist. The 
 revolutions of the earth have no power to cause motion of the sun, they 
 only can make conscious beings whom they influence perceive such mo- 
 tions; just so God's act does not cause or produce a physical universe. 
 But this intermediate effect upon ourselves we overlook ; perhaps how- 
 ever it is not wise and advantageous that we shd do so. Our doing so 
 in respect to astronomy may have led us into much error. It may be 
 much better that we shd remember that the phn is ever the result of an 
 effect produced on ourselves, and that the cause is a cause operating on 
 ourselves. 
 
 Thus we see at once how the physical universe is ' dependent on the 
 mind,' as they say, and how the psychical and physical are polar. The 
 physical is dependent on the psychical as the upward motion of a pen- 
 dulum on the downward ; i. e. as effect is dependent on cause. For ef- 
 fect is produced by cause by virtue of the limit, i. e. when not simple 
 continuation, as when we. say a portion of a continuous motion is caused 
 by a preceding portion, and even then we supply or conceive a limit, 
 and indeed this might be taken as a good instance of how the relation 
 of cause and effect involves a limit. [So also must we not say in a just 
 sense, that the upward motion wh reaching its limit is followed by the 
 downward, is, tho' in a different way, its cause ? ] 
 
 I think I thus have a good answer to 's objection that we can never 
 know anything but an effect upon ourselves. Happily we are able to 
 know the cause of the effect on ourselves, and this we do by this very 
 fact of its producing a phenomenon for us to study. This we do by the 
 fact of thinking wrongly, and putting effect for cause : this gives the 
 nutrition, wh effects the function of revealing the reality. We do 
 practically quite overlook the passion in ourselves, and place the cause 
 of it and the effect of it in direct relation. Indeed it is striking how 
 entirely we do habitually, and as if by instinct, overlook the passion in 
 ourselves, and go at once to its cause and its effect : the revolution of 
 the earth, and motion of the sun ; the act of God, and physical universe. 
 We look ever without (within ?) to effect or phn at first; without, to cause 
 or God's act afterwards. And this is not only good in its working, as 
 making us busy ourselves with the phn at first, thereby acquiring many- 
 useful arts, and learning the cause, and making us busy ourselves with 
 the cause when we know it ; thereby acquiring more benefit, rising to 
 higher knowledge, growing even in piety and holiness at last ; but also
 
 342 
 
 it would appear to have for its cause the fact of our moral agency : we 
 look within, consider as subjective only that wh we are conscious of 
 doing ; only when we act do we 'naturally' regard the fact subjectively. 
 "When acted upon we look without. The proof of free action is here 
 very convincing. There is the phenomenal presentation of it, plain 
 enough, in our bodily life and instincts. The hody having capacity of 
 operating from internal forces, we know (as the rule) when these inter- 
 nal forces are at work, and only then do we consider the ' fact ' sub- 
 jectively . "When our bodies are operated upon from without, we always 
 look at once without ; not troubling ourselves about the subjective 
 passion, we say that stick, that fire, pains me. In this case the external 
 phn is the true phenomenal cause : the fire operates on our bodies as 
 God's act (or God) on our spirit or on us. These phenomenal relations 
 of the physical world are types, or presentations of the spiritual realities, 
 being, indeed, the effects of the spiritual act, thro' the limit interposed 
 by us. 
 
 I wish I could see why the psychical passion, wh I suppose involves 
 time, becoming or causing physical from limit, shd assume the conception 
 of space or matter. 
 
 Must we not consider this idea of cause from limit as applicable also 
 to mathematics ; I say that that wh becomes the opposite by means of 
 the ' limit ' is the cause of that opposite : e. g. the ellipse wh prolonged 
 to infinity becomes hyperbola, at the limit is cause of hyperbola. Then 
 at the other limit does hyperbola become ellipse again ? Can the idea 
 thus of produced and permitted, of distension and recoil, be traced as 
 yet in mathematics ; and if not, is not this one of the things it wants 
 for its development ? Is it thus, the one conception having, by the 
 limit, produced the other, then, by the recoil from his ' distension,' the 
 original conception is restored ? 
 
 Hegel's idea of ' dialectic force of ideas ' comes in here ; it is the 
 psychical instinct, wh is polar attraction. The producing one conception 
 from another, thro' the limit, is result of such mental instinct or polar 
 attraction ; and by the same instinct operating again, it is brought back 
 to former form when the result is attained. This instinctive desire for 
 attaining result, acting like gravitation in the pendulum, to produce first 
 the rise from the gravitating passion (thro' limit), then to bring down 
 again. The considering the one as the other is a ' distension ' produced 
 by force, and recoils again when it has reached its limit ? 
 
 To develop mathematics it needs to make it embrace the three, length, 
 breadth, and depth. It is at present superficial in the strictest and 
 most literal sense ; it deals with surface, the two polars length and 
 breadth, but not the bi-polar, depth. It does not .-. yet correspond to 
 nature (in wh is no mere surface) ; all things have and must have the 
 three dimensions, from two turns at right angles. What is wanted 
 is yet another step ; such another conception of limit wh shall reproduce 
 both the polars in one bi-polar, length, breadth as now, and depth. Here 
 is a whole, a true conformity to nature. What shd be done or how I do 
 not pretend to know, but I feel this is the thing, and I believe not only 
 that it may be done, but that the doing of it would extend to an en- 
 ormous amount the practical power of mathematics, and enable it to 
 grapple with many problems now beyond its power : mathematics wants 
 the conception of a new limit, wh shd unite both the opposites in a new 
 Metaphysics, 270-
 
 343 
 
 form ; to make a solid instead of a surface. [Is this attained in any 
 measure by the conception of fluxions of a fluxion ; may it not be : and 
 unless mathematics thus did answer to nature, could it have done 
 BO much ? I see how Newton thought Euclid trifling with the subject ; 
 his question was how and why.] 
 
 But, now I think, I may have been wrong in the idea that mathe- 
 matics wanted to embrace the three ; is not this recoil, wh produces the 
 function, the third ; as I trace in life, the force, the resistance, the func- 
 tion ? Consider whether this does not constitute the depth, and 
 consisting either in a kind of external function (a result) or a develop- 
 ment of mathematics itself, as I have noted respecting the mental life. 
 I think the function, or recoil, must be considered as the two in one, 
 the right result and logical process united. The interesting point is that 
 mathematics for its limit, being psychical, goes to eternity, i. e. to the 
 spiritual. Mathematics attains similar objects in respect to the mental 
 life, as mechanical contrivances do in respect to the physical ; to subdue 
 the phn, to give laws to it, grasp and employ it : a mathematical age is 
 a great mechanical age. 
 
 This is a wonderful idea of the mind as a life, and of ' the human 
 mind ' as representing the collective life. We have a part thus in the 
 life of the whole. And see what a glorious vista this opens : this human 
 mind is not the individual mind each of us has a ' mind, ' a mental life, 
 as we have a body and a physical life ; but the human mind is parallel to 
 the great universal life wh has developed and is developing around us. 
 What a noble privilege to live in thought and feeling over again the 
 whole history of creation ; but it is true this is what our mind is, that 
 same act of God wh constitutes the universe. And this shows also why 
 our minds are so adapted to nature, why the sympathy ; we understand 
 that wh we are. What stage is now : have we just reached the 
 organic ? 
 
 Talent "is emphatically the vital forcemental'in life ; as opposed to the 
 chemical." As in respect to the physical life not only the elements but 
 the forces are taken from, and are part of, the world around, so in respect 
 to mental life. The mental vital force, or talent, is first in nature before 
 it is in man. The vital force is only one form of the universal physical 
 force. So in mind : talent is only the reproduction in the human mind 
 of the divergent passion wh has vitally arranged the elements of the 
 mental food, and arises from an approx passion in these elements, aided 
 and determined by digestion ; i. e; a stimulus applied to the approx af- 
 finities of the food itself while in a certain relation to the living organism. 
 And also the diseases of the mind may be understood better by this 
 physiology, and will in their turn throw light on physical pathology. 
 Surely the inactivity of mind produced by over-study of books is the 
 effect of over-eating without digesting ; abuse of novel-reading like an 
 abuse of stimulating drinks. 
 
 All that is in our minds was first in nature (as in respect to our 
 bodies) ; mind is organic psychical life. There first the psychical passion 
 of the universe attains an organic state, becomes as it were self-acting, 
 with power by its own functions to maintain itself. That is, physical 
 life is parallel to sensational life, such as the mental life of animals, or 
 such as ours would be if it were without a spirit ; true consciousness, I 
 [Mental Physiology, 1. Aug., 1856,
 
 344 
 
 conceive belongs to the spirit only, i. e. feeling of personality and moral 
 character. 
 
 In nutritive music the music is the result of the meaning ; in func- 
 tional the meaning is the result of the music [we are apt to think the 
 reverse]. The meaning in the former case being the 'vital force' wh 
 causes nutrition, and being as ever a function, a result of some previous 
 approx change : what is that ? what is the parallel in the physical world 
 to this marvellous development of mental life in certain individuals ? 
 
 It is ture that ' nihil in intellects quod non prius in sensu ' : the parallel 
 of mental with bodily life puts this question right ; it is, as there is 
 nothing in the body vh is not first in the food. The ' nisi intellectus 
 ipse ' is altogether a mistake in relation to the abstract question, tho' to 
 the concrete all-important. Nothing is in the body that is not in the food, 
 except the body itself; wh originally indeed came from the food, but 
 now altogether determines what becomes of it and results from it. The 
 dogma with regard to the mind is really an affirmation of the identity 
 of the mental life with the psychical life of nature, that the mind is a 
 part of the universe, just in the same sense as we affirm that the body 
 is, when we say that the vital force is only one form of the universal 
 force. 
 
 The perceptions of the senses constitute the food by wh the ' mind * 
 is formed, they are its feeding itself; but when nourished in any other 
 way the real process was the same. 
 
 It is very difficult at first to keep the material ideas of space, physical 
 attraction, motion, &c., from mixing up with the conceptions relating to 
 the mental life. Many causes produce this. It is suggested so much 
 by the analogy of the body. But what I see is this that the vital re- 
 lation in opposition to affinities, in respect to mind, does not seem to con- 
 sist in divergence or separation between the ideas wh should be united 
 [e. g. in respect to function and decomposition] ; the relation wh makes 
 function cause of chemical change is as close as that wh makes chemical 
 change cause of function but it is wrong ; in this case inverted. 
 
 Further : the affinity of the ideas wd seem to depend upon the facts 
 being so in nature ; the relation wh they tend to assume is simply the 
 true relation, that wh agrees with the fact. How, and in what sense 
 and way, does this agreeing with fact constitute an affinity between the 
 ideas ; and in what sense especially can this constitute a polar attraction ? 
 It is likely that I may have put cart before horse, and the relation of 
 the ideas may be rather the cause of the relation of facts. It would be 
 interesting if a polar attraction between ' ideas ' determined such and 
 such physical facts ; the physical fact being really result, not cause, of 
 the mental perception, the cause of wh is God's act. It wd be like what 
 we have so often found : we see the result or phn, and are quite familiar 
 with it, long before we discover the existence of the cause. 
 
 There must be something in this a clue to the dependence of the 
 universe upon our minds. This, namely : that the sequence of facts in 
 physical Nature, the relation of cause and effect, depends upon a tendency 
 in our ideas to assume certain relations, i. e. upon the mental organization. 
 Baden Powell implies it ; it is the meaning of his statement. The rela- 
 tion of cause and effect is a relation of reason, not of physical force. 
 This implies, however, that the things themselves have their character, 
 as such things, also from our minds.
 
 345 
 
 It is passion in us that God's act immediately produces : the material 
 universe results from that. Now these passions in us are perceptions or 
 ideas wh constitute the assimilated ideas of our science. Therefore, in 
 relation to the material universe, it is as Ferier says, 'Being and 
 knowing are one.' Yet the thing is complicated ; for of course there is 
 no more actual mind than real matter, real thought than real motion it 
 is all God's action. I cannot properly disentangle the objective and the 
 subjective here. Observe : facts are mental elements, not physical : they 
 are ideas, neither matter nor motion, but thought : here has surely been 
 a great error, that we have supposed facts to be ' physical.' Surely facts 
 are relations, wh are wholly mental ; .*. ' cause ' is wholly mental. We 
 not only spoke but acted in our " thinking ' as if ' cause ' could be phy- 
 sical, i. e. motion, or a thing. Cause is as much an idea as matter. 
 
 Again, I conceive that perhaps the special inversion of the relation of 
 two ideas, wh I have noted as so characteristic of mental function, is 
 nor so much the approx passion itself, the unifying, as a result of it 
 itself a function ; and that the true approx passion is in all cases a real 
 polar union. Thus e. g. in the functional doctrine, was it not a percep- 
 tion of the sameness of two ideas supposed to be opposed, that was 
 really the first source of the mental function ? 
 
 I have the idea of mental polarity, polar attraction and the approx 
 passion or unifying process wh produces the function [the inversion being 
 a result, not a cause] ; also I see in quite a new sense how all science is 
 of course mental. I am sure many persons are under the delusion that 
 ' physical ' science has a relation in itself, and primarily, to the physical 
 material world. It is a mere form of mental life. It is plain physical 
 facts are mental passions the physical world is the result of mental 
 passion. 
 
 In order to truly comprehend either the physical or mental world, the 
 mental must be considered first, and the physical as a result : here again 
 there was phn before cause. With regard to the question, how, in our 
 mental nutrition, phn comes to be before cause, I see that although 
 theoretically denying the reality of matter, and making it a result of 
 mental passion, practically I was thinking as if it were real ; and here 
 is a proof of its non-reality, that that practical existence wh I allowed 
 it, set me wrong. As Emerson says, the thing to remember is the abso- 
 lute dependence of the external universe upon the mind. 
 
 Here is another point about the how of mental nutrition. Thus, in 
 astronomy, we start by seeing the sun go round the earth : now, here is 
 an actual vital 'mental passion.' Hence, when other organic mental 
 passions, i. e. observed facts, are added to it, they are asssimilated, i. e. 
 arranged in such relations, necessarily wrong or vital, as will correspond 
 to that ; this is done by talent, by human effort. [The seeing the sun 
 go round the earth is the ' germ ' or ovum.] But when this has gone 
 on to a certain extent, and a great false or nutritive theory been con- 
 structed, the function comes : now, how ? I say by the effect of the 
 inherent polar affinities or tendencies of the mental elements. I can 
 understand that the nutrition reaches its limits, that the natural affini- 
 ties of these elements overpowers the vital resistance, including also 
 that of the original germ ; but I want clearly to apprehend in what 
 consists this affinity of the elements, wh are male and wh female, and 
 how they unite.
 
 346 
 
 In astronomy a new element is introduced, viv. the motion of the 
 earth round the sun. Is it not equivalent to, and instead of, the motion 
 of the sun round the earth ? i. e. is it not the vital force re-appearing 
 under the form of the function ? The vital force wh constitutes the 
 nutrition or wrong relation disappears, is overcome ; but it exactly re- 
 appears in the equivalent motion of the earth, i. e. the ' idea ' of each. 
 It is the physical process precisely. I see it dynamically in exact con- 
 formity with the requirements of the case ; it is the substitution of one 
 effect for another, hut the same force. This is the result ; what is the 
 process ? It is the bringing of these actualities, observed and assimi- 
 lated facts, into conformity with the ideal, with common sense ; putting 
 them in their natural relations. 
 
 Now, this functional polar union of elements in divergent relations, 
 may take place either spontaneously, the tendency overpowering the re- 
 sistance, as in heart, &c., or from stimulus ; both these occur in the 
 mental life. Sometimes a man sees simply that such must be the true 
 relation between such ideas, not excited thereto by anything, but simply 
 it is so spontaneous function ; at another time it is some passion of 
 altogether another kind produced in him, some force ab-extra, as it were, 
 or some other function in himself, acts as stimulus and excites it. Now, 
 again, it is because this is the mode of the mental life that we see the 
 same thing in the physical world. 
 
 It would really be almost laughable, our solemn conviction of a real 
 universe around us, if it were not too glorious a thing : this wrong rela- 
 tion of our ideas is our nutrition, the very fact and basis of our mental 
 life. It is, in fact, because of this wrong perception that we have a 
 mental life at all. I am truly overwhelmed with the grandeur and 
 solemnity of this thought : our perception of a world external to our- 
 selves is the source of our mental life, the stimulus of all our mental 
 activity, in one word, it is our mental nutrition from first to last. All 
 our mental life comes from observation of nature. Consider how useless 
 it would have been for all purposes of mental life for us to have per- 
 ceived nature as being merely a passion in ourselves ; or, if instead of 
 seeing the sun moving we had directly perceved that we were being 
 carried ronnd it. 
 
 In this necessity of our perceiving passion in ourselves as external, I 
 conceive I approach to a solution of the question as to the sense in wh 
 our mental life is maintained by organic or wrongly arranged materials ; 
 to seeing how the elements are in themselves organically arranged. But 
 now, this is curious, that tho' the vital wrongness consists in our per- 
 ceiving a passion in ourselves as external to us, yet the discovery that 
 it is a passion in ourselves is not the direct approximative passion 
 effected by the tendencies of the elements, but the function (tho', in 
 this case, only a new, similar life). Until the illusion of a real external 
 world had had its full nutritive operation upon us, it could not be done 
 away with. Berkeley and other spiritualists attacked it in vain ; its 
 work was not done. And now, if so be it is overthrown, nature has 
 another sort of work to do for us, not less but more : e. g. the illusory 
 motion of the sun was the life of astronomy up to a certain point, but 
 when that was seen aright, there were other nutritive errors in 
 astronomy, quite enough, and it advanced faster than ever. So when 
 we see matter aright as a passion in ourselves, there will be other
 
 347 
 
 nutrition from nature, and science will advance faster than ever : for each 
 function is a nutrition. And see how the nutritive elements of each 
 former period are cast off, excreted, when they have performed their 
 function and become decomposed or disintegrated ; with what contempt 
 we look back upon the idea of the sun really moving round the earth 
 (tho' not upon the men who believed it) ; so shall we before long upon 
 the idea of a real matter. 
 
 Not only does it seem impossible that we shd directly perceive passion 
 in ourselves as such, but if we directly perceived our own motion we shd 
 be able to ' perceive ' nothing else ; if we were conscious of whirling 
 at such a rate through space, how could we observe sun or stars, or any- 
 thing else ? But it does seem odd that all this whirling also is only 
 mental passion : are we really moving so or not ; that is the question : if 
 not, what is the good of talking about it ? there is a right of this some- 
 way. How does this agree with our direct perception of joy, sorrow, 
 &c. ? And if material things are only mental passion, what is the differ- 
 ence between them and thought and emotion wh give no impression of 
 outness ? Why do we perceive the external world as motion and matter ? 
 That is what I shd like to know ; bnt knowing now so much of mental 
 physiology, knowing the analogies of the mental functions, and in par- 
 ticular, that perception is muscular action, I have a probability. 
 
 In the body, the secretive and nervous functions are confined to itself, 
 they are wholly internal ; the muscular functions have relation to the 
 external world. Now, in the mind, thought and emotion are wholly 
 internal ; perception alone has relation with the external world. Here 
 is the clue : perception is our relation by means of our muscles with the 
 external world : thought and emotion are secretive and nervous func- 
 tions, the question with relation to the externality of perception is the 
 same as with respect to the externality of the muscular functions. How 
 are the perceptive related to the intellectual and emotional functions, 
 especially the latter ? This is the point to remember, facts are not 
 physical ; a fact is not a matter or motion. Facts are psychical ; the 
 psychical inorganic universe, I suppose, is the universe of facts. Facts 
 are the food of the mind [see the truth of the poetry of common 
 language], .-. they, by assimilation, constitute the mind. Is not the 
 term fact convertible with the term ' idea,' in some sense ? and yet not 
 so, because altho' all facts are ideas perhaps, certainly all ideas are not 
 facts. By-the-bye, as the physical world has a two-fold character, viz., 
 that of motion, and of matter or things ; so surely has the psychical, if 
 I could find it out. Are not the ' facts ' equivalent to the matter or 
 ' things '? The facts must be the psychical things, and rather organized 
 things, or bodies, than otherwise, being the food of the mind ; for food 
 does not consist of motion, but of things or bodies. 
 
 In the physical world we perceive both motion and things to us external 
 Change of place in a force acting on us, whether produced by motion in 
 it or passively in ourselves, we perceive as motion : the direct action of a 
 force on us as things ; there is surely here a mental parallel. 
 
 Surely this is the great secret : it is facts that we perceive, not 
 matter. Now, facts are psychical ; we do not perceive a physical world 
 at all ; all that mystery vanishes : we have simply put cart before horse 
 again, have supposed ' facts ' depended on, or resulted from, matter, in- 
 stead of matter or things on facts. And that Science consists of ' facts '
 
 348 
 
 also, not of things, is manifest enough : the whole affair is psychical. 
 Facts are perceived falsely ; the facts are false, or organic in nature, as 
 presented to us : this is our mental food. 
 
 To return to the point of the cause of the approximative passion in 
 mental organization, wh causes function. It is admitted that there is 
 an universal tendency in our minds to unite the actual and the ideal ; 
 that wh is perceived as fact and that wh is theoretically true. This I 
 conceive is the mental or psychical polar attraction, this the force which 
 constitutes the tendency to approximative change ; the resistance to this 
 is the functional power. In fact, in the mental world, in relation to 
 the mental life, this is the ' love,' the universal polar attraction the vi- 
 tal, nutritive or female, and the ideal or male, united by polar attraction. 
 This tendency .-.is not an action of ours, hut a tendency in the very 
 elements of our minds ; resisted in nutrition, in a state of abeyance in 
 the facts perceived, or in the mental food, and equally in the assimilated 
 facts. Here is a confirmation that this polar attraction is the cause of 
 assimilation ; the effort to unite observed facts with the ideal, failing, 
 causes them to assume the new vital relations in our minds digestion. 
 This is the thing, but not clearly seen. The real and ultimate vital di- 
 vergence is the difference between our perception of ' nature,' Nature 
 as we perceive it, and God's act. We by degrees bridge over that differ- 
 ence, unite the two ; this is the great apppoximative passion wh causes 
 the function. This is, in one sense, the function of Science, to show 
 nature to be God's act ; to unite the two. 
 
 The very essence of a fact, i. e. a fact of observation, is that it is 
 false : i. e. the essence of a fact as distinguished from a theory, wh is 
 ' true fact ' (supposing both to be good in their way, fact truly and ac- 
 curately observed, theory soundly and correctly deduced). Each theory 
 (i. e. good theory), forms a fact, a nutritive, or vital material for a 
 higher and larger life. The theory is also false considered as a fact 
 itself, tho' true considered as a mere arrangement of the elements of the 
 ' facts ' wh it includes and ordinates. Here is the real organic constitu- 
 tion of our mental food ; facts as we eat and assimilate them themselves 
 consist of elements in wrong or organic relations ; we do not make them 
 so, they are so. When the facts, having been ' assimilated ' in organic 
 relations, adjust themselves into true or chemical relations, a theory or 
 function results ; which is again a fact of a higher order, viz., contain- 
 ing its elements also in organic wrongness, and furnishing so the power 
 for still another and higher function or theory. Is not the function 
 effected by the putting together of many facts, each of which consists 
 of organic (wrongly arranged) elements ? also is not this analogous to 
 animal development, by union of two oppositely polar individuals after 
 a certain multiplication of such ' individuals ' ? 
 
 It is as absurd to feel reluctant to assimilate and organize facts in 
 wrong relations in mental life, as it would be to decline to eat and as- 
 similate organic food, and to insist upon living only upon the simplest 
 chemical compounds. Men of talent must not be ashamed but proud 
 and happy to assimilate and arrange facts in wrong relations ; this is 
 their business ; if they do not do this, they were better away : not to 
 say that it is a necessity ; the facts are presented to them wrong, and 
 the more accurately they observe the more decidedly this vital wrongness 
 will characterize their observations, the more energetic, that is, the vital 
 force, the more healthy the nutrition, the more power for the function.
 
 349 
 
 Is this the general character of our ' abstract ' notions, that they are 
 ' assimilated facts ' ? Books are truly above nature : being a part of her, 
 and .-. the highest part. They also constitute a life ; nutrition and func- 
 tion are in them, past and present : the nutritive, present assimilated 
 facts ; the functional, theories. The functional poets are theoretical, in 
 the abused sense of the term. Shakespeare is true to nature just as a 
 sound theory is, not true to observation ; truer than nature, as observed. 
 Shakespeare does not represent to us what we see, but something much 
 truer than what we see ; just as the solar system of astronomers is not 
 what we see, but something much truer. And see how in the poets we 
 instinctively recognize the true, altho' opposed to observation ; so we 
 shall shortly instinctively recognize God's act as the true universe, altho' 
 opposed to what we see. For in human nature, as in physical, the facts 
 of observation are necessarily false ; we see effect before cause ever, 
 tho', of course, when the mental life on any subject has advanced to a 
 certain point, we in the very act of perceiving rectify this false relation 
 up to a certain point : just as astronomers knowing the nature of the 
 earth ; rectify immediately all their perceptions, so far as to bring them 
 into accordance with that : that is to say, they at once convert all their 
 facts into theories so far. They are only truly facts of observation in so 
 far as they are not rectified to allow for known errors of observation. 
 
 And so in relation to all other things, our very perceptions are recti- 
 fied by our true theories ; and they are facts of observation only so far 
 as uurectified, viz., in relation to unknown errors of observation ; in so 
 far, i. e. as made conformable to false views, i. e. to our organic constitu- 
 tion. In this consists assimilation in part, and in the wider and wider 
 influence of true theories consists the higher and higher life. I must try and 
 apply this to physical physiology, and see whether the higher vital con- 
 stitution of organic bodies do not consist in something parallel to this, 
 viz., in a large and larger number of particles being grouped according 
 to their chemical affinities ; and these larger elements then being grouped 
 in organic relations. But, surely physical development is inverse to 
 mental. Then this would be the inference that in lowest forms of life 
 many particles are grouped according to chemical relations, and the par- 
 ticles thus formed are grouped organically ; but that in the higher forms, 
 each particle is more and more grouped into organic relations. This is 
 probable. 
 
 True poets give us true theoretical human life, as opposed to matter of 
 fact observation. The poetical in life is the true, the prosaic matter of 
 fact view is the false ; the latter is like contending that the sun does go 
 round the earth : that is the matter of fact. The highest poetry is the 
 most absolute truth in respect to human life ; it is Science as opposed to 
 vulgar errors. It bears the same relation to people sticking to what they 
 can see, as scientific investigation and carefully induced theories of na- 
 tural fact bear to ignorant uninstructed perception. Poetry and Science 
 are one ; are one by virtue of an identity of essential character ; both 
 consist in a rectification of the facts of observation. It is glorious : here 
 is another unification. This is why poets express and anticipate the 
 highest generalizations of science. Poetry is the Science of human nature, 
 and it expresses and contains all Science because human nature represents 
 and contains all nature.
 
 350 
 
 Surely all Science of human life political economy, and so on, are 
 nutrition meant to be made one with poetry, an organic false arrange- 
 ment of facts preparatory for a function. And further, see how men of 
 Science who oppose themselves to theory (i. e. to right and legitimate 
 theorizing) go contrary to the very idea of Science, wh is to convert into 
 truth, i. e. theory rightly so called, the facts of observation. Those men 
 of Science who avert themselves from theory as theory, independently 
 of whether it is good or bad, forget the very nature of Science, and re- 
 present exactly those who avert themselves from Science altogether, and 
 adhere to that wh their own eyes and hands inform them. It is Science 
 committing suicide , for Science is itself a theory. If a man sticks to 
 facts, let him stick to the fact that the earth is in the centre of the 
 heavenly sphere ; it is as much a fact as anything else that is not 
 a theory. 
 
 The facts perceived are first merely our own sensations, these are en- 
 larged by additional sensations, by comparison and inferences ; and then 
 the feeling of necessary relation between certain of them polar attrac- 
 tion causes approximative passion. It is increasing perceptions that 
 cause better arrangements of them, that so neutralize vital force and cause 
 it to re-appear under another form ; just as it is increasing nutrition, that 
 causes spontaneous function. 
 
 What a light this idea of a mental organization throws upon many 
 facts, especially the effect of certain perceptions on us, exciting large 
 and long trains of passion, just like a stimulus on an organism of causes. 
 The external fact is one force with mind, and .. acting ; as in physical 
 world motion is one force with life, and .-. the external world acts on 
 the body. 
 
 Is not ' cause,' as is were, the psychical ' force,' as ' motion ' is the 
 physical force ? Each ' fact ' (in nature) has a cause, wh cause is the 
 force, and must exist in some form or other [psychical force, ' cause ;' i.e. 
 force wh constitutes ' facts ']. If the cause be not one ' thing ' it must be 
 another ; but ever the cause, the ' force,' will exist. Cause, like motion, 
 cannot be annihilated [nor produced], tho' it may vary in form and con- 
 dition or mode of existence indefinitely. Is there a parallel between the 
 tendency to motion, or resisted motion, and anything in relation to 
 ' cause ?' See in respect to the sun's (apparent) motion, this has a cause ; 
 what the cause is, is the question of Science. Fact of observation says 
 * the sun moves ;' theory, or Science properly so called [resulting from 
 polar union of actual and ideal], denies this ; but the cause must still ex- 
 ist : if not in the sun's motion, then in the earth's. So, cause resisted 
 (disproved) in one form assumes another. This is the analogy, e. g. in 
 the conversion of vital force into functional force ; for the functional 
 passion is the very same passion as that wh placed the elements in vital 
 relations, opposed their affinities : the force wh maintained the vital con- 
 stitution in opposition to affinities, being resisted as such, prevented from 
 continuing so, becomes the force wh constitutes the function, i. e. another 
 form of nutrition ; it is still vital ; force is essentially vital force, and 
 never ceases to be so. Here is another unification : for, in truth, I see 
 
 that C 's representation of function, as a conversion of the vital force 
 
 into the functional ' force,' is correct, only the idea of conversion is , 
 wrong. He thinks the conversion is first, instead of being result of
 
 351 
 
 resistance : effect before cause, as ever. But rightly defined, the doctrine 
 of the conversion of vital force into functional force is true enough ; the 
 force that was the vital, heing prevented from continuing so, becomes 
 that wh produces the function : i. e. the force that effected the one nu- 
 trition, resisted as such, effects another nutrition ; but ever a nutrition : 
 force ever and necessarily produces nutrition, it is its nature. All the 
 force is one, used over and over again ; but we must remember not to 
 confuse by applying the term force to polar attraction itself ; perhaps it 
 can hardly be withheld from it in some relations, and .-.I must mind 
 not to let myself write obscurely in relation to force. 
 
 In the physical world the force may exist in any form, producing 
 either an actual passion or only a tendency thereto, as heat. So, doubt- 
 less, in the mental life ; the force, or cause, set free by the approxima- 
 tive passion of elements, may produce either an actual mental passion or 
 only tendency thereto : and now I perceive this tendency to mental 
 force must be the feeling that we do not know the cause. ' Suspension, 1 
 tendency, of opinion (glorious instinct of language), the prevention, 
 resistance, exclusion, of a false cause or vital force, produces either a 
 passion or tendency thereto ; i. e. either a new cause, or a suspension 
 and a feeling that we must find a cause. Yes, how truly cause is mental 
 force ; it is basis and source of all mental passion (except emotional). 
 How that term ' suspension of opinion ' implies polar attraction, and 
 how we feel it is result of restraint, difficult. 
 
 Is ' cause ' the force, or not rather the necessity for finding cause ? I 
 think I may best make this out by looking at the tendency to mental 
 passion, the necessity for finding cause when not known, wh causes 
 nutrition, investigation of facts, of nature. Here it is, the necessity 
 for finding unknown cause is the hunger wh causes eating, i. e. ex- 
 ploration of nature ; when materials are present the same force puts 
 them in vital arrangement. 
 
 Ever in Science and in all the forms of mental life, that first crude 
 stage of relation to nature, when we simply perceive and observe 
 the facts as they are presented to us, arranging them according to their 
 appearances, returns. But it takes place ever on a higher level, tho' 
 ever essentially the same process, the actual facts are vastly different. 
 This is the nutritive period, it represents the time of ignorant mere 
 perception, before Science as science existed ; the period* in wh the 
 mind was a mere germ, I suppose, before true organization commenced : 
 such is every nutritive period, such in reality has been our great experi- 
 mental period of Science for the last few centuries ; its kinship is not 
 with Science as science, but with the unreasoning observation that pre- 
 ceded ; Science, as distinguished from this, is related rather to the 
 theoretical periods of Science ; Science, in its essential and distinctive 
 character, is much rather theory than observation : ignorant unreason- 
 ing perception is the nutrition, Science the function ; the finding out 
 not so much of what, as of how and why. 
 
 The very same life wh exists unconsciously to us in our bodies, exists 
 consciously in our minds. 
 
 Is not the relation of cause and effect indeed a polar relation ? Our 
 minds consist of 'causes and effects,' surely male and female elements. 
 (Each fact is cause or effect relatively to different facts, as the same ele- 
 ments are male or i'emale relatively to different other elements.) I do
 
 352 
 
 believe this is it : cause and effect are polar, though I have seen cause, 
 condition, and effect to be male, female, and offspring ; and this is also 
 true : but still cause and effect are male and female cause, approx ; 
 effect, divergent ; they are necessarily approx change and resulting 
 function strictly male and female. In the functional passion of mind 
 a kind of elective affinity takes place ; certain causes unite with certain 
 
 Further : those facts wh are assimilated and constitute the ' mind,' 
 must represent the chemical bodies, i. e. organic chemical bodies. But 
 what in the psychical world represents inorganic chemistry, in wh are 
 so many elements that do not enter into living bodies at all ? I fancy 
 the parallel cannot hold so closely here. All the psychical world seems 
 to be first organic, and reduced to the inorganic form only by passing 
 thro' the mind ; the mind, as the body, reducing organic elements to in- 
 organic; and developing thence its life. 
 
 If the mind be parallel to the animal body, what is the parallel to the 
 vegetable world ? these facts wh are presented in organic relation to 
 our minds [those from other minds being animal food] ? But then 
 nothing is left for the inorganic world, because all facts are presented at 
 first in organic relations. Is the course of the psychical and physical 
 worlds inverted ; the physical beginning with inorganic and organic fol- 
 lowing : the psychical beginning with organic, and inorganic following ? 
 It seems a not improbable inversion : mind advances from variety to 
 unity, body from unity to variety. In the physical world the organic is 
 the result ; in the psychical world, the inorganic. Physical nature pro- 
 ceeds from from God's one act to innumerable diversities ot form ; psy- 
 chical nature begins from the diversities, and proceeds to God's one act. 
 And this shows how vain are our ideas of better and greater. We 
 think life so noble as compared with the inorganic [physical] world, yet 
 in truth life consists in wrongness : and see in the psychical world, the 
 inorganic developed from the organic, instead of the organic from the 
 inorganic. The inorganic represents the truth ; the organic, error. 
 Here too, surely, our perception is an illusion. 
 
 But observe : the inorganic physical world is falsely distinguished 
 from the organic as being unliving. It also is living, and so of the in- 
 organic psychical world developed by the organic : it is not dead, it 
 also is living. 
 
 Is it not remarkable, that where in the inorganic world we see a 
 whole, [and .. life] viz. in the solar system, we see almost a parallel to 
 the simplest known forms of organic life. viz. a cell as it were, with 
 central nucleus and revolving granules (it is true we do not see the cell 
 wall, doubtless really there is none ; but this does not impair the analogy 
 in the least to my mind). If the solar system thus presents a resem- 
 blance to the simplest form of organic life, what living forms of incom- 
 prehensible complexity and sublimity the sidereal universe wd present, 
 if we conld see them. And we may know quite well that the truest 
 theories we cau form, the inorganic psychical world relatively to our- 
 selves, is verv far from being divested of all organic wrongness ; far 
 enough are we from having put the elements really and entirely right ; 
 it is merely inorganic relatively to us, i. e. the organic relations are on 
 too large a scale to subserve the purposes of our life. It is still organic, 
 tho' not so to UP.
 
 353 
 
 It is a beautiful thought that the physical inorganic world is only in- 
 organic in relation to us ; its organic relations being on too large a scale 
 to subserve our life ; but it is quite manifest that if ever there were a 
 physical being large enough, he could live on solar systems. The ten- 
 dency of the planets to the sun wd produce passion generative of a force 
 by wh his functions could be effected, &c. Thus, surely, the inorganic 
 life of the universe is even now really nobler and higher than the or- 
 ganic ; grander, larger, more powerful ; and I believe interpenetrated 
 with mental and spiritual life ; the vehicles of souls, the instruments of 
 spiritual Beings. 
 
 In relation to the mind as to the body we must recognize the absolute 
 identity of the forces, passions, elements, &c., in us, with those of the 
 world external to us and on wh we live. 
 
 The relation between cause and effect expresses the essentially vibra- 
 tile character of psychical passion. It answers to the two halves of a 
 vibration. The two halves are correlative ; they may be separated but have 
 tendencies till united. Perhaps cause and effect are like action and re- 
 action : they are equal and opposite, and either may be either. The re- 
 lations of cause and effect in the facts or elements of mental life will 
 help us to understand the relations of chemical polarity. If the psychical 
 inorganic world is developed by the organic, why does the physical or- 
 ganic world correspond to and include so small a portion of the elements 
 of the inorganic : or does not the psychical organic world remit to the 
 inorganic many elements wh no more enter into it as organic facts seen 
 every day, but seen aright, as inorganic, and never entering into the 
 mind's life at all ? 
 
 Space, time, &c., are not laws of thought, as such, and do not 
 pertain to all our mental passion (as cause and effect do). They do not 
 pertain to abstract thought, to emotion, &c., at all ; they belong only to 
 one class, the perceptive : that wh relates to the physical world, as if 
 only to the muscular function's of the mind. 
 
 Newton's theory of light and color is a capitally illustrative instance 
 of nutrition. How exactly it represents the phna : how true to nature ! 
 i. e. how close to the facts of observation. Therefore it is exactly 
 wrong, and most chimerical ; the effect before the cause, as ever pre- 
 sented by nature. It can hardly be called a theory at all. but a trans- 
 cript of the facts observed. This is said in praise ; and so it is praise 
 of Newton, but absolute condemnation of the theory, wh it was never- 
 theless his business to make. And by-the-bye, observe in astronomy, 
 in the theory of the earth's motions, the same organic relation, the cart 
 before the horse, the tangential motion supposed first and the gravitating 
 added to it ; instead of the gravitating first and the tangential arising 
 from it. The wrongness of Newton's optical theory of compounded 
 light arises from its close correspondence with observation, but hence 
 also its value. The unequal retardation by the prism suggested as cause of 
 spectrum is a new element supplied, the function arising surely from union 
 of actual with ideal ; but in this case it arose from experiment, i. e. from 
 nutrition added. Of course either may be first, the condition is the 
 union of both : certainly due nutrition is necessary for function, and if 
 the cause of function is present it takes place as soon as the nutrition is 
 effected. To what is the tendency to test a theory by further observation 
 of nature, due ? the impulse given by a theory to collect new facts, is 
 it not the affinity of cause for effect instinct to eat ?
 
 354 
 
 Mathematical reasoning seems to me to be quite a typical example of 
 theory. Mathematics, as such, are theory. In mathematical reasoning 
 the entire process is just that of all theoretical reasoning, viz. letting 
 the elements arrange themselves by their own affinities this is the very 
 conception ; it is function : it is so in geometry, so in algebra. But all 
 mathematics is not mathematical reasoning. Mathematics consists also 
 of vibration, as everything else ; a nutrition and a function ; altho' the 
 the total tendency and design of mathematics is theoretical or functional. 
 The two elements in mathematics are, first the arrangement, the con- 
 struction of the equation, and then the solution. These are the nutri- 
 tion and the function. First to express as accurately as possible the 
 facts as observed, in mathematical formulae the nutritive mathematics : 
 then to let the elements thus nutritively arranged, arrange themselves 
 by their own affinities theory : and again to use the elements thus ob- 
 tained in the same way, until the last simplicity is gained. 
 
 Now mathematics exactly resembles Science. Our science constructs 
 equations and scowls on the man who seeks to solve them, because people 
 in old days went on trying to solve problems after they had exhausted 
 their equations. Science vibrates ; function and nutrition follow each 
 other. Is there not a new life for mathematics in this view of its phy- 
 siology ; raising it from the level of a series of artifices to the dignity 
 of a living organization ? 
 
 It is clear to me that the solution of problems is functional : i. e. that 
 it is effected by the affinities of the elements themselves suffered to 
 operate, but this may be a work of great difficulty. In fact, mathema- 
 tical reasoning, like all theory or reasoning, is then only done aright, 
 when the elements arrange themselves by their own affinities. Then re- 
 sults the function, because then the vital force is set free. Similarly in 
 mind : in the setting free of a cause : just as when elements held apart 
 come together, the force that held them apart exists and produces a 
 motion or tendency : so when ideas wrongly ascribed to causes put them- 
 selves into true relation, the excluded cause demands another effect or 
 the effect another cause, and the new element the function or demand 
 for new elements the tendency arises. Astronomy is the most perfect 
 of all the sciences because the most theoretical, and least accordant of 
 all with perception : .. most accordant of all with real facts. The 
 present astronomy is something like what science will be when it is the 
 accepted view that there is no matter. 
 
 These conceptions of mental physiology are satisfactory so far as they 
 go, but they by no means embrace all the problems presented by the 
 question, nor as yet all that are essential. I have an idea of the mental 
 life in general, and of the mental functional power ; but many points of 
 detail are yet unsolved. The following are a few thoughts that suggest 
 themselves to me : The relation of mind to body is that of two halves 
 of a vibration. I think this is so from their mutual dependence and 
 inseparability, but it does not explain the exact facts ; e. g. how the 
 body may remain apparently unaltered and yet the mind be as it were 
 destroyed, nor the relation of mental passion to the brain, &c. 
 
 The physical world is not physical because ' it exists ' in time and 
 space, but surely rather because it is that form of ' fact ' to wh we apply 
 the ideas of time and space. And observe : we perceive not only phy- 
 sical facts, but moral, emotional, intellectual facts. These moral facts
 
 355 
 
 are as much external to ourselves as the physical ; and they nourish, 
 constitute, are food of, our (moral ?) emotional and intellectual life, just 
 as the physical facts are of our scientific life. This is important to ob- 
 serve ; because tho' our entire mental life depends upon observation of 
 physical facts, yet these physical facts are not only physical, they are 
 intellectual, emotional and moral, as much as physical e. g. when I 
 perceive a person fall in the street, I perceive a physical fact illustrating 
 gravity ; but I also perceive an emotional fact, a fellow creature injured ; 
 a moral fact, a call for my assistance ; an intellectual fact, or process of 
 thought and motion, &c. And these emotional, moral, intellectual ele- 
 ments are as truly in the fact I see as the physical ones. I no more 
 create them than the other, indeed perhaps even less ; doubtless the phy- 
 sical elements, those wh involve space, time and matter, are much more 
 dependent upon my perception than the others. It is these facts that 
 nourish our minds ; the emotional, moral, intellectual facts external to 
 us are the food of our emotional and mental life. This is the sense in 
 wh the psychical universe exists the universe of wh our minds are the 
 organic form. Thus each psychical fact is three-fold physical, intel- 
 lectual, moral ; nourishing our three-fold mental life. 
 
 Our emotional life is only one form of the emotional life of the uni- 
 verse. And observe : our minds must be nourished with emotional ele- 
 ments in wrong or organic relations. The entire process of nutrition 
 and function exists here also, and will reveal itself to patient thought. 
 Thus an emotional organization is produced, so that perception of ' phy- 
 sical facts ' sets up long trains of feeling. It is psychical facts that we 
 perceive in Nature. But the question returns whence and how come 
 those physical forms of thought, space and time and matter ? I know 
 what is wrong : I have a nutritive view of the question ; I put the phn 
 before the fact, effect before cause ; this it is that perplexes me. 
 
 It may be objected to the statement of our perceiving emotional and 
 intellective facts in nature, that we only perceive these by virtue of our 
 own consciousness, because by our own experience we have learnt that 
 they must be there : e. g. when we see a person fall we do not perceive 
 a sentient being in suffering, but know from our own experience that it 
 must be so. Now this helps me to the very fact I have been wanting. 
 I grant that our perception of emotional facts in nature is based upon 
 our own experience ; but this statement is equally true of all our per- 
 ceptions, of physical as of emotional. We can perceive nothing but that 
 wh is homogeneous with what we have experienced. The foundation of 
 all that we perceive lies in what we feel : here is the foundation of our 
 perception of space, time, matter. Let a man once perceive a new idea, 
 excite in him a new emotion, and from that time he sees everything new : 
 i. e. what he sees depends on what is in himself. A child perceives no 
 ' things ' in the facts of nature until by his own consciousness he has 
 obtained the idea of himself, of his body as a thing, or occupying space, 
 as being solid : nor of time, until he has experienced in himself the 
 lapse of time. So he perceives in the facts of nature no ideas, no emo- 
 tions, until he has conceived ideas and felt emotions himself. Thus the 
 facts of nature constitute our minds and yet are independent of what we 
 perceive in them. The 'things' bear the same relations to the reality as 
 the ideas and emotions do ; they are all, as perceived by us, self-derived, 
 and yet true.
 
 356 
 
 Now the question is, How came we to have this experience in our- 
 selves ; how, since the mind is entirely derived from and formed by the 
 facts of nature, can anything he experienced in the mind before it is 
 perceived in nature ? Here is the answer: the mind performs func- 
 tions, and these first experiences in itself are its functions : these func- 
 tions are new and higher forms of the mental life. The facts in nature 
 first perceived by the infant constitute the organization of the mind, the 
 first rise of new ideas, not perceived, are functions this organized mind 
 performs (by the tendency of the elements of its mind to come right). 
 Then this new stage of mental life attained, all facts are perceived in 
 conformity with it. I wish we could trace this process of embryonic 
 development in the mind, and find really how the idea of material 
 things arises. Each new class of ' ideas ' that presents itself to the in- 
 fant's mind is a work of Genius, result of nutrition, and gives rise to a 
 new nutrition on that level, in conformity with that mode of perception, 
 and so it goes on ; the talent and genius of the individual as of the 
 race. 
 
 In truth we really are nourished, we do take in, as food to the mind, 
 more than we perceive. The function is not created, it is only the same 
 vital force as was in the elements of the food, and it arises because we 
 perceive them wrongly. See, in respect to ths physical world I advanced 
 from the individual to the race ; in the psychical from the race to the 
 individual. 
 
 It is necessary to understand that in the act of perceiving we are 
 really nourished by more than we perceive, or else this doctrine of our 
 perceiving only what is in ourselves wd be fatal to itself. In fact there 
 is more in what we perceive than we perceive in it, i. e. a vital force. 
 Just as in eating, we eat for the sake of the materials alone, the ele- 
 ments ; but there is in those elements a vital force, in the shape of a di- 
 vergent arrangement wh affords us the functional power, and without 
 wh the elements wd be worthless. So it is the wrong arrangement of 
 the psychical elements by wh our minds are nourished ; the vital force 
 by wh they are held in opposition to affinities, our wrong perception, 
 that gives them all their value ; because by that only is function effected, 
 and the new element introduced wh we could not perceive in nature 
 until it first existed in ourselves. The infant, I suppose, has at first 
 merely sensation, and purely physical or bodily instincts. But what is 
 this sensation does it not imply the existence of the germ of the 
 mind ? 
 
 The education or instruction of youth must be a carrying out of the 
 natural process, and in conformity with the natural methods. It con- 
 sists of two parts : the feeding (but not over feeding, only presenting so 
 many facts as can be ' assimilated '), and, in due time, presenting the 
 stimulus to function ; but not hurrying, there must be the nutrition be- 
 fore there is the function : the wrongly arranged elements before they 
 can be arranged rightly. It is as a stimulus only that the teacher's 
 effort can be of use ; the child cannot learn it from another he must see 
 it himself. 
 
 I see too, that books presenting new truths, must be first misunder- 
 stood : men must be so as well as nature ; it is essential ; this is nutri- 
 tion ; there can be no function without it. All new facts of observation 
 must be first organically aranged ; it is the very law of life. Perhaps
 
 357 
 
 we may say he never really understands a fact or truth, who has not first 
 misunderstood it. A new truth is presented by a book just as by 
 nature, and will certainly, by all who really perceive it, be organically 
 perceived, altho' the rectification or function may immediately ensue : 
 the new, true food, must be first assimilated, i. e. its elements arranged 
 in vitally wrong relations, in conformity with previous life of the indi- 
 vidual : it could not else effect its function. And why should men 
 complain ? It is not a thing to feel hurt about ; they only participate 
 in a common lot with nature : surely this is enough. Nature is ever 
 misunderstood at first, and most by those who most earnestly study her. 
 Did not she show us, as plainly as it was possible to put the thing, the 
 earth going round the sun ; and did not we, for ages, think that she 
 meant that the sun went round the earth ? It was too bad, and really 
 very hard for her, for we are her pet children ; our education is her 
 dearest delight. But we could not help it, and she has had most pa- 
 thetic patience with us, never one harsh or angry word : she has only 
 said, ' look again, see this fact, how can it be as you think ?' and when 
 we put that wrong also, she has still only smiled, and caressed us gently 
 and said again, ' look here.' Fact after fact she has tenderly laid before 
 us, until at last we could not but see it as she meant it. But still how 
 far we are from her real meaning. Nature deals with us as with 
 children ; when we see one thing wrong she does not scold us nor ex- 
 plain it to us, but shows us other and other things, yet truly one, till we 
 cannot help seeing them aright. Hers is the true scheme of education. 
 And the true scheme for a writer is not to explain, but to show fact 
 after fact. Ever by men as by children, a new fact (and especially a 
 new theory, wh is the fact of facts), must at first be wrongly seen, and 
 assimilated to that wh is in the mind before. 
 
 The false, a priori theorizing, without assimilation, is like the 
 attempt to antedate function ; like trying to impart to children larger, 
 juster views than their knowledge of facts warrants, or naturally pro- 
 duces. So, my attempt to teach people ignorant of physiology, the 
 meaning and moral bearing of life. But the false function is proof of the 
 true ; it is counterfeit, and proving its value. 
 
 There is nothing in the talk about all mental life being based upon 
 and derived from the properties of matter. ' Matter ' is simply one of 
 the ideas we derive from ourselves. And, after all, is not the we the 
 spirit : does it not come to that ? the great basic fact of man's nature, 
 the only one, by light of wh anything is to be explained, is the spiritual 
 active being, not the mind and body, wh are parts or forms of the 
 'external,' i. e. God' act. 
 
 Now I see that a priori speculations are not altogether abortive, 
 antedated functions. They are, perhaps, rather assimilation, the putting 
 facts in conformity with our own vital state ; this causes appetite, the 
 tendency to observation, and to obtain new facts. The true theory is the 
 function ; it is not made to explain or arrange the facts, but the facts by 
 their natural affinities produce it ; it results from them, not is made for 
 them ; and is only seen, and not constructed. 
 
 As illustrative of the physiology of the human mind, as nutrition 
 preceding function, I will write down a note I made a day or two ago, 
 containing an exactly wrong or organic view of facts wh I now see just 
 oppositely. ' Why, all our knowledge is based on physical facts, is,
 
 358 
 
 that these are the food, the substance, the nutrition of our minds ; the 
 other processes are functions derived from this nutrition, thought, emo- 
 tion, &c. But perception is also a function, by wh we take the food ; 
 but we receive food before we can use our muscles.' [How nutritive, 
 effect first.] Then I went on : ' But there are mental, moral, or other 
 facts besides physical ones, wh we assimilate as nutriment to other 
 forms of mental life.' Thus it is, a fact of observation is, and ought to 
 be certainly, a false fact, i. e. one with its elements in wrong relations ; 
 not false as a whole, but with its elements falsely arranged. If we per- 
 ceived facts with their elements only in right relations, we shd be like 
 crystals, growing only by accretion ; additions of new materials increas- 
 ing indeed their weight, but giving them no power to act. It shd be 
 our joy that the facts we observe are thns organic, and tending to 
 change : we shd learn to look forward to the production of function, as 
 the end and object of observing, as we do to it as the end of existing ; 
 for we do not eat to get fat, to weigh heavier, but to have power to act. 
 So we shd observe, not to know more facts, but to be able to perform 
 higher functions. 
 
 But in respect to the general mental life of man, the different pro- 
 cesses are usually effected by different persons ; one man observes the 
 facts, perhaps another classifies or forms them into a theory : another 
 applies the stimulus wh permits the decomposition, and educes so the 
 function. What we shd learn to do is not to look with distrust or de- 
 preciation upon each others work, but, feeling that we are mutually 
 dependent and engaged in one great work, to be full of mutual respect 
 and goodwill ; helpful to each other ; not trying to make every body do 
 our work, but rejoicing that there are others to do the work wh is not 
 ours, and on whom we are more especially dependend, because we 
 cannot do it ourselves. And if we see one of the other organs acting 
 falsely, not to upbraid, but to help him ; and to help him as we best 
 can by doing for him that work wh it is our office to do : e. g. if there 
 be an assimilator spinning idle theories without facts, give him the facts. 
 
 Bacon, and all theorizers on the forming of Science, even including 
 Comte, recognize, tho' more or less obscurely, the relation of nutrition 
 and function, in the division of the laborers in Science into observers 
 and interpreters ; or, as Comte expresses it, a class whose business it 
 shall be to bring the facts observed by others into mutual relation. 
 
 Facts must be assimilated before they can perform their function ; the 
 facts of Science, e. g., cannot be interpreted while viewed directly 
 in nature ; they must ' idealized ' first, grouped by the mind, and con- 
 templated as conceptions in the mind, before they can yield to their own 
 affinities and, falling into their true relations, produce their function 
 in Science. Is not this in some sense the true idea of abstraction? 
 Existing, it must be right ; even if vitally or wrongly right : it is no 
 use to rail against it, and wish to exclude it (as Berkeley). 
 
 The important point is not only to know that all phna depend upon a 
 subjective passion, for that is an asxiom, and has indeed been known and 
 stated almost from the first dawn of philosophy, but to know what that 
 subjective passion is, and all its laws and causes. [I must 
 substitute the word phenomenal for wrong or organic arrangement in re- 
 lation to the facts wh constitute the nutrition of the mind.] I conceive 
 that the men who have beforetime denied a real matter, and affirmed
 
 359 
 
 the phna to be the act of God on mind, &c., correspond with those who 
 before Copernicus, asserted a motion of the earth instead of the sun. 
 What we want to know is, not the mere fact of the subjective origin of 
 phna, but the exact nature and kind of the subjective passion; wh cd 
 only be known by a larger collection of the phna, and from a phenomenal 
 point of view. The progress of Science is just like the progress of 
 Astronomy ; the belief in the real motion of the sun led to all the com- 
 plicated epicycle theory before it cd be seen that the sun did not move : 
 so belief in real matter leads to all our complicated Science , the end 
 and object of wh is really to show us not only that matter is a passion 
 in ourselves, but also what that passion is ; viz., that it is God's action 
 on our spirit, participated in by our spirit ; and much more than that, 
 wh I do not yet in the remotest degree conceive. The value of a nutri- 
 tion can only be appreciated by its function : our Science is infinitely 
 nobler than we thought. How poor a thing would a human body be 
 except for that wh it is the means of effecting by its functions. 
 
 Is not accurate observation mastication ; and experiment, cooking and 
 preparing food ? Observe : animals masticate, and certainly often obseve 
 accurately ; but they never cook nor make experiments. At first, in 
 the mental life, the mere phna are simply perceived, and all equally re- 
 ceived without care to observe accurately ; as an infant sucks the milk 
 from its mother, swallowing it as it comes to him. The teething 
 represents the acquiring powers and habits of discriminating ob- 
 servation. 
 
 The function is a nutritive force or tendency. Therefore the man of 
 Genius may, and is almost sure to, observe new facts on the level of the 
 life of his own function ; forming thus new nutrition. 
 
 In the child, the external 'phenomenal' passion is stage by stage trans- 
 ferred, as it were, to the internal subjective passion, and a new mode of 
 mental passion exists. So in physical Science, in the progress of universal 
 mind; the functional epochs are those in wh external passion is 
 rendered subjective, and what were many external facts exist as one 
 subjective fact. 
 
 Self-educated men are powerful because they are naturally educated ; 
 they have assimilated the facts and performed the function for them- 
 selves, .'. vigorous nutrition and power. Surely this is the principle of 
 education : not to explain to the child, but to present to him phn after 
 phn, causing him to assimilate them, and for himself to perform the 
 function; i. e. to see the truth, not to be told; e.g., not to tell him that 
 the earth moves round the sun. Whatever fact be told a child, how- 
 ever far it may be rightly explained, it is still as a new fact, a phn to 
 him ; the question is, where shd the explanation cease. 
 
 Only phna, or apparent facts unexplained, are truly food for the mind. 
 The principle of education must be to present phna to the mind, and 
 let it assimilate them. Thus alone it is nourished and made strong. 
 A book for children shd not explain things, but so present phna as that 
 children shall themselves place them right ; ' Find out for themselves.' 
 Practically, indeed, the principle is already largely recognized. 
 
 Understanding a thing, is seeing it not to be as it appears (how in- 
 structive is the antithesis between apparent and real). A child always 
 misapprehends a new fact first. The human mind as a whole, is self-edu- 
 cated, has learnt wholly from phna unexplained. But see what a
 
 360 
 
 vigorous mind it is, how vast its achievments, how perpetually expand- 
 ing its sphere ; what glorious functions it performs. The work of 
 education should be the same in principle. 
 
 I think there have not been so many functions in Science that a child 
 might not well perform them for himself, if the phna were judiciously 
 presented, and his mind excited to interest and guided by good 
 questions. But this education must not be hurried, especially the func- 
 tion. Doubtless in our explanatory system of education, or attempts to 
 feed the mind with inorganic food, not so much is lost as might appear. 
 No man can perceive what is not homogeneous to himself; and probably 
 no explanation really explains anything to a child until he has per- 
 formed the function for himself, or so far effected the nutrition that the 
 teacher's explanation is merely a stimulus. Observe : the phn, as every 
 nutrition, is also itself a function. In what way ? 
 
 Can I see how the transference from objective to subjective, in each 
 function accords with the idea of nutrition reaching its limit as cause of 
 function, similar to the vibrations of a string turned back and sub- 
 divided ? 
 
 The peculiarity of milk as food for children is in its being a secretion, 
 and as such having partly undergone decomposing change ; thereby- 
 more readily carrying on that approximative change that leads to diver- 
 gent ; more easily digestible. This is analogous to the early feeding of 
 them ind by instructors. They give the food as secreted, i. e. partly 
 prepared by the process of thought, in themselves ; not wholly decom- 
 posed (this would be excretion, and afford no nourishment), still 
 phenomenal, but in such a condition as that assimilation by the child 
 is more easy than of the immediate phna of nature. 
 
 Cooking also is a decomposing change ; aids chemical affinity. So ex- 
 periment tends to put the facts into true, as opposed to phenomenal, 
 relations to each other. It belongs to functional change, but not com- 
 plete ; as digestion also. A man invents assimilative theories, he can 
 only discover functional ones. Just as he may invent modes of construct- 
 ing equations, but he can only discover solutions : the constructing 
 equations corresponds with assimilation in mathematical life. 
 
 As in order to know with any accuracy, the exact form and nature of 
 earth's motion, it was necessary to make a large induction of facts on the 
 theory of the earth's motion, so to teach us the full meaning and nature 
 of that act of God wh we perceive as the material world (and much 
 more, as the mental world), there will be a large induction of facts 
 made upon the theory of the non-reality of matter. 
 
 How does our emotional mental life arise from our perception of phna 
 as facts ; and how is it to be elevated by recognizing the illusory nature 
 of the phna ? 
 
 Is there not a sense in wh it is true that the beauty of nature is in 
 MS ; so the truth, so the love : all the things we perceive ? That is 
 they are really in that act of God's wh produces the subjective passion 
 we call nature. It is in God's act they are ; the cause determines the 
 phenomena. 
 
 If nature is the bride of the universal human soul, are there chil- 
 dren of nature and humanity ? Is not nature truly mother, and humanity 
 father ? How does the dependence of mental, and even spiritual, life 
 on the physical condition, and especially on the condition of the brain,
 
 361 
 
 constitute the reality of spirit and the phenomenal character of mind and 
 body ? The mutual dependence of mind and body seems to agree to a 
 certain extent ; but the mind seems more dependent on the body than 
 the body on the mind. 
 
 Do not the French observe, or effect the eating ; the Germans assimi- 
 late or effect the theory ; and the English perform function or 
 interpret ? Not exclusively, of course (wh never is the case), but in 
 general I think this is the mode in wh the mental life of humanity is 
 distributed. Copernicus was a Dane [the same English race] ; is not 
 Comte, who would keep us for ever eating, not even digesting, typically 
 French ? 
 
 In our mental life we must be content to live and conform to the laws 
 of life ; to eat, and drink, and sleep, and be nourished, as well as perform 
 functions. At the same time fully believing that, by such conformity, all 
 we aspire after and much more is finally to be achieved : not despairing, 
 for the general mind (Science) is the universal life, to the attainments of 
 wh no limits can be placed. It is no argument that as the powers of the 
 human body are limited, and pretty well known, so are those of the 
 mind : the analogy does not hold. The human mind, in the sense in wh 
 it advances from age to age, is one b'ving organism, wh has a course to 
 run quite unknown, unknowable until it is revealed in fact. It can no 
 more anticipate its future than can the child its manhood, still less can it 
 conceive a greater. Nothing can conceive a greater than itself ; anything 
 that is growing and developing must of necessity outstrip its conceptions. 
 Youth indeed casts a splendour on the future ; but it is never anything more 
 than a pleasant present ; wh is just what our Science anticipates, an ever- 
 lasting ' feast,' forgetting that such a feast wd become intolerable torment. 
 Better than that, there is before it a noble succession of feasting and 
 working, producing a quite unanticipateable development. 
 
 What is sleeping in the mental life ? it is the period during wh assimi- 
 lation most vigorously takes place, with no eating and very little function. 
 It strikes me it must be a period of a priori reasoning ; just such a period 
 as preceded Bacon's epoch, not so badly called the dark ages. This is 
 no legitimate term of reproach : what greater blessing than the darkness 
 of night ? what period of greater or mere beneficial activity than natural 
 sleep ? Do not the alternation of light and darkness from the one mo- 
 tion of the earth, represent the vibration, day and night; being as 
 function and nutrition I 
 
 The new cause wh function introduces is sometimes known, but put in 
 wrong relation (as in respect to function and chemical change) ; some- 
 times unknown, and the function reveals it, as e. g. in respect to changes 
 of level, as cause of the coral islands. What is the difference in these 
 classes of cases ? is it more in appearance than in reality ? See how the 
 phna prove cause without observation of the cause itself ; even if the 
 fact of chemical change accompanying function were unknown, it might 
 safely be asserted as the result of interpretation. 
 
 It is just when the ' theory' (or assimilation) has become so unwieldly 
 that it cannot go on any longer, that the function comes. So in astro- 
 nomy [epicycle theory] ; so in our present Science ; so ever : the theory 
 falls by its own weight. 
 
 It seems curious to consider mind and matter, or more properly motioa
 
 362 
 
 and thought, as the halves of one vibration. Yet perhaps this is not so 
 strange if we could look at it aright. How unlike are many forms of 
 force, and especially organic life, to the ordinary movement of masses, 
 yet are they the same thing. So the organic mind, tho' so unlike the psy- 
 chical facts or ' passion ' of the universe, is really the same thing ; and 
 hy its muscular functions reproduces the psychical equivalent of move- 
 ment, as hy others of heat, &c. [What is the animal heat in respect to 
 mind?] 
 
 Now have I not a view towards the connection of mental with phy- 
 sical passion in the organic body ? Is not, in fact, every physical pas- 
 sion in the universe really attended with an equivalent psychical passion 
 because of the vibratile relation? In the animal body the very same 
 thing takes place : viz. with the organic self-acting physical life or body 
 goes on of course a self-acting organic psychical life or mind. The 
 mental passion accompanying bodily passion is nothing else than the 
 universal psychical passion wh accompanies all material passions com- 
 pleting and constituting the vibration. There is no mystery of body 
 and mind specially united in organic forms, in animals. It is one thing 
 thro' all Nature ; and there is a mind or soul of the universe necessarily 
 as of an animal ; even as the universe as a whole is organic or or- 
 ganized. 
 
 The relation of the brain to the body, as necessarily repeating and 
 representing the whole in every detail, shows how the whole is repeated 
 over and over again. Surely man is to Nature, in some sense, as brain 
 is to body, : a complete repetition of her, including all relations under 
 another form. As man is brain to Nature, so the spirit seems only in 
 immediate relation with man as compared with the rest of Nature, just 
 as it seems only in immediate relation with the brain as compared with 
 the rest of the body. Then man is connected with Nature as by 
 nerves. 
 
 The details of astronomy will give assistance here. Even these are 
 absolutely repeated whenever the same relation recurs. The organic body 
 developes into the brain, wh repeats the whole ; just as nature developes 
 into the living human body, wh repeats and comprehends the whole. 
 The brain appears to be developed by means of the nerves. There is a 
 clue here : how little we know of our own bodies except by scientific 
 investigation ; also how comparatively slight is our power over them. 
 We control only a few of their external functions, are conscious (save 
 in disease) of scarcely anything but the action of external stimuli. Is 
 there not here an analogy to our relation to nature ? 
 
 I am embarrassed here again by the difficulty of laying aside the 
 feeling of a real matter, and regarding the phna merely as phna, as 
 passions. This seems to be the great necessity in order to acquire real 
 knowledge ; and until the fact is quite familiar (the subjective nature 
 of all ' phna '), our unconsciously regarding them as external, will be a 
 constant source of embarrassment. 
 
 That word ' passion,' as the term for all physical and psychical 
 actions, contains in itself the whole doctrine of the subjective nature of 
 phna. A ' passion,' of course, is subjective. If matter be motion and 
 motion be a passion, a passion of or in what is it ? There can be only 
 one reply. These physical and psychical passions are our passions 
 of course.
 
 363 
 
 The relations of body and mind, of the physical and psychical 
 world, are merely relations between phna, .-. no real causation of them 
 on either part. Not only does effect ever appear before cause in respect 
 to phn appearing before the subjective passion, but also in the relations 
 of the phna themselves the (phenomenal) effect ever appears before the 
 (phenomenal) cause. So that scientific life has these two forms ; first 
 the eliciting of the true phenomenal causes, putting cause before effect 
 in relation of the phna to each other ; and secondly the putting cause 
 before effect in relation to our subjective passion and phna altogether, 
 so educing the real cause, wh is not phenomenal but spiritual. 
 
 So long as we think that the perception of matter is really the effect 
 of a mental passion in us, ve cannot get right. It is only phenomenally 
 so, in the same sense as the sun's motion in astronomy ; or more clearly, 
 tho' not more truly, as the relation between a blow upon a body and its 
 motion, &c., or any other physical sequence of cause and effect (in wh 
 there is no real cause). These relations of external phna to passions 
 in our own bodies and minds, are only types of the real relation of all 
 phna to passion in our spirits (i. e. in us). 
 
 There has been a two-fold progress of Science in this respect. First 
 in respect to our bodily passions : in astronomy, and in the doctrine of 
 all perception being a chemical change in our body. Second, in respect 
 to the mind : in the doctrine that our perceptions depend very much 
 upon the state of our minds at any given time (of our ' feelings,') ; and 
 also in the general doctrine that the external world results from, or con- 
 sists in, a mental passion. Both these are true : and these are types of 
 the real subjectivity of the phn ; viz., that a passion in the spirit is the 
 reality both of material and mental world, including our own body and 
 mind. The perception that matter depends on mind is a step in the 
 right ordering of phna, and just parallel on the one hand, to the ma- 
 terial universe being to us a result of physical passion in our own bodies ; 
 and on the other, to the perception that all phna, mind and all, are to 
 us as a result of passion in the spirit. The true subjectivity, the true 
 cause, is only discovered in the discovery that nature, physical and 
 psychical, is a spiritual act of God. The relation between the ma- 
 terial and psychical universe is only a relation of phna, and not of real 
 cause. 
 
 I conceive the material world is not directly a passion of the spirit, 
 but rather of the mind. Just as the sun's motion is due, not directly to 
 a passion of the mind, but to a passion of the body. It would have been 
 wrong to say the sun's motion was subjective, in the sense of being a 
 mere state or passion of the mind ; it was a passion of the mind pro- 
 duced by and through a passion of the body. So the material world 
 cannot rightly be referred to a passion in the spirit directly ; it is a 
 passion in the spirit produced through a passion in the mind. There is 
 a relation of the phna wh has to be put right before we can advance to 
 the real subjective question. The material world is result of a mental 
 passion. The mental universe is result of spiritual passion. To 
 attribute phna directly to subjective passion, before we have ascertained 
 their correct relations to each other, is not the way to arrive at a true 
 knowledge of the subjective passion. This was Berkeley's error. I 
 must first accurately ascertain the relation of the phna ; i. e. the rela- 
 tion existing between the universe and the mind ; I must learn from the
 
 364 
 
 phna what is that quasi-subjective mental passion wh causes the appear- 
 ance, before I can know what the passion of the spirit is, and .. that 
 spiritual act wh truly is the cause. 
 
 The phn, in a decided sense, is like, i. e. homogeneous with, the sub- 
 jective passion that causes it : e. g. the motion wh we perceive in the 
 sun is homogeneous with the motion of our bodies wh causes us to per- 
 ceive it. It is motion of our own bodies wh causes us to perceive external 
 motion. Must there not be some sort of relation of homogeneousness 
 between our mental passion and the ' thing ' we perceive in consequence 
 of it ? As it is motion of our bodies wh causes us to perceive motion 
 external, so must it not be facts or things in our mind wh cause us to 
 perceive facts or things distinct from it ? The character of the mental 
 passion determines the character of the external universe. The mental 
 passion being the phn, is to be accurately investigated as the revealer 
 of the spiritual passion wh constitutes, or causes us to perceive, it. Is 
 not passion in least resistance this mental phn ? Passion in least resist- 
 ance is the equivalent in the mental world to the motion of the earth in 
 astronomy : it is the phn. This is the mental phn, from wh the spirit- 
 ual passion and its real spiritual cause have to be deduced ; and that, I 
 think, is God's holy act influencing and carrying with it the spirit, as 
 the earth does the body. Is this illustration applicable also to the 
 mental passion ? As the motion of the earth is only one part of the 
 great motion of the heavenly bodies, so is the passion in our spirit only 
 one part of the great act of God ; this act being not only the cause of our 
 own passion, but equally the cause and reality of that wh we perceive. 
 The sidereal motions we observe are one with the motion of the earth of 
 wh we partake. Xow do I not see the true bearing of what I saw before 
 in respect to the mixing up, to our perception, of motions due to our mo- 
 tion and motions truly external to us, wh seemed, before we understood, 
 exceptional and embarrassing. All in the mental world that is passion 
 in least resistance is subjective ; but there is a class of facts wh do not 
 come within that denomination, wh are exceptional and embarrassing, 
 setting any simple theory at defiance. They are the moral facts, our 
 own free will and that of our fellow men : arbitrary, capricious, not con- 
 formable to any principles of Science, certainly not passion in least 
 resistance ; they are the residual phna wh remain after satisfactorily re- 
 ferring all the great mass of the facts wh constitute the universe to our 
 own mental passion, like the residual motions wh remained after the 
 mass of the heavenly motions had been satisfactorily referred to our own 
 motion produced by the motion of the earth. They are the materials 
 and basis of the Science of the universe, just as those residual stellar 
 motions are the basis and the materials of the Science of astronomy. It 
 would be a poor astronomy that shd simply consist in the knowledge 
 that the earth turned round, yet that is all we shd have known if it had 
 not been for these truly external motions. 
 
 The true Science of the universe is a spiritual Science, and these are 
 spiritual facts ; they are no part of our mental passion ; they are dis- 
 tinct from and far beyond the mind : with them goes ' cause.' This also 
 is spiritual, and certainly not mental, as it is in no way passion in least 
 resistance, but rather the opposite. All that is passion in least resist- 
 ance is result simply of a passion in our minds ; all that is not is 
 spiritual ; hence is the true Science of the universe to be constructed.
 
 365 
 
 By the light of these alone our own mental and physical passion, the 
 whole universe of the phnomenal, is to be explained. 
 
 The motion of the earth is one of those very residual motions, the 
 appearance of wh it does not cause. The earth itself only moves as one 
 of those orbs whose motions were so embarrassing and seemed so irregular. 
 
 In what consists the special relation to ourselves (the spiritual) of 
 our own bodies and minds ? How in other men and in beasts do we 
 perceive similar special relations ? 
 
 The clear apprehension of the relation between phn and reality, re- 
 moves very many of the greatest difficulties to a full realization of the 
 nature of the universe. In this way, viz. : that all the old familiar 
 and instinctive ideas wh spiritualism at first seems to demand us to lay 
 aside, such as the idea of externality, the idea of substratum, &c., need 
 not be so laid aside, but understood to apply to the phna and not to reality. 
 
 The externality of the world is fully admitted as a phenomenal fact. 
 The idea of substratum, or substance in wh ' properties ' inhere, is 
 equally welcome. We must only remember that this substratum is 
 phenomenal also, the relation of properties to substratum being a rela- 
 tion among phna. So all the violence wh at first seems to be done, 
 not only to our instincts but even to our habits, disappears ; and 
 spiritualism is as easy as naturalism, or rather much easier. It is just 
 as we practically consider and speak of the apparent motion of the sun 
 as real, and admit all the relations and conceptions involved in it, 
 knowing them all to be apparent. 
 
 We talk about the circuit of the sun, the sphere of the heavens, the 
 greater or less altidude of the stars and so on, the accompaniments of 
 sun-rise and sun-set. Knowing (wh is easy) and remembering with full 
 comprehension of the nature of the case (wh is equally easy), that the 
 physical and mental universe are phna only, all the old familiar ideas 
 resume their place and leave our conceptions with all their former ease 
 and naturalness, but with an inconceivably valuable addition. 
 
 It is interesting this idea of phenomenal substratum, how one phn is 
 substratum of another. But it is so indubitably ; and the idea of sub- 
 stratum is one that we want and cannot afford to tamper with ; it is 
 that that gives us knowledge of spiritual beings. The great instance of 
 phn being substratum for phn seems to be in the mind, being substratum 
 for the material world. Are not our bodies the substrata of the sun's 
 motion ? We must remember that it is only these relations of phna 
 that reveal to us the nature of the reality or cause. 
 
 It is the fact of the phn as a whole being subjective that puts the 
 theory or assimilative process wrong. The phna are rightly arranged 
 among themselves, as in epicycle theory ; but the entire phn (or the 
 mass of it, with few exceptions), being subjective, this assimilation wh 
 goes on the basis of its real objectivity is utterly wrong or nutritive ; 
 just as the epicycle theory was, because the great motion was a sub- 
 jective one, not really objective. Thus in physical Science up till now, 
 the theory is quite wrong, although the phna are very accurately ar- 
 ranged ; because they are arranged on the basis of the real objectiveness 
 of the material world, or real existence of 'matter.' Hence they 
 furnish the true subjective passion ; viz., motion in least resist- 
 ance ; and that gives the real cause, God's holy act. So with reference 
 to mind ; however accurately the phna might be arranged, the theory
 
 366 
 
 must be utterly wrong while mind itself was supposed to be 
 objective. 
 
 Our conviction of the real objectiveness or externality of the phn, 
 arises from the idea of cause. Our perception, our passion, must have a 
 cause, and .'.as our passion is the only thing we know of, we make it 
 the cause of itself, as if it were two ; we enact a divergence between 
 polar elements ; between our perception (our mental passion) and the 
 material world (the physical passion) ; we separate the mental and 
 physical passion, wh are polar and form one whole, by the idea of cause 
 the vital force. See here how the vital force, the life, the act, is 
 spiritual, as cause ever is. Life thus, as ever, is a separation of polarly 
 attracting elements physical and psychical vibration. The idea of 
 cause thus, as vital force, separates the two polar elements of the one 
 whole, viz., man's mind and the physical universe. But again recurs 
 the necessity for a cause, viz., for the phn. The phn is supposed the 
 cause of the perception, but what is the cause of the phn itself? This 
 is God's direct act, creation ; involving however a false idea, viz., that 
 of time in relation to God. The real cause, God's act, is arrived 
 at, but round about and in inverted order, viz., God's act, phn, 
 passion in human spirit : instead of God's act, passion in human spirit, 
 phn. Thus this great function also consists, when clearly seen, only of 
 inverting the relation of cause and effect, both known but put in wrong 
 relations ; viz., phn and subjective passion. 
 
 I see how God's act comes to be so misrepresented as arbitrary, occa- 
 sional, past, direct and secondary, &c., it is made the cause of the 
 wrong effect, of the phn and not of the subjective passion. This inver- 
 sion of cause and effect sets us necessarily about finding another cause 
 for the effect ; and even when the true cause in itself is found, being 
 applied to wrong point, namely, to effect of the known cause and not to 
 that cause itself, it is wrongly applied, and does not suit, and has to be 
 altered accordingly. So in respect to animal function ; the cause, the 
 stimulus, did not suit the effect (viz., the function), to wh it was ap- 
 plied, and the whole was unintelligible. The affair is put right by 
 putting the known cause and effect in right relations ; then the cause 
 introduced, being the cause of that known cause, suits ; all is natural 
 and plain, and the new cause can be rightly presented, even as God's 
 act is rightly presented to us as causing passion in us, but as directly 
 causing phna, wrongly. The process of rightly arranging the phna is simi- 
 lar : effect first perceived before cause and considered as cause, then another 
 cause sought for the effect of the supposed effect ; and so, even if this 
 cause introduced be the right cause, it is wrongly applied. Here is 
 an assimilation, an organically wrong theory : this then arranges itself 
 rightly, and the new cause is either first discovered or placed in right 
 relations. This is the function, the interpretation, the higher life. I 
 conceive it is necessary for the true cause to be known or conceived of, 
 even if not put in relation of a cause, before the function can be per- 
 formed. Though was it so in relation to motion of the earth? "Was 
 not that first revealed by the assimilative theory falling by its own 
 weight, by the elements arranging themselves by their aflinities ? or 
 was the idea before suggested, even if only by the known movements 
 of the other planets round the sun ? The two processes, the putting phna 
 in the right relations, and the perceiving them to be subjective, are
 
 367 
 
 well illustrated by those two epochs in astronomy : the planets' motion 
 round the sun discovered, and earth's motion discovered. 
 
 This advantage for religion is gained by seeing that the phn is effect 
 and not cause of the subjective passion; viz., that tho' when the phn is 
 put first, some people may deny that it has a cause, and so be atheists, 
 no one, I think, will be found to deny that our subjective passion has 
 a cause. This is the very basis on wh the belief in an external world 
 reposes ; and has availed to maintain that belief all these years in de- 
 fiance of the most conclusive metaphysical proof to the contrary. If it 
 once was shown that it is the subjective passion wh demands a cause 
 and not the phn, there is surely no class of men that will deny the 
 necessity of a cause for that. Unfortunately by making it the phn that 
 demands a cause, unnecessary difficulties are placed in the way of a full 
 recognition of the Divine act as the cause. The effect does not agree 
 in many ways, as is plain, and is shown by consequences ; e. g. the 
 referring of the act to a distant period ; the dividing it into direct and 
 indirect, or supposing it to consist altogether in the institution of laws, 
 or to be amended and altered : the whole series of inappropriate and 
 unconceivable peculiarities wh are supposed to attach, and one can 
 hardly avoid attaching, to the Divine act as manifested in ' creation.' 
 The one source of all the error is the attaching the idea of God's act 
 to the phn instead of the reality. There is but one cause appropriate 
 to the universe, and that is a subjective passion of the human spirit. 
 It is the cause of that passion wh we must look for in the Divine Act ; 
 and so seeking it we find it to be in accordance with ibs effect, what it 
 must be in itself, an eternal spiritual act, having for its one emphatic 
 characteristic, holiness. 
 
 The atheistic idea, that the universe simply exists and has no cause, 
 is precisely parallel to the old idea respecting function ; that capacity 
 for function, irritability, sensibility, &c., were original and specific en- 
 dowments of the organic tissues ; like the material universe on the 
 atheistic hypothesis, they simply existed, they had no cause, they were 
 primary facts. [Another instance of the parallelism between the rela- 
 tion of function to chemical decomposition of tissues, and the relation 
 of the phenomenal universe to subjective passion.] 
 
 Whence comes the perception of ' things ?' There must be a reason 
 for this in the nature of the mental passion. Matter is a phenomenal 
 substratum, not a thing perceived. It is in the chemical motions in the 
 body, not in the actual external phna, that the reason of the mode under 
 wh we perceive the external world is to be sought. Influence of motion 
 on the organic body produces functions ; so on organic mind produces 
 perception, or things. 
 
 The substratum for properties of matter is mind ; for properties of 
 mind, spirit. Just as substratum for all the properties of apparent mo- 
 tion of the sun is the motion of the earth, our motion. May not the 
 ' universal mind of man,' wh is the substratum of Science, bear in some 
 sort the same relation to the individual minds that the general motion 
 of the earth bears to the motion of the individual bodies produced 
 by it? 
 
 By putting phna into their right relations causes can be found for 
 them ; they can be shown to be ' logical ' results of known conditions. 
 So with respect to earth's motion, instead of that of stellar sphere :
 
 368 
 
 the latter is a mere unaccountable 'primary' fact, the former an 
 intelligible result. 
 
 And how much larger a fact it discloses and forms part of, tho' seem- 
 ing to be less. How much less it must have appeared at first that this 
 poor globe shd revolve on its axis, than that the entire heavenly sphere 
 shd revolve. Yet was this sacrifice of greatness only a means to the 
 attainment of a grandeur inconceivable excelling. So it may be thought 
 a sacrifice of grandeur, to give up this real physical universe. A mere 
 subjective passion produced by some common cause in human minds, 
 may seem a paltry substitute for it. And when again we are called to 
 give up the human mind as a real entity, and regard it as a mere sub- 
 jective passion of the spirit, a phn, an illusion resulting from a passion 
 in ourselves, it is natural to complain ; but let us have patience and 
 reflect. The revolution of the earth is a little thing to substitute for the 
 magnificent procession of the universal sphere ; but what does that little 
 thing indicate and reveal ? of how vast a system it forms a part, and 
 by its influence on us enables us to form some faint conception. As the 
 earth's motion is the means by wh we gain our insight into the real 
 structure, the relations and movements of the stellar universe, so our 
 knowledge of that part, so to speak, of God's eternal act, wh, affecting 
 us, produces psychical and physical phn a, is the means by wh we may 
 attain some little knowledge of the entire scope and bearing of that act 
 itself ; may gain some glimpse of the grand reality. It is, all, such as 
 that by wh we are influenced ; and the great and essential characteristic 
 of it we know ; it is holy. This holy act for holy ends, is the infinite 
 reality ; shall we not be content to give up for it phenomenal universes 
 multiplied a thousand fold ? will it not so far surpass them all as the 
 great ever expanding universe itself surpasses stellar revolving spheres ? 
 
 The reference of scientific phna to subjective passion resembles the 
 idea of the earth's motion in various respects : e. g. it is simple ; the 
 phenomenal Science is always complex. It tasked the highest powers 
 to gain a conception of the epicycle theory ; but when the motion of the 
 earth was seen, a child could understand all that was of importance. 
 So to have a thoro' knowledge of our Science tasks the highest powers, but 
 on the subjective view as passion in least resistance how simple it is. 
 
 Berkeley's idea involves that the object of the universe is ourselves, 
 our instruction, &c. So the ordinary Science rests on a similar basis ; 
 i. e. that the world exists for the ends it subserves, of use, enjoyment, 
 &c., to its inhabitants. Just so the phenomenal astronomy represented 
 and made men think that all existed for the earth and man. He and it 
 were the centre. It is the essence of phn to revolve about man as a 
 centre. The anti- phenomenal Science, wh makes the universe consist 
 in a subjective passion produced by a Divine act, wh has no primary 
 and immediate reference to ourselves, how much larger it is, as well as 
 simpler, just as is the helio -centric astronomy ; it makes the universe 
 more a matter of personal interest, and yet less a matter of personal sub- 
 servience to us. The anti-phenomenal Science shows that earth and 
 humanity are only a subordinate part, partaking in the effects of an 
 action wh is infinitely beyond anything they can perceive or conceive 
 as phn. What we perceive is limited by the passion produced in our- 
 selves ; the reality expands to the vastness of the cause of this passion, 
 and all of wh that constitutes a part.
 
 369 
 
 Again, it might be thought for a time that astronomy was exhausted, 
 when the earth's motion was discovered ; but in truth it only then began 
 in any worthy sense. The study of the residual phna, not part of the 
 subjective motion, opened a new world. So in respect to Science : the 
 study of the residual, the spiritual phna, opens an entirely new world. 
 
 Sidereal astronomy is the Sociology of the heavens, wh could only be 
 studied when the anti-phenomenal astronomy had been established. So 
 the sociology of the earth the facts of human nature and the workings 
 of the human Will the spiritual facts, can be studied only on the basis 
 of a non-phenomenal Science. Understanding that Nature is a spiritual 
 act, we can study to some purpose other spiritual acts, but not before. 
 
 Every holy act is homogeneous with, is one with Nature ; even as the 
 motion of the earth is one with the motions of the other planets, and ho- 
 mogeneous or essentially one with the universal starry motions. They 
 are indeed all comprehended and represented therein [the perfect spiral it 
 is, to wh nothing different can be added.] These spiritual residual 
 facts, wh are not passion in least resistance, and . . not subjective, are now 
 the objects for us to study : a spiritual science, Nature considered as 
 spiritual also, and giving us the chief clue for interpreting and studying 
 other spiritual acts, just as the motion of the earth is the chief means 
 of interpreting the motions of the other heavenly bodies. 
 
 The idea of cause is the one force wh produces divergence or nutrition ; 
 wh constitutes then the polar attraction, affinity, or tendency to assume 
 new arrangements ; wh effects the function or new nutrition. It is the 
 one sole mental force in relation to Science ; and in all other forms of 
 mental life must be essentially the same, and convertible therewith tho' 
 differing in form. The three forms of vital force in mind [answering to 
 the three forms of vital force in body, viz. irritability of muscles, se- 
 cretibility of glands, sensibility of cerebrum] are (?) of Art : idea 
 
 of cause, in Science : passion or love in emotional life. 
 
 It is this arrangement of facts by idea of cause, while retaining their 
 phenomenal relations, that constitutes emphatically theory or nutrition. 
 There is just as much theory in the phenomenal or experimental science, 
 or science of observation, if the facts are arranged at all, i. e. brought 
 within the sphere of real science in this there is just as much theory 
 as in any possible system of interpretation. There is the strangest 
 notion that the connection of facts in their phenomenal or inverted 
 order, by idea of cause, is not theory ; but that that only is theory wh 
 connects them in the anti-phenomenal order by the same idea of cause, 
 and as if the former has a right to maintain its place until it is abso- 
 lutely disproved, without offering any evidence in its own favor. The 
 two arrangements of the facts are equally theoretical, and no favor shd 
 be shown to either, except on the ground of their inherent merits : tho' 
 even this is too much to grant to the phenomenal theory, as will be seen 
 when the physiology of Science is understood. It will be seen that the 
 phenomenal theory exists only for the interpretation, is a nutrition, only 
 designed to effect a function and to be superseded by it. 
 
 Either matter is cause, or mind is cause, [and Comte truly denies 
 that cause is in either] or Science leads directly and must go to spirit. 
 Her business is to find cause, and wheresoever she finds it there she 
 finds a moral cause, and all her ' reasons and ' causes ' are swallowed up 
 in the one cause of holiness the one fact of holy or unholy Beings.
 
 370 
 
 Certainly no materialist can deny the Science is founded on the idea of 
 cause, for what do we know of matter but as the cause of our percep- 
 tions ? Comte cannot be a materialist [at least in his principles], he 
 must at any rate be an anti-materialist, tho' not a spiritualist, denying, 
 inconsistently cause altogether. But Comte is doing his work ; helping 
 us to see that cause is not in matter or in mind : he is more right than 
 we. But the difference between errors is, some are nutritive, organic, 
 are food ; others are inorganic, want the vital force wh puts the phn in 
 wrong relations, .-. are poison. Comte seeks (and Berkeley sought) to 
 substitute inorganically true for organically false materials. But man 
 has an instinct wh teaches him to prefer food to poison in spite of all 
 arguments. Shew him how exactly crystals are arranged according to 
 chemical affinities and how fruit sets them at defiance, you will not per- 
 suade him to eat crystals instead of fruit. A little salt is all very well ; 
 but all salt, by no means. 
 
 Our perception of things or facts is determined [apparently produced] 
 by relations among the phna. Chiefly by relations between the external 
 phna and our bodies ; but also in part by relations of the external phna 
 to each other these relations determining the relation between them 
 and our bodies; e. g. a light from one object to another: and also the 
 condition of our bodies themselves ; a blind man fails to perceive many 
 things. The point that must be elucidated before any satisfactory result 
 can be arrived at is, the relation to us and to external phna of that phn 
 wh constitutes our bodies. 
 
 Does not the perception depend on the subjective passion, just as 
 function does on nutrition ? but the character of the function is mainly 
 determined by the organization ; and is it not on the organization of the 
 mind that the character of perception depends ? The reason of percep- 
 tion is to be ascertained by a mental anatomy, an explanation of the or- 
 ganization of the mind and of the mode of action of its various elements 
 and their relations to each other, before its external objective functions 
 can be understood. We must understand mental anatomy and functions, 
 of individual elements, as we understand the anatomy of the muscles 
 and bones, and the mode of action of the muscles as such, and by that 
 means alone comprehend the muscular functions. The mental muscular, 
 secretive, and' nervous systems are the constructive and perceptive, the 
 intellective, the emotional. A great guide to the knowledge of the 
 mental anatomy will be a knowledge of the bodily anatomy, the two 
 being very parallel. 
 
 Here is an instance of the inverse relation (in our apprehension) of 
 the mental and bodily worlds. We knew first the organization of the 
 body as phn, the actual anatomy, before we discovered that it was the 
 result of passion in least resistance, or the nature of physical life. We 
 know first that mind is passion in least resistance, and the nature of 
 mental life, before we have any clear apprehension of the actual mental 
 organization, or mental anatomy. 
 
 Shall we not find a similarity between the kind of function performed 
 by the several systems and tissues ? something analogous to contraction 
 in mental muscles ; to the formation and casting off of cells in the mental 
 secretive system; to nervous action in the mental nervous system. 
 
 Result, or phn, is the first object of ' perception ' in the physical 
 world: is not process or passion the object of 'perception' in the psy- 
 chical world ? An inversion here also. 
 
 [Mental Physiology, 45.
 
 371 
 
 The universe is one great spiral returning into itself (as the earth's 
 orbit) : a true or complete spiral, i. e. three co-existing continuous vibra- 
 tions ; this great spiral consisting of innumerable subordinate spirals. 
 Is not every motion completely spiral, either continuously or transitively ; 
 when continuously, the spiral is seen as spiral by us ; but when appa- 
 rently not spiral the other forms of passion, wh constitute the transitive 
 vibrations, truly make up the spiral, if we could trace their relations : 
 e. g., each motion, wh does not, as such, return upon itself, i. e. consti- 
 tute a continuous vibration, sets up an equal and opposite motion which 
 produces a real vibration. So that in every case every passion truly 
 consists of three co-existing vibrations, or is a spiral. 
 
 A man can always effect nutrition by directing his attention to phna 
 and arranging them according to relation of cause, to the best of his 
 ability ; but he cannot effect function until the appropriate nutrition 
 first exists. It is so also in the physical world ; but then each nutrition 
 is a function of a preceding nutrition : and it is only such function as be- 
 longs to the existing nutrition that he can effect. To produce any other 
 function, he must (by directing the function he can perform to such end) 
 first produce the nutrition : e. g. to produce the function of the steam 
 engine he must first make the engine and then accummulate the power 
 (nutrition) by causing restrained expansion of the steam. This instance 
 of man making the machine illustrates his entire relation to external 
 world ; this, and his power of causing external function where nutrition 
 already exists by producing a stimulus. 
 
 Is there not here some clue to the man's (the spirit's) relation 
 to his own body and mind ? they are the nutrition over which he has 
 direct power to make it perform its functions. These functions however, 
 being according to their organization ; and only by means of relation to 
 these or other nutrition can he effect other functions ; and these functions 
 also directly influence him. The nutrition and many of their functions 
 are effected independently of him, but the functions he can effect rule 
 the nutrition. These also are phna, are really his subjective passion. 
 
 There must be a real difference in the cause to produce such difference 
 in the phn ; it is not one passion (in some sense) that causes phna so 
 different as our body and mind and the external universe. In the hea- 
 venly motion produced by the earth's motion, what represents our own 
 body and mind ? what the external world ? Can we better solve the 
 problem by regarding it in relation to others than to ourselves : in rela- 
 tion to the animal world, where there are the same elements and same 
 relation, but no spirit ? 
 
 The relation of the external universe is to our body and mind, it is 
 subjective passion in them that constitutes the external universe ; and 
 the subjective passion of spirit constitutes only our own body and mind. 
 Our spirit acted on by God undergoes a passion wh is our own body and 
 mind : our spirits and their immediate passion we call ' us.' The Di- 
 vine action influencing these passions in ourselves, and therefore one 
 with them, we call the Universe. 
 
 To return The man can always effect nutrition, i. e. he can always 
 perform some function wh he can direct to cause different kinds of nu- 
 trition. This seems man's (the spiritual) power of acting : to permit 
 function and to direct it as he pleases, or to resist and control passion 
 within certain limits. He can act directly only on his own body and
 
 372 
 
 mind, i. e. the passion in himself: to that he has a spiritual relation 
 hut to that wh is in relation only with this passion (i. e. with his hody 
 and mind) he has only a phenomenal, not a spiritual relation, he has no 
 power over it hy his will. The relation of the external world to us is 
 a relation to our hodies and minds, not directly to us, i. e. to the 
 spiritual man. 
 
 The entire subjective passion is really one of the exceptional facts ; 
 i. e. it is a spiritual moral act. These are the exceptional facts wh will 
 not he included in the formula of passion in least resistance. Consider 
 how great a phn may arise from how little a cause : how little a fact is 
 the revolution of the earth on her axis to produce the phna of the re- 
 volution of the sun and all the stars. So in the animal body all sorts 
 of spectra from how slight a change in the brain. Consider also how 
 great are those exceptional facts which look to us so small ; the phn 
 appears great and is small : the realities appear small and are great. 
 So one spiritual or holy act is really greater than all the universe. The 
 great phna from little subjective passion is function, and depends on 
 organization : how slight a stimulus produces enormous function where 
 nutrition and organization exist. How far is the perception of phna 
 function in this sense, as being only produced by a stimulus ? We are 
 in a region of illusions, and must walk warily. These permitted pas- 
 sions, so altogether out of proportion to apparent cause or stimulus (wh 
 half the passion in the universe is, and all the most striking, viz. the 
 functional), will continually deceive us, unless we be on our guard and 
 well aware of all the conditions. 
 
 The facts or phna are the elements, the materials, of our mental food ; 
 the theory is the life. And theory is produced by idea of cause, wh is 
 the vital force ; the essence of all theory is the idea of cause. When 
 this vital force is excluded from the elements of the phna it exists as 
 function, or a new nutrition ; still and ever the vital force. 
 
 Is cause related to facts or events as force to matter ? Force is motion 
 resisted : is cause spiritual action ' resisted ' ? The idea of cause, as 
 between phna, is parallel to the idea of force as between things : it is 
 a similar phenomenal illusion. As we cannot in idea separate motion 
 and ' things ' and yet it is first ; so neither can we causation from events, 
 and yet it is first. As motion exists in the two forms of motion and 
 tendency to it, or force, so surely must cause exist in two parallel forms ? 
 
 May it be that space, or idea of matter, is a force, a wrong relation, 
 the vital force in relation to matter ? Is matter a nutritive form of 
 thought (as cause and effect are), only ceasing with the physical world 
 as cause does in relation to God so time also ? As seeing phna in rela- 
 tion of cause and effect is taking organic food, so is not seeing phna in re- 
 lation to space and time ? The exclusion of these from phna wh have been 
 assimilated as including them, producing a force, and .'.a function in 
 our organization ? 
 
 How we put chains on our hands, and spoil ourselves, making our- 
 selves do wrongly where Nature wd lead us right. The very conception 
 of a method for the prosecution of science is a fetter : it is a wrong con- 
 ception what we shd do is all we can do. Nature is all possible things, 
 and so shd our mental life be. To see this wd put an end to all objec- 
 tions that a thing is mere theory : all possible mental passion is right in 
 its way ; the only question shd be, Is it good of its sort ? Nature will
 
 373 
 
 have no exclusiveness, will yield nothing to the contractive system. 
 Whatever we can do, that is right for us to do ; and that most right wh 
 we most strongly tend to do : hut ever with due self-control, or we are 
 unnatural again. 
 
 Surely it must he the seeing the phn to he subjective that constitutes 
 the true development of the mental life the higher grade. Is it not 
 a turning inward of a passion wh else was external ; more subjective 
 passion, higher life ? 
 
 Surely it is the plan of analogy that is truly the factual : it is rea- 
 soning and collecting facts about one subject alone, or comparing it to 
 only one thing, that is like a priori reasoning. The more other facts 
 any given fact can be shown to be analogous to, (i. e. essentially the 
 same with) the wider is the induction of facts, the more probable the 
 truth. 
 
 It is certain that we must understand Nature, it is given us for that 
 end ; that by understanding her we may learn somewhat of God. But 
 it is not so clear that we must rule her. We can only act on Nature 
 through our own minds and bodies, is it certain that these will avail 
 for an absolute dominion ? I mean of course not in the sense of altering 
 her, i. e. of interfering with passion taking direction of least resistance, 
 but of ruling her in the sense of turning to use, for our own purposes 
 all forces wh may operate against us. In favor of this I see much ; 
 [making all force wh effects a nutrition, evil to us, perform a function 
 beneficial to us.] 
 
 With reference to the metaphysical view of cause which ex- 
 cludes causation and gives us mere sequence, it is right in one 
 sense, i. e. it was the right decomposition ; but then the vital 
 force thus excluded still exists in another form, viz. as spiritual 
 act. The view of Life gives the clue ; this organic food should not de- 
 compose until it is assimilated, and enables us to perform function ; i. e. 
 until the entire phenomenal chain of cause and effect have been brought 
 to light, and been made to form part of our mental life. 
 
 Is any light thrown upon the phenomenal relation to us of our sub- 
 jective passion by the physiological facts connected with sensation; e. g. 
 our feeling a pain in an extremity when the inward physical change 
 connected with that pain is in the brain : and even feeling an extremity 
 after it has been removed. In the case of pain caused by an external 
 object, the sensation is caused by and truly represents the phn i. e. the 
 phn the reality ? 
 
 Every supposition of primary properties or powers, as of gravitation, 
 or of irritability or sensibility in living tissues, &c., is necessarily chi- 
 merical and inexpressible ; it is a step in the direction of Berkeley and 
 Comte : i. e. an a priori exclusion of cause from phna, rendering the 
 mental food inorganic. It is also utterly unscientific, opposed to the 
 very idea of science, wh exists only on the basis of cause between phna. 
 This is how the atheistic science, tho' claiming such freedom and expan- 
 siveness, is really so contracted and inconsistent. For science' sake we 
 must hold absolutely to a causal relation between phna, and a phenome- 
 nal cause of every phn, until excluded by induction and interpretation. 
 This is the life of Science : if we exclude cause before assimilation, we 
 are like children mocked with stones when we ask for bread. 
 
 Is not the fact that each nutrition is a function (of foregoing) and
 
 374 
 
 each function a nutrition (of following) in some way the essence of the 
 universal bisexual character [like man having female mind, woman male 
 mind], and parallel to the polar relations of chemical bodies which are 
 electrically positive and negative in relation to different other substances 
 standing above or below them in a table of such polarities. 
 
 Our belief in the reality of phna is the simplest instance possible of 
 our putting the effect before the cause. The best way perhaps clearly 
 to understand the relation of the phn to the subjective passion is to 
 regard it as an instance of that natural and necessary error of first 
 knowledge ; but being the basic or fundamental error it is of course the 
 last rectified. "Wlien this is put right, after assimilation, performing 
 thereby its function, Science alters its character. Science, indeed as 
 the term is understood, viz. the doctrine of phenomenal causes has 
 performed its function, and indeed ceases to exist ; has developed into a 
 higher form of life : and this, by turning inwards, or into subjective, 
 of objective passion ; and by polar union, viz. uniting into one of two 
 opposite views, materialistic and spiritualist. How these facts of mental 
 development shadow forth the higher life wh we hold to await man 
 after death. 
 
 Interpretation perceiving true relation among phna, or perceiving 
 phna to be subjective is merely looking naturally at the facts, as it 
 were closing our eyes and forgetting our former artificial ideas, and 
 opening them again to look the facts fairly in the face. It is like a man 
 who has perplexed himself in vain with an affair overnight, and after a 
 night's rest sees the same matter under a totally different aspect and as 
 simple as anything can be. Genius takes this morning view. The 
 difficulty lies in the first false perception. At first we cannot see things 
 in their true relation, we do not know the facts sufficiently : then as we 
 discover the facts we assimilate them, arrange them according to our 
 false view ; and so at last require just to forget them entirely and look 
 again naturally, to see how they really are. 
 
 To suppose that we can perceive ' things ' or matter or anything but 
 force or passion, is an unsound dynamical view ; it involves the origin- 
 ation of force or passion. For perception is a passion ; and all passion 
 is produced by passion, i. e. by force. It can of course be only force 
 wh produces the passion or perception. We only need to remember 
 what we are talking about. 
 
 I have an idea that motion shd be regarded as the mental passion [and 
 then I suppose ' thought ' in largest sense, shd be rather spiritual passion] ; 
 i. e. that motion is a passion in the mind, deriving all its characters 
 from its being in the mind ; that motion i. e. is mental and not physical ; 
 the 'physical' being rather the result of motion. Space, &c., are not 
 properties of matter but modes of passion in the mind, from wh matter 
 results as a phn : so the passion wh constitutes ' mind ' is a passion of 
 spirit. Time is a mode of the spirit's passion from wh ' mind ' results 
 as a phn. It is curious how matter, which seems so real to us and so 
 opposite to mind, shd truly be but the mode of that mind's passion. 
 
 Are not ' time ' and ' space ' like that supposed stellar sphere wh seems 
 to revolve around the earth and wh is a necessary condition of such 
 motion, i. e. conditions of the phna? But how is it that we know only 
 thro' the physical ? The physical is first in our progress of knowledge ; 
 is it because it is last effect, and .-. the truest phenomenon, and necessarily
 
 375 
 
 the first in perception ? It has the first phenomenal task, viz. that of 
 revealing the cause. 
 
 If all mankind were annihilated, or even if they were all blind, there 
 wd be exactly the same true motions in the heavens, but there wd be 
 no apparent motion of the sun and stars. So if there were no men, or 
 if men had no senses, the facts, the existence, all that is real with 
 respect to the universe wd remain just as it is. But there wd be no 
 phn, no motion, no resistance, no life : neither sun nor earth, light nor 
 sound ; all wd be gone : just as wd be the apparent motion of the sun, 
 wh we equally see. But the reality must remain ; that great fact, wh, 
 causing passion in us, makes us see and hear and feel and taste so many 
 phna. That fact that wd remain, what is it ? The phna have told us 
 what it is ; we know, and know that we know as soon as the idea is 
 presented to us : it is God's Holy Act. 
 
 The motion of the earth, by the subjective passion it produces in us, 
 only causes a visible phn. The motions of the heavenly bodies are only 
 seen, not heard or felt. There are five passions coincidently concerned 
 in the phna of the universe : we see and feel, &c. It is clearly con- 
 ceivable that the motion of the earth shd have presented us with a phn 
 affecting all our senses : we might imaginably have heard and felt mo- 
 tions so produced. Does this idea of ' things ' arise from coincident effect 
 produced on vision and feeling ? Do sight and touch together, alone 
 produce idea of space, and .-.of things or matter? 
 
 The question returns, Why five senses ? And are not these five, two 
 threes? thus: /-^> N 
 
 Hearing, seeing, touching: touching, smelling, tasting. 
 
 These two sets respectively psychical and physical. The first three are 
 the psychical senses; are essentially and mainly connected with and 
 subservient to the mental life. The second three are physical, mainly 
 related to the bodily life. Then we have surely in the psychical senses 
 
 Hearing . the emotional sense. 
 
 Bight . the intellective sense. 
 
 Touch . the esthetic, or constructive or perceptive sense. 
 In the physical senses : 
 
 Touch . the muscular or constructive, &c., sense. 
 
 Taste . the intellective [or secretive] sense. 
 
 Smell . the emotional or nervous sense. 
 
 And each divided indefinitely again into threes. Here is a parallel. 
 The five arises from the union of the two polar halves, of physical and 
 psychical. These are two halves of one vibration ; and see how in a five 
 the two halves are polar, and result from a sort of polar union (?) 
 
 Is not Dr. 's view of the cause of the coagulation of blood, as the 
 
 giving off of ammonia, a pretty instance of a peculiar phenomenal ar- 
 rangement of facts ; viz. not exactly putting effect for cause, but con- 
 necting as cause and effect facts wh do not stand in any such relation ; 
 and because of want of knowledge of other facts and of a correct general 
 conception. Is not this giving off of ammonia in fact a result of that 
 decomposition, or play of restrained affinities, wh causes the coagulation ? 
 [as Hunter said, a vital, a 'functional ' change, a 'dying.'] A very 
 good instance of nutrition : the idea of cause introduced among elements 
 from wh it will be necessarily excluded, thereupon revealing truer cause
 
 376 
 
 by virtue of the organization thus formed ; for the addition of this fact 
 helps to complete the organization. Science cannot be understood 
 except as nutrition and function. 
 
 The proof of the performance of function is the origination of a new 
 nutrition ; and also probably the uniting of things previously separated. 
 It is always in itself an unification, but producing a new separation. 
 
 What lives, is not that wh is like what is being done at the time, but 
 that wh is unlike. That truly carries out the tendency of the age wh 
 is the very opposite to that wh it has been doing and wh is in fashion and 
 approved. That wh is in the spirit of the age, and meets at once with 
 universal approbation, plays but a subordinate part : that wh seems to 
 go utterly against it, is the true function. It is true that afterwards 
 this function is seen to be a genuine expression of the age, and to have 
 had many foreshadowings ; but it did not appear so at the time, and 
 
 these foreshadowings probably had not been noticed at all. Dr. 's 
 
 discovery of the cause of the coagulation of blood is thoroughly in the 
 apparent spirit of the age, and is not a great step. The doctrine of the 
 circulation of the blood was based on well-known facts ; Harvey only 
 interpreted them : it was a function. So Newton's gravitation was 
 based entirely on known facts it also was an interpretation. 
 
 That tendency of the mind wh makes men cling to that wh they have 
 been accustomed to, for no other reason but that, exhibits itself plainly 
 in science now as ever. And now especially it exists largely I think 
 under the guise of a contempt for mere theory and a regard to facts 
 alone, wh practically comes to this : that the established theoiy must 
 be retained simply because it is established, i. e. familiar. People forget 
 that all their facts are arranged in theories, and that no theory can have 
 any other foundation than that the facts indicate it ; and what theory 
 the facts indicate, is always open to question. 
 
 The error of all criticism has hitherto been that each man has made 
 himself the centre, and necessarily so (as in astronomy of old), the 
 rectification is to show that all is life, that each man, including each 
 critic, merely takes part in the great life, is part of the phn, performs 
 his nutrition or function, as may be. 
 
 There is a boundless scope for research respecting the reasons of our 
 sensations, what and why they are ; the mode and necessity of them ; 
 why we perceive light, sound, color, tone, pitch ; especially, perhaps, 
 harmony and discord. These physical things and forces, or passions, 
 are our sensations or perceptions ; and the reason of everything physical 
 is to be found in the nature of the mind ; and the nature of the mind is 
 revealed by these sensations, as cause is by phn. This is where and 
 how the mind is to be studied ; viz., as it is revealed in its passions or 
 sensations, i. e. in the material universe. The primary phn is the 
 passion in ourselves, the subjective passion, wh reveals the external 
 phenomenal cause, wh again is seen to be subjective ; viz., idea. Thus 
 it is, first sensation, then studying cause of sensation, as external ; but 
 by further studying we perceive that external cause also to be subjec- 
 tive ; viz., an idea. First, sensitive; secondly, mental. 
 
 Do sensations, by the introduction on our parts of the spiritual ele- 
 ments of cause and real existence, form ideas ? But then these ideas 
 have for their basis, as it were, are constituted necessarily by, the 
 sensations themselves. We conceive the sensations as really existent
 
 377 
 
 causes, in other words, as things possessing properties. We certainly 
 do not perceive externally either real existence or cause, nothing but 
 passion. Heal existence and cause come from ourselves : this is 
 universally admitted, and must be. Thus man is rational, acts on ideas, 
 forms Science, art, society. Beasts, I conceive, do not introduce those 
 spiritual elements, .. have not ideas, but act directly on the sensations. 
 Sensations produce in us ideas ; in animals, actions, i. e. functions. 
 Thus, what first seems to surround us is our own sensations, as real ex- 
 ternal existences causing our perception ; i. e. sensation, with addition 
 of these two spiritual elements, constitute the external world as first 
 perceived. Afterwards we reason respecting these sensations, trace the 
 phenomenal causes, form. i. e. ideas. Then our ideas, with the two 
 spiritual elements, constitute partly the world wh surrounds us. First 
 a sensitive, then an ideal world, or partly both. But this is designed 
 to reveal the true, viz., the spiritual, act : first physical, then mental, 
 then spiritual. But I conceive that infants at first are as animals ; and 
 sensations produce in them only functions, directly. These things can 
 be traced out ; patiently, by looking simply and naturally at them, 
 without force or hurry ; being calm, and simple, and willing to be 
 ignorant of that wh we do not know ; having confidence in progress 
 and in God. 
 
 I conceive men must in the future be astonished at the ideas enter- 
 tained in this day ; such e. g. as that of typical form of living beings : 
 that a thing has properties, tendencies, powers, &c., before it exists, or 
 however it is to be expressed or defined. The only way in wh they 
 will be able to understand it at all will be by seeing that they do the 
 same thing in respect to a different order of ideas. For such views are 
 merely the nutrition ; and the nutritive (or theoretical, for our experi- 
 mental Science is eminently and emphatically theoretical) ever must be 
 such. And each function is a nutrition, each interpretation, while it 
 puts the previous facts right, reveals new facts, which necessarily are 
 wrongly or nutritively arranged. Science is compelled by her very na- 
 ture thus, as it were, to advance backwards, like a crab. Each new 
 phn ever appears (necessarily) phenomenally, i. e. effect first. ' Inter- 
 pretation ' can be only of what has been known before. It is a life : 
 that explains all. See the unreasonableness of finding fault with an 
 interpretation because it gives no new facts. An interpretation also 
 wants no proofs ; it is its own proof. It is itself one fact, instead of 
 many theories ; and, like other facts, does not need to be proved, but 
 to be seen. That Nature is passion in least resistance is one fact instead 
 of many theories. 
 
 Each nerve produces its special sensation from any irritation, it is its 
 own chemical change that determines the kind of perception. The phy- 
 sical world is clearly determined by our body. Now the question arises : 
 first, "Why such and such bodily changes produce such and such sensa- 
 tions : second, Why the organs of the body are related as they are to 
 the external forces : why the eye is suited to light, the ear to sound, &c. 
 
 The mental life advances from the organic state towards the inorganic, 
 developes from the organic to the inorganic ; viz. from that condition in 
 which all the elements are most wrongly arranged, and the ' passions ' 
 smallest, to that in wh the elements are to a greater and greater extent 
 arranged according to their affinities. Each advance of science gives us
 
 378 
 
 as it were larger masses rightly arranged, i. e. an advance towards what 
 we call the inorganic. For the organic and inorganic differ only I con- 
 ceive in respect of the size of the elements, i. e. masses, arranged in 
 opposition to their ' tendencies.' Mind advances from highest (or mi- 
 nutest) vital state up to that wh corresponds, as it were, to the original 
 single passion of matter, the one first vibration. 
 
 Matter developes from unity to variety (from inorganic to organic) ; 
 mind from variety to unity (from organic to inorganic). Thus they are 
 polar one to another ; halves of a vibration, one ending where the other 
 begins ; returning spirally upon itself, as it were. As I have said, the 
 mind is Nature returning to God. And this shows a thing about phy- 
 sical life, viz. that as the mental life developes (inversely) by becoming 
 of continually larger elements (or passions), so physical life developes 
 by becoming continually of smaller : the mental by addition of two 
 into one larger, the physical by subdivision of one into two smaller. 
 Thus the psychical is of great use in the study of the physical ; it 
 shows us just what we cannot see in the latter. The two naturally il- 
 lustrate and reveal each other, each presenting most clearly, as a fact, 
 (phn or thing that is to be perceived) exactly that wh is least to be per- 
 ceived, obscurest, and only to be inferred in the other. 
 
 In mind we perceive rather the process, in matter, rather the result. 
 Does not this indicate somewhat of the relation of them to each other 
 and to us ? Is not here the path ; to consider these with reference to 
 the spirit, their relation to us : why mind is process, matter result ? 
 Clearly they are what they are to us, because we are spirits, they exist 
 to our spirit ; the mind cannot ' perceive ' itself. The spirit is conscious 
 of its own passion ; this is the foundation ; and primarily of process or 
 passion, i. e. mind ; then, by virtue of this passion, of result, or matter. 
 
 With regard to the ordinary life of the individual mind, what we do 
 in our physical life is this, viz., to take in force from the external world 
 in shape of organic food, and then in our functions to return the force to 
 the inorganic world ; i. e. we add it to the life or nutrition of the in- 
 organic world, after having assimilated it, and constituted so our organ- 
 ization. In relation to our mental life, what is parallel to this ? As all 
 life is vibration developes, decays, ceases so must this mental life of 
 man reach its maturity, decline, and cease. What, and how, and when 
 will this be ? Is it lamentable to think ? or does not this compensate, 
 viz., that the spirits, those that have life, live on ; and the life itself, 
 the passion, because it is life, must not only continue but develope ? I 
 have seen how by our right action the merely mental passion is con- 
 verted into spiritual life, and thus the life of nature herself returns 
 again, as it were, to the spiritual. Being holiness, how naturally it be- 
 comes holiness again. 
 
 The physical is the nutrition, of which mind is the function. This ap- 
 plies to the relation of body and mind, for our immediate perception is 
 clearly only of passion in our own bodies. The conceptions given us by 
 Science are result of our spiritual nature, i. e. of the conception of cause ; 
 but all that is immediately perceived, and directly forms food for the 
 mental life, is, and can only be, functional or decomposing changes in our 
 bodies themselves. And these physical changes are approx, .-. the pro- 
 duced psychical passion is necessarily divergent, as being other half of 
 the vibration. Is this why they are phna, and thus false, or nutritive ?
 
 379 
 
 So is not God's act itself essentially thus three-fold : first divergent, 
 then approx ; and the universe the result of this approx passion, the 
 new nutrition occasioned by the function ? Thus representing talent, 
 and Genius ; and the universe in this sense a work of Genius. 
 
 Is not the inverse relation of the physical and psychical worlds shown 
 also in respect to the sexual tendency and resistance ? In the physical 
 the female ' element ' tends towards, or seeks, the male, and the resist- 
 ance is offered rather by the male ; as the female planet moves towards 
 the sun, and the resistance arises rather in connection with the sun than 
 the planet. But in the psychical world, e.g. in love, wh is the psychical 
 form of polar attraction, the male seeks or moves towards the female ; 
 and the resistance arises rather in connection with the female. Not that 
 the resistance is not truly connected with both, and in a similar sense ; 
 both men and women have ' natural ' modesty ; but it seems to belong 
 chiefly to the male, in the physical ; to the female in psychical. 
 
 Like modesty, beauty, truth and good, consist in the presence of right 
 resistance, due control, in relation to the spiritual act of God, 
 wh constitutes the reality ; .. if anything be really ugly, there is not 
 the right resistance ; but as all reality is spiritual, the absence of this 
 right resistance would be sin : and to maintain God's holiness we must 
 maintain the absolute beauty of all reality. Similar are all our percep- 
 tions of propriety, they are all the spirit's consciousness of moral right ; 
 but when applied to passions wh are not his volitional act, of course, do 
 not possess the moral element. Just as the application of the spirit's con- 
 sciousness of real being to passion does not constitute it real being, or 
 moral agent ; nor the application of the spirit's consciousness of power 
 to passion, constitute it truly efficient cause. 
 
 Is not the pain of disease like the perception of ugly and evil ? 
 Pleasure is when the passions in our bodies are accordant with our life ; 
 pain when not so. So our perception is of beauty, when the phn is ac- 
 cordant with our life ; ugly when not. And these passions in our bodies 
 are phna. Indeed they are the only phna. Thus, surely the perception 
 of beautiful and ugly are, as it were, healthy and morbid passions 
 in us. 
 
 Matter and mind constitute or make up one vibration ; are not 
 different, but continuous or identical (both being passion, not real 
 being). The functional passion in our bodies generates the force wh be- 
 comes, or is, the vital force that exists in the phn, or perception (phn 
 and perception are in strict sense synonymous). Thus a phenomenon 
 must be a nutritive, or wrong, arrangement ; illusion : our senses must 
 ' deceive ' us. It is necessarily a divergent passion : the new nutrition 
 from preceding function. 
 
 The mind the mental or psychical life rejects or casts off the 
 organic, as the living body casts off the inorganic or dead ; the mind 
 casts off the wrong phenomenal views, as the body casts off the ma- 
 terials ' put right,' as result of function, or other forms of decomposi- 
 tion. In this the progress of thought consists ; and here secretion. Now, 
 what is analogous to diseases, e.g. of increased or suppressed secretion ? 
 excessive phenomenal or organic views. ? 
 
 Are there not five systems in man (rather than three) : muscular, 
 vascular, glandular, sympathetic, cerebral ; the glandular being, as it, 
 were double ; i.e. perceptive, constructive, intellective, artistic, emotional
 
 380 
 
 and intellect belonging to both. That theory (or putting wrong) 
 alone constitutes true nutrition, wh is passion in least resistance ; any 
 mere putting wrong is not nutrition : it must be logical, not arbitrary. 
 A vital or nutritive theory is, as physical nutrition, result of passion in 
 least resistance ; i. e. of good logic and due influence of all the facts. 
 In a living body assimilation, or conformity of elements to the life, is 
 simply result of passion in least resistance. The life is the resistance 
 that determines it. As logic is the instrument by wh the mental assimi- 
 lation is effected, or a really nutritive theory is formed, so is assimilation 
 effected by a parallel to logic in the physical world. Logic is not a 
 means of discovering truth ; it has relation to our mental life, it effects 
 nutrition or theory, not interpretation : tho' interpretation also is logic, 
 i.e. is passion in least resistance, and is bad and worthless, i.e. arbitrary, 
 if it be not. See how a view may be strictly based on the phna and 
 most logically deduced from them, and yet be utterly false ; viz., a 
 theory or nutrition. Logic does not necessarily lead to truth or function, 
 but equally to nutrition and function ; just as motion in least resistance 
 produces equally nutritive wrongness and functional Tightness. An in- 
 terpretation does not want logic to prove it ; but the opposing vital force 
 wants logic to overcome it. 
 
 The neglect of aural surgery hitherto and its present study is instance 
 of passion in least resistance. The difficulty prevented before, and be- 
 sides there was less stimulus, less force, than in respect to diseases, wh 
 produced more danger and discomfort. Now it is more easy in compari- 
 son, and special circumstances produce stimulus to studying it ; so force 
 produces passion in mind as in matter. In mental life special force pro- 
 duces special development. 
 
 We shd revere our own thought, if it is genuinely our thought. It is 
 God's very deed. To yield to fashion, to take another man's thought in- 
 stead of our own, is ugly, evil, everything that is bad. If we could get our 
 eye right we shd see that it is disease, a passion not conformable to our 
 life. That operation of an extraneous force is disease, the very essence 
 of it. Disease is not so terrible, because it is in itself a bad thing ; it is 
 equally good with the best, simply a part of the universal life ; but be- 
 cause it is a passion in us not conformable with our life, a passion 
 imposed on us by extraneous force. This is just like having a thought 
 imposed on us ; it is mental disease ; a little more of it were death. To 
 make another man's thought our own, to see and understand it, become 
 one substance with it, is another thing ; that is to grow and develope. 
 The passive submission, to, and the living appropriation of, another 
 man's thought, are two opposite things : healthy growth and develop- 
 ment, and disease. 
 
 The logical is the beautiful j passion in least resistance, and result of 
 right resistance. Good also is passion in least resistance, and with right 
 resistance: all reality involves right resistance. That which seems 
 beautiful, true, good, to us, is that wh we see to be the result of right re- 
 sistance. That spiritual element of due control of passion is the essence 
 of all. The opposite of this is arbitrary. What seems to us arbitrary 
 is false, ugly, evil. In relation to truth we see this very well ; a false 
 idea is an arbitrary one, wh is not ' thought in least resistance.' The in- 
 troduction of all the elements, or resistances, is itself only a form or
 
 381 
 
 result of thought in least resistance. We include more facts, &c., 
 because thought in least resistance, true thought, compels us. Truth is 
 thought in least resistance ; false is arbitrary thought. A good illustra- 
 tion is in interpretation and theory ; e. g. the cause of function. That 
 function causes decomposition is arbitrary or false : that decomposition 
 occasions function, is in least resistance. A theory yields to an interpreta- 
 tion by being seen to be arbitrary ; the interpretation is seen to be the 
 least resistance for thought ; in other words, the affinities of the mental 
 elements overcome the vital resistance. And further, thus we see how 
 arbitrariness is really not being, non-sense, zVi-action [sin or death]. That 
 wh is arbitrary cannot be : to see that an opinion is arbitrary is simply 
 to see that it is not ; i. e. is false : or inversely to see an opinion to be 
 false, is to see that it is arbitrary. Now, evil and ugly, in this respect, 
 are just like false : evil and ugly are arbitrary, and .-. are not. Sin is 
 arbitrary, i. e. is inaction, is death. The arbitrary cannot be, because 
 passion is necessarily in least resistance. Therefore there is nothing 
 arbitrary or really false, evil,, or ugly, because God's act, wh includes 
 and constitutes all passion, is holy. Nothing is arbitrary, because God 
 is not arbitrary. If our spirits act, they act by right ; and if not, still 
 passion is in least resistance. There is nothing arbitrary in the universe 
 but sin ; and that is choosing to die, refusing to act. Sin is inaction, 
 slavery. God says, Love, obey, control passion ; the spirit says, I will, 
 or I will not ; and lives or dies accordingly. But in what sense is this 
 arbitrary or sinful choice an act ? 
 
 Our bodies and minds are li ving elements in a living whole, so shd our 
 spirits be. 
 
 The way to understand nature is by patience and gentleness, being 
 willing to be ignorant, not using force. How violent and arbitrary, and 
 .. unmeaning is that idea that we perceive things as we do because they 
 are so. It is an invention forcibly introduced. Let us be content with 
 that which nature gives us ; not being in such a hurry, and so violent. 
 There is no possible connection between things being as we perceive them 
 and our perceiving them so. Let us think in least resistance ; not insist 
 on making a thing clear, but leaving it obscure if necessary, above all 
 things distinguishing thoroughly between things that differ, not forcing 
 things into unatural union. 
 
 People are in the habit of claiming for themselves right feelings, good 
 motives goodness, in fact ; and this does not seem offensive. To claim 
 talent or beauty, &c., is self-conceit, and offends. To claim spiritual or 
 real rightuess or power is held tolerable, even praiseworthy : to claim 
 physical or mental (i. e. phenomenal) power or Tightness is held intoler- 
 able. In truth, the former is the only real boasting ; in claiming good- 
 ness, we do really claim something for ourselves ; in claiming talent, &c., 
 we speak merely of a fact in nature, in the praise of wh we have no 
 share. One would have thought it would have been the other way, and 
 that men would have been at liberty to speak of their bodiei and minds 
 freely, as of any other part of God's action, but that modesty would 
 have demanded of them to be silent respecting their goodness, or their 
 own real act. Why may not a man say I can do this mentally, my mind 
 has such and such powers, when he perceives it as a fact ? That is not 
 boasting, if it be rightly understood that my mind and body are not I,
 
 382 
 
 but only God's act, like the rest of nature. This inversion of what 
 seems truly natural is founded upon the practical confusion wh so uni- 
 versally exists between our minds and bodies and ourselves. And not 
 only is boasting of our minds and bodies offensive, as being boasting, 
 or praising ourselves, but it is the more so because it involves this error, 
 that our minds and bodies are ourselves, and are anything that we can 
 boast of. I think two changes shd (and .-. will) take place : 1st, it will 
 be regarded as boasting to speak unnecessarily and without greatest 
 modesty of our good feelings and intentions. Also as a very good 
 opinion of our body and mind, and great proneness to manifest the 
 same, almost invaribly go with littleness of mind, and not really with 
 bodies and minds worth boasting about, so it will be found that a great 
 readiness to think well of our feelings, &c., and to express the same 
 will indicate rather the reverse of a really good heart. 2nd, when we 
 see that in speaking of our bodies and minds we are speaking only of 
 God's act, and of His gifts to us, it will be allowed to men (and wo- 
 men) to speak freely of their own bodies and minds whenever occasion 
 justly calls for it, as freely as of others. Those facts in nature wh are 
 connected with their bodies and minds, will be as free to them to dis- 
 course of, in just moderation, as any others. All personal or offensive 
 feeling will cease to be connected with it, and self-conceit, in its present 
 sense, will be simply ludicrous, almost impossible. Thus the foolish 
 custom wh forbids one to speak of himself, except to praise his good- 
 ness and depreciate his abilities, i. e. to praise himself and his acts and 
 depreciate God's acts, will be much altered. 
 
 But what is that relation to us wh makes our bodies and minds ours ? 
 Our individual minds liA r e and die, constituting the whole, the great 
 universal mind, the mental life of humanity ; just as the individual 
 elements of our bodies live and die, constituting thus the body itself, 
 the physical life of the man. This relation of the individual mind to 
 the universal mind is the grand presentation of the problem of continued 
 identity the transitory elements and the permanent whole, individual 
 minds and the universal mind : as cells are formed, grow, and decay in 
 the body, and by their decomposition produce the functional effects, of 
 development or other. This universal mind must be a living thing. 
 There can be no passion without substratum ; and spirit being the only 
 being, it must be passion of a spirit ; the mind of a spirit, such as man ; 
 a higher man, including humanity constituted by men. 
 
 This is the mental life e.g. in Science : The theory yields to the in- 
 terpretation, but the interpretation reveals a new phn, i. e. a new 
 theory and basis for a new nutrition. Thus, e. g. in astronomy : the 
 motions of the sun and stars, interpreted, reveal the motion of the 
 earth, wh is now the phn, and forms the basis of a new nutrition, i. e. 
 a new theory. So in Science as a whole. The phn is interpreted as a 
 subjective passion, viz. as motion in least resistance ; but this reveals 
 the holy act of God wh is now the phn, and forms the basis of a new 
 nutrition, i.e. a new theory. The motion of the earth has been theore- 
 tically regarded as an original motion deflected by gravity. This and a 
 lot of chimeras or inventions, (just answering to the cycles and epicycles 
 of the old astronomy) interpreted now as life or resisted polar attraction, 
 again form a new phn, a basis for a new theory in respect to the nature 
 and origin of that polar attraction, &c. So now that Science presents the
 
 383 
 
 holy act of God as the phn, we shall have to treat that theoretically, to 
 invent many things respecting it wh of course we cannot foresee (being 
 yet to be invented) ; and to reveal new truth by interpretaion, wh can 
 still less be foreseen. 
 
 To understand how all is life, the great thing is to have an unbounded 
 faith ; to know that all must work for good and have a higher end. 
 This is life, that all evil is nutrition ; by faith essentially it is to be 
 seen. By faith indeed even the interpreter acts : he sees that wh is in- 
 visible. Faith is the source of life ; of mental, of spiritual. Physically 
 even, the analogue of faith must be the source of life. To believe and 
 know that everything shall have a higher end and issue than we can 
 see, this is to see life, to feel it in and around us. But how simple a 
 thing is this faith after all how little to be so much ! It is but to be- 
 lieve that God does what we wd do if we were in His place. 
 
 What is the use of saying, or trying to say, that wh we do not see ? 
 e. g. that we perceive things in time and space, &c., because they really 
 exist so, or that animals have a certain form because they have an in- 
 herent tendency thereto ; or that matter has an inherent gravitation. 
 What comes of it ? what, in the name of common sense, is really said 
 after all ? Saying is seeing ; and if the two be separated they are use- 
 less both especially the saying. There is no perception contained in 
 or involved by such expressions, and thus in fact as nothing is perceived, 
 so nothing is said : the words are no more than the rattling of a stick. 
 God uses them, however, and by their means reveals something to us 
 wh we can perceive, and in saying wh we say something. We cannot 
 say anything we do not understand; just as [consciously] we understand 
 nothing we cannot ? do not, say. These expressions, wh are intended 
 to convey incomprehensible ideas, are really meaningless. We know 
 nothing but that wh we comprehend, see fully and completely all about, 
 not only that it is but that it must be ; it must be involved in our fact 
 of thinking, or we do not know it ; and what is the use of saying that 
 wh we do not know the idea is an absurdity. And yet surely these 
 theories must be said : like the cycles and epicycles they are things un- 
 real and impossible, yet having a reality to us until they have revealed 
 the real [we invest them with our own reality?] It is just so with 
 matter, wh is a theory, phn, or chimera, a thing not only unreal but 
 impossible ; wh cannot be said, because it cannot be known : yet it is 
 real to us until it has revealed the reality. Thus matter is a theory, an 
 invention, like the epicycles ; necessary to the conception of the phna 
 until they have revealed the fact. 
 
 This is the way those inventions came to pass, those theories or at- 
 tempts to say what we do not see ; viz. we perceive or feel that if they 
 were so the facts or phna wd be as we perceive them. Then we come 
 in the strangest way, I suppose by familiarity, to regard that wh we 
 have invented as the easiest way for us of accounting for or conceiving 
 the phna, to regard that as a fact, as certain ; and we cling to it with 
 the most wonderful tenacity, forgetting that we do not see it. We 
 think that is the very thing we do see. People think that matter is the 
 very thing that they see. It is all the result of our intuitive conviction 
 of cause ; it is our life ; if we do not perceive a cause we invent it (and 
 quite right too). This is the assimilation. Thus we come to be trying 
 to say what we do not see, to express what we do not know a ridicu-
 
 384 
 
 lous position certainly in one sense, yet not to be laughed at, and one 
 at wh God does not laugh : far, far from Him is it to mock His child- 
 ren's life. And all this ceases by falling by its own weight : the theory 
 yields to the interpretation. Instead of our supplying unknown causes, 
 the facts show us their cause, wh thus seeing we know, and then can 
 say. 
 
 "We see the interpretation, or revealed cause ; it is a phn to us, i. e. 
 passion produced in us not by our own act. Those inventions are not phna, 
 they cannot be seen ; they are the result of our own internal passion ; 
 they originate proximately from within. Phna, or things seen, are passion 
 produced in us from without. Thus it is that the interpreter says con- 
 stantly, 'I see' ; but not .-. imagination not seeing of phna as phna, 
 but of truth as the phn. 
 
 Kow in what sense is this revealed phn a theory.? The inventions 
 are proved, supported by evidence, are legitimate deductions shown to 
 be reasonable and necessary : everything that is excellent and becoming 
 a theorist everything in fact but seen : this is just what they cannot 
 be. A new force is produced by the permitted approx passion in which 
 interpretation consists, that can produce a phn upon us. It is a new 
 fact, this revealed cause new mental food, that has to be assimilated. 
 
 The holders of theories ought to be the last persons to object to the 
 analogies (truly the inductions) of interpretation : for the theories are 
 ever merely making the unknown the same as the known, wh is assimi- 
 lation to previous mental life. What could have guided Copernicus but 
 the analogy of the motion we see in surrounding objects when we 
 are passively moved ? Interpretation is ever analogy, making many 
 things one must be, by the nature of mental development, from variety 
 to unity. Interpretation, in fact, is true analogy ; theory false analogy. 
 Interpretation does not more involve analogy than theory, wh is pre- 
 cisely applying our previous ideas to new facts. Every new fact is and 
 must be first assimilated or regarded theoretically (i. e. if we think 
 about it at all) and then interpreted. We first assign it to a cause pre- 
 viously known, then we see that it cannot be so ; and it reveals its 
 cause. The process is invariable (even if it take place in a moment) 
 supposing a fact of a new or yet uninterpreted order. It wd be inter- 
 esting to trace it in small and ordinary things. 
 
 Theory [and all nutrition] bears the mark of individuality. It is 
 such a 'view,' such an arrangement of 'elements,' as could belong to or 
 be effected by such a being alone : just as physical nutrition represents 
 the species, the particular life, so in mind ; the decomposing change, the 
 interpretation, is the same in all. In the universal mental life, all 
 theory, all nutrition, represents the individual humanity : it is such a 
 view as only human nature could take ; one individual in the great 
 family of such collective or universal lives. But the interpretation 
 gives us a view not human, but true, and such as not only man, but all 
 Beings, would take [i. e. in so far as it is interpretation]. Thus, e. g., 
 it is only man, a being so situated, that could have an epicycle astro- 
 nomy. Give that astronomy to any Being who knew the facts, he could 
 have told man's relation to the universe, i. e. that he was on a planet 
 revolving on its axis. But every Being whatsoever sees the solar system 
 (granting the 'matter') as man interprets it. So of our present phe- 
 nomenal Science it is human, expresses humanity. The human being
 
 385 
 
 alone, among that family or world of such inclusive lives, could have, 
 or form, our phenomenal Science, or see the universe as we see it. But 
 when we have interpreted it, and see the universe as a spiritual, holy 
 act of God, there is no longer an individual or human view, hut a true 
 one, such as all Beings take. We have got rid of the individuality, wh 
 pertains not to function but nutrition. However varied the nutrition, 
 the functional or decomposing passion is ever the same. 
 
 Here is additional reason for the individuality of the universal human 
 mind, for its being in fact the mind, or passion, of a spirit. I love the 
 idea of our minds being elements of a living mind, and what is done so 
 passively and undesignedly and unconsciously by us, being the conscious, 
 even volitional passions of a spiritual Being. [Can they be the volitional 
 ' actions ' : are they not only concerned with the life or development ? ] 
 
 It is a beautiful thought, too, that as our minds have some sort of 
 share in or concern with, as they partake of and enjoy, this universal 
 life of wh they form subordinate or composing elements, so do the ele- 
 ments of our bodies and minds have their share and portion in the life 
 of our bodies and minds as wholes. The greater belongs as it were to 
 the less : not only depends on them, but reflects its lustre on them. 
 The humblest actor partakes the glory of the entire deed. 
 
 When a man has interpreted, he cannot help knowing it. Theory 
 wants proving, extraneous support ; it is unstable, easily overthrown 
 like an organic structure, being opposed to the affinities of the elements. 
 A theory is a thing constantly tending to tumble down ; an interpreta- 
 tion lasts for ever. Like chemical bodies, it is stable ; the elements 
 are arranged according to their affinities. But as chemical bodies be- 
 come again arranged against their affinities, or nutritively, in the physical 
 world, does the same thing happen over and over again in the psychical ? 
 I think it must in some way ; not only in respect to individual minds, 
 but in some larger mode that I do not yet understand. The relation of 
 our minds indeed to the psychical universe (like that of our bodies to 
 the physical) is a matter that is not yet at all seen. There are hidden 
 there the solutions of many problems. 
 
 Observe this : interpretation being an approx passion, virtually a 
 death, produces force ; wh force must be a new nutrition, opposing other 
 affinities. The interpretation produces the force wh causes opposition to 
 other affinities ; i.e. a new nutrition or theory or phn is produced by the 
 interpretation. So every phn or effect on us is caused by force, wh must 
 result from permitted approximation. We see it physically in relation 
 to our bodies, our perception being function produced by permitted phy- 
 sical approximation. But this is only a type or representation of the 
 real. 
 
 Interpretation is merely seeing, or rather it produces or causes seeing ; 
 produces force, which, acting on us, i. e. on our organization, causes a 
 perception, i. e. reveals a phn. Thus interpretation causes perception 
 by producing a force [as permitted passion ever does, a force being 
 excluded] ; this acts on our organization and is perception. Now here is 
 an obscure view of a great unification ; e. g. how all function is just in 
 this sense interpretation or perception : ' perception ' caused by force 
 generated within us causing an effect on our own organization. All our 
 functional passions may be called in this sense perception, for seeing 
 and doing, or expressing, are one.
 
 386 
 
 And again All perception is thus in one sense result of interpreta- 
 tion : if so sometimes, so ever. Perception is ever the result of a force 
 acting on our organization, this force being produced by some previous 
 permitted passion, excluded in fact from elsewhere : i. e. being result 
 of an ' interpretation.' So our body and its functions are but a repro- 
 duction of Nature. What in mental life corresponds to the senses and 
 the different modes of perception ? and how does interpretation cause 
 various perception ? I begin to perceive dimly another view ef the 
 subj ectiveness of physical nature. Every phn or nutrition flowing 
 from function or interpretation, Nature must be as it were interpreta- 
 tion, the Act, or source of passion or force. The universe or phn must 
 be the theory or result of the passion or force. Nature is as it were 
 the functional or decomposing passion, and the phna are the nutrition 
 produced thereby. Thus every phn is a theory, or form of mental life, 
 and each new interpretation, or fact revealed by interpretation, is a new 
 grade of life, to wh assimilation takes place. 
 
 The human body is a function of the physical world ; the human 
 mind a function of the psychical. Our mind is acted on by the psychi- 
 cal world as our bodies by the physical. Both physical and psychical 
 worlds are truly living ; and our bodies and minds are organic elements 
 of them ; we see, in one, the results, in other processes. These interpre- 
 tations are in truth the analogues of the external physical passions 
 [approx passions] wh, producing force, cause perception in us, reveal to 
 us phna. The interpretation, as fruit of the great science the universal 
 mind acts on our organization, and causes us to perceive a phn. (?) 
 
 What takes place in thought in respect to Science is just what takes 
 place in a caterpillar when it developes into a moth : development into 
 a higher grade and form. And I see also what that development of a 
 caterpillar is, just as in mind [the physical shows the fact or result, the 
 psychical the process] it is new nutrition from function, or new theory 
 from interpretation. Thus the elements nutritively arranged (wrongly) 
 coming right, produce a new nutritive or divergent arrangement, a new 
 vital force, reveal a new phn. The vital force excluded from the old 
 elements, produces a new vital arrangement, also a higher one more in 
 proportion to the elements, part of them being, as we see, excluded. 
 And this is a hint as to the development of mental life ; in interpreta- 
 tion not only new nutrition but higher, or more as it were to the same 
 elements ? No, just the opposite ; not a farther remove from inorganic, 
 or right arrangement, but a nearer approach to it. The same force in 
 more elements and .-. less wrong; for mind developes inversely to 
 matter, i. e. from the organic or nutritively wrong to the inorganic or 
 right, i. e. true. The same vital force in fewer elements is development 
 of physical life : the same vital force in more elements is development 
 of mental life. 
 
 Even in details, I see better the development of the caterpillar, &c., 
 from development of mind. The special developments arise from special 
 decompositions. The new organs represent as it were tumors, increased 
 local nutrition from increased local decomposition. This is the philo- 
 sophy of development. In mind these special interpretations or local 
 decompositions are simply thought taking direction of least resistance : 
 So in the development of Science ; it is not only a higher grade 
 that has been attained, but special formative, processes as it were, 
 in particular parts.
 
 387 - 
 
 It is interesting in respect to metamorphosis to notice the clear ex- 
 planation of the formation of these special processes wh have appeared 
 to me so difficult. A great point ever is to remember that wherever 
 force or nutrition is, there has before been decomposition, permitted 
 approximation, function. 
 
 How well the terms Imagination and Theory agree with the idea of 
 nutrition or the production of living forms : this also is surely the idea 
 of Creator or poet. So also holiness is nutrition, the production of 
 Life. Theory is cause of nutrition, producing vital condition or assimi- 
 lation, the elements of course being given. Theory appears thus to be 
 a restraint or control supplied by us, and in order to produce a life in 
 us. It produces mental life, as moral control the moral life. Theory 
 is the active form of the phn, of the mental life, a restraint applied to 
 the passion and causing nutrition or assimilation to our own life ; this 
 is the life, or nutrition, of holy control of passion and see this control, 
 in theory, arises from the spirit, i.e. its perception of right. Wonderful 
 analogies open here. 
 
 The hard case for the interpreter is that interpretation necessarily re- 
 veals a phn, and produces a theory or nutrition wh is necessarily false ; 
 and as the interpretation or truth is ever an axiom, the theory or false 
 idea is that by wh he is most apt to be finally known. For the truth 
 he discovered becomes more and more self-evident, the theory he could 
 not but form becomes in consequence more and more amazing. The dis- 
 covery of the truths is trifling, the invention of the errors striking. 
 Thus e. g., Newton's great discovery of the law of the inverse square 
 is mere common sense : all force must, by the very definition of force 
 and space, vary so unless something prevents. But the theory of an 
 inherent and universal gravitation of matter, is an astounding chimera 
 at wh the world will ever wonder more and more. "Will not Newton 
 be remembered rather as its author than as discoverer of the ' law ' ? 
 
 I may say also of the position, that passion takes direction of least 
 resistance ; that it is just in the same way self-evident, and indeed ri- 
 diculous to speak of as a discovery. But I feel that I have arrived 
 even now at points at wh I must form theories, being unable to go far- 
 ther, not having materials for interpretation. And these theories are 
 of course false, and not only false but egregiously so, even wonderfully 
 so ; and will appear more and more so as the conception of the universe 
 as passion in direction of least resistance, or God's act, becomes more 
 obvious and familiar. Thus I fear I shall at length be known rather 
 as an inventor of the absurdest theories than as the interpreter of the 
 previous theories. Interpreters here rather suffer a wrong. They make 
 theories indeed necessarily, because every new fact or phn necessarily 
 must be so presented. But, being by nature interpreters, they feel and 
 know them to be theories only they know them to be wrong. But those 
 that follow them do not see this, and assign these theories to the inter- 
 preters in a sense in wh they never meant them. Newton knew uni- 
 versal gravitation to be a theory, and expressly disclaimed the opinion 
 that it was an original property of matter. Other men have called in- 
 herent gravity a fact, and falsely ascribed it to him. 
 
 One presentation of the difference between theory and interpretation 
 is this : theory represents a thing arbitrarily :. says it is so but knows not 
 how or why. Interpretation reveals its cause : sees it must be so. The
 
 388 
 
 theory exists when we do not know the cause ; we represent how it 
 might be, we suppose things wh wd account for it, represent it as if 
 isolated and as if primarily so. Arbitrary is essentially opposed to 
 right. To show the cause or necessity of a thing is really to show its 
 holiness. Apply this doctrine of theory to our physiological theories 
 as to the nature and origin of life, species, living forms, &c. They are 
 condemned at once : they are arbitrary I seek to make life a work of 
 holiness. 
 
 The phn is represented by the image of a candle reflected to our eye, 
 the candle being unseen. I see now that it is like one candle reflected 
 from^innumerable reflectors, and .-. in innumerable forms; but only one 
 reality. Thus knowledge advances by union of many into one, until all 
 are united into one, wh is the reality. One act of God producing passion 
 in innumerable spirits, constitutes the universe. Thus we are one with, 
 and yet so different from, the external universe. We perceive by our 
 own body and mind because we perceive or are conscious of the passion 
 of our own spirits (of course). In sensation the passion of other spirts 
 becomes passion of our spirits ? 
 
 In this perception of the universe as many organizations or passions 
 of spirits, the great mystery of our bodies and minds, and the external 
 world, has been made to reveal its secret. We perceive how things are 
 around us, similar to our bodies and minds ; how external existences, 
 by our relation to them, make us perceive our subjective passion ; and 
 this first as external, or as if it were the existence, just as motion of our 
 body is perceived first as a motion of the objects seen. The defect to this 
 illustration seems removed. The external universe is not strictly sub- 
 jective passion, but cause of it. This is a unification of the non-reality of 
 matter, and the reality of the external world, and places us (body and 
 mind) at once in the right relation to nature ; viz., as being part of it, 
 and yet in special relation to our own spirits. The course of the argu- 
 ment is very plain : from our own body and mind to nature : what the 
 former are the latter is. So we interpret nature by ourselves ; wh is 
 just what this view brings us to. Of course, we can ( understand ' 
 nothing else. We ourselves are the key to the universe. This is the 
 true unity of nature ; and surely it is beautiful. 
 
 But do I not reject some views I have lately held and strongly stated, 
 ' theories ' wh I have now interpreted ? e. g. even nature being God's 
 direct act affecting our spirits. Surely it is not so ; but passion pro- 
 duced in spirit by God's act, participated in by ourselves. Tho' finally 
 it comes to one act of God in the same way. Also, was not that wrong 
 about our giving the laws to nature ? I trace my own progress through 
 theory or wrong arrangement : nutrition and function. 
 
 The force produced by decomposition (in body), or interpretation (in 
 mind), effects the function by operating on other parts of the organiza- 
 tion ; and on parts, often, wh themselves do not decompose, as tendons, 
 bones, and nerves. This is important in relation to the mental function, 
 or new truth from interpretation ; it is revealed by virtue of other ideas 
 or parts of the organization, wh are not concerned in the interpretation 
 itself ; our knowledge and understanding of other facts. 
 
 How simple it is that perception is consciousness, and that we per- 
 ceive the force or passion that was external to us by being conscious of 
 it when it becomes ours. No wonder people were altogether at a loss
 
 389 
 
 in trying to find out the difference between perception (of external) and 
 consciousness (of internal), the two being one. Thus nature is not such 
 as we see her because of us, not depending upon us, as I, with others, 
 have supposed [and indeed have been obliged to suppose by the facts, 
 until the universe is seen to be passion in spirits, among whom we are, 
 as I now see it] ; we become recipients of the passion such as it is ; 
 that wh was in others passes into us, and being the subject of our con- 
 sciousness is truly perceived. Yet our perception is not directly of the 
 forces or passion external, but only of passion permitted in us, and de- 
 pending altogether upon our organization ; but I have seen, that we 
 still perceive truly because our organization is one with that wh thus 
 operates on it. Our bodies and minds are parts of nature, and their 
 1 functions' re-present its functions. 
 
 Surely the universal mind is the ' mind' of the physical universe. The 
 physical universe and universal mind are one vibration, male and fe- 
 male, as our bodies and minds are, and married : so are the universal 
 mind and nature. Nature is bride of this universal mind ; and these 
 the body and mind of a spirit, tho' comprising probably many subordi- 
 nate spirits. 
 
 Are not Science, art, philosophy, &c., in some sense, special arganiza- 
 tions of distincts spirits ? 
 
 In the mental life, the term < theory ' has been indiscriminately ap- 
 plied to theory and interpretation ; just as in physiology the term 
 ' vital action ' has been indiscriminately applied to nutrition and 
 function. So in art, and philosophy : the two opposite forms of passion 
 have not been recognized. It has not been seen that it is all vibration ; 
 ever two opposite and equal actions making up one whole, and this ever 
 life. The great principle involved in and embracing all the puttings 
 right is, that passion is essentially vibration ; every form of passion 
 having been first regarded as one simple continuous passion, all in one 
 direction, as it were, and .-. utterly mysterious in all its aspects. 
 
 The real meaning of ' action and reaction equal and opposite ' is 
 simply that all passion is vibration ; or is it only a clumsy form of the 
 doctrine that force continues ever the same, what is added in one 
 direction being lost in another ? 
 
 There is this evidence that imagination is the word correspondent to 
 theory, viz., that it is the word first used, and used for both. Ever it is 
 the nutrition that is first designated ' vital action.' Theory in the largest 
 sense, the various and developing theories, result of nutrition, assimila- 
 tion, and development, constitute an aggregate life, represent, or are, the 
 living forms ; just such as exist in the physical world, and wh we con- 
 sider so specific. A ' theory ' is an organization, just like an animal. 
 Thus we see more how the physical world may be the ' organization ' of a 
 spirit. And the physical and mental worlds correspond, and are the 
 same. The ' mental passions ' are the various forms and grades of life 
 [art as vegetable, science as animal, philosophy as human] ? 
 
 Good theories, logical ones, or truly result of passion in least resist- 
 ance, are normal, sound or healthy organizations. Illogical, bad theories 
 are deformed, unsound organizations. But these also are really result of 
 passion in least resistance ; i.e. other resistances have been in operation 
 besides those properly belonging to the individual organization, wh .-. 
 is defective, but part of a larger life (as I have seen in deformities) ; 

 
 390 
 
 e. g. a Scientific theory bent and biassed by a theological opinion. 
 When people will not allow themselves to think perfectly logically 
 for fear of consequences, &c., when truth is in any degree sacrificed to 
 other considerations, a deformed or diseased organization is the result. 
 So, when people think badly, do not consider all the facts, or when 
 their feelings unconsciously bias their judgment, here is the secret 
 of disease ; here are scrofula, gout, inflammation, &c., all repeated in 
 the mental life, here the process may be seen. It may be seen also how 
 disease is not accident and failure, but only a part of the universal life, 
 and contributing, by the very ' evils ' or ' failures ' it produces, to 
 evolve higher life and larger function. We ?hd not be too much dis- 
 gusted at bad theories and narrow illogical views ; they too are a life. 
 
 Mental inflammation is an excessive and premature effect of the polar 
 attraction, excessive and abnormal unifying, and with the consequent 
 excessive vital passion or theorizing, but of too low a grade, of degen- 
 erated standard. And does this constitute emphatically the mental, as 
 the physical disease ? 
 
 Theory is making an unknown like a known ; interpretation is seeing 
 how the unknown is, and the perceiving it is like many other things. 
 I have felt this difference many times, and a man who has once felt it, 
 I think, can never be mistaken respecting it, if he is careful. Perhaps 
 I never felt it more distinctly than in the refraction of light ; in respect 
 to wh I did not first think of a stick falling obliquely on water, and 
 then that refraction might be like it ; but I saw how refraction was, 
 and then perceived at once that the falling stick was the same. So it 
 is ever ; the truth of the thing interpreted is first perceived, and then 
 the analogies necessarily present themselves. So it has ever been with 
 me ; so it must have been with others. Theory is exactly the opposite ; 
 the analogies are first present to the mind, and the new facts are 
 ' assimilated ' to them. This surely is how it is that interpretation is 
 so certain to the discoverer, but so doubtful to others. The discoverer 
 cannot doubt it ; it is simply a fact to him. He has seen it, and all the 
 analogies and additional evidence add not a jot to the absolute percep- 
 tion ; they are interesting and beautiful, but do not weigh in the 
 proof; the great use of those is to help him to explain it to others. But 
 to others this interpretation is only a ' theory,' one among many ; it 
 commends itself more or less intuitively to all, but it is judged of by 
 them [and especially by them who know about the subject] in quite a 
 different way, viz., by the evidence ; and, in the way in wh it is and 
 must be presented, viz., thro' and by means of the analogies, there 
 arises another difficulty to others ; for it comes, as it were, wrong end 
 first, and appears like a ' theory,' viz., as a view assimilated to previous 
 views, instead of, as it really is, as a fact revealed. Practically I per- 
 ceive the desirableness of keeping analogies in the background in my 
 writings ; and showing first how the interpretation results from the ir- 
 restrainable tendencies of the facts themselves, and that the analogies 
 are revealed by the interpretation, not used to produce it. This account 
 of the mental life theory and interpretation related, as nutrition and 
 function is itself an interpretation ; and meets with just the reception 
 of such ; viz., it is seen to be ' natural,' simple, the best explanation, 
 ' it ought to be true,' &c., but they cannot say whether it is the true 
 one, they have to think of many things first ; in fact it appears to them 
 as a 'theory,' and has to be judged of by extraneous evidence.
 
 391 
 
 R is eminently nutritive. He is a good theorist, gives views 
 
 thoroughly true to the phna, but does not interpret : if he could, he 
 could not be content to publish theories. An interpreter forms theories 
 enough, but he does not rest in them, he has no peace till he has inter- 
 preted them ; it is nature. E 's account of ' great art,' e. g. is 
 
 exactly phenomenal ; that is how, to exact accurate observation, the 
 theory appears ; but he does not say that this great art is also only 
 part of an inclusive life. 
 
 It is the nature of a ' phenomenal view ' to represent everything as 
 a whole in itself, isolated, special, and final, as it were ; or as existing 
 of and by and for itself : interpretation shows it as part of a larger 
 whole. And thus arises, indeed, to the interpreter the intuitive con- 
 viction of the truth of the interpretation. Thus the interpretation re- 
 veals the analogies. This shows me another thing ; viz., an example 
 of the inverse relation of the physical and psychical : for in the phy- 
 sical world the developing life 'individuates' more and more [Coleridge 
 says ' life is the individuating tendency '] ; from the general educes the 
 particular. The psychical is the reverse, resolves the particular again 
 into the general. We may conceive the scientific life as a retracing of 
 creation, back from man (the personal and extreme of individuality), 
 thro' the broader and broader forms of life, up to the first, one passion. 
 
 This vital process, of observation, theory, interpretation, in all forms 
 of the mental life, exists complete and is easily to be traced in the 
 minutest details, as well as in the history of the human mind : the 
 child's learning embodies, and ever embodies, the whole. Interpretation 
 is not possible before the theory : the exact truth may be said before 
 the phna are assimilated,but then it is ouly guess: nor probably will the 
 the true interpreter be the man to say it. Emphatically the interpreter 
 sticks to facts ; he may see a long way on, and make the truest guesses, 
 but he knows them to be guesses. 
 
 Having had a piece of the skin removed from the top of my fore- 
 finger, smooth surfaces appeared, or felt, as if they had a depression in 
 them ; and doubtless an elevation exactly fitting the depression in the 
 finger would have felt smooth. A good indication of the dependence of 
 our ' perceptions ' on our own condition ; and it shows also the mental 
 life : for a conception of a depression in the body felt is strictly a 
 ' theory,' wh is interpreted into a depression on my own finger. 
 There is all the discovery of the earth's revolution here. 
 
 How, when we truly analyse all things, all resolves itself into spirit- 
 ual passion ; there truly is nothing else, nor can be. And in this way 
 we may argue besides that that wh it is once it is ever ; being certainly, 
 in some case, spiritual passion, it can never be anything else. 
 There is no conversion of real being, only changes of form. 
 
 Theory is ' expression ' [of that which is in us] ; interpretation is re- 
 velation [to us]. These are talent and Genius: the one produces, the 
 other is produced. The name ' theory ' is good etymologically ; it is 
 what we observe, the phenomenal view. 
 
 Each man's (or woman's, or child's) special incapacity, or dislike, is 
 his specific resistance ; that wh directs his force, gives him his specific 
 form or being, and is the great source and secret of his value. 
 There is no more inestimable gift than a well-marked and powerful 
 ' resistance.'
 
 392 
 
 The developments of the mental life of nations are also life, and deter- 
 mined by exactest laws, wh are also parallel to those of organic life, 
 and are to be found. This is the scope of future Science. [See Ruskin, 
 vol. 4.] The whole world comes into one great life in this respect. 
 
 Ever we think that wh we have is final ; there is no conception that 
 Bacon too is unipolar, and meant to be superseded. A strange idea it is, 
 that there is an abstract ' truth ' from wh we are kept by abstract 
 errors, wh we have to get rid of, but never can ; strange that we cannot 
 understand that the mental life is a perpetual advance and develop- 
 ment. If we had seen the earth in any early stage of organic life, we 
 shd have been sure that was the final stage : we might have wanted it 
 better of that sort, but shd never have thought of it being superseded. 
 This feeling of finality, of absolute true and false (instead of more and 
 less), is the universal dynamical error : the looking at things as exist- 
 ing absolutely, as beginning and ending, being such and such, having 
 such inherent properties ; not seeing that all ' things ' are one act or 
 passion in many forms. 
 
 Since all that we know or c perceive ' is force or passion, we shd ever 
 regard it so, i. e. under a dynamical view, in our thoughts, and present 
 it so in our speech. In respect to mind, this is especially wanted : to 
 give up regarding it as a ' substance ' with ' properties,' an absolute ex- 
 istence, and see it as a form of passion wh must have pre-existed and 
 may be traced, and obeys the dynamical laws of least resistance and 
 vibration : i. e. is equal and opposite. May not these be called the 
 two dynamical laws ? This is what is wanted to set metaphysics right, 
 and render it a Science ; to introduce the idea of force or passion, and 
 the laws of force ; especially that of tracing all mental passion back to 
 causes, or other forms of the same passion ; as in the true ' correlation 
 doctrine.' This also is wanted to render chemistry a Science ; to recog- 
 nize all the * force ' as a form of same force that previously existed in 
 another form a dynamical view of chemistry. By this view we get a 
 present acting God ; by the other, of substances and properties, we have 
 a God who acted long ago if ever, when he ' made ' the things ; to say 
 nothing of the chimeras also involved in the idea, e. g., of 'properties' 
 belonging to a thing wh yet is inert, or has no power of ' acting.' Can 
 we trace also whence this general idea of succession, ' wh includes 
 space, time, and cause : is it not involved in the idea of ' things ' ? 
 
 How the most effectual and most decided opposition to wrongness of 
 all sorts is involved in the knowing and showing it to be ' nutrition ' ; 
 that it exists for the sake of the good, and in order that it may be put 
 right or corrected. That is its end and object : if it is not opposed, 
 overthrown, and put right, it fails of the reason of its existence ; not 
 only does evil exist, but the good it was designed for is not attained. 
 [Is not this the truth of Buskin's ' infinite good out of infinite evil ' ; 
 function from nutrition : but then he does not see that the evil is only 
 phenomenal, not real, and moreover the necessity of the evil, or that 
 the good could only be so attained, is also involved.] This view so far 
 from rendering iis less earnest in correcting error, or rectifying wrong, 
 renders us necessarily more so ; gives us a double motive. We see not 
 only the evil to correct but the good, else unattainable, to be gained by 
 correcting it. Yet also it makes us tolerant, calm, loving, reasonable, 
 patient, hopeful : full of confidence, indeed, and smiling through our 
 [Mental Physiology, 65.
 
 393 
 
 bitterest tears. It gives us double power, greater fortitude and earnestness 
 in doing, greater calmness, patience, love in the mode of doing. Not 
 tolerant of error or wrongness, but rejoicing in it as a means to truth, 
 and good. In truth, embracing instead of opposing. It teaches us to 
 say to the doers of things wrongly : ' You too are good workers ; you 
 express the phenomenon ; but this is the fact : this we owe to you, it ia 
 the fruit of your labors, receive and enjoy the reward of your toil.' Is 
 not this better than saying to them, ' You are doing quite wrong ; leave 
 off and begone, or imitate me.' "Wh is likely to have most effect as a 
 remedy for wrongness ? Nay, wh man is likely to work most consis- 
 tently, trustfully and earnestly, and therefore perseveringly, for the 
 remedying of wrongness ? In fact it is the same thing as in physics ; 
 wrongness is the result of force, and can only be averted by turning the 
 force to good ; physical evil and good are theory and interpretation. 
 We see the beauty of our instinct of putting wrong right, of opposing 
 all evil and falsehood. It is instinct in its truest sense, the tendency to 
 function ; we overthrow the wrong to reproduce the force, and obtain 
 its function thro' the ' organization.' 
 
 Further : this ' wrongness ' is phenomenal only, an effect upon our- 
 selves ; the result of an affection of us by somewhat (some act) that is 
 not wrong. Thus, as I have seen, error arises at the limit of our know- 
 ledge ; the nutritive passion at the ' limit ' of us. The passion-producing 
 process is a type of the real act ; it is right : but when this reaches a 
 limit it is turned on itself and becomes a passion-absorbing process, or 
 wrong. In this it is a re-presentation of the physical fact ; the passion- 
 producing movement when it reaches its limit becomes passion-absorbing. 
 Both mentally and physically the nutritive process arises from the func- 
 tional at its limit. Phenomenally wrong passion arises from right pas- 
 sion at its limit, and because it cannot end. Thus is produced an organ- 
 ization wh reproduces the passion in a function. Thus the development ; 
 thus the constant interchange and inter-working of Nature. And all in 
 musical relations ; development by octaves. 
 
 Thus wrong is ever at limit, and .-. only phenomenal. But how is it 
 that two polar opinions ever arise from the limit, the male and female ? 
 God's act on us is passion-producing; resulting .*.in a passion-absorbing 
 or nutritive process. But the passion-producing is reproduced in us 
 with each interpretation ; reproduces as it were God's act on us ; and 
 therefore is always true to Nature (as we say) ; is one with God's act ; 
 and real : while the nutritive or theory is ever phenomenal ; and as I 
 have seen, represents, not God's act, but inaction. 
 
 Certainly our present hypothesis of a material universe is as complete 
 a specimen of a thing made up a work of talent as can be conceived. 
 There are the properties, or forces, to affect us ; the abstract ' matter ' or 
 substance for them to inhere in ; the chain of second causes to account 
 for things that are pretty uniform and like one another to our view, 
 with God's special interference to originate any thing that we cannot 
 very well see how such chain of causes could have produced : and 
 finally, there is God's original creation out of nothing, infinite ages ago, 
 to give the first start : wrapped up all straight and clear ; with an un- 
 ending time and an infinite space for scenery and scope : all is rolled 
 up into the smallest compass, and may be conveniently swallowed as a 
 [Matter, 1. See p. 158, fa
 
 394 
 
 pill ; but woe to the poor soul who attempts to masticate it. It was not 
 meant for that ; it was made to sell, not for use ; to attain an object, not 
 to be right. And all those infinite gaps and abysses [wh being infinite 
 occupy no space, and can .. be well ignored] ; all those self-contradic- 
 tions, impossibilities, and paradoxes, wh start up directly you attempt to 
 open the Pandora's box ; all these we are requested to be so polite as to 
 consider not to be, or to be of no consequence. If we will be so in- 
 quisitive, and enter upon tasks beyond our power, we mnst expect to be 
 confused. And if we remonstrate that God is dear to our hearts, and 
 that we cannot be content to have had Him at work only so long ago, 
 but would fain see Him now, working hitherto, and now so directly and 
 so truly that He could never have worked more directly ; that is blas- 
 phemy. Is not God the Creator, and does not geology drive back 
 creation millions of ages every year ? Cannot we cultivate a pious 
 resignation, and content ourselves with a God, who created once the uni- 
 verse, and again each specific form ? The creation of Adam is not so 
 very far back. And do not the laws of nature work in the main for 
 good ? what more have we a right to expect ; how could perfection be 
 obtained in such an imperfect, unpliable material as matter ? Do we 
 wish to know everything ? Alas no ! we not only are ignorant of very 
 much, we would wish to be so, if that be knowing. Do we in- 
 deed know more than this little wh contents us in our humility : that God 
 the eternal acts eternally ; that God the holy acts in holiness ? 
 
 We refer the effect upon ourselves of wh we are conscious as if external 
 to us i. e. we ' perceive it as external ' in order that we may study it, 
 and come to know it in all its minutiae. Thus it reveals the cause, be- 
 cause we see first that its real existence as we perceive it is incredible in 
 itself, and from effects truly known we can always infer causes more or 
 less successfully, but this studying what we perceive as external is truly a 
 subjective study, a study of effects on ourselves, and our experiments are 
 only some among these effects on ourselves. It is curious that we are so 
 attracted to this subjective passion, and that we perceive it as so de- 
 cidedly external, even in spite of our knowledge to the contrary. Surely 
 this is partly because the phn is really (i. e. relatively) external to our 
 bodies, wh are themselves but such subjective effects ; and also, perhaps, 
 because in some sense the perception itself, as phenomenal, as w^ell as the 
 cause of it, is truly external, or without us, i. e. the spirit, the true ' I.' 
 Only that wh we perceive as moral, or spiritual, we perceive or can per- 
 ceive to be truly internal ; all the phenomenal, for this higher reason, 
 must appear external. Is not this the true difference between the moral 
 and phenomenal ? In reality they are both one, but the one is in us, the 
 other external to us. The moral is God's creative act, in or of us ; the 
 phenomenal is God's creative act, in or of ' other,' or external to us. 
 Thus I unify again, the phenomenal is in strictest sense the external 
 world. The instinct must re-appear : we suppress it, and make the 
 phenomenal world subjective, but this is only the nutrition ; the instinc- 
 tive view comes back again, and takes the prominence : it is the 
 characteristic view, to wh the nutritive is subordinate. The phenomenal 
 is the nutritive ; it is passion instead of action ; inertia and therefore with 
 idea of substance ; from the psychical which supposes arbitrary action. 
 
 We form as it were individual parts or elements of a great mechanism.
 
 395 
 
 There is our own part to play, our own act, wh is, of course, to act as 
 controlling and directing, in its just measure, the general passion of the 
 whole ; to resist and direct that wh is brought into relation to us ; to 
 act our part. This is the moral in us. The phenomenal is the affection 
 of us by that general force of the whole, and our relation to the other 
 parts. But different as these seem to us they are truly one and the 
 same. The operation of ' us ' is precisely the same as the operation of 
 all the other elements or parts ; there is no real difference. All is one 
 homogeneous fact, or operation ; or speaking of the spiritual, one 
 action. 
 
 Conceive a portion of the boiler of a steam engine conscious ; how it 
 would perceive as its own action, its own resistance to the expansion of 
 the steam, &c. Its exerting due resistance would be its action (its 
 holiness) : its not resisting would be its ' not acting,' its sin [and would 
 spoil the whole , by not being~\. It would also perceive the pressure of 
 the steam ; this would be the ' passion ' [like that wh we have to con- 
 trol morally]. And its relations to the other portions of the boiler wd 
 be like our relation to other men ; whom we perceive and know to be 
 like ourselves, and in whom we perceive moral action like our own. 
 But all this passion, and all other parts of the machine, wh is the phn, 
 of course, is truly the same as that wh constitutes the individual action 
 of each part. To each individual part its own resistance or action bears 
 a different relation, seems quite different to that of any other part : but 
 it is not so in reality : all the force, all the resistance, are the same : to 
 each individual part its own is thus personal or internal, all the rest 
 external. Conceiving a living whole, instead of a mechanism, and 
 recognizing the moral or spiritual nature of the action, this illustration 
 seems applicable. 
 
 Created spirits constitute such a living whole, each bearing its part, 
 and when any bear not their part do not act there is disease from the 
 death of that individual. So humanity is diseased, because individual 
 men do not act, sin, or are [partly or wholly] dead. But humanity is 
 not the whole ; this disease of humanity constitues part of a larger life : 
 not really less life from man's sin [as I have seen]. God's act remains 
 unchanged, tho' man receives it not. Now Christ heals humanity, re- 
 stores its life, by restoring the life to the individual parts ; causes 
 individual men to act, to live, or to be holy ; so restoring to health the 
 humanity that is diseased. Rather raises it to higher life, by means of 
 this very sin. 
 
 Now, because spirits are thus individuals, and the living whole is 
 made up of individual beings, surely it is that we conceive thus of 
 matter, as composed of individuals or actions, and of the life as result- 
 ing from each one ' acting its part.' Our ' atoms of matter ' exist in 
 our thoughts, because of the personality and individuality of created 
 spirits, and the actions of these atoms of matter, because of the ac- 
 tivity of the spirit. We cannot conceive the phn otherwise, because 
 the reality is so. Let us never fear to give up any thing, if it seems to 
 us erroneous ; it is sure to come back to us in a higher form ; i. e. all 
 that there is in it. 
 
 I see that I, in truer, better sense, affirm real matter ; bring back the 
 re-ality of the external world : i. e. it is re-al in its true sense of 
 thing-al. The external world is real ; only by the denial of it could its 
 
 B 2
 
 396 
 
 true reality its exclusive reality be affirmed. The spiritual is not 
 re-al. That is moral, personal, absolute ; not a thing. Motion too, tho' 
 it is not a thing, is thing-al or re-al, it pertains to things. Does this re- 
 ality include also the mental as well as the physical ? I have the right 
 words now, the physical is the real ; the spiritual is the actual. The 
 word was made for it ; shows how act and spirit are identical. And I 
 thus leave to the real, or physical, the real external world as opposed 
 to fancies and imaginations, all its value ; leave in all their force - the 
 rational and experimental deductions, respecting the authority and 
 value of the real, as opposed to the conjectural or fancied ; the necessity 
 and wisdom of turning our attention without instead of within, the 
 external origin of our knowledge, &c. ; the nobleness of regarding the 
 external works of God rather than brooding over our own fancies. The 
 real is the image of the actual : in this lies its reality, its beauty, 
 Tightness, necessity; its subordination to law above all. All that Science 
 has discovered in the phn, that induction affirms must be true of it, 
 finds its explanation in the fact of its being the image of the actual. 
 That wh the moral is, it is ; as the moral is exact and absolute con- 
 formity to law, so is it ; as the moral life is nutrition from control, and 
 function from self-sacrifice ; so is it. It does not embody and express 
 the laws of our minds ; our minds are simply a part of it. It embodies 
 God's holy act, wh from it alone we can learn. 
 
 True speaking expresses that the phenomenal thing is the spiritual 
 fact, as it should, ' The Church is His body ;' i. e. the fact or actuality 
 of the thing, or image, ' body ' is this spiritual relation. Not that the 
 spiritual is like the physical, rather it is the physical ' body ' wh is like 
 the spiritual fact. Now, why is this image of God's act, or of the 
 spiritual, presented to us thus as real, or as things ? "Why as space ? 
 I think I see why in time or succession ; viz., because of the fact of 
 self-sacrifice, wh is 'succession.' There is necessity for time in its 
 being an image of the spiritual. Is there not a similar necessity for 
 space ? That the image shd be real, or thing-al, in sense of not unsub- 
 stantial or unreal, is clear. It shd express to us the intensest and most 
 real being, or it would be no fit image. Even images of phna have this 
 character. They are ' real ' enough until we learn them to be but im- 
 ages. The question is why do we infer the substance, or ' thing ' ? It 
 is not, as I supposed, from our own substance ; we are not things. 
 
 Thus I see time relates wholly to form : i. e. surely to body, matter, 
 or substance, as space does also. Time and space .-. relate to one thing, 
 viz., form (body). I must look further into this : the meaning, source, 
 and origin of that wh we call form, wh changes in succession, ceases to 
 be in efficient cause. Is it essentially substance ? no, I think not ; 
 that does not cease nor change, according to our idea, altho' the ' form ' 
 is in some sense inseparable from it : is it cause of it, or dependent on it ? 
 This is the point : it is not real, absolutely, existing, as the force, or 
 passion, or fact is. 
 
 It is that passion in us wh constitutes our bodies that causes us to per- 
 ceive a physical world external to us. Our perception of the physical 
 depends upon our having bodies. As the motion of us makes us see an 
 external motion like that of us, so the ' physical ' passion of us wh con- 
 stitutes our bodies is the cause of our perceiving an external physical, 
 like thereto ; and it is only by means of our bodies we can perceive it,
 
 397 
 
 even as it is only by virtue of our motion that we can perceive the sun's 
 motion. The question is, then : "What is this passion wh constitutes our 
 bodies ; why is it so ; why does it give us the nutrition and cause the 
 function wh is perception, &c. ? i. e. what is the cause of this passion 
 is us ? The answer is to be obtained by examining the effect or phn ; 
 as in astronomy. What is it we perceive ? that will give us the passion 
 in ourselves ; that is, the cause of it. The phn first shows itself sub- 
 jective, then reveals its cause. 
 
 I have seen partly how the spiritual passion necessarily becomes the 
 physical in us ; but now, why is all our knowledge thus primarily from 
 the physical ? This is emphatically the phenomenal ; the phn must be so. 
 Then do I not see how our perception of the physical ceases with the 
 body how the next world is eternal or spiritual ; shall I not by this 
 find a better clue to spiritual existence apart from moral acting ? Does 
 not that still exist of wh the body was the passion ? "Why are all our 
 perceptions functions of our bodies ? 
 
 It is because the physical, or the phn, is stibjective, or in and from 
 ourselves [effect of spiritual act on us], that all our language must be 
 physical. Language must be drawn from within ourselves ; so the sub- 
 jectiveness of the phna accounts for all language having primarily a phy- 
 sical meaning. We can express the eternal, i. e. the spiritual, and also 
 even the mental, only in terms derived from the internal or physical. 
 If physical things were really external, our speaking so would be very 
 strange ; and those who maintain that all our knowledge is derived from 
 the external or physical world, in fact affirm it all to be first subjective; 
 and probably they are right, but they are ignorant of the life, the nu- 
 trition and function ; they ignore the instinct the function wh gives 
 interpretation and wh certainly goes beyond experience. 
 
 I must trace now the source and mode of our knowledge ; I think I 
 am able, I must read and put right. But now, is not this nutrition ; the 
 knowledge of and from the physical, also from resistance to function, 
 from suppression ? First is a function, an instinct surely, from which 
 [by limit as in Bacon's day, on a larger scale], physical or phenomenal 
 knowledge or perception springs. In the individual, surely, as in the 
 race, the functional is first. First is excited by physical impression, in 
 the child, a functional mental process, before perception of the phn as 
 external ? [I cannot get this ; it has puzzled me before.] Look at a 
 seed : first is external passion producing in it at once nutrition : its first 
 operation is the vital resistance before any function ; unless that be also 
 a function. Look at the spiritual : we first control, and form nutrition, 
 before function. 
 
 See Poe's Eureka Works, vol. 2. Considers matter as first a unity, 
 caused to be variety, then tends to the unity wh has been suppressed ; 
 but is prevented by < homogeneity.' 
 
 Is it not clear that the affirming all the real to be moral is the recon- 
 ciling of all? No objection now to affirming all to be one with God ; 
 therein is His moral Being emphatically affirmed, i. e. His personality. 
 
 The subjectiveness of Nature is like the subjectiveness of the motion 
 of the sun : i. e. it is not in ourselves, nor derived from ourselves, nor 
 caused by ourselves, nor determined by ourselves, &c. ; it is a thing wh 
 we infer from our consciousness of an effect produced upon ourselves by 
 some action external to us ; i. e. of a Being [or Beings] separate from
 
 398 
 
 ns. It is an interpretation of our sensations, from substitution of unity 
 and simplicity as external fact, for the variety and complexity of sensa- 
 tion ? i. e. it is a ' function ' of us ; an effect produced thro' our organ- 
 ization, hut not produced by us. In a word, it is a phn to reveal a 
 fact ; wh fact indeed it is, only perceived under a peculiar and inverted 
 form, arising from its relation to ourselves. It is that which the fact 
 ' becomes ' by passing thro' us, as it were. The phn is the polar opposite 
 of the fact ; we, as it were, being the ' limit ' by wh the fact, suppressed, 
 exists as the phn. This is the relation of cause and effect : the fact is 
 the cause of the phn, thro' us as the ' condition,' or limit. 
 
 We are so full of the wonder of the phn of life, e. g. of its greatness, 
 its glory, the skill of God in it, &c., that we will not let it go ; we will 
 not give up the shadow for the substance. "We have to see that all that 
 is imaginary, before we can see the true wonder. We need not fear ; if 
 there were not something great and grand in fact, we shd never have an 
 image so glorious. Did our forefathers lose anything by giving up the 
 phn in their day ? They were bolder, wiser, than we ; they had no ex- 
 perience of their fathers' to encourage them : cannot we take heart from 
 theirs ? Never fear to let go ; it is the only means of getting better 
 things self sacrifice : let go let go ; we are sure to have again. Thus 
 how Science teaches the lesson of morals, wh is ever give up give up ; 
 deny yourself ; not this everlasting getting ; deny yourself and give, 
 and infinitely more shall be yours : but give, not bargaining ; give from 
 love, because you must. And if the question will intrude, ' What shall 
 I have if I give up this ? relegate that question to faith, and answer, I 
 shall have God : yes, God Himself gives Himself to me ; my giving is 
 my acceptance of God's act God's act in me, wh is myself. I live, I 
 act, I create in giving. In my giving, in my love, God, who is Love, 
 gives Himself to me. This course of Science the development, the 
 creation, by giving up teaches the moral lesson of self-denial, self- 
 control, and love. 
 
 Certainly all that is in what we call ' the external world ' is our sen- 
 sations, and inferences from them. I cannot see that these can be of 
 more weight, in any sense, than our consciousness, and inferences from 
 it ; and tho' it be perfectly true that by resting on the latter (in an un- 
 wise exclusive way) men have run into many chimeras )t it does not ap- 
 pear that they have ever based upon that, chimeras so extravagant as 
 those wh they have inferred from, and connected with, the former, viz. 
 the sensational : not such as real matter, space, &c. ; not ideas of God 
 so chimerical as that wh represents Him as mentally designing, and 
 physically creating, a ' real phenomenon.' When men have erred in 
 interpreting their consciousness it has always been by an intrusion of 
 the sensational or phenomenal. The consciousness is moral, and only 
 so ; and men have erred just as they have introduced into the absolute 
 or Divine i. e. the spiritual anything that is not moral. 
 
 Consider how Peter says, ' That we might become partakers of the 
 Divine nature ' : the entire meaning is moral it is that we might have 
 love. The Divine nature is moral wholly ; there is no other way, no- 
 thing more, in such partaking but being holy ; but true self-sacrifice in 
 Love. Any other idea is ' mystical ' ; it introduces the phenomenal (or 
 substantial) into the actual. How plain the affirmation here, that moral 
 holiness is ' the Divine nature.'
 
 399 
 
 Is not a ' thing ' wholly an affair of relation to us [an image] ? It 
 begins and ceases ; i. e. it was, and becomes not ; but that is because 
 it ever is not ; if it were, it could not cease to be. That it is not, is in- 
 cluded in the doctrine that nothing (that is) can be annihilated. Now 
 I see ; time, or succession, does not relate to being at all ; to any thing 
 even ; only to form, but that is surely only to ' appearance ' : is not this 
 also a matter of definition ? How strange it is, we feel no surprise at 
 form beginning and ceasing, in spite of our conviction that nothing be- 
 gins or is annihilated. Clearly it is involved that nothing that is can 
 be truly in Time. Consider now how it is, and what, we perceive as 
 form. 
 
 Now I perceive : these forms (that pass away) are the things the 
 physical they are the images of the spiritual : they constitute the phy- 
 sical. We know it ; we say things cease to be ; they become other 
 things : the ' thing ' is the ' form.' Neither the unchanging matter nor 
 the force is the thing. The universe is real ; i. e. it consists of ' forms,' 
 wh become and cease ; i. e. are not, are but images. It is the things or 
 the forms that are images of or correspond to the spiritual ; it is the 
 ' thing,' not the abstract matter or force that is the symbol, &c. 
 
 Now whence and what is the matter we suppose, and the force, wh 
 do not change (wh are eternal ?) The ' matter ' is the hypothesis, just 
 like the epicycles, viz. what we invent upon the belief that the forms 
 or things are not forms only, or images, but actual. And the physical 
 force, the 'motion,' is equally a chimera with matter: of course both 
 go together ; if one, there is the other ; if not one, not the other. The 
 matter and changeless force we have hypothetized ; we do not perceive 
 them, but only the things or forms ; we invent them because we con- 
 sider the things actual. Consider in relation to this how the hypotheses 
 of matter and force, of inherent properties, and so on, do truly involve 
 the attributing to things of spiritual action ; make the ' real ' actual. I 
 eee it now fully. Matter and force (and motion) alike and equally are 
 chimeras; because we have considered the 'real,' or images, actual or 
 spiritual. We have supposed some true actual power or existence in 
 these things or forms, some self-dependence, as it were : and from sup- 
 posing this we have to ' suppose ' an eternal matter, and force which is 
 truly spiritual, i. e. existing in becoming, or giving itself. Note how 
 the idea of acting is involved in that of existence : it is like that of 
 faith, wh cannot be without works. In supposing the true existence of 
 material things we do necessarily suppose their acting, or, wh is the 
 same, having power to act, i. e. inherent properties. Else are these pro- 
 perties God's act ; wh is to say what I say, that the thing is God's act : 
 the properties are the thing. Only look how clearly that 'force 'is a 
 spiritual self-act. 
 
 And what a simplicity is thus introduced into Science, into our entire 
 conception of the physical universe. We no longer refer its existence, as it 
 were, to itself, and need to invent such strange hypotheses ; it exists as 
 an image of that wh we perfectly understand ; that wh we know or ex- 
 perience [have in us], viz. of moral being or action : the source of all 
 the phna is not to be sought in the things, or properties, &c., which is 
 utterly mysterious, but in that simplest of all things, a spiritual act ; 
 wh indeed we know must be, equally, whether we imagine real matter, 
 or actual ('acting') things or not. This is good : the idea of ' real
 
 400 
 
 matter ' is just the same as of acting things. We have considered things 
 as actual or acting, and therefore have been compelled to suppose a real 
 matter, ("with inherent properties, forces, &c. ) ; i.e. we have considered 
 things as spiritual, we have taken the ' image ' for the fact. [As I have 
 said in another mode, asserting the reality of the phn does the mischief.] 
 
 Of course it is absurd to attribute force or power to that wh is not 
 actual, wh is only an image: surely in asserting the passiveness of 
 matter, or things, it is implied fully that they are only images ; if once 
 we could see aright. For existence is always and necessarily one with 
 action ; this is not peculiar to spiritual existence, it is the fact of exist- 
 ence itself. Existence necessarily involves action : if matter or things 
 exist or are, they certainly act; [our language implies this true in- 
 stinct also, that if matter exists it acts.] Nothing can be that does not 
 act, or be except in acting. We see this in reference to matter ; we 
 mean by its existing, its acting : e. g. by its weight. Matter is not 
 except in its attracting or its weight, i. e. its action. And ' action ' is 
 necessarily self-sacrifice. Thus self-sacrifice is the fact of being ; and 
 vice versa, being is self-sacrifice. "What a generalization from Nature ! 
 and how it bears upon spiritual 'Being': Being is creating; is 
 producing Life. 
 
 "We have had to invent a real matter, because we have thought that 
 ' things ' (wh we perceive) acted ; i. e. we, being spiritual, can have 
 only the spiritual ; we could not have these things any other way. We 
 have attributed a spiritual being, the only one we know, to them ; the 
 only possible one : ' what can we refer without but that wh is within ? ' 
 The phn must be spiritual to us, either as image, or actually ; and till 
 we know it to be so as image, we conceive it as actually so : i. e. truly 
 we do so ; our conceptions of it are such, we involve spiritual being in 
 it, tho' in words we are so careful to deny it ; and tho' practically we 
 do not confuse the two, or at least only partially. But what happens 
 is, that we get our ideas (our metaphysics) into utter confusion ; sur- 
 round ourselves with chimeras and have contradictions and paradoxes 
 and mysteries on every hand ; so that we come to believe such questions 
 are hopeless mysteries, and the first and most natural of all questions 
 to the human mind utterly unanswerable : we come to think metaphysics 
 essentially an unintelligible jargon, and that our instincts utterly mis- 
 lead us. But in truth these paradoxes and chimeras surround us in the 
 wrong path only to lead us to the right : by resistance to the wrong to 
 make us go right ; that being always and necessarily the direction of 
 least resistance, we only need to cease doggedly to knock our heads 
 against the wall and go where there is plenty of room. The solution of 
 all our difficulties is to see the phn to be not itself actual, but an image 
 of the actual : then all is clear again, at least for a long way ahead. 
 
 I think I may to a great extent drop the word spiritual and use moral 
 or actual. 
 
 Think also how the things we invent matter and force are eternal, 
 i. e. unchanging ; without relation to time : and especially think why 
 we must have the two ; matter and force, opposite and yet correlative. 
 
 The physical is only the image of the spiritual : therefore for each 
 physical event or thing we look for the true or actual cause or power 
 producing it, not to physical force but to moral action ; wh moral action, 
 however, being also imaged in the physical, there is of course the physical
 
 401 
 
 cause also to be traced : a chain of physical causes and effects must 
 be the image of moral action. 
 
 Wherever and whenever there is space there is certainly matter, or 
 the physical ; for that is merely passion, or force and resistance, in space. 
 Is it not .-. wherever there is substance there is matter ; and .-.if only 
 so, no spiritual substance ? Am I overlooking too much the sensational 
 part of our nature, not allowing it sufficient weight, one-sidedly : let 
 me bring this into its full bearing. 
 
 Our putting the apparent for the real [as motion of hedges or of the 
 sun, or reflection for the thing reflected, &c.] is an image of our putting 
 the real for the actual : both are by a necessity of our nature, both are the 
 means of our progress. Is not the material electricity or light, first put 
 for the ' force,' an instance of a similar process ? Science is ' coming to 
 the point,' i. e. leaving out the substance [?] 
 
 To give up the word ' re-al ' to things to restore it rather is a 
 great step ; it is the re-appearance, in higher form, of the suppressed 
 instinctive view. 
 
 A thing cannot be, because it ceases to be. Now here is the good of 
 dissociating chemicity from substance. A person might say, a portion 
 of an 'element,' e. g. gold, is a thing, yet it never ceases to be, i. e. 
 ceases to be that thing, or gold. But to this there are two answers : 
 1st, it ceases to be the thing, or lump of gold, when its form ceases; 
 2nd, it may cease to be gold ; knowing that the property of chemicity is 
 not substance, but as much separate from it, in theory, as heat, or any 
 other property. In truth, shd we not say that it ceases to be gold when 
 it is dissolved ? I think so, and that we shall never get our chemistry 
 right until we think and speak in this way. A thing is only a thing 
 by virtue of its having the properties of that thing the ' form ' of it 
 and ceases to be that thing when it loses those properties. The concep- 
 tion of chemicity, as being one with or producing the substance or 
 matter different kinds of matter sets us wrong here. Gold is that 
 wh is so heavy, so yellow, so ductile ; and it is no longer gold when it 
 is not so : a colorless fluid is not gold nor can contain it, any more than 
 so much dust and vapor (with proportion of heat or other force), is my 
 body. The confounding the thing with the substance that wh ceases 
 with that wh does not, is the error. 
 
 ' Form ' does not exist because it does not act ; only that wh acts, is, 
 (as I have seen). This is an axiom in Science, and see how it is an 
 image of the spiritual ; spirit is in acting, but action is self-sacrifice, is 
 love. Force only (physically speaking) is ; and it is in acting, or giving 
 itself. [The conception of matter for substratum of force is just like 
 that of spiritual substance, to act.] And is not 'matter' felt by us all 
 to be ' hypothesis ' ; no actions, no ' properties.' 
 
 It is not true that we are in time ; we are surrounded by forma (and 
 affected by them) that are in time ; but these are .. and necessarily, 
 only appearances. How wonderful : to be in time is to be only appearance. 
 
 Self-sacrifice, or action, does not involve ceasing to be. Even physi- 
 cally this is quite clear. It is just the contrary : the action or self- 
 sacrifice constitutes the being [or continuing to be]. It is the form that 
 ceases, that does not act, or give itself; and it ceases because it does not 
 act. To cease to be is not to act. It is not the form [or thing] which 
 ceases, but the force wh does not cease, that acts or gives itself. Do I
 
 402 
 
 not now see a further use and meaning of that word 'form''; might 
 I not use it instead of image, and say things are the form of the spirit- 
 ual and actual ; 'the real is the form of the actual ' : the actual or 
 eternal in time ? And here too shall I not see the old use of that word 
 form and find I can adopt it well ? And another connection : it is form 
 that I find to be result of passion in least resistance ; i. e. things. Does 
 anything hang on this ? It is that wh is not, it is appearance, that is 
 the effect of this. 
 
 "We think there are the three things spiritual, mental, physical : in 
 truth there is one actual, and of that a two-fold image, the mental and 
 the physical ; of wh the physical is ' thing ' or form. What is the 
 mental ? here is a threefold-ness to he traced. 
 
 I see the spiritual life the nutrition and function, the doing right 
 because we ought, and because from love we must. I say the mental 
 and physical universe present to us the same fact one fact of life, or 
 nutrition and function ; first controlled, and then permitted passion ; 
 and that these are forms or images of the actual or spiritual, and exist 
 only from it, by its existence, and becai^se it is. No power or actuality 
 is in either of them, that is only in the spiritual ; and that if the spi- 
 ritual were not, they would not be. 
 
 Think again : I want something whereby the physical the things 
 may be ; something of which we may perceive the passion, as image of 
 the passion of ourselves. Now is not this the relation of the psychical 
 or mental to the physical ; is not the physical a passion of the psychical, 
 as the earth's motion is imaged by the motion of the sun ? So is the 
 spiritual life imaged by the ' life ' or passion of the mind ; wh passion 
 is the physical. Thus, first sensation ; then from sensation the physical. 
 I see it dimly: from the spiritual first the perceptive or sensational, 
 then passion of or in the sensational is the physical ; and that is image, 
 or form, of the spiritual. So I get back again my nutritive uiew of the 
 snbjectiveness of the phenomenon or physical. "What I want now is, 
 What and whence the sensational : this, as I have seen before, is the 
 element that needs to have its due place and weight assigned to it. 
 
 How instructive it is that the things we have invented the abstract 
 force and the matter are eternal, unchanging, and must be so ; that only 
 we can invent. Is not this found in ourselves ; they are eternal because 
 we are ? 
 
 Is not this a good form of the argument : Here is a book : now I 
 burn it ; then it is a book no more ; i. e. the book is not. And it cannot 
 be said that the book is [in the matter and force] for that would be to 
 affirm one thing to be another thing, for the matter is dust and smoke, 
 wh cannot be a book. But tho' the book is not, there is all that there 
 ever was : therefore the book never was. In short, the book or the 
 ' thing* is a form or appearance. So one does not approach to granting 
 real matter by affirming real things ; if matter be re-al, it is form-al, 
 i. e. thing-al only, or merely appearance. 
 
 Consider the reversion of the fact in the image ; the oppositeness of 
 the apparent motion to the real : even so is not the real opposite to the 
 actual ? Is not this the clue to the relation of the physical and the 
 spiritual : an image, but inverted ; like, but opposite to, the fact ? Are 
 the physical and spiritual related at all as matter and force ; active and
 
 403 
 
 Shall we not find that things are at last mental states ; ideas, i. e. or 
 conceptions ; as is provable also in so many other ways ; and thus how 
 clearly it will appear that the inference of a real matter has no basis, 
 it being entirely based on the existence of the things ? I know that 
 this entire argument looks like a logical trick, but it is not one ; it is 
 in truth the detection of one ; that trick whereby we are duped into 
 admitting a real abstraction as a deduction from the reality of an exter- 
 nal world. This is the logical trick, achieved by double meanings to 
 the word real, and not defining the term 'thing;' and landing us, as we 
 feel deeply enough, and may see if we choose, in most miserable dilem- 
 mas. Real is thing-al : now, define the term ' thing ;' as soon as that 
 is done the whole thing falls. That wh is real or thing-al, is formal or 
 not existing. It is clear the form is the thing, not the matter and the 
 force, because the very same matter may be innumerable 'things.' The 
 ' thing ' is the form, a perception, a mental state ; then, what produces 
 this mental state : clearly it must be some agency adapted to have such 
 effect, and what can that be but a spiritual act ? not matter, not phy- 
 sical force, logical abstractions : what adaptation to produce perception 
 is in them ? The idea needs only to be realized to be condemned It is 
 not so wonderful that a mental state shd be the perception of a thing. 
 The difficulty seems to arise from our power of abstraction or conception, 
 of thinking of a thing when we do not perceive it, or of forming ideas 
 wh are not things or of things. But why shd this occasion difficulty ? 
 "We must try to see the difference between these, and why. What else 
 can an act on us occasion but a perception ? We have mental perceptions 
 as well as physical. 
 
 See how our present idea of matter rests on a logical circle. We first 
 form the conception of actual or active ' things ' (wh we necessarily 
 form because we are actual or spiritual ourselves), and so derive idea of 
 real truly existing matter ; and then we make the conception founded 
 on this inference of real matter, a proof of the true or actual existence 
 of the things ; saying, tho' the form ceases the matter and force re- 
 main, &c. We do not properly set about ascertaining what the things 
 are ; this sets us wrong at starting. Consider, however, the full mean- 
 ing of our perception of the continuance of the matter and force tho' 
 the form changes, wh is an experimental result, altho' an axiom [i. e. the 
 ideas gained from nature, the self-evidence from ourselves, as ever]. 
 The succession of forms, or things, with the one matter and one force, 
 what does it indicate ? Is it not our spirituality or eternity, that be- 
 neath the temporal or real we must place the unchanging, the eternal, 
 and attribute to the temporal, thus actuality : not being in time our- 
 selves, we cannot be content even with a phn that is in time. 
 
 Are not things images in the same sense in wh a work of art is; i. e. 
 they are suggestions of ideas : not, so much matter and force, they are 
 things ; as we say, ' they have a meaning ?' The thing is the meaning, 
 what we call in art expression. So we say, ' there is " something " 
 in that.' Consider a tree : if we get rid of the form, think of only so 
 much matter and force, we have lost the thing ; just as in a work of 
 art considered as only so much material, &c. : the thing is gone. 
 
 Things are so powerful, so important, are so much to us, so real, be- 
 cause they are, or 'image,' or result from, or signify a spiritual act on 
 us. This is the importance of them. I do not make light of things ; 
 I magnify them.
 
 404 
 
 That abstract physical force is just as much a chimera as the abstract 
 matter ; the two are but one in fact : in truth the force is that wh is 
 first, from wh we infer the matter. The root of the whole is clearly 
 that we consider the things as acting ; and primarily acting on us. Is 
 not our invention of force but an unconscious affirmation that that wh 
 acts on us must be spirit or agent, not substance ? Most instructive 
 is this invention of an absolutely passive substance or substratum ; it is 
 our denial of the action (on us) of anything that is not spirit, or that is 
 real or substantial ; i. e. our denial of its being, for that wh does not 
 act is not. This is in our language, in our conceptions, in spite of our 
 attempts to say the contrary in our doctrine of inert matter. 
 
 The question well arises : things are forms forms of what ? They 
 say of matter or force ; I say by no means : forms of spiritual action. 
 In this sense I use the word ' form ' as an equivalent to that of ' image.' 
 This is the thing to insist upon. 'What we ' perceive ' in this world is 
 not mere matter and motion poor absurdity but more, infinitely more. 
 They are things, the forms or images of the spiritnal. It is curious how 
 the word being means person, not things ; spirit or agent, not matter. 
 I have to assert that they are ' things,' not to deny it : it is the mater- 
 ialists deny it. They are things ; ' forms ' replete with divine energy 
 and meaning. 
 
 Thus it is that a real world is given to mankind, i. e. in respect to 
 Science ; a world of things, wh the present Science denies, and substitutes 
 an abstract world of matter and force : i. e. there is given a world of 
 meaning. ' Things ' have meaning, they are forms ; forms of fact or 
 act, wh matter and force are not ; they are not thing-al. There are no 
 ' things ' to Science as yet, only to artists and poets ; but now Science 
 again has things, deals with meaning and significance. Think of this 
 word significance. Things are ' signs.' Perhaps this word sign is better 
 than image, for the relation of the real to the actual. 
 
 What a glory and brightness surrounds the world now to my gaze, a 
 brightness even dazzling to my eyes : that these things wh Science has 
 taught me to look on with such cold curiosity, are in truth more real, 
 more ' significant ' than ever enthusiast has dreamed. Science outvies 
 in meaning and depth of revelation the inspirations of the artist and 
 the poet. ' Things ' are the forms in wh the spiritual ' appears.' This 
 is the basis of poetry and art, for the emotional is also in a true sense 
 the spiritual. Let Science give us back our real world again. It is 
 the present phenomenal Science that is unreal, is abstract, dealing with 
 our own conceptions. The old metaphysical ' Science had its 
 faults doubtless, and, of course, was only a half; but, at least, it had 
 a real world, i. e. a world of things, of forms or signs, each with its 
 meaning or reality. It did not confine itself to abstractions as 
 ours does. 
 
 Things or forms must have a fact, a life, a meaning in them, a 
 reference and subordination to some ' existence ' that is not themselves, 
 wh matter and force have not. Yet is the meaning only to be discovered 
 by means of the hypothesis of matter and force, or inductive Science. 
 There was a two-fold use of the epicycles ; first, as statement of the 
 phna ; second, as revealer of the real. So a two-fold use of our Science ; 
 first, as statement of the phenomena; second, as revealer of the 
 actual.
 
 
 405 
 
 I do not substitute for things something unlike them, hut that wh is 
 exactly like them, as like as the motion of the earth to the motion of 
 the sun. For we feel things not to he abstractions, but to be full of 
 spiritual, moral, emotional significance ; we ever speak of them as such, 
 they are called by such names ; nothing can be more natural than to 
 see the fact of them to be so ; we do see it already in fact, and say it. 
 The substitution of matter and force for 'things,' as object of Science, 
 is simply taking away the fact and leaving us the form alone ; wh then 
 is no longer a form in the true sense, not having a fact in it. It is 
 taking away the grain and leaving us the husk. Nor can the fact be 
 an abstraction like matter and force. It will not do to say, it is true 
 things are forms, i. e. they are forms of matter and force. I must see 
 clearly the answer to this ; an answer besides saying that we only in- 
 vent matter and force by misconceiving things. 
 
 Things (i. e. forms with a meaning) must surely have begun to exist 
 when first there was a percipient to perceive them. But as to the existence 
 of things in this earth so long before man, of course there was all then(at 
 any given time) that is now, viz., the fact (spiritual) of wh those things 
 are the form, aud wh we perceive as those things ; and infer what the 
 form of the fact was, or would have been no, was, at such time for 
 ' was ' does not imply but denies true exisience. There is, however, 
 more here to think about : no objection, but something not fully known, 
 as also in the first beginning of things. As long as there has been the 
 spiritual fact, there must have been also forms ; i. e. eternally. But 
 perhaps these began at some time to be material, or things, and may at 
 some time cease to be material. 
 
 Men do not perceive at first that things axe forms, and have a 
 meaning, or reveal a fact. This is done by means of theory, by 
 nutrition. 
 
 That our ' objective ' Science, founded on observation of things, the 
 external world or phn, is, as I have said, truly subjective, is well 
 shown by its landing us in a Science of abstractions. Thus our Science 
 comes to be divorced from, and at strife with, all our consciousness of 
 the actual or spiritual. In truth matter and force are to us instead of 
 the spiritual. Get rid of them, and the spiritual necessarily comes in to 
 take their place : they are where the spiritual ought to be ; viz. that of 
 wh ' things ' are the form what a poor exchange. "We see it, e. g. in 
 the doctrine of a past creation instead of God's present (eternal) act ; 
 the matter and force exclude God. 
 
 In the doctrine of nothing ceasing to be, seems clearly involved that 
 of existence being in action ; it does not cease to be because it is in 
 acting, in becoming in giving itself. Even the matter is in becoming 
 another thing. Tho' consider how this is, that matter is ; i. e. that it 
 does not cease to be, altho' it does not act. Matter is said to be inert, 
 but the conception of it involves action ; if it have not weight, e. g., 
 and resistance, it is not ; so that tho' we affirm the inaction of matter, 
 we do so only in a very limited sense ; we truly and very clearly attri- 
 bute to it action ; and thus it is that, as it acts, it is. Indeed force 
 and matter are not only inseparable, but according to the actual con- 
 ception of the case, they are two names only for one idea. In truth it 
 is thus we have formed the conception, or have invented real matter, 
 &c. ; viz., because we have supposed 'things ' to act, and .-. to be.
 
 406 
 
 Therefore, since we must have them be, i. e. not ceasing to be, and yet, 
 as we saw that they did cease to be i. e. the things wh we perceive 
 we were obliged to invent a something else in them, or constituting 
 them, wh shd not cease to be ; i. e. the force and matter. The thing 
 at once is, because it acts (as we suppose), and is not, becauseslt ceases 
 to be ; .-.to get their ideas right men were, of course, compelled to 
 suppose this ' substratum,' wh at once is, and is not, the ' thing.' The 
 origin of the whole conception is from that of things acting, and .-. 
 being ; we are obliged to conceive something in the ' thing ' wh does 
 not cease to be. This is from our necessary conviction of two spiritual 
 facts ; first, that being is eternal, and that it is action ; or rather that 
 action is being, and being eternal : or in one word, that action is 
 eternal. 
 
 I think that men's first conception must have been of the force, and 
 from that of the abstract matter, wh, however, was and is quite con- 
 founded with it, in spite or our artificial and verbal distinction. Phy- 
 sical force, in truth, as I conceive, being matter ; and the distinction 
 only serving to show how the wrongness of the whole conception is 
 felt, but the attempt to remedy it only making confusion worse. 
 
 I see that I was wrong in saying ' The succession of events, wh we 
 call the material world ;' it is not a succession of events, but a thing 
 consisting of many things. 
 
 We have made things actual ; our language betrays us : we say of a 
 thing, it acts. And indeed here is a deep Tightness too : we ought to 
 say so, and must : i. e. the existence of wh the thing is the form, or 
 sign does act, and .-. the form (or thing) appears to act. There is a 
 real, i.e. a formal, action, wh action is the sign or image of the actual 
 or spiritual action. Even as I have seen this brings me round to my 
 first point again re-al action is image of the actual: this is just what 
 I have seen ; it is life ; nutrition by self-control, function in self-sacri- 
 fice. We are right rightly wrong in speaking of the actions of 
 things : as things or signs they do act, and represent the spiritual act, 
 wh is the eternal fact. This instinctive view, of things acting, must 
 be re-asserted, asserted in the denial of it. Things act. i. e. their 
 changes are images of actions ; and shd be called so : it is the right 
 word. To call them ' passions ' is to imply a wrong view ; viz., of a 
 real substance, unless it be passion in us ; but then wrongly applied ot 
 the actions of things on each other, wh are images not of our passion, 
 but of spiritual action. 
 
 Nothing is gained by persisting in a real matter ; it is only refusing 
 to see the spiritual, to recognize that wh we experience in ourselves. 
 For when I say the spiritual, moral, actual, I mean no theories or in- 
 ventions, but that wh we feel in ourselves, and to wh the world has 
 given those names. It is apart from all question as to what is the 
 moral, or whether we have any true power of original action : these 
 facts of our nature, be they what they may, are what I refer to. 
 
 The great error, as I have noted before, is that we think the mean- 
 ings, the analogies to the spiritual, wh we see in Xature, are given by 
 ourselves, are from us and not in the things ; arbitrary and varying, not 
 true and necessary. Yet has this its truth also ; they are so, and have 
 been, too much ; it is only Science that can substitute the right or ne- 
 cessary for the arbitrary. This it does by Law : its pursuit of law, its
 
 407 
 
 subordination to law. The idea of Science is Tightness ; an inconceivably 
 glorious task is hers ; the highest : it represents the moral, the right, 
 among the faculties of man. Emphatically it is the spiritual, and this 
 is given to Science because its guide is right or law. 
 
 Swedenborg's view, that the sight is as the Being, is certainly true in 
 this world ; it is ' imaged ' in the physical, inasmuch as perception [what 
 we see the things] ig a function, and must be according to our organi- 
 zation ; the external influence, the stimulus, being supposed the same. 
 
 It is not I that deny ' things ' ; I only point out that our Science 
 does. I affirm that things are, are real, do really exist, and thus deny 
 (?) the maxim in relation to the physical that nothing ceases or is anni- 
 hilated. I hold succession, or beginning and ceasing, to be the mode, 
 and the only mode of physical existence. The contrary maxim we derive 
 from ourselves, it is spiritual in origin and meaning. 
 
 And yet again : I hold that things do act ; i. e. that we rightly speak 
 when we say so, meaning that what appears to us as the actions of 
 things is entirely one in kind with our own actions. Only thus can we 
 truly know Nature, or feel it one with us. Our artificial conceptions 
 make an impassable gulf between us wh is quite unnecessary, and abso- 
 lutely prohibits our ' comprehension ' of it. The more we study it under 
 the abstract notions of matter and motion the more it removes itself 
 from us and sets us at defiance, the less and less like ourselves it be- 
 comes ; it gives us barren ' ideas ' and mere physical power instead of 
 knowledge, wh is the life of the soul, and holiness, which is ' being one 
 with Nature.' 
 
 My definition of spirit must be that which is like ourselves ; in that 
 sense, active, moral. And how strong the argument is that all should be 
 like that wh alone we can be sure absolutely is, which alone we truly 
 know ; surely the unknown is like the known. 
 
 Seeing things thus as images gives them their true value, and even 
 more than before ; makes our ordinary duties more to us. For by 
 ' things ' we see the spiritual ; in real things and in real duties it is ex- 
 pressed and cannot be without. If the sign, or image, be not, certainly 
 the fact, the thing signified, is not. The absence of right act, of dis- 
 charge of duty, is death ; and infallibly certifies, as image, the spiritual 
 death. The not being of the image, the thing, the external operation, 
 is itself an image of the not-being of the spiritual fact. For here again 
 we see how even not-being is not mere absence : absence of right is 
 suppression of right, and is not nothing [there is no nothing in Nature] ; 
 but wrong or sin. This is the actuality of Sin ; its real actual evil, 
 because it is not-Being ; it is the opposite of being : the ' rank in the 
 abyss,' as Ruskin says. But this evil, tho' real and actual in a most 
 important sense, yet is such as is wholly comprehended in the absolute 
 good. Here is the great mystery which even now in part reveals itself. 
 For spiritual not-being or not-acting is moral not-being or inaction : it 
 is Sin, : the sinfulness consists in that not-being. Here again 
 see the truth of expressions wh seem the most absurd : many philoso- 
 phers have talked about the negation as really being [Oken, e. g.] : and 
 it is involved in mathematics, wh is ever so spiritual and ever on the 
 spiritualists' side, in its plus and minus quantities. The minus being 
 not, and yet as much, to her, as the plus. Here is the image of spiritual 
 not-being : it is also in the physical and mental : mathematics images
 
 408 
 
 For the minus of mathematics is no actual and absolute minus, it 
 does not affect the absolute plus-ness so to speak : it is only relative. 
 
 Plus and minus are alike real, but alike included in an absolute Being : 
 just as sin and holiness are alike actual, but both included in an Infinite 
 Act wh is all holy. 
 
 How strange it is, this idea of the physical the imperfect or material 
 existing as such only thro' Sin. It seems to be the same idea as that 
 of Boehme, of the deterioration of the earth by the fall of Satan, i. e. 
 essentially the same, tho' differing in form : and far as it may be from 
 the true form, I am persuaded there must be fact in it. For consider : 
 things are -what we see, the result of our function, determined, in part 
 by our own organization ; indeed determined altogether as to their cha- 
 racter [i. e. their ' form ' or thing-ality] by our organization : only their 
 mutual relations are dependent on the character of external force, &c. 
 
 Swedenborg's doctrine, of perception being according to the state or 
 being, i. e. the life, of the percipient, is clearly necessary, and is an ob- 
 vious and indisputable physical fact. So man perceives the universe ac- 
 cording to his nature and being, and being depraved i. e. spiritually 
 diseased dr partly dead he perceives falsely. The physical world sur- 
 rounds us, as such, by virtue of the Fall (?) It is even as a man in dis- 
 ease perceives things other than they are : so does diseased humanity. 
 
 How action or being consists in self-sacrifice : in respect to force e. g. 
 wh is only in constantly ceasing and becoming another : and in respect 
 to ' things ' we may say, either that they cease to exist, i. e. are mereln 
 forms, or that they continue to exist after the form is changed : but they 
 we assert that existence in its becoming another, or self-sacrifice. 
 
 I must bring clearly out how the thing is denied in denying the mean- 
 ing in it. It is just as a picture or a book is denied if we assert the 
 meaning to be from ourselves, and ^that they are merely matter and 
 force. The case is just as gross with ' things ' or God's works as with 
 man's. They contain ' facts ' we even call them so, with happy incon- 
 sistency. It is clear that the thing ' is not the matter and motion, and 
 equally clear that it is not the mere physical form, ' form of matter ' ; 
 it ceases, .*. it is not matter and force. It is the thing, .*. it is not the 
 mere form of the matter and force ; for the form of these without them- 
 selves is not the thing ; we shd reject that conception at once. That 
 vd give us an ancient ' idea ' in some miserable sort. We clearly cannot 
 get at the thing this way ; it escapes us wholly ; it is neither the matter 
 and force, nor the form of them, nor both together ; we cannot arrive at 
 * things ' by means of matter and force any way. Things are forms ; yes, 
 forms of spiritual facts, or actuals. Denying the spiritual fact, we deny 
 the thing the tree, e. g. The matter and force and form do not give it 
 us, do not constitute it ; by reason and feeling alike, by clearest percep- 
 tion, we know there is more in it. 
 
 This view of things, as forms of the spiritual, agrees well with the 
 mode in wh we arrive at a knowledge of them, or perceive them, viz. by 
 inference, inferences from our sensations. Our sensations are affections 
 of us, i. e. of spirits ; they have nothing like matter and force in them. 
 We cannot infer matter and force directly from sensations, i. e. we cannot 
 perceive them. From sensation necessarily we infer something akin to 
 sensation, something having a direct relation to the spiritual (or at least 
 to the sensational or emotional) ; i. e. we infer, or perceive, things, and
 
 409 
 
 we never can by our senses or sensations perceive anything else. The 
 inference of matter and force is quite another affair. Thus shall I not 
 find out still farther what things are ; viz. that wh we infer from our 
 sensations, as cause of sensations. When we see that 'things' are truly- 
 spiritual how beautiful appears the use we make of the word ; we use it 
 for everything, especially for whatever is important and valuable, saying 
 there is ' some thing in that ' &c. ; certainly not meaning that there is 
 some matter and motion, nor that there is an apparent form of the same, 
 but some spiritual, moving, concerning, fact. How reverently these 
 thoughts make us look on Nature. 
 
 Now I do believe I see Space : it seems to arise from, or be connected 
 with, the no-thing, the not-being. Things are physical, i. e. material, 
 because they exist in space, even as they are things because they exist 
 in time. Both these conceptions, of space and of time, seem to depend 
 on the one essential idea, viz. that of not-being. That wh is created 
 'from nothing' manifestly exists in space, [and also, surely, in time]. 
 This essential idea of space, or not-being emptiness or nothing wh 
 we unavoidably attach to matter or to things, is the fact of not-being ; 
 image of the not-being [Sin ?]. And does time necessarily go with 
 space ? i. e. with motion ; the two being inseparable, having a common 
 root ; where no space, no time : where one there the other. And the 
 not-being, or image of sin, the root of both ? "We exist in space and 
 time because we are sinful. The image of redemption, or creation from 
 ' not-being,' must be a world of l material things,' space, and succession : 
 therefore partly evil, development, &c., such as we see. A vacuum, 
 that in wh is no control, no resistance to passion, is the very type of 
 spiritual not-being, or Sin. Therefore may we not be sure there is none 
 such in Nature, if for no other reason : an absolute vacuum, utter 
 negation ? 
 
 This is the reason men have never been able to settle about the ex- 
 ternal world : what it is, or why or how we perceive it ; all such at- 
 tempts have failed, the only general result being that the physical cannot 
 be the true or actual ; can only be the result or image, and but a dim 
 and marred image, of such. The reason is that this had to teach a 
 moral lesson, on the one hand ; and could be explained only by the 
 moral, on the other. 
 
 We do not find action in ourselves, as it were, necessarily, or 
 naturally; .-. we think it, as it were, 'natural ' there shd be none. 
 Therefore we have that most false conception, that being that love 
 needs to be accounted for, or proved that it must be ; as if ' nothing ' 
 must be, unless reason can be shown for being. The wrongness of our 
 perceptions, of our mental nature, as of our physical, is proof enough of 
 the moral fall, or depravity, of our not being as we ought to be ; flow- 
 ing as it does from the perversion of the moral state, and imaging it. 
 We need not be made to love ; .'.we think that all being, or love, 
 must be made or produced. The not-love in us is the source of the 
 ' not ' around us, and in our thoughts I should say, in our perceptions 
 and our thoughts. 
 
 There is a thought I must pursue : is there not in us an absolute 
 ' not-being ?' ' No good thing in us,' i. e. in our flesh. How the Bible 
 asserts the utter and entire evil of man. Is not this indicated by the 
 struggle it is in us to do any right ? All the good is from God ; con-
 
 410 
 
 science is not us, it is God in us, or operating on us, as it were. There 
 is in us absolute not-love, but God, by conscience, acts in us. 
 
 In the pain of childbirth, wh is part of the curse, see another indica- 
 tion of the physical first becoming at the fall ; for this pain clearly is 
 essential to the physical birth. We see all as physical around us, and 
 even before man, tho' only by virtue of our own nature : well called a 
 curse upon the ground. 
 
 It is a pitiful thought to have, that we are sinful because ve are in 
 matter ; that we are associated with the physical in order that we may 
 be tempted, as it were. It is not so : we are in a material world in 
 order that we may be redeemed. A sinful spirit must be in a physical 
 world in order to be redeemed, in a world of time where the deed once 
 done may be undone again ; where the eternal is diffused, as it were, 
 into the temporal, the one fact dissolved into succession ; where 
 penitence may find scope, and repentance may avail : and where there 
 are so many, not hindrances, but aids ; where all things that live and 
 rejoice say to us ' live, control passion, and be happy !' and death, in 
 its perpetual recurrence, warns us not to die ; saying in tones that will 
 not be denied, ' Sin is destruction, passion uncontrolled : he that 
 soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption : he that liveth in 
 pleasure is dead while he liveth :' where each form of beauty or of 
 fear warns us from sin, solicits us to love. Therefore it is we are in a 
 world of things ; that we may learn to live. The image of redemption, 
 of being from not-being, is around us, that we may be prevailed upon to 
 accept our own. 
 
 Is it not probable, that the opinion so widely entertained in all ages 
 of our being in the flesh by a degradation from a former state, or as a 
 punishment for sin, is the result of the tradition of the fall ? is indeed 
 the fact, the true origin of the physical. How much spiritual meaning 
 is in the * tree !' Consider besides, Christ was crucified on a tree, and 
 the references made to it. 
 
 It is very simple about matter and force. They are hypotheses, ne- 
 cessarily introduced to express the facts wh we observe [wrongly con- 
 ceived] just as the epicycles. And see, it is from the hypotheses 
 themselves, in each case, that the revelation of the fact arises. It is 
 from the getting right and complete the conception of the relations of 
 the forces, that the demonstration arises that they cannot be, but that 
 ' things ' are forms of the spiritual. The epicycle astronomy was a 
 Science of ' abstractions,' it was neither of the 'things' that men saw, 
 nor of the fact that caused them to be seen ; something between, 
 neither one nor the other, and intolerable every way. Just such is our 
 Science, of substance and forces ; neither one thing nor the other, every 
 way odious ; neither the things we see the phna nor the fact wh 
 causes us to see, wh is spiritual. But these Sciences of abstractions 
 or hypotheses, miserable as they are in themselves, have their worthy 
 place and work ; they are transitions, steps from the phna to the fact. 
 Giving up matter and forces we cannot lose any ' thing ;' there is then 
 something else wh makes us perceive things : what is that ? It will 
 certainly be much more to us : the matter and force hypothesis suits 
 our ignorance of the phna. The fact revealed will be conformable to 
 our knowledge. 
 
 It is manifest that the conceptions of substance, efficient cause, 
 [Matter, 17. Jan. 1857.
 
 411 
 
 and beauty, are never entertained by the lover animals. It never 
 occurs to them to think in any such way : they have sensations, and 
 associations of the same, I suppose, and act upon them. Man owes 
 these conceptions to some element in his being wh they have not ; that 
 is, of course, to his spirit. All that is most important in man, as a 
 rational and emotional and active being, is derived from and dependent 
 upon his spirit. It will be very interesting to trace the line wh separ- 
 ates the mind properly so called from the spirit ; the phn, or passion, 
 from the being or agent. The clue surely is furnished to us by the 
 higher animals. They are body and mind : nothing that they have in 
 common with us is spiritual. 
 
 Trace why mind (or the psychical) and matter (or the physical) are 
 such as they are ; the necessity and reason. Granted motion as a 
 form of thought, or sensation, the spirit introducing conception of real 
 existence or substance, things or matter necessarily result ; and therein 
 the universe. But why motion or space ? Why that idea of extension ? 
 Shall I not first find out why there is time, or the psychical condition ? 
 Will not that lead me to the physical ? I think I see how passion 
 (even of a spirit) involves time, i. e. of a limited spirit. Surely time 
 and space result from limit, even as vibration. Infinite act on limited 
 spirit causes vibratile passion : vibratile passsion involves time as its 
 condition. 
 
 Thought, and desire or love, and truth, also involve time. Why does 
 this involve space or motion, as force, matter, beauty, do ? Is the 
 emotional element the first ? The passion must precede the condition ; 
 it cannot be motion because space, thought because time ; but the 
 passion, being thought and motion, involves the conditions of time and 
 space. Can I advance at all by considering thought and motion as one 
 vibration ? Am I not in error by considering either as separated from, 
 or anterior to the tther : are they not one ? And again, are they not 
 determined by the essential nature of spirit ? 
 
 ' He that eateth me hath life.' The eating is a moral act; the life 
 must be moral : it is in the words. Perhaps the Jews at the time wd 
 have understood life of existence, but we must learn to understand aright. 
 The Jews misunderstood the Bible, ve are meant to learn more and 
 more from scripture as from nature. 
 
 When the question is raised of how we conceive the real existence 
 of and actually perceive, things, the thing to do is to show how ve do 
 actually introduce into nature elements from ourselves, of wh substance 
 is one ; and the whole thing is plain (especially as .illustrated by the 
 course of Science, wh shows a gradual exclusion of that idea). Beauty 
 is a good illustration, a thing so decidedly perceived in nature, and yet 
 so decidedly introduced by ourselves. 
 
 This origin of the idea of substance puts it quite right relatively. 
 I see now that to attempt to banish the idea of substance from the phn 
 is an error, akin to that of attempting to banish the idea of cause. 
 There is as really matter, or substance of physical things, as there is 
 physical cause ; and that is absolutely and truly, considered in physical 
 point of view. Just as there is beauty really in nature ; we shd feel 
 it an error to attempt to make beauty subjective only, while allowing 
 reality of physical world. I see now how I have erred, and where the 
 tendency to error ; viz., to treat the phn as partially phenomenal, par- 
 tially real. c 2 
 Spirit, 40. Oct., 1856.
 
 412 
 
 Surely there is a real difference between those things which Science 
 considers as forces, and those treated as substances. What is there in 
 that mechanical resistance and weight (especially weight) wh causes us 
 to consider a thing as matter or substance ? We have learnt to see 
 that all things are passions except those that have weight, or resist our 
 touch. Why these exceptions ? Weight is simply polar attraction, 
 Le. passion or motion (just the same as attraction of electricity for the 
 opposite). Also, it is clear that resistance to touch is only motion, i.e. 
 force ; so that there is no real reason for the exception. Why has it 
 been made ? 
 
 Can Spirit Mind, Matter, 
 
 be Cause, Condition, Effect; 
 
 Divergent, Approximative, again Divergent ? 
 
 Are the spiritual, mental, material, a true spiral, returning on itself ? 
 
 The Spiritual or cause being first divergent 
 ,, Psychical or condition ,, functional or approx 
 
 Physical or effect divergent, or a new nutrition. 
 
 Thus the physical is the resulting nutrition, is ('variety') from psy- 
 chical function. 
 
 The physical thus, being nutritive, constitutes a new cause ; cause of 
 the mental life. We produce the phn by our passion, but learn from 
 it. The passion returns on itself in true spiral ; and each is nutrition, 
 each function. Does each bear to each the relation of producing func- 
 tion, and produced nutrition ? Thus the psychical, or mind, by its 
 function, produces the physical as nutrition ; but the physical, by its 
 function produces the mental nutrition. Spiritual passion makes up the 
 three. Are there not several triplets in respect to motion and thought; 
 parallels by wh I may, perhaps, find why motion ; i. e. whence extent, 
 or place ? Surely 'place* is the basic idea that involves motion, and .. 
 space and matter, &c. Why ' place ?' 
 
 Our idea of pure or disembodied spirit is an error. For the mind 
 and body are only the reality of God's act on the spirit, result from the 
 spirits' consciousness of real being, wh it applies to the phn or passion 
 perceived. Therefore, I think all spirits must, because they are spirits, 
 hare that wh is equivalent to body and mind, viz., vibratile passion 
 produced by God's act on them, clothed in the spiritual element of real 
 being. But this equivalent of body need not be matter, &c., that de- 
 pends on God's act and on the nature of the spirit. That we know 
 body and mind to be not real, but God's act, makes no difference to our 
 possessing body and mind. 
 
 As Emerson says, the most powerful men have ever felt themselves 
 to be the most passive, and the mere instruments of an energy operating 
 thro' them. This shows how our bodies and minds are part of nature ; 
 but it does not avail to Emerson's conclusion that the man is so, that he 
 is a mere channel. For the man's act is his moral act ; and therein all 
 men equally are self-agent. A man is not a channel for right or wrong 
 action : that he does, not nature. Our intellect, our emotions, our tal- 
 ent, our Genius, are nature acting thro' us : our moral character is our 
 own act, our spirit using our minds and bodies.
 
 413 
 
 These things to me are evident : 
 
 1. That every act is moral. 
 
 2. That every being (every real existence) acts. 
 
 Therefore (a) the universe is result of a moral act, and cd not 
 have' been other than it is, unless God had been unholy : (b) those 
 actions of man alone wh have moral character are his acts, all else is 
 passion in him, result of God's moral act (i. e. part of nature) : (c) that 
 the physical and psychical worlds are not real existences, but spirits 
 only are so. Life is passion produced by, or resulting from, action ; i.e. 
 spiritual action. So our spiritual life is passion resulting from spiritual 
 act, just what nature is. 
 
 It is only by controlling and restraining (aright) the animal, sexual 
 passion, that the life of the emotional, spiritual, sexual love can arise. 
 Thus the physical is shown to be really one with the psychical : this 
 mutual dependence of body on mind and mind on body is, in truth, the 
 mutual dependence of the two halves of a vibration. From resistance 
 comes the opposite passion ; and by that, the life, the power. The life 
 of love depends upon the regulation of a mere physical ' passion,' mere 
 'motion.' The same is seen in innumerable other cas.es. Thus we may 
 understand how control of passion produces spiritual life, not ' holiness' 
 in a passive sense, but capacity, or power for and tendency to holy 
 action. This is the eternal life wh God gives, not a passive ' holiness,' 
 but the power for and love of (tendency to) holy action. And He gives 
 it by the love of Christ, the persuading influence of His Spirit causing 
 us to control and regulate passion. He who does not regulate his pas- 
 sion, has not eternal life ; nor can he have it, save by being led 
 so to do. 
 
 Again, when fasting, the sight of food excites hunger, desire to eat, 
 wh is a sensation, and mental ; but after eating, sight of food produces 
 no such effect. After excess, it excites loathing, or disgust, wh again 
 is a mental passion. Here see how the physical and psychical 
 are one. 
 
 The phn is ugly to us, as fireworks frighten children, while their 
 parents go to gaze on them for their beauty. Sinai was the sunrise of 
 one of the world's great days a sun wh set in blood when Jerusalem 
 fell before the Komans. How fearful both to us : but was it not 
 heavenly beauty to those who could see it right ? Was not the scene 
 at Calvary, the brighter dawn of a more glorious day, the loveliest sun- 
 rise within God's universe ? Yet what was the phn, but murderous 
 malice and dying innocence. The judgment a sun-set, filling heaven 
 with radiance, terrible tho' it may be to us. 
 
 If we do right, the passion so controlled becomes our spiritual, our 
 real life ; if not, it becomes the life of the universe. It is the same to 
 God. The evil is but phenomenal evil ; it is nutrition of the universal 
 life. If we restrain the passion, that resisted tendency is our life ; if 
 we do not, the unrestrained passion is still resistance to tendency, is 
 still life. It is our life, if we will take it ; but if not, there is 
 no loss. 
 
 The universe is necessarily as it is, because God is holy, and His act 
 cannot be arbitrary. This physical and psychical necessity is, in 
 reality, God's holiness. The necessity of the universe does not
 
 414 
 
 contravene, but reveals the holiness of God. Physical necessity is a pi in 
 of wh the reality is spiritual holiness ; a theory of wh the interpretation 
 is moral rectitude. 
 
 Evil is life, and .*. we dare to look on it. ' Ocean of life, whose 
 waters of deep woe,' says Shelley. The waters of life are woe ; we 
 need not be ashamed or afraid to own it. The perception of nature as 
 a spiritual reality, re-creates for us the world, and all that it contains ; 
 makes all new and of a higher order. See the contrast drawn between 
 noble motives and interest, enthusiasm and a regard to material results. 
 Yet truly seen they are one. Material well-being is only a phenomenal 
 representation of holiness. Rectitude, love, holiness, are expressed by, 
 constitute, all these physical laws. We must learn to see holiness in 
 them, and when we trace the working of material laws, or the results of 
 physical passion, know and feel that the reality thus presented is one of 
 infinitely vaster import, even the eternal rectitude of God. 
 
 To see that the evil (phenomenally) is not really evil, but only an effect 
 on us produced by good, has this great advantage, that it enables us to 
 face boldly the fact of the evil, and removes the disposition to regard 
 the phn as other than it is. Knowing that evil too, as evil, is really 
 good, we are no longer afraid to do full justice to its proportions as evil, 
 and to admit that, as seen, it is absolute evil, unredeemed by the least trace 
 of good. With this faith of the absolute good (and it applies equally to 
 beauty and ugliness), we can face the facts. It is just as in Science : 
 men could not really see nature, they could not bring themselves to look 
 at her, so long as they thought she was really partly false. The experi- 
 mental, inductive (phenomenal), Science arose necessarily from the faith 
 (for it was strictly a ' faith '), from the conviction as a self-evident 
 fact, that nature was absolutely and perfectly true. So will the same 
 thing arise from the faith that she is really, absolutely, and entirely 
 beautiful and good. A phenomenal art and philosophy will be the 
 necessary fruits. 
 
 And now I see, for the first time, clearly what the real debt of 
 mankind is to Bacon : he first clearly saw, or articulately said, that 
 nature is absolutely true. His invention of the inductive method, his 
 special directions, his individual discoveries, all these are trifles, or errors. 
 The thing for wh humanity is for ever beholden to him, is for telling ^her 
 that nature is true. I say for telling, not for proving it : he does not 
 attempt to prove it. He simply assumes it, as the Bible does the being 
 of a God ; and, in truth, there is nothing wh shows his greatness 
 greater than this very fact, that he only said, and did not attempt to 
 prove. That is the basis laid down, or rather, involved. The super- 
 structure is what appears as his work the phn. But the foundation 
 was his real work ; i. e. the truth of nature. Bacon said ' God is light, 
 and in Him is no darkness at all.' And in that announcement, startling 
 the dreaming world from its slumbers, Science had its birth. Light 
 dawned upon the world when they saw that God was light. So, when 
 the world shall wake up to see that God is beauty, that God is love, and 
 in Him are no ugliness nor evil at all, then art and philosophy shall 
 reach their birth. Beauty and love shall then surround humanity 
 when they see that in God and His works ugliness and evil 
 are not.
 
 415 
 
 For in truth, the becoming phenomenal of Science, art, and philosophy 
 may well be called their birth. The present art, and philosophy of the 
 beautiful and good, are embryonic. 
 
 But to return : knowing that the evil phn is a real good, we can now, 
 and now only, truly investigate the phn itself. For investigation is, and 
 means comprehension, finding out the truth ; but this means finding out 
 the beauty and the good. So long as it is believed that any phn is really 
 ugly or evil, it can no more be investigated than if it be believed to be 
 really false. There cannot be a phenomenal art or philosophy except 
 upon the basis that all phna are really beautiful and good. This is clear 
 enough of art. The phn, as a whole, cannot be brought within its do- 
 main, save on the assumption that it is (or will reveal) beauty. In phil- 
 osophy this is less apparent, but equally true. Nothing comes within the 
 domain of philosophy, except on the assumption that it is (or will reveal) 
 good ; to give a reason for anything is to show how and in what sense it 
 is good : save sin, the only account of wh is that a being or spirit will 
 not act, i. e. chooses death. Sin is not a fact or reality, but a negation ; 
 and, as such, needs only a negative account of it. 
 
 I love this idea of sin as not an act (or reality), but as inaction : a re- 
 fusal to share in life. The mystery of the existence of moral evil is 
 thus solved. Placing my eye right I see that the universe is transparent. 
 I see something of the infinite wisdom with wh this system of things is 
 formed ; the meaning, origin, result of the phn ; the deep reality wh it 
 subserves, from wh it flows. God has shown it to me. There is no blot 
 on His creation that needs to be washed out, or compensated for. The 
 idea has arisen from confounding the phenomenal with the real, thinking 
 evil was really evil. So excellent is life, that not to live, is that foul 
 and fearful fact of sin. What does the hatefulness of death prove to us, 
 but the loveliness of life ? It is so simple : first to see that nature is 
 God's act ; to see that all God's act is absolutely good : to see what life 
 is shows it all. It removes quite away that black pall that overlies the 
 universe. It is God's hand wiping away our tears. The universe is a 
 scene of absolute life and beauty and good ; nothing is there that is not 
 so ; only this sad fact wh stains not its glory, that some spirits refuse to 
 share in it, is the great mystery of sin. 
 
 This suggests to me, that we misinterpret what the Bible tells us of 
 heaven. It says indeed that God will wipe away all tears, that sorrow 
 and sighing shall flee away, even that there shall be no death ; but it 
 does not tell us that there shall be no phenomenal evil. That is quite 
 another thing. Still shall there be life, yea, more life ; still therefore 
 evil. But not sorrow and sighing, not tears : everlasting joy and undi- 
 minished gladness gladness for life for evil seen to be good. We 
 fancy if there be evil there must be grief sorrow, and sighing, and 
 tears unwiped away. But it is not so. To cure us of our grief, it needs 
 not to take away the evil, but to show it us. Shall we grieve at the 
 evil when we see it as God does? Let me only see the evil as it is, oh 
 God, and my eyes shall weep no more, nor my heart know another pang. 
 The motion of the sun was a source of error to the men of former times : 
 now God has removed for us that error ; but He has not altered the 
 phn : still falsely, as falsely as when first Adam witnessed the illusion, 
 roll* Hit- sun around the earth. But God has shown it to us. The
 
 416 
 
 illusion remains, but the error is gone. So shall evil remain, hut the 
 grief shall he gone. The illusion shall not cease, hut sorrow and sigh- 
 ing shall flee away. Not in the least jot will God alter His deed it is 
 eternal. In heaven there shall he all the evil there ever was on earth ; 
 nor shall we say it is too much. None shall gaze upon the life of 
 heaven and say, ' I will not live.' So there shall he no sin there, no 
 death. 
 
 In heaven, as on earth, our eternal life must he ' self-control ;' even 
 as God's life is. 
 
 Redemption is God giving eternal life to those who have lost it, 
 having refused to live. The life of the spirit is right affections. The 
 idea of right is the vital force in relation to spiritual life, as that of 
 true, beautiful, good, is of mental life. [Is there a parallel in these 
 three to movement, motion (physical forces), and vital passion?] 
 
 Emerson says also, that evil is negation. But I think he does not 
 see it rightly, either as regards ' natural evil,' or sin. He does not see 
 that sin is death ; speaking of man in act of sin as on the way to all 
 that is best. And he does not see that phenomenal or natural evil is not 
 negation, hut real actual good. 
 
 I like this idea, and thank God for it : that, as our sense of truth, 
 good and beauty is given us that we may interpret [re-present] Nature 
 in respect to thought, feeling, and physical performance ; so our sense of 
 right is given that we may interpret or represent her in Act, viz. as 
 holiness. This is the real re-presentation of her ; for Nature is not a 
 thought, a feeling, a physical performance ; but an Act. These lower 
 phenomenal interpretations are only means whereby we may rise to the 
 true interpretation ; by them we represent in a phenomenal way what 
 God does : in holy action we do again, truly re-present, the fact. Thus 
 and thus alone we comprehend it. The sense of right is as it were given 
 us to interpret beauty, truth, good See how all reality is moral : 
 thinking, feeling, performing right are but symbols of acting right 
 the only reality, the only fact, the only thing that can have the name of 
 Being. The others are phenomena, illusions of time, space, sensation. 
 The right act is eternal, i. e. spiritual. Beauty, truth, goodness, point 
 all to holiness and say, We are but shadows, reflections of the real. 
 But all this involves the view of Nature as absolutely true, good, beau- 
 tiful : involves indeed a revolution of art and philosophy. The doctrine 
 that the ugly and the evil are the phna wh art and philosophy are to 
 interpret into good and beauty is at once involved in Nature being holi- 
 ness. Nature cannot be holy if it be really in any part ugly or evil or 
 less beautiful and good. 
 
 Incidentally I think I have lighted on another triplet, viz. 
 
 
 Space 
 
 Time 
 
 Sensation 
 
 Or ideas of 
 
 Art 
 Beauty 
 
 Science 
 True 
 
 Philosophy 
 Good 
 
 Corresponding to 
 
 Muscular 
 
 Secretive 
 
 Nervous 
 
 Or, 
 
 Perceptive 
 
 Intellective 
 
 Emotional 
 
 
 Physical 
 
 Psychical ? 
 
 
 [Too much is given to the psychical : it must be resolved into equiva- 
 lents of thought and emotion. Sensation is a kind of function from ap- 
 proximation ? and Thought ?]
 
 417 
 
 Are not truth, beauty, good, the triplet ? How are they length, 
 breadth, depth ; male, female, child ; producing and produced yet one ? 
 
 All life is one : the mental universal life the same as the organic life. 
 And as the organic life ' represents ' the" universal life, so must each ele- 
 ment, or particle, of the living frame as it were contain and represent 
 this organic life. All the ' passions ' of the living body exist in, belong 
 to, each individual particle ; and individual men, in relation to the great 
 humanity, are as such particles in a living frame. Each individual re- 
 presents an ' organic particle ' ; each such particle represents an indivi- 
 dual. Each particle must have as it were its five senses, its various 
 corresponding forms of passion or tendency, must be ' moved and influ- 
 enced ' even as men are ; and the living body must be built up and 
 formed and held together, even as Society is. 
 
 Surely the solar system is diseased, or liable to disease, even as other 
 organic bodies. What are these irregularities and disturbances in its 
 motions ? are they morbid processes, altho' confined within the bounds of 
 ' stability ' ? Are not diseases often such ; and the spontaneous cure of 
 diseases precisely such a return ? the disturbances confined within the 
 limits of stability. The solar system also is imperfect, being part of 
 the universe, and .-. influenced by it ; having its ' normal' proportions 
 probably disturbed thereby ; so appearing imperfect to us (if we could 
 see it sufficiently within our view) because we are not able to perceive 
 the relations wh determine such variations. 
 
 We are, as it were, afraid of the solar system and stellar universe, be- 
 cause it is big. But why ? it is not bigger than ourselves, or we could 
 not ' comprehend ' it. We can never know, or understand, be substance 
 of, anything bigger than ourselves. The objection to the material uni- 
 verse being limited, arises from confounding the phn with the reality : 
 the reality is indeed unlimited, but the phn arises from limit. It is 
 striking that we see the mental world, or time, as limited more clearly 
 than the physical, or matter : yet the ends of each escape us. 
 
 Does not the universal threefold-ness of the phenomenons how a three- 
 fold-ness of the spirit ? Are not beauty, true and good all in the 
 * right ' ? and from these three, the physical, intellectual, and emotional 
 worlds (as phenomenal) have their origin ? Matter dependent on sense of 
 beauty; thought on that of truth; emotional world on sense of good. Eight 
 the spiritual sense embraces the three elements of beauty, truth and 
 good ; it is true, good, beautiful : and these three forms of spiritual 
 passion constitute and give rise to the physical, intellectual, emotional 
 worlds. 
 
 When we move, we see certain objects around us as moving: being of 
 real substance we see certain motions around us as real substance. In 
 the case of the motion we supply the passion (wh we perceive) from 
 ourselves : in the case of the things we supply the substance (wh we 
 perceive) from ourselves. It is, respectively, our passion(phenomenally); 
 our real Being. Thus when our motion is perceived as an apparent 
 motion of things there appear to be two inverse processes (? vibration): 
 to the passion in our spirit we supply the real Being, constituting so 
 things; between wh then there are relations of phna : to the 'things' ex- 
 isting, we by virtue of our phenomenal passion supply a passion[motion] 
 In each case we add to the one presented to us the opposite or comple- 
 mentary substance and passion, or Being and Action. First we supply
 
 418 
 
 the idea of substance ; then this substance is the occasion of our sup- 
 plying the idea of motion : the first is the result of spiritual passion, 
 the second of phenomenal. Surely one may trace similar relations in 
 respect to ordinary sensations. Do we not supply in some cases sub- 
 stance to passion ; and in others passion to phenomenal being ? in matters 
 of sensation e. g., and those ' passions ' in our bodies wh are the imme- 
 diate conditions of our perceptions ? 
 
 Interpretation is ever life, even as function is nutrition. The view of 
 continuous and transitive vibration as constituting continuous and tran- 
 sitive life, (continuous vibration being what we call organic life, but 
 transitive equally truly life, tho' not of the individual) : this view ap- 
 plies exactly to the spiritual life. It is thus our passion, rightly con- 
 trolled, becomes a continuous vibration, i. e. constitutes our life. Not 
 controlled, it becomes transitive vibration death to us, but life in and 
 of the universe. Thus life and death re-present holiness and sin. It is 
 no forced analogy, no illustration, but one identical fact. 
 
 Practically, controlled passion becomes continuous vibration, or life : 
 we find it so. Controlled passion does give us life, i. e. power for acting, 
 for enjoying ; functional power in a word, or character. We trace it in 
 innumerable ways. The passion resisted or controlled still leaves us in 
 possession of the tendency ; but at the same time produces an organi- 
 zation by means of which this same tendency effects by its operation a 
 function, an effect beyond and above itself. Our passions controlled and 
 partly prevented from operating, are exactly a vital passion, produce a 
 living organization : at once the power and the structure. Just as che- 
 mical passion resisted produces a living organization, at once the power 
 and the structure, wh is life. Thus the control of our passion by our 
 spirits (ourselves) produces true life. The spiritual life is perhaps 
 rather the result of holy action than holiness itself. The right act, the 
 self control, is holiness : the result is life power of acting, enjoying, 
 feeling, loving ; all that is to be desired or hoped for. So self indulgence 
 is death: leaves man a slave with no power, no enjoyment, no feeling, 
 no love ; as a dead body he simply decays, and must decay : the very 
 source of his life and power becomes now a tyrant to destroy. 
 
 I have taken the control of sexual passion as alone producing the life 
 of marriage ; loving, domestic. A social, mental, emotional life all 
 flow from this control. But this is not the spiritual life : that is above 
 and additional to all these. The character, the Being of the man, comes 
 by control of passion and doing right. It is higher, better than all 
 these, and never lost. Say marriage may not be, nor children, nor the 
 joy of social life : still is the spiritual life, the holiness, infinitely above 
 all these ; yea in itself enough. Self-control never loses its reward : 
 resisted passion does produce life ; it is Life. Is not spiritual life 
 right affections, produced by right action, even as appreciation and love 
 of the beautiful result from practice of the beautiful ; and higher, truer 
 feeling and appreciation ? All men have the sense of right ; not all men 
 have sense of beauty. So mental life comes from thought, i. e. from 
 practice of the true. 
 
 We should see in our inclinations as it were chemical attractions : a 
 source of life if controlled, but death, decay and loathsomeness if un- 
 controlled ; death to us, but still forming part of the great life of the 
 universe. We do not call chemical attraction evil ; the results are bad
 
 419 
 
 only in relation to the particular organization, it is the result of that 
 special relation only. This is the idea of evil being not real but only 
 phenomenal, or from our relation. We shd learn to understand that our 
 tendencies, our natural inclinations, are not really evil (even when they 
 produce unholiness or death in us), but only phenomenally, i. e> in their 
 special relation to us. 
 
 Our passions uncontrolled are putrid. How true language has been, 
 again : we speak of moral ' corruption,' ' corrupt ' passions : the word 
 expresses organic decay, a breaking up. Yet not the inclinations, but the 
 unresisted passions : the inclinations, when not diseased, are not corrupt 
 but are the very life. It is the withdrawal, want, or in respect to spirit 
 refusal to exercise, the proper [vital] control, that turns life into cor- 
 ruption. That is, the inclinations are not corrupt except from the prac- 
 tice of sin. As the practice of right produces ' right affections,' wh is 
 spiritual life, so the practice of sin produces wrong, corrupt inclinations, 
 i. e. disease. In a diseased body the chemical tendencies are, in relation 
 to that body, corrupt tendencies ; so man by sin becomes corrupt, his 
 tendencies evil. But further : may we not have an inherited tendency 
 to sin, just as a body may have an inherited tendency to disease ? I do 
 believe it. We inherit (not sin, but) ' corrupt inclinations ' from our 
 first sinful forefather : therefore it is we all sin. This also is only phe- 
 nomenally evil. And if this be unjust, then surely inherited disease is 
 also unjust, wh we know it is not, being passion in least resistance and 
 therefore holy. 
 
 And common feeling and common language tend to this conclusion. 
 Men feel that man's inclinations or tendencies are evil or corrupt in a 
 sense in wh the tendencies of Nature are not so : even apart from the 
 non-exercise of control, man is diseased. And this view of sin as 
 disease and death opens the way for the understanding of Redemption. 
 The remedial instinct of man fortells and asserts it. Physicians are 
 emblems of it ; and the title of Great Physician is more than a figure. 
 There is scope for healing where there is disease ; yea the healing of 
 disease is part of the great plan of Nature ; it is involved in it, is part 
 of the necessary passion. Moreover disease and healing constitute a 
 life by disease and healing a function is effected. Yet further, we may 
 see in Redemption a pattern of all true healing ; it is the giving of life, 
 of wh disease consists in the loss. God gives life to the dead j human 
 means only restore partially when but partially lost. 
 
 Christ is the physician, giving life where it has been lost. [I speak 
 with all reverence, God knows]. Even dynamically there seems to be 
 an appropriateness in Christ's death being the life of the world. 
 
 There is a wonderful truth in those words, 'without shedding of 
 blood there is no remission of sins.' Without death is no restoration of 
 life, nor can be ; for remission of sins must mean imparting again the 
 lost spiritual life ; death must yield the vital force. 
 
 Life comes only from death ; the force only from the approximating 
 passion. Nutrition is ever the result of function. Christ's death to 
 give life to the world seems but a simple expression and instance of this 
 universal fact, or more truly these phenomenal relations flow from the 
 spiritual verities. The Bible appears a new and stupendous fact in my 
 eyes, appealing as it does so simply to the plainest instincts of all, yet
 
 420 
 
 outreaching and anticipating the farthest inductions of science, and des- 
 tined yet, doubtless, to receive a new illustration from new advances. 
 
 Theoretical, false science is likely to be in opposition to the Bible if 
 the Bible is true ; but I believe that ever and ever more, in- 
 terpretative science will range herself on the Bible's side ; and poetry, 
 art, philosophy, also. The phenomenal alone opposes ; and that is ne- 
 cessary, yes, and good ; good for faith, good for the advance of biblical 
 knowledge. And yet more I hold that biblical knowledge will be ever 
 much beholden to interpretative science for the light it sheds (and it 
 alone can shed) upon its deeper meaning. For while we have a pheno- 
 menal science we must have a phenomenal theology ; a system of bib- 
 lical explanation. Only by interpreting Nature can we fully interpret 
 the Bible ? 
 
 Christ's death restores the lost life ; and, in restoring, effects an object 
 higher than could otherwise have been. The wrongness has been a 
 nutrition, and redemption is its function. In Christ's sufferings there 
 was more than the death of the body : a real spiritual life flows from 
 His spiritual Passion : He bore our ' iniquities,' our death : from Him 
 we thus derive new life. 
 
 Spiritual life is right affections : the result (and only possibly 
 the result) of self-control, of holy action. Thus Christ gives us 
 life by leading us to holy action ; no otherwise possibly. In physical 
 life, the only means of producing or restoring life, is by the vital resist- 
 ance ; it cannot be in any other way. Life is life ; to give anything 
 else under the name of life were but a mockery. It is not anything 
 imparted or impartable from without, anything, external, but a fact in 
 the individual himself : it is controlled passion in himself. This only 
 can be the spiritual life imparted by Christ. In the treatment of dis- 
 ease the only possible plan is and must be the restoration of the vital 
 resistance : tho' we are obliged often to be content with loss and to assist 
 only in throwing off the lifeless. Redemption gives life by restoring 
 the vital resistance, the self-control ? In the remedial art it is sought 
 to restore life to the individual instead of to the universe : so in Re- 
 demption ? 
 
 Dec. 2, 1856. I think I reconcile God's glory and the sinfulness of 
 Sin : that sin is a true nutrition in relation to God's work, and 
 effects a function, a higher good. Yet our refusal of God is sin and 
 death to us. So even our own sin or wrongness, if it be put right, 
 may effect a higher good for us ; it shall have its function. But only if 
 it be rectified, only by redemption. The new life given by Christ may 
 be a higher life, but only in those to whom it is thus given. 
 
 There is but one mystery in all God's universe, and that lies in us. 
 Not in gleaming suns or circling planets, not in the myriad forms 
 and varied capacities of living things, nor in the mighty achievements 
 of the intellect. Life is no mystery ; it is an axiom : it all lies in a 
 definition. The mystery is, not life, but death not that Nature lives, 
 but that man refuses to live. The mystery is the mystery of Sin ; not 
 indeed as it affects God's universe, it casts no shadow there ; but as it 
 affects ourselves, the sinners. The dark cloud lies in our own breasts ; 
 the heavens and the earth afford no solution, as no parallel. All there 
 is life. The death within us seeks in vain a fellow, save in hell. Our 
 conscience testifies the fact : if a reason can be given our consciousness
 
 421 
 
 must give it. Let us search our own bosoms and say why sin is ; an- 
 swering at last the marvelling universe that calls to us in God's own 
 loving words, Why will ye die ? Let us give the reason now, dragging 
 it forth from our deepest hearts. Let us say, Therefore we sin that 
 Nature may cease to he amazed, and life no longer shudder at the touch 
 of death. Oh shame and sorrow infinite ! we dare not tell it not even 
 to the gentle earth and placid stars : we dare "not whisper it to the 
 flowers, nor breathe it sighing to the sighing trees. Least of all to these, 
 that love us so purely in our impurity, the trustful love of innocence : 
 that smile upon us day by day, and stretch out gentle hands to greet us, 
 bidding us welcome to their beauty, as if our hearts were pure and full 
 of love like theirs. Not to these can we breathe the fell secret that 
 haunts our memories, they wd shrink from us in horror, and never again 
 shd we behold them free and unconstrained as now ; averted eyes and 
 shuddering looks wd meet us everywhere. Would to God we could hide 
 it for ever ! And yet, not so that were indeed the worm that dieth 
 not. We will tell i1> yes, we will tell it to the Saviour. Into God's 
 ear will we pour it : He will listen and forgive ; altho' for utter selfish- 
 ness we have spurned His just authority and trampled on His law of 
 perfect love ; altho' for meanest pleasures, wh our tongues refuse to 
 name, we have disregarded conscience and been deaf to the voice of duty ; 
 tho' we have known the right and chosen wrong, He will forgive. 
 
 There is no atom, no particle, no mass, no element throughout the 
 physical and psychical universe, that does not willingly yield to the 
 control wh constitutes nutrition. We alone refuse. Let us be natural, 
 take up the universal burden ; and learn to look on the attractive sins, 
 feeling their strong temptation, and say, These are the elements of my 
 life : the forces that shall nourish me, and give me vital power. For 
 the resistance or control of passion constitutes the nutrition of the 
 spiritual life. The holy acts we thus gain power to do are its functions. 
 Much tried, much enduring man, who with firm heart withstandest the 
 assaults of strong temptation and with resolute will controllest passion, 
 blessed art thou ! True image of the Deity, like Him creating life j 
 sharer by thine own act, in the universal life. Thine own act indeed, 
 for only so thy life ; yet an act wrought in thee by God's free grace 
 alone : taking this for thy portion, the life that flows eternally from God 
 and making it thine own : life that is thus at once God's act and ours ; 
 God's holiness shared in by us. God's act is the passion, the life, but it 
 becomes our life only by our own deed. There is the life, God's act ; 
 whereof we may partake if we will, or, not partaking, having refused 
 and lost it, may receive as a free gift from the Saviour's hand. Thus 
 emphatically, I think, was man made in the image of God ; the centre 
 of life, the right doer ; having dominion, less over the beasts, than over 
 himself. 
 
 It is our invention of 'being' that does not act, that alone embarrasses 
 us respecting Beings that do act. If we had not invented the chimera 
 of a real matter or a real mind a ' passive being ' we shd see at once 
 that Being acts, that Being and Agent are inseparable. Man's ' free 
 will ' wd never have been a debated subject if we had not obscured the 
 idea by confounding it with phenomenon or passion : it is altogether an 
 artificial difficulty, and is proved to be such by the fact that mankind cd 
 never be induced to take the slightest interest in it, or to see that there
 
 422 
 
 was anything in it. "We do not treat realities so. Language even has 
 no trace of it; all the discussions of all ages on this subject, all the 
 talk of the word-makers, have, as we might suppose, failed to leave the 
 slightest trace of all this difficulty or mystery on any single word : wh 
 shows it is a non-entity. Man never saw anything that he did not say. 
 
 Action or power is the very simplest idea to us, as simple as Being 
 itself. There is no natural difficulty about it : it does not involve us in 
 contradictions as the idea of a real matter does ; it is an axiom as life 
 is. It is so much one of our most natural ideas that it even infects our 
 language with error. We are constantly supposing ' action ' where it is 
 not, calling passions action ; speaking even of the actions of matter. 
 Even philosophers have found it so natural that they have been unable 
 even to think of a phenomenon without it, and have supposed activity 
 to be an inherent endowment of matter. It is odd that they shd find 
 it difficul as an inherent endowment of Spirit or Being. The tendency 
 of the human mind to attribute activity, or power of acting, of origi- 
 nating passion, to everything, is instinctive. It expresses the fact that 
 this activity or power does belong to Being. At first, wheresoever we 
 think we perceive Being we instinctively recognize power of acting. 
 Then we learn that some things we thought real Being [as matter] have 
 not power of acting. Now the legitimate deduction from this wd be, 
 that such things are not real Being. But we must not go right, but 
 wrong ; the mind needs organic food ; it wd be premature to see that 
 matter is not real ; therefore instead of this true deduction we infer a 
 false one, viz. that real Being may be without power of acting. From 
 this misconception flows the artificial difficulty about man's free will ; 
 and the confusion of mind with spirit. It is man's mind and body that 
 obey the law of least resistance, i. e. that are determined by strongest 
 motive ; t hey are passions ; but real Being is not a passion, and the law 
 of least resistance and all phenomenal relations of attraction, ' motive,' 
 &c., have no bearing upon it. 
 
 The mystery of free will is such a difficulty as might have arisen re- 
 specting the power wh maintained the sun in its orbit round the earth ; 
 wh of course wd have been a very important subj ect for discussion before 
 it was known that the sun did not go round the earth : and not a useless 
 one either, for it wd be likely enough to contribute its share to a reve- 
 lation of the truth. 
 
 Mr. L speaks of the basis of everything being force, of God's 
 
 1 force ' being in everything ; and points out how that may be made to 
 land us in a pantheism wh we cannot logically repudiate. It is a wrong 
 conception and a wrong expression (wh latter it wd not be if it were 
 not. the former). It is not God's force in everything, but God's Art /.s 
 everything. A Being and an Act cannot be confounded. 
 
 I am part of a living whole, and must take my life. If I refuse to 
 be living, that is to embody controlled passion, I am dead. The life 
 that might and shd have been mine, has been not lost or thrown away 
 but dissipated and transferred to other elements, and is of no avail to 
 me. I am dead, a slough, and must be cast out at any expense of loss 
 or suffering. Surely Sin is a disease in Mature ; for all disease (?) con- 
 sists in, and its phna result from, loss of life. Elements that have lost 
 their life are expelled in disease : loss of life involves other diseased 
 passion. Have I here a generalization of Disease ? [except ? morbid
 
 423 
 
 growths and degenerations) that it a easting out of 'the dead ? Christ 
 heals this disease : the remedial system is one with Nature. 
 
 It is an instinct that everything that is, acts. "We learn only by de- 
 grees and by violence that some things are merely passive. The division 
 is then into real things that act and that are passive. But the original 
 instinct was the truth ; and in advancing we go back to it and see that 
 things that do not act are merely phna, and that all realities are agents. 
 This is a restoration of the first instinctive intuition that Being is 
 Agent. It is a child's instinct to apply moral ideas to all things : thus, 
 as in science, art, and philosophy, the first instinct is the highest reason ; 
 so in the basis of morals, the first instinct that all Being is agent or 
 moral, is the highest reason. In fact, the instinct of true, good, beau- 
 tiful, is but a form of the moral or holy, the sense of ' right '-ness : all 
 have their foundation in the ' act ' and its moral quality. To deny 
 moral agency is to uproot science, art, philosophy, all the goodness, 
 truth, beauty of Nature : the absolute goodness, &c., of the reality all 
 are its holiness. If we saw things rightly we should perceive that the 
 fact of our perceiving power, or efficient cause, involved necessarily and 
 absolutely our power, i. e. our power to act : and our perception of 
 beauty, &c. rightness in its various forms involves, and depends upon, 
 our moral being ; our power to act right or wrong. 
 
 We perceive a real matter, by referring the effect on ourselves 
 of God's act, externally, as its own cause ; and attributing to it a real 
 being, because we are such. It is passion, the effect on ourselves (wh 
 alone we perceive), that we thus refer, but in referring passion ex- 
 ternally we also refer a real being or substratum : passion does and can 
 exist only in a substance. Thus it is necessary in the very fact of our 
 referring externally our own passion, that we shd perceive it as a 
 substance. This is axiomatic. Spirit being the only reality, every- 
 thing must be really spiritual (Science, art, and all) .Are we not 
 wrong in considering matter as so especially dependent on mind, as per- 
 ceived by mind ? It is not so : I take it, mind and matter are equally 
 and alike passions of the spirit ; on an equal level. Motion is not a 
 passion of the mind, nor matter or substance supplied by the mind, but 
 by the spirit. Mind and matter are two halves of one vibration, and 
 both shd be referred directly to the spirit. Time and place, alike from 
 the limit of spirit. To beasts there is no more matter and motion than 
 mind and thought. 
 
 The thing that sets us altogether wrong, is putting ourselves in the 
 centre, regarding things in reference to ourselves, thinking them to be 
 really!as they are to us. We must learn to see ourselves as part of a great 
 life, to wh we are absolutely subordinated ; even as the elements of our 
 bodies are to us. Human life is nothing more than any other form of 
 passion to nature. Cease to regard the bearing on ourselves of facts in 
 nature as of any real importance in relation to the things themselves : 
 e. g. in diseases, consider them as essential and absolutely good parts of 
 the universal life (and cure by utilizing the force wh causes). This 
 the practical lesson, that as we are parts of a living frame we must 
 be living, i.e. holy, accept our part, control our passion, do as God does; 
 being part of nature, be natural. 
 
 Holiness, control of passion, is giving up our own ideal for God's, 
 just what makes Science, art, and all things, living ; this includes all 
 life. All physical life too (even life of earth in relation to sun, &c.).
 
 424 
 
 It is accepting, in faith, the actual for our ideal, empatically being 
 natural, one with nature ; making our ideal the thing we aim at, our 
 deed one with nature or God's deed. Throughout all nature this is 
 the one task given to every ' element,' the essental work of holiness : 
 To give up their ideal for God's. Sin refuses ; it is death. We who 
 see this so plainly for all other things, shall we refuse to see it for our- 
 selves ? The right is God's ideal : can we lose hy accepting that as 
 ours ? Will it not introduce us into an unutterably higher life ; reveal 
 to us infinite glories ? The right is one with the actual, one with that 
 wh He does. Is it aught but an infinite, an overwhelming glory, to 
 be called to share His action ? To behold, to know, and comprehend, 
 His work ; this is not Science, but holiness. Shall we refuse to do that 
 wh all nature does, each smallest, meanest element we tread beneath 
 our feet ? What would become of us if the elements of our bodies re- 
 fused to control their passion ? Where were then our passion ? Shall 
 we be such ? Not that we thus affect the great eternal life ; but we are 
 cast out ; we count ourselves unworthy of eternal life. God controls 
 His passion : thus is our work one with His. 
 
 The dead elements of the body, even sloughs and deadly sores, have 
 given up their life to the body. Even so sin, causing external evil, 
 causes nutritive evil [like inflammation]? 
 
 Is not conversion also giving up our own ideal, and taking God's ; the 
 beginning of life ? 
 
 Humanity is diseased a diseased member of that great society wh I 
 conceive. Too much death in it, i. e. sin : men dead, when relatively 
 to humanity they shd be living. Looking on the universal humanity 
 thus, it must appear to other beings (of such a grade as to see it as one 
 living thing) as a diseased body does to us. The elements wh constitute 
 it, partly or wholly dead : the body diseased by want of vital state of 
 some of its elements. Sin is disease. But disease is not really evil ; 
 it is an evil only to the individual organization : in reality it is one 
 perfect part of the great life. Christ heals humanity by restoring life 
 to the individual spirits, the men that compose it. This is the only 
 true cure of disease. To this we must attain before we are worthy of 
 the name of physicians. To restore life to the elements that are dead, 
 or dying in excess. At present our treatment does not attempt this, 
 nor does our Science see it. Christ heals humanity by restoring holi- 
 ness or life to the individual men ; we attempt to heal the diseased 
 body only by alleviating particular effects of the disease ; checking, e.g. 
 the increased action, &c. What we must aim at is to restore the vital 
 resistance (the due self-control). By virtue of Christ's healing of the 
 diseased humanity, is achieved a result of a glory surpassing what wd 
 otherwise or could have been. Thus disease and nutrition come to be 
 one : nutrition, in respect to the organization effected ; disease, in 
 respect to the elements themselves wh constitute it. 
 
 For what is disease but a living frame not attaining its ' ideal,' not 
 perfectly fulfilling its tendency ? But this is life : there is a wonderful 
 unification here. Disease is ever life life ever disease (i. e. using life 
 for nutrition). Thus God uses sin, as it were ; but does this cast sin 
 on God ? I think not. A spirit lives or not, as it chooses ; but all the 
 evil which it produces by refusing to live all the disease is not real 
 evil, but nutrition or life. Thus, I think, we have attained the point
 
 425 
 
 from wh the mystery of moral evil ceases; and we find to be nothing but 
 the simplest and most natural way of regarding the facts that the true 
 explanation is contained entire in the commonest physical phna. It is 
 simply life one instance of the relation of continuous and transitive 
 vibration. 
 
 The decay of a human body is just so much nutrition to the physical 
 universe, God counts it no less : we find it evil because of our relation 
 to it. So, if a human spirit die, infinite is its loss (that is real death ; 
 spirit being reality) ; but it is no loss to the real or spiritual universe : 
 God counts it no loss. But His love leads Him to redeem ; not for His 
 sake but for ours. And the very existence of medicine, the science of 
 healing, among ourselves is proof and justification of redemption, makes 
 it one with nature. If the healing of disease be natural, so is redemp- 
 tion. Healing of disease, in fact, exists but as a type of redemption ; 
 that is the reality of it, as the reality of death is sin. 
 
 'Nature,' being the reality, is God's spiritual act. Thephnisthe phy- 
 sical and mental world: the relation between nature and them being that 
 of cause and effect; and ourselves the condition[as the revolution of the 
 earth is cause ; motion ofsun, effect ; ourselves the ' condition.'] Nature 
 is the act, the phn is the passion. Animals perform their functions 
 (have their instincts), true to the phn, not to nature. It is we that are 
 true to nature. "We introduce into the phn the spiritual elements of 
 reality, power, Tightness. Ultimately, surely, we shall attain to a per- 
 fect truth to her, wh will be a moral conformity. Surely the per- 
 fection of the instincts of animals foreshadows that perfect moral con- 
 formity that shd exist between man and nature. 
 
 Any respects in wh any given organization is wrong, or diseased, 
 being passion in least resistance, are rightly wrong, and constitute nu- 
 trition. The organization itself being part of a higher organization, 
 its disease is a right wrongness, a nutrition of that organization. Sen- 
 tient evil in addition produces a higher good, even a spiritual good to 
 us. Here is surely an argument in favor of beasts not really feeling : 
 viz. that their pain seems not capable of producing for them any higher 
 good. If feeling were truly spiritual it wd be very clear ; and what 
 but real Being or spirit can feel ? and must not feeling and acting go 
 together ? But consider infants, who feel before they can truly act. I 
 do not know what to think. What can be conscious but real Being ? 
 and does not sensation involve consciousness ? Does not sensation also 
 involve the idea of good ? and that is wholly derived from spiritual 
 idea of right. I do not think the phna demand us to assign sensation 
 to the brutes. All the symptoms from wh we infer their sensation may 
 exist, and do exist, after separation of the brain, when we know sensa- 
 tion does not exist. Here is a strong argument against their sen- 
 sation: how can the same effect be from two causes? for our sensation is 
 not physical, nor mental, but spiritual. Matter and mind, motion and 
 thought, alike are spiritual passions ; two forms of passion making one 
 vibration ; perceived only by the spirit ; rendered motion and thought, 
 indeed, only by their relation to it, wh alone has sensation. We must 
 be content to confine the idea of enjoyment in Nature to spiritual 
 beings ; nothing that is not real Being can be happy. Spirits are happy 
 in Nature and God is happy in His Act : that is what the apparent 
 happiness of living creatures shd reveal to us : God's happiness in acting.
 
 426 
 
 Man's happiness must be the same also ; real happiness only in spiritual 
 action or holiness. It is life that is happy : pain is ever contrary to 
 life, it is disease and death. Yet there is perhaps a certain kind of 
 happiness through all Mature. Can this view he so guarded as 
 not to tend to increase cruelty to animals ? 
 
 It will he a great advantage in philosophy ; for what makes the grand 
 difficulty in the relation of matter and mind is the attributing conscious- 
 ness to mind. How can the hrain have anything to do with conscious- 
 ness ? but if sensation or consciousness he transferred wholly to the 
 spirit the entire affair becomes clear. Physical and psychical passion 
 are alike unconscious, alike mere passions. But the spirit is conscious 
 directly of both; has pain and pleasure, impulse and aversion, &c., in 
 respect to both. 
 
 Look at the universal mind, wh is as really a living mind as our own 
 individual minds. It has no sensation, no consciousness, it is mere pas- 
 sion. But being passion in a spirit, as it must be, it constitutes a mind 
 in wh that spirit perceives pain and pleasure, beauty and ugliness, true 
 and false. Every life is passion in some spirit ; passion involves a sub- 
 stratum by the very definition of it. So everything that we perceive 
 as life constitutes or appertains to a spirit (i. e. to the body or mind of 
 a spirit according to whether it be physical or psychical). Xow the spirit 
 feels, or is conscious ; and feels of course thro' the medium of his body 
 or mind. Therefore there is real feeling in the non-human world ; but 
 this is feeling on the part of the spirits, not of the phna ; just as it is 
 not our bodies that feel, but we ; and not the individual elements of our 
 bodies but only as parts of the whole. The feeling of happiness and 
 pain in nature also is truly spiritual. Thus, an injury inflicted upon 
 one part (upon any elements) of us is felt as pain ; not by the elements 
 themselves, but by us, and only because the elements are organically 
 part of our body. Yet, the elements, I will be bound, re-act to 
 this injury just as if they suffered, even as a separated limb will do. 
 So in respect to animals : injury to them is felt as pain ; but it is felt 
 by the spirits to whom the universal life pertains, not by the individual 
 animals ; and the signs of pain may exist when no pain is really felt. 
 
 This conception of sensation as being a property of spirit alone, not 
 of mind, helps me much ; even to seeing better the special relation of 
 our own bodies and minds to us, as being that life or passion wh is di- 
 rectly felt by us. All the life we perceive is effect on us ; but the cause 
 of it is passion in other spirits. The external universe is passion in 
 other spirits ; as our own bodies and minds are passion in ourselves, i.e. 
 our spirits. 
 
 Being, acting, and feeling, go together. An act, or passion (wh are 
 two words for one thing, differently viewed), can neither be (real), nor 
 act, nor feel. But there seem to be two kinds of sensation or feeling 
 of the spirit. One perception of things psychical and physical, of our 
 own bodies and minds and the universe, as facts : the other of the 
 quality, as true, false, beautiful and ugly, good and evil. And, indeed, 
 a third form, that of right and wrong. Here is the three-foldness of 
 the spirit : 
 
 Eeal Being, Feeling, Acting, 
 
 Perception, Sensation, Conscience, 
 
 Science, Art, Morals.
 
 427 
 
 But this is manifold ; needs to be seen through and in all Nature, and 
 mnst gradually show itself. Do I contradict my derivation of sense of 
 beauty, truth and good, from sense of moral right ? Is that ' sensation ' 
 in any true or special sense phenomenal ? 
 
 When we inflict pain upon each other we know it is not the part wh 
 feels, nor even the body at all tho' it looks like it, but the man whose 
 body it is. So there wd be nothing unreasonable in conceiving that when 
 we inflict pain upon an animal, it is not the animal that feels it (tho' it 
 looks like it), nor even the entire animal organization, but the being (the 
 spirit) whose body that organization forms. And further, shd we not 
 conceive that all that we do ' in opposition to nature,' inflicts pain upon 
 the spirit whose organization nature is ; that by injury to any part of 
 the external world, we cause suffering to a spirit ? I believe it. I have 
 long had an instinctive feeling that all nature was sensitive ; and this is 
 the truth of it. It is all sensitive, as our bodies are, viz., as being the 
 ' organization ' of a spirit. The apparent sensation of animals, as ani- 
 mals, is designed to reveal that to us. Thus, the reason against cruelty 
 to animals, is not rendered less strong, but more so, and is 
 extended. 
 
 Further ; our sin, being disease in that organization of which we con- 
 stitute elements, also occasions pain to that higher spirit whose organiza- 
 tion or passion it is. Humanity is sick ; and the spirit that ' inhabits ' 
 it suffers. Sin produces pain (besides to ourselves and to our fellow 
 creatures) also to a higher being the ' universal man,' if we may name 
 him so. But this disease and evil also are nutrition, forming yet a 
 higher organization, of which these inclusive organizations are the 
 elements. 
 
 Knowing nature to be God's act, we need not fear that any imagina- 
 tion can lead us towards atheism ; knowing holiness as life, and sin as 
 death, no imagination can lead us away from Christianity: no 
 imagination, i. e. founded on these bases, none that does contravene 
 them. 
 
 Can it be that our organization also is constituted of beings : the 
 elements be the organizations of spiritual beings also ? I should almost 
 think it must be so. 
 
 The spirit would seem to be in relation to the body only by the brain. 
 This is the same thing as that spirits are connected with the material 
 universe, as it appears to us, only in man. Man is the brain of nature ; 
 not the spirit only, but the psychical is in relation to man alone. The 
 physical world developes man to bring her into relation with the spiritual 
 and psychical ; as the human body developes the brain. Yet it is the 
 whole man that is the spiritual psychical being ; not the brain. The brain 
 by itself is nothing. So it is all nature that is in relation with, and corres- 
 ponds to, the spiritual and psychical being ; not man alone, man by 
 himself were nothing. 
 
 The attributing consciousness or sensation to mind or thought, is one 
 instance of the error resulting from confounding the mind with the 
 spirit. Mind appears to be conscious, sensation appears to belong to 
 thought ; this is ' phenomenal ' i. e. false, part of the great phenomenal 
 mystery. [The phn is a mystery necessarily, and because it is a phn.] 
 The body aspears to be conscious, or to possess sensation, just as much as 
 
 D 2
 
 428 
 
 the mind. We have by scientific induction learnt te separate con- 
 sciousness and sensation from body, but science has not yet sep- 
 arated them from mind ; yet it is clearly only the same thing 
 under another form. How can we think that thought (or mind, wh is 
 indeed result of thought, as body is of motion), can be conscious ? It 
 is no less absurd than that motion or body shd be so. At first how the phn 
 seemed as if matter acted (another spiritual quality); as we now practic- 
 ally think mind does. Our first perception is of motion and thought as 
 possessing all the attributes of spirit ; we gradually divest them of these ; 
 first matter, then lastly mind. Thus by excluding the spiritual elemeuts 
 from the passion or phn, it reveals the true spiritual, or the reality. The 
 clear distinction between mind (as passion) and spirit (as the real being), 
 is the grand solution of the phn the great interpretation. In truth, 
 the separation of one spiritual element from mind, really involves the 
 separation of them all. If mind is not moral, then not active, then 
 not real, then not sensitive or conscious. 
 
 Mind or thought (used in the largest sense as parallel to ' motion '), is 
 passion in time ; motion is passion in space ? There is no difference in 
 nature between motion and thought, they correspond, being two halves 
 of one vibration ; equally passive, equally unconscious or insensitive, 
 only perceived (and both with equal directness) by the spirit which con- 
 nects with them its own spiritual elements of real being, Tightness, 
 beauty, truth, error, ugly ; good and evil. We do not perceive matter 
 thro' the medium of the mind as ve have supposed, it is not the mind 
 perceives. The spirit perceives alike motion and thought (or matter and 
 mind) directly. They are divergent and approximative halves of one 
 vibration. The matter (or motion), as it were, comes first, because that 
 is the nutrition : thought or mind is the function. 
 
 Metaphysics has been so wrong, because confounding mind with 
 the conscious being or spirit. To endeavour to discover mental 
 physiology by observing our consciousness, is really as absurd as to 
 have studied bodily physiology by same means ; not to say that this cd 
 give us no knowledge of the external physical universe, by study of wh 
 we comprehend our own bodies. So by study of the external universe 
 alone (?) can we understand our own minds. Thought bears precisely 
 the same relation to us that motion does : we think as we move. Pleasure 
 and pain in various forms are connected similarly with mental and phy- 
 sical passion. Bye and by we shall have as clear an idea of our minds 
 as an organization, as we have now of our bodies, and of their relations 
 to the external psychical universe. But we must learn our minds thro' 
 processes ; not as we learn our bodies, thro' results. 
 
 Every passion, every vibration, consists .. virtually of body and 
 mind, tho' not .-. conscious; for not only are body and mind correspond- 
 ing divergent and approximative halves of vibration, but conversely 
 the divergent and approximative halves of (every) vibration are re- 
 spectively body and mind, or nutrition and function. Thus every diver- 
 gent passion is organization ; vibration is life, or nutrition and function; 
 and union of body and mind is indeed only life the very universal 
 and essential fact of life. 
 
 As for the difficulty of seeing how the bodies of men can form one 
 living hody, observe that the material relations we perceive wh seem so 
 irreconcilable with that conception, are only phna. They are to reveal
 
 429 
 
 to us the truth, wh may perhaps be exactly such as we shall see here- 
 after to constitute humanity one physical organization. 
 
 I do not see clearly how thought is passion in time, as motion in 
 space ; I do not see, that is, that this relation to time is so much in 
 respect to thought as the relation to space is to motion. And fur- 
 ther, motion involves time in a way in which thought does not 
 space. 
 
 I am happy in the thought that animals, as animals, do not suffer 
 pain : it is a ^reat relief. So much wanton pain seems to be inflicted 
 upon them even in nature, i. e. pain wh can produce no good end. I do 
 not believe any pain is borne by any creature except nutritive pain, i.e. 
 such pain as may produce (unless sin be present) good to the creature 
 that bears it. And this can only be to spiritual beings: to them pain is, 
 or may be, nutritive, life producing ; it may benefit a spirit, but cannot 
 benefit a beast. Therefore spirits alone bear pain. Pain is spiritual 
 evil, and is truly nutritive, and altogether a spiritual affair, existing only 
 in beings in whom it is, or produces, life. All evil is life, or nutrition. 
 In the animal world there is only physical or mental evil, wh produces 
 life physical or mental. Pain, or spiritual evil (natural evil), is also 
 nutrition. The appearances of pain, rage, emotion of any kind that 
 we see in the animal world are all supplied by ourselves, introduced by 
 our spiritual being ; like other spiritual elements of real being, power, 
 beauty, &c., introduced into the phenomenal by us as spirits. And they 
 are designed to reveal spiritual relations as the appearance of death in 
 the phn is to reveal to us the spiritual death of sin. 
 
 The various forms of motion and thought perfectly correspond. I 
 must trace how all the physical universe, even to minutest detail, is re- 
 presented in the psychical. There is no more interesting study than 
 that. Rejecting the element of consciousness from thought, makes all 
 plain. We are but living elements in a living organization ; just as the 
 living body is made up of living individuals. Those cells, &c., wh con- 
 stitute the body are living individuals, as we shd see plainly enough if 
 they were separate, and indeed, do see now in scientific sense. In each 
 living organization the component individuals are partially sacrificed in 
 their own perfection or integrity, for the perfection of the whole. They 
 are, in fact, deformed or diseased, imperfect [as seen before]. So the 
 individuals wh constitute the larger organization, viz., the individual 
 men, are imperfect, restrained from the complete fulfilment of their 
 tendencies, for the sake of the perfection of the whole. The imperfect 
 men are the compressed cells ; and the more imperfect the more highly 
 developed, in each case Is it so that in organisms composed of cells, a 
 nutrition, or tendency to function, arises from resistance to the perfection 
 of individual cells ? 
 
 All the passion wh is the universe around us is passion in spirit, in 
 a spiritual being, or beings ; of wh we partake as living elements in a 
 living whole. The force of the external universe becomes our life, phy- 
 sical and mental, just as in the living body the force of some parts be- 
 comes the force of others. And this, I conceive, must be the structure 
 of the organic body : individual living wholes, united into larger living 
 wholes ; and these again into larger, and ultimately into the whole. 
 Thus comes our nutrition, physical and mental, from external force. 
 This is again what I have seen, that the phn is, as it were, nutrition in
 
 430 
 
 us, produced by function in nature. Perception, divergent passion in 
 us from approximation in other elements : as in living bodies approxima- 
 tion in one part produces divergent in another. Thus interpretation 
 produces new phn or perception. 
 
 Why shd God do evil, or make evil things, wh is the same, when we 
 see well how real good may produce the effect on us of apparent evil ? 
 i. e. all the possible good of evil : as we see so well with children. And 
 it is only by phenomenal evil being really good that our life can be de- 
 veloped. 
 
 Seeing that the resistance to polar attraction, in respecf to mind, be- 
 longs rather to the female than the male, gives the reason surely why un- 
 chastity in woman is instinctively felt to be a greater evil than in man. 
 In woman it is against even the phenomenal right ; it is emphatically 
 unnatural, unnatural even in respect to mind : in man the resistance to 
 sexual passion is more entirely spiritual or moral. In man unchastity 
 is a crime ; in woman also emphatically a shame ; and human instinct 
 feels it so. "Wonderful is the beauty this < phenomenal ' resistance 
 throws around the female character: how beautiful is modesty in itself, 
 and how beautiful a type. How all things, indeed, have this spiritual 
 meaning. 
 
 Divesting animals of feeling [of all sorts, except as being parts of the 
 organization of spiritual Beings] is a great help towards seeing evil phe- 
 nomena as real good. In fact the great evil of the world is gone : our 
 pain pain in spiritual Beings it is not so hard to see to be nutrition ; 
 to be life, and .-. good. Pain as relating to spirits is no mystery : as 
 relating to animals it is a mystery. We, as spirits, are placed among 
 other spirits, and deriving from their passion as it were, our own. Even 
 as we see in respect to motion, that it is transmitted from particle to 
 particle : each of wh has its own vibratile passion, receives force, under- 
 goes divergent passion, and approximation after, and then its passion 
 ceases. It has had its life. Thus is not passion transmitted to our 
 spirits, forming our bodily and mental life ? But and here is our pre- 
 rogative as spirits this passion we may make our own, our spiritual 
 moral life. "We take for our own, permanently, our eternal life, the 
 life thus wrought within us by self-control. This is our privilege, our 
 power, our duty to make the life of Nature our life. It is as if the 
 particles of matter had power by their own act to make their own the 
 motion wh affects them. 
 
 Our bodies and minds are the passion in our spirits ; the external uni- 
 verse is the passion in other spirits. It is all one passion, flowing from 
 one to another. 
 
 The pain, the fruitless pain, and apparent evil disposition in animals 
 are the great evil phna, but these are supplied wholly by our own spirits, 
 and exist but as phna to reveal to us spiritual facts ; they are as the ap- 
 parent death in Nature, to teach us what sin is. 
 
 ' All force is the vital force ' I have said : the true view of natural 
 phna is that of life ; every force vital ; every result of force nutrition, 
 every cause of force function, or permitted passion. So we are the func- 
 tion of Nature ; and our perceptions her functions. 
 
 I see that I have placed an obscure matter in a clear light : thus, 
 viz. all life, being passion, must be the organization of some spirit. 
 Thus I see the connection of life with spiritual being : further, I have
 
 431 
 
 seen the necessary connection of body and mind in life, being simply 
 vibration : so that the mystery of man's nature, as body, mind and spi- 
 rit, comes to be, also, a matter of definition, and of necessary univer- 
 sality. It seems almost strange that I shd not sooner have seen these 
 things, wh are all involved in what I have before said. (1) That mind 
 and matter being vibration, all passion must be essentially mind and 
 matter [i. e. if it were either; wh is necessary]. (2) That passion in 
 least resistance necessarily producing organization, all the universe 
 must be organization ; or, as we shd say, mind and body. (3) That in- 
 asmuch as passion must be passion of some Being, and spirit is the only 
 real Being, all the universe must be passion of spiritual Beings ; i. e. 
 mind and body of spirits : just such as we are, indeed, spirits ' clothed ' 
 in mind and body. The universal human mind shows thia very well ; 
 what is that passion of, or in ? 
 
 I think I am now on the road to understanding that difficult point, 
 the nature of physical sensation (light, sound, &c.). At any rate it 
 does not stand alone, but is parallel exactly to what may be called 
 ' psychical ' sensation, viz. our perception of thought. Both of them 
 are the spirit's consciousness of passion ; both of them must comprehend 
 the same varieties, and in all respects corresponding forms. Finally, 
 with both are connected feelings of pleasure and pain ; or, in the ab- 
 stract, of right and wrong ; i. e. conformable or not conformable to our 
 wn life : and here is the secret of the conservative nature of pain ; it 
 makes us reject that wh is not conformable to our life altho' this re- 
 mark loses its value if animals do not feel pain, because the same re- 
 jection of the hurtful is attained in them. And yet, it is not so ; because 
 in spiritual or volitional Beings pain is necessary to prevent volitional 
 acts wh might be hurtful. The possession of a spirit alters entirely the 
 relation of any living creature to the ' external world.' We perceive 
 motion just as we perceive thought, and feel in relation to both in a 
 similar way. Now the hoio and why of these will reveal to us our own 
 spirits : these are the problems to investigate, inductively of course. 
 
 I need to trace similarly how thought becomes and must become the 
 psychical universe an inverse process to motion becoming the physical 
 universe and how this universe constitutes one vibration, one life, in 
 an unbounded series. 
 
 "We have used the word motion for two things : the physical passion 
 [ever vibration] and our sensation. Take e. g. light and sound, which 
 mean either a vibratory motion or a sensation wh is in no way like it. 
 So we have used the word thought in two meanings, tho' without per- 
 ceiving it so clearly. We must learn to distinguish absolutely here. 
 We can learn as little really of thought as of motion [e. g. light or 
 sound] by studying it subjectively or in respect of our sensations. For- 
 merly motion, or the physical world, was studied more or less in this 
 subjective manner ; e. g. men enquired into the nature of whiteness, 
 &c., i. e. of their sensations, as the means of investigating the physical 
 world ; just as now they enquire into our sensations as the means of in- 
 vestigating the psychical world : an equal error and an equal failure. 
 The psychical world, or thought, also must be investigated objectively, 
 and without any reference to our sensations or consciousness, i. e. only 
 gathering from our perceptions the objective knowledge. The study of 
 our sensations of light and sound, is not a study of the physical world
 
 432 
 
 at all, but of our own spiritual nature. And before they can be under- 
 taken the objective knowledge of both motion nnd thought must be per- 
 fect, or at least far advanced, or else we have no basis for the subjective 
 study. Thought like motion must be studied objectively; this will re- 
 veal them, the study of our sensations will reveal ourselves. The 
 studying of thought under the form of sensation is a confounding of 
 passion and Being. 
 
 Our minds think or perform their functions just as our bodies do, viz. 
 by being organic, the result of nutrition, and involving resisted tenden- 
 cies, so that the external passion is stimulus. I perceive that I do not 
 yet fully distinguish the individual from the universal mind ; our own 
 nutrition and function from the great nutrition which we contribute to 
 form. 
 
 An union, Here, surely of the views of those who hold the mind to 
 be immaterial, and the materialists ; both being true : thought is exactly 
 on a par with motion, but perception equally of motion and of thought, 
 is spiritual. 
 
 It seems curious at first, yet it must be thoroughly understood, that 
 an animal thinks yet is not conscious ; it performs, and consists of, 
 thought, just as it performs, and consists of, motion, yet has no sensa- 
 tion. 
 
 It is strange that sensation shd be seated in the brain alone, as it 
 were ; i. e. shd ensue only on passion in the brain. I hardly see if 
 this be difficult. Is it strange that in the physical world sensation shd 
 be found in man alone ? Can it be that the brain alone is truly the 
 passion in the spirit, of wh it is conscious, and that it perceives by the 
 body only because the passion in it is conveyed thereto ? Here is much 
 to be put right. I perceive that I have phenomenal or theoretical views 
 here, yet not interpreted; or their cause, and therefore necessity revealed. 
 Hereafter some one will see how man must consist, as he does, of body 
 and brain, and the brain alone be the means of conveying sensation or 
 volition. 
 
 There is more enjoyment in the human body (so to speak) from its 
 being connected as a whole with the spirit, than if each particle sepa- 
 rately felt.* So in the animal creation : there is surely more enjoyment 
 in it as being the organization of a spirit, or spirits, wh alone are sen- 
 sitive, and feel as it were in them, than if they were individually sen- 
 sitive; the enjoyment of the spirit that inhabits them is of more value 
 than theirs, as elements, could be. So that even in respect to the ani- 
 mal world, the idea of enjoyment in Nature is enhanced, not diminished, 
 by denying their sensation, and attributing it only to spirits : not to say 
 that thus all Nature, the organic world in every form, is seen to be the 
 seat of enjoyment ; i, e. just as our bodies are, wh is the only possible 
 sense. 
 
 Again, if we attribute sensibility to animals, where in the animal 
 world are we to suppose sensibility to begin ? I say, it begins and 
 ends, and is only co-existent with, spirit : i. e. is everywhere, in every- 
 thing. 
 
 * Suppose a million of monads, each vitalized atom endowed with separate sensi- 
 bility, and the same number constituting a human body : in wh case wd the aggre- 
 gate enjoyment or sensibility be greater in the many or the one ?
 
 433 
 
 Life is vibration; .-. it ceases, or passes on. This is "why every 
 living thing must die. It ends in one form, beginning again in another. 
 Thus, also, we see that the transitive vibration is still a part of the one 
 life, as in the various elements of the body ; our physical or phen- 
 omenal death is a part of the life of the universe. As our organization is 
 habitation, or, more truly speaking, ' passion' of a spirit, so a fortiori 
 is the organization wh constitutes the universe (for organization is es- 
 sentially the result of passion in direction of least resistance ; and the 
 universe .-. must be an organization). The universe is a spiritual act 
 upon spiritual beings. 
 
 I think we approach now to the way by wh an investigation of the 
 phn will reveal to us the nature, the exact character, of that spiritual 
 act wh constitutes it. We perceive that the phn is passion, one with our 
 bodies and minds, and not the direct act of God. Our bodies and minds 
 are passion of spirits; .-. the external universe, wh is one with them, 
 must also be passion of spirits. The phenomenal universe is passion in 
 spirits, produced by God's act ; it is from this we can learn what that 
 act is. And again, do we not see in what sense we are surrounded by 
 spiritual beings ' walking the earth ?' Do we not perceive the external 
 world, in some sense, really as it is ; passion in other spirits becoming 
 passion in us, and surely of the same kind as in them ? All the forces 
 or passions of nature wh affect us, are they not results of functions in 
 these other organizations, and come from spiritual beings to us? Just as 
 our functions produce (or re-produce) force, and transmit it to the ex- 
 ternal world, i. e. to the organization of another spirit, or as in 
 some cases function in us transmits a force to the organizations of other 
 human spirits. In our functions we affect ever some spiritual being, 
 as we do if we touch a fellow creature ; our functions produce a force 
 wh, operating on the organization of a spirit, is by him perceived ; per- 
 ceived, viz., as a force, producing a pleasurable or painful passion in 
 his organization. We shd consider what we do. It is beautiful to trace 
 out each organization, how by passion in least resistance it has all its 
 own completeness and mutually dependent parts, senses, organs, &c. 
 It must be so : and I cannot but imagine that Swedenborg is right, 
 who holds the human form to be the universal type. 
 
 How all things are the type of holiness. Theory, or mental nutrition, 
 is assimilation to our own life, making the life of nature our life: as holy 
 action, control of passion, makes life of nature our spiritual life. Theory 
 is restraint to passion, causing the elements to assume relations 
 (opposed to tendencies), such as are conformable to our mental life, and 
 determined by our sense of truth. Just such does right action, but de- 
 termined by our sense of rirjlit. In each case it is the spiritual element 
 that causes the life ; the sense of truth wh causes theory is also based 
 on spiritual sense of right. Does sense of right apply to our own pas- 
 sion, and sense of truth, beauty, good, to the passion in other spirits 
 external passion over wh we have no control? how far does this control 
 extend ? how arise, and why ? what the necessary limits of sense of 
 right or duty ? 
 
 Beasts have nomental life because no theory, no control or assimilation 
 (as the inorganic): i.e. they have no spirits. Consciousness is necessary 
 for any of these 'senses' of right, beauty, truth, good, by wh the life 
 of man is effected (sense of good surely concerned in the practical life).
 
 434 
 
 The sense of beauty, good, true, is merely a passive resistance on onr 
 part ; part of our mental life, in fact, wh is God's act merely perceived 
 by us. But here is proved the active nature of the spirit, its ' moral 
 agency,' viz., that while the operation of these senses of beauty, truth, 
 and good, is absolute and involuntary, that of the sense of right is 
 otherwise. Its effect depends on ourselves. We cannot perceive 
 wrongly consciously wrongly as we can do. 
 
 As in Science, theory produces organization and capacity for higher 
 function, so in spiritual life, the nutrition produced by due self-control, 
 produces organization and higher function. That theory shd be arbitary 
 appears not to agree with its relation to right action (both being control 
 of passion, causing the life of external nature to become ours) ; because 
 arbitrary is opposite of right. Yet, on consideration, both these appear 
 to be true. The theory or restraint is arbitrary phenomenally, in re- 
 spect to the passion itself ; but not really, being caused by our sense of 
 truth or right, wh are absolutely one with nature. There is in each case 
 a phenomenal arbitrariness, and a real Tightness. Our right action, 
 tho' it seems to originate with us and be an arbitrary interference with 
 nature, is true to and identical with nature. So are our theories true to 
 nature in their phenomenal unnaturalness ; part, indeed, of the life of 
 nature in us. It is the non-exertion of this control that is really 
 arbitrary, unnatural, sin, or death. No-theory in the mind would be no 
 life, unnatural, impossible ; not so in morals : this difference proves the 
 moral, or real action of the spirit. No-theory would be no life, but this 
 is impossible, because mind is life or living. 
 
 There is no mental life in animals [mental life, dependent, as indeed all 
 life, on spirit], as there is no mental life in the elements of a human 
 body, but only in it as a whole, and by the medium of the brain. So, 
 is there not a true mental life in those organizations wh animals go to 
 compose as elements, tho' not in the animals, here also by the medium 
 of a brain ? Can this universal mind of man be the mind of wh all 
 nature goes to constitute the elements ? It embraces and corresponds 
 to all. 
 
 All crime is not controlling passion : not the passion itself, "We see 
 simple passion in beasts, and no crime. We are conscious of it that 
 we may control it. Why shd a beast be so, wh cannot control it ? or, 
 indeed, how can consciousness of passion be, without power to control ? 
 The two are inseparable in thought. Also sensation is consciousness of 
 passion; and .-.if beasts are not conscious of their passion, they have 
 not sensation. No man is wicked for being tempted ; tho' temptations 
 become stronger thro' a man being wicked, as the decomposing tenden- 
 cies are greater (more relatively powerful) in a diseased body. Crime 
 is not-controlling. We are conscious that we may control. 
 
 An act is an act or a passion, according to the view that is taken of 
 it. It is an act in relation to the doer, a passion in relation to its 
 effect on others. Act and passion are two words for one thing. The 
 external universe is God's act, and at the same time passion in spirits ; 
 and regarded in this two-fold manner, it stands before us, as it were, 
 completely revealed. When I used to think of the universe simply as 
 God's act, the question would arise, on what does He act. We have 
 been accustomed to think of Him as acting on matter ; and we seem 
 somehow to want a substratum or recipient for the action. This
 
 435 
 
 our own experience suggests to us. And I conceive this idea is a 
 just one in some sense ; and that God's act is an act on something ; 
 viz., on the world of spirits. That God first created spirits, and that 
 His act, wh constitutes the universe, is His act upon them. Thus I ap- 
 proach towards the great question, ' What is that act of God's which 
 produces such passion on spirits, that we perceive it as nature ?' 
 
 Very many questions arise out of the view of nature as passion of 
 spirits ; e. g. whether some of the apparent evil in nature may not he 
 due to real evil, or sin, in some of these spirits ? This is very doubt- 
 ful ; it seems a misapprehension. 
 
 Viewing the passion thus, as transmitted from spirit to spirit, why 
 must it involve time and space ? This transmission of passion from 
 spirit to spirit seems to be precisely what takes place in the multiplica- 
 tion of human beings. We have one standard, one type of the thing 
 affirmed, that is obvious and unquestionable ; so that the question is 
 intelligible. Moreover, the idea is placed before our eyes in the phen- 
 omenal transmission of motion from particle to particle of matter a 
 thing wh cannot be real, and yet is one of the most intelligible of all 
 conceptions. 
 
 All the invincible logic wh proves that there is no real being but 
 spirit, establishes and involves the view that the universe is passion of 
 spirits. I really said this long before I saw it. 
 
 It is beautiful to see life the body and mind as a transient passion 
 affecting any given spirit ; beginning, becoming mature, decaying, 
 ceasing but re-appearing in another spirit, in another form, of the same 
 sort or different according to the conditions, but always the same passion, 
 wh is one act. 
 
 It seemes strange to deny sensation or consciousness to animals, to see 
 them hearing, seeing, and acting accordingly, and yet to hold them un- 
 conscious. But the answer is, that in conditions in which we may be 
 sure there is no sensation, e. g. in decapitated animals these same facts 
 occur. So much so, indeed, that it has been forcibly argued that sensa- 
 tion must reside in every part [Dowler]. But, indeed, our own 
 machines shd make this intellibible to us : and the physiological proofs 
 that, even in us, sensation is not the cause but only the accompaniment 
 of the adapted and expressive actions. [Wh by-the-bye, we can control : 
 here is good example of spiritual control of passion. Does not the 
 spirit's power over the body, a fact wh physiology is utterly at a loss 
 respecting, prove that the body is passion of the spirit ?] But animals 
 have mind, altho' they are not conscious. We see in them true mental 
 passion. May we not say they think, altho' unconscious ? Indeed, 
 there is this mind, this thought or mental passion, throughout nature, 
 and not in animals alone (as poetry has recognized) ; our organic mind 
 being one with the psychical universe, as our bodies are one with the 
 physical: Here surely is the true meaning of Laycock's ' unconscious 
 mind ' : he has a right conception at the bottom. In truth, mind is un- 
 conscious, ever and absolutely, even as body is. L 's hypotheses will 
 
 help us here ; he has taken a good step by disconnecting consciousness 
 from mind. But having done it once, he has done it for all. If mind 
 be unconscious ever, it is so for ever. 
 
 Here is the defect of Des Cartes' ' Cogito ergo sum.' It confounds 
 mind and spirit. Cogito, or thinking, as mental passion, involves no
 
 436 
 
 real being ; an animal thinks ever as, it moves, unconsciously. Des 
 Cartes meant to imply consciousness ; and in this sense the argument is 
 good. 'I am conscious, .. I am,' will do; and perhaps as conscious- 
 ness is less likely to he questioned as a fact than acting, it is a better 
 form of the argument than my ' ago .*. ego.' But in each case it is 
 spirit that is affirmed. 
 
 Can I see all the sensations or perceptions to be result of approxima- 
 tive passion in nature ; to be, i. e. functions of nature effected in us as 
 part of her organization ? For this is the true view of our perceptions 
 as functions of nature, i. e. divergent passions effected in our organiza- 
 tion, by means of previous (i. e. in relation of cause) approximative 
 passion ; i. e. they are theories produced by interpretations ; but only 
 the theory is our sensation : i. e. only that is passion in us, of that 
 only can we be conscious. I see smell to be such result of approximative 
 passion ; but how about taste ? is it not the result of such passion in 
 the tasted substances ? Only those things wh undergo decomposition in 
 the mouth have taste, or those wh enter into chemical union with our 
 tissues. Touch is different, but only apparently ; here the approxima- 
 tive passion is not in external nature ; touch is only effected by pressure 
 on our tissues; and in the resistance of objects wh we feel, is virtually a 
 force exercised by them [as we see, indeed, in the case of a hard body 
 impinging upon us]. It is virtually the same ; the resistance represents 
 a force. Touch, when a result of passion in us, has a different character 
 from other sensations ; is more of exploring than perceiving. Is it not 
 from this exploring ' touch ' we chiefly derive the idea of real 
 matter ? 
 
 Although we speak of motion as emphatically belonging to matter, as 
 being indeed ' physical passion ;' yet, in truth, motion appears to be 
 altogether mental, i. e. a mental conception. Our bodily conceptions 
 are not of motion ; e. g. light and sound we perceive as unlike motion 
 as possible ; but we think of them as motion ; they are motion only in 
 respect to the mind. But we do seem directly to perceive the move- 
 ment of bodies, as a rolling ball, e. g. The motion here seems to be a 
 truly physical sensation. But I think this is an error : the physical * 
 sensation is confined to the various colors, shapes, sounds, &c. ; the mo- 
 tion is a mental inference. Indeed, motion rests entirely upon idea of 
 cause? (even as the external universe does). Thus motion is not physical 
 but mental. This is not clear ; but there is something in it. Even so 
 matter is mental. By-the-bye, matter being 'mental,' of course, mo- 
 tion must be ; if reality of matter be denied, motion goes with it. But 
 now, the ' external world ' is also mental, i. e. as being an inference ; 
 what remains as physical ? Even the sensations of light, sound, &c., 
 are mental ; no, these are physical, directly perceived by spirit. There 
 is no inference here : this, in fact, it is coming to ; that there is no real 
 difference between physical and mental ; they are one vibration, only 
 opposite halves. The physical is passion divergent or tending to 
 variety ; the mental is the same passion approximative or tending to 
 unity. As we physically perceive the passion it is variety ; as mentally, 
 it is one (or tending so respectively). Motion and matter are mental, 
 as belonging to the unifying ; light sound, all sorts of bodily sensations, 
 color, form, &c., are variety. To call them all motion, is to make 
 them one. So of movement : the bodily sensation is of variety of
 
 437 
 
 impressions, the mental is of one fact, viz. movement, as Cause. Surely 
 the mental rests on Canse. 
 
 Is there not a proof that the heasts do not perceive or have sensa- 
 tions, in the very fact of their having such right instincts ? If they 
 perceived, they would perceive wrongly and act wrongly : e, g. they wd 
 see two objects in different places instead of one, and could never find 
 out the truth? And so surely it is with all perception: that our senses 
 deceive us, lies in the very fact of our having senses. Perception is ne- 
 cessarily false perception : nor can we, I think, conceive the beasts as 
 having sensations not referred externally sensations but not perceptions 
 sensations that produce corresponding passions [functions] without 
 perception of the external world. Are not all sensations ever referred 
 externally, and more especially at first ? I think to deny to the beasts 
 perception of the external world, wh is necessarily denied by denying 
 them knowledge of efficient cause,' involves the denial of sensation of 
 any kind. 
 
 The animals not having perception of the external world, cannot 
 have intelligence : even if their sensation be affirmed, the mystery of 
 their acting as if they understood things remains unmitigated. Quite 
 a new field is opened in the actions of the animal world, considered as 
 non-sensational, wh was closed by the assumption of intelligence. 
 
 Matter and motion must be surely spiritual passions; I mean they 
 depend upon consciousness and reason, or sense of efficient cause, and 
 lightness or truth : only from a spirit could they be derived I find 
 these things growing in my hands ; becoming simpler and .*. more mar- 
 vellous, every day. Surely I see now, as mere matter of fact, that the 
 universe must be spiritual passion, see that when we define it we define 
 that wh is and can be nothing else ; wh has palpably in it, and depends 
 upon, spiritual elements. All mind and thought must be passion in 
 least resistance ; even including theories wh are wrong and could not 
 really be ; wh are arbitrary so to speak, and no part of Nature : whence 
 the resistance then ? It is from the spirit ; the spirit supplies the re- 
 sistance wh causes theories ; [? as the life of the body supplies the re- 
 sistance wh a causes assimilation]. Theories .-. are passions in least 
 resistance, the resistance arising from the spirit; and is not this by its 
 sense of truth, beauty, good, real Being, &c. ? These are spiritual, and 
 these constitute the force by wh theories are formed. Are theories like 
 ' organic beings ' ! making ' wholes ' and seeming arbitrary ? 
 
 Surely as the physical passions in our body are perceived by us as 
 something altogether different from that wh they are ' in Nature,' [light 
 and sound being nothing like vibrations] ; so the psychical passions in 
 our minds are perceived as something quite different from that wh they 
 are externally 'in Nature.' Our mental consciousness and the external 
 psychical world are separated by a similar gulf as in the ease of our 
 physical consciousness. 
 
 The entire difficulty of ' perception ' vanishes with the recognition of* 
 the simple axiom that we perceive only passion in ourselves ; carrying 
 this out consistently all is clear ; our bodies and minds are passions in 
 ourselves, and changes therein are accordingly perceived ; and they are 
 one also with external nature wh is perceived in perceiving them. 
 
 Eternal is spiritual. ' The Eternal ' as the name of God, means ' The 
 Spiritual ' ; wh imparts to it a new sublimity. We shd as far as posssble
 
 438 
 
 seek to banish all thoughts of duration from spiritual things. To look 
 upon them as absolutely existing apart from duration is not impossible, 
 any more than to regard the mind as having no relation to space. Not 
 that we can conceive of either ; our conceptions are bound to time and 
 space : but we may feel it. 
 
 Even a finite spirit surely does not strictly either begin or end. It 
 is not a correct expression to speak of a spirit, even a human spirit, be- 
 ginning its existence. It is only form that begins and ends, even in the 
 physical world : time relates to, and affects, the form only. 
 
 This also appears in a new light to me : how the world is organized 
 for good, and sin brings its own punishment. There is something won- 
 derful here, that to make even physical relations good and happiness- 
 producing, our due control must be introduced ; it is one of the essential 
 elements : showing profoundly how Nature is one with holiness ; and 
 is so good because the Doer of it does Eight. 
 
 How beautifully the view of the universe as passion in least re- 
 sistance [ and .". necessarily an organization, and a life or vibration], 
 fulfils alike our necessity for an universal principle, a wholeness, in 
 the universe embodying the details, and at the same time our desire for 
 the recognition of God's direct design and act. For passion takes di- 
 rection of least resistance only because God is holy. It is the ' necessity ' 
 ' of holiness ; necessary because it is right ; necessary because God is a 
 Spirit, and acts out His Nature. This is the truth of the universe de- 
 claring the Glory of God ; it shows or expresses His holiness. 
 
 Are not those appearances of contrivance, skill, design, wh appear in 
 the universe, only human or phenomenal views ; the reality of them 
 being Holiness, from wh they flow and in wh they are contained ? The 
 Tightness of the act causes the appearance of design and skill. Holy, 
 i. e. spiritual action, seen in time and space, are beauty and admirable 
 adaptation. 
 
 For a ' materialist ' to deny ' free-will ' is indeed to strain at a gnat 
 and swallow a camel. To believe matter and doubt action ! As Berkeley 
 says : ' It shall suffice for an argument to show the mere possibility of 
 matter.' 
 
 How we see some things as ' things,' others as passions, though not 
 really differing ; even in the physical world we see some passions as 
 things, e. g. a flame : so again, disease wh we see merely as defect in a 
 passion, is a living world. Surely the great and unbounded variety in 
 Nature, not variety of similar things but essential variety, depends in 
 part upon the different view we have of one and the same essential fact ; 
 the different aspect or relation to ourselves : some as passions, some as 
 things ; as processes or results ; the evil or the good ; the nutrition or 
 the function. 
 
 It will be wonderful to trace and study mind (as unconscious) in an- 
 imals. I conceive the whole may be traced there, and well seen in fun 
 or play. A child's ' fun ' is surely his consciousness, or perception, of 
 what takes place in a kitten unconsciously. "We cannot suppose a kitten 
 really plays, knowingly and with comprehension of the case, and design 
 of a joke : and yet all follows wh I assert respecting the unconscious- 
 ness of mind, and its relation to spirit, if it do not. 
 
 Can we not understand also the instincts of plants ; are these exam- 
 ples of mind, or merely physical phna ? I see the relation of animal
 
 439 
 
 instinct as two vegetable instincts, and human thought as two animal 
 instincts. This parallel is no longer embarrassed by the unaccountable 
 supervention of consciousness or sensation ; and further I see how it is 
 that human feeling, or passion or thought is to nature the same as any 
 mere physical passion or tendency ; only we [the spirit] are conscious 
 of the one. As our body is one with nature so is our mind. And all 
 passion whatever is perceived by some spirit ; viz. the spirit in wh, or of 
 wh, it is the passion : all constitutes sensation or thought. There is no 
 real difference, even of relation, between our minds and bodies and the 
 rest of nature ; all alike is passion of spirits. 
 
 Mr. has entirely lost the sense of smell, but tho' he is quite un- 
 conscious of any fetid odour, he ' finds himself ' spitting when he is ex- 
 posed to such. Is not this as the unconscious mind of animals ; does it 
 not indeed involve everything ? 
 
 The instinct of the plant, sending its leaves towards light, its roots 
 towards nourishment, is the instinct of the animal for exercise and 
 feeding ; and when perceived by spirit, as in man, is love for, and plea- 
 sure in, the same choice of them : and so of others. My conception of 
 consciousness or sensation as confined to the spirit, and .. animals not 
 feeling as such, puts aside the doctrine of the necessity for and use of 
 pain in relation to the body, as needed to save the body from injury. 
 It is not so ; this is all accomplished reflexly, which also other evidence 
 proves. The entire idea of pain is higher, viz. spiritual, i. e. moral : 
 pain is an element only of spiritual life. 
 
 Is not, ever, ' to show what a thing is,' to show its identities ? 
 
 The study of the facts of consciousness reveals to us the spirit, to wh 
 alone they belong : this is their sphere. The ' mind ' is to be studied 
 purely objectively, like matter. And by a true knowledge of the spirit, 
 wh consciousness reveals, we shall come to know truly what that action 
 is wh causes the passion in the spirit perceived as the universe. It is 
 our own consciousness that must reveal to us Nature : our conscience I 
 might say ; our essential, i. e. moral, consciousness. As I have before 
 said, He who acts rightly ' comprehends ' Nature. 
 
 The same thing regarded as action' is holy ; as passion, is beautiful or 
 true. The beautiful or true passion is holy action: therefore 'also the 
 universe is absolutely beautiful, as it is true and absolutely good. 
 
 It not the idea of merit and demerit, or of the fitness of happiness 
 and suffering respectively for right and wrong, based on the reality of 
 Nature and holy action ? the right control shd have the right control ; 
 L e. suitable passion, phenomenal happiness : the wrong deed, want of 
 right control, shd have wrong passion, phenomenal unhappiness ? The 
 happiness or unhappiness are only personal or relative ; both equally 
 right in respect to the universe or God ; they are simply conformable 
 or non-conformable. The want of right control, of holiness, is disease, 
 producing unconformable conditions : it ever produces such in Nature ; 
 ever ought to produce such. Can it be thus, that in phenomenal suf- 
 fering there is really a remedial character, a transference, as it were, of 
 the spiritual disease to the body or mind, and from the pain the spirit may 
 re-derive its life ? that punishment is medicine, or may be used as 
 such? 
 
 I have seen that space and time belong to the spirit ; i. e. to con- 
 sciousness : yet this is not the very thing ; I think this is it rather :
 
 440 
 
 Space and time belong to spiritual passion ; it is the passion they belong 
 to, but the passion is, necessarily, passion of a spirit : i. e. they belong 
 to the universe, the phn ; so the spirit itself, apart from its passion, has 
 no relation to them, no relation to time. The ' future existence ' of 
 spirit is not a question at all. Existence is : past, present, future, re- 
 late only to passion; only passion has any relation to duration. Is it 
 thus : that the physical, or matter and motion, has no relation to time, 
 cause and effect being simultaneous and .-. the entire chain of cause 
 and effect also ? Then is time only to the psychical ? But is not cause 
 and effect also related only to the passion, not to the spirit itself, i. e. 
 to the agent ? and here the truth of free-will, the liberty and moral 
 action ? Space, time, causation, belong to the passion only : the spirit 
 is eternal, ?*-local, free. 
 
 The unity of man pertains to the spirit, not to the mind. 
 
 How difficulties and contradictions disappear by seeing the universe 
 as an Act, and not as a thing. And this simple view is again the first 
 instinct ; always, whatsoever we perceive, we first, and by our nature, 
 suppose some one does it. This is the superstitions form of first science, 
 to wh last science returns. Instead of properties in a substance we 
 have passions in a Being. 
 
 The great difficulty in Science seems to have been the want of seeing 
 that all force, motion, or passion, must flow from, or rather perhaps be 
 the re-appearance of, some previously existing force or passion, precisely 
 equal. See how this has vitiated physiology, as in the idea of ' vital ' 
 force as a ' property ' of matter, or any ' force ' as a property at all ; not 
 perceiving that life was passion, and must be referred to equal pre- 
 existing passion. So with regard to function, physiologists did not see 
 that the force of the function involved an equal force as previous to it, 
 wh the function is, in another form : so they talked about the contrac- 
 tility of a muscle, and its contraction causing waste. And throughout 
 Science, the false and impossible doctrines I think must all of them 
 have rested on this one error, of supposing physical passion [or psychical] 
 to begin, as it were, not recognizing the force or passion as ever the 
 same passion with some previous form. Now the root of this error may 
 be clearly 'seen and is beautiful. It is nothing less than that we are 
 spirits, and can act ; and our consciousness as Agents has led to our at- 
 tributing in thought (tho' not designedly) active powers to 'things.' 
 The whole philosophy of Science I think lies in this ; the source of all 
 error, and .. of all advance ; i. e. of nutrition and of growth. 
 
 Our consciousness of acting has been a continual illusion to us in na- 
 ture ; we have thought that ' actions ' acted. Just as we have thought 
 ' actions ' were real Beings, by virtue of our consciousness of Being [i. e. 
 we have taken physical nature to be ' substances.'] So simple and na- 
 tural to us is this idea of ' acting ' or ' free -will,' that the whole advance 
 of Science consists in separating it from that to wh it cannot belong. 
 In brief this is Science : to get rid altogether of ' properties of matter,' 
 and to see all such properties as passions, the same in another form as 
 some pre-existing form of passion, wh becomes the property or passion 
 in question. 
 
 I say, the universe is passion in spirits : this rather than God's act ; 
 i. e. regarded phenomenally. As every passion is also an act, so is the 
 universe God's act really, and passion in spirits regarded in respect to 
 effect or 'fact' [i. e. the thing done.]
 
 441 
 
 Is it not thus : all life, i. G. all nutrition, is martyrdom, sacrifice : 
 and we are elements of a living fact : therefore each man martyrs him- 
 self, or Nature martyrs him : in everything it is so. Self-sacrifice is 
 thus excellent, it is life, as all sacrifice is ; hut it is the spirit's own 
 life. 
 
 Pleasure and pain, true and false, ugly and beautiful, are they not all 
 what is conformable or unconformable to our organization ' ? i. e. in 
 relation to us, the right or appropriate proportion of force and resist- 
 ance, or in brief, the right resistance. Thus all these senses come to be 
 one with and derived from the moral sense, or sense of right resistance 
 in respect to our own actions ? Aud thus we see also whence, in rela- 
 tion to the physical and psychical world, comes our standard of right or 
 due resistance ; viz. from conformity to our own organization [wh being 
 one with Nature gives the right standard ?] But whence, or how, or 
 what, is the moral sense, that of right spiritual resistance or self-control ? 
 Is it primary or inherent in spirit ? 
 
 Think of the inconceivable wonder that all the exact adaptations and 
 beautiful and beneficent results in Nature, shd be the mere fact, and 
 necessary consequence, of passion in least resistance. The thought fills 
 the soul with emotion. But it does more ; it proves at .once that the 
 fact of passion taking the direction of least resistance is something more 
 than a simple definition or axiom, and mere necessity. In a word it 
 proves it to be a spiritual act ; shows that this appearance of logical or 
 physical necessity, wh can of course account for and do nothing, is the 
 Divine holiness, from wh flow all the phna of wisdom, power, skill, be- 
 nevolence. There is a great demonstration here, wh I clearly feel, and 
 shall be able to say some day. 
 
 This is one form wh it may take : the old argument of design assu- 
 ming a true dignity : for just as all these adaptations cannot be the re- 
 sult of blind chance or necessity ; so, that passion takes the direction 
 of least resistance, wh is the cause or fact of them, cannot be. In either 
 view, equally, a spiritual act is discerned and seen to be necessarily the 
 basis. In fact, it is only carrying to a higher level what has been ever 
 the progress and elevation of natural theology, the raising the idea of 
 the immediate Divine act from details and particular instances to laws 
 and general principles. And this is joyful ; here is another unification. 
 I see the Tightness of the wrong here also ; this separation of God from 
 immediate facts, and considering Him as acting by laws, culminates and 
 reaches its ultimate point of truth in the fact that passiou in least re- 
 sistance is God's act. The two opposites are one : God's acting by laws 
 is His universal immediate act. 
 
 Here is another instance that nothing was ever rightly said, in any 
 sense, that the true philosophy does not embrace : it is in one sense 
 right to say that God acts by laws ; it is good theory, phenomenally 
 true ; and carried out and fully seen, it is seen to be that Nature is His 
 act ; all laws being one ; all facts embodiments of one law. One act, 
 therefore, includes and constitutes all facts. The making God act by 
 many and various laws was the wrongness ? 
 
 It seems to me that in one sense pain or suffering is the very idea of 
 nutrition; i. e. it gives tendency to 1 change, 'functional power.' In 
 relation to conscious Being it is what ' resisted tendency ' is to passion. 
 If no pain or discomfort, no life, surely : no tendency to passion when
 
 442 
 
 permitted. This is obscure as yet ; yet I begin thus to see the relation 
 of sensation. The suffering is, in some sense, the result of, and index 
 to, the nutritive passion, indicating the tendency to other passion, and 
 resulting from the violence or opposition to such tendency. And so in 
 the unconscious animals, that wh prompts them to their functions is the 
 physical or psychical equivalent of pain or desire in the conscious 
 being. 
 
 Is not the problem so many have attempted of making man's moral 
 nature one with the universe, solved thus by going the opposite way ? 
 and, instead of making man un-moral, seeing nature moral ? Yet, was 
 this a true instinct in them; I shd say, an instinct, and .-. secure of 
 its accomplishment at last. 
 
 If God had introduced ' special resistances,' that would have been to 
 act arbitrarily. The right resistance is the absolute and unvaried 
 passion in least resistance ; it arises necessarily from that. So, when 
 we act right, we act invariably ; when we act arbitrarily, we sin. 
 
 I think the best view of space and time, is to consider them as be- 
 longing respectively to the physical and the psychical. 
 
 These being polar, and universally co-existent, shows why time and 
 
 rce are so universally co-existent. To abstain from applying the idea 
 time to the spirit is the greatest aid towards clearness of understand- 
 ing ; e. g. especially the punishment hereafter. The soul that sins is 
 dead, so far as it is sinful. Everything relating to spirit is eternal, or 
 absolute. To introduce the idea of time, produces an obscurity wh it 
 is not worth while to go into. And no expressions founded on our 
 material and psychical existence, such as annihilation, can do any kind 
 of justice to the subject. 
 
 The ' I ' is the being ; the conception of a spirit is also an ab- 
 straction. 
 
 The materialists deny spontaneous action to God and to man, but at- 
 tribute it to matter : the idea is only shifted, not denied. It cannot 
 be denied ; words will not deny it. To deny action, is to deny being. 
 At last the question is such as this : not whether there be action, but 
 whether I act, or my house acts. The only possible question in the 
 subject is, what acts ; a being, or an abstraction. 
 
 I would introduce a new basic idea into our conception of nature, 
 shift its foundation, as it were ; renovating it at the centre : the idea 
 of holiness, for those of power, wisdom, design, benevolence. The 
 idea of Tightness is not less important, not less pre-eminent, for the 
 creative than for the governing act of God. 
 
 And there is even scientific evil resulting from regarding goodness 
 and wisdom as the primary elements in creation ; just as religious evil 
 results from so doing in respect to God's government. The substitution 
 of subordinate and phenomenal, for chief and primary, cannot be made 
 with impunity. This evil ensues with respect to Science ; viz., that 
 the ' laws of nature ' have a kind of power and necessity attributed to 
 them, and are regarded as limiting the power of God. For, if the 
 bases of creation be only God's wisdom and goodness, then why so much 
 that is not productive of the greatest conceivable happiness ? We cd 
 conceive much better results attained if the laws of nature were modi- 
 fied sometimes ; if the sun, e. g., could give out more heat in one di- 
 rection than another, and so on : the result on our minds being, that
 
 443 
 
 we consider the physical laws as necessities limiting God's power, 
 matter as a substance with wh He does the best He can, as endowed 
 with ' properties,' in conformity with wh He works, and so on. To 
 take holiness as the ' idea ' of the world makes all right : laws of nature, 
 physical necessities, properties of matter, dissolve like chimeras as they 
 are. These laws, which work for evil as well as good, are God's right 
 action. 
 
 We mean, by evil, a reference to the being in whom the passion ex- 
 ists; evil means, evil to a subject. But we may consider evil in two 
 lights : in relation to the created spirit, or absolutely in relation to the 
 act itself. Surely we may [altho* it could not be] conceive God's act as 
 in itself evil, tho' no created spirit were. Now, so regarding it, do we 
 not see at once that the only 'evil ' that could be, in relation to the act, 
 must be that it shd be wicked, sinful, unholy. Evil in any other sense 
 must have relation only to the passion, and be relative to the subject. 
 Only .. in relation to the subject, i. e. the created spirit, can evil ex- 
 ist ; thus involving all that I say : ' evil ' is merely our relation to a 
 perfectly holy act ; i. e. there is no real evil no real evil in nature. 
 Real evil is sin, and only sin ; and exists only in so far as we or other 
 spirits sin. But, now, can it be in any way, that to God even sin is 
 not rightly to be called ' evil ?' I think not ; it is death. Evil is ; 
 but it is only inaction, non-entity. 
 
 So surely of beauty and ugliness, except as far as they relate to the 
 created spirit, or subject, surely they resolve themselves into right and 
 wrong. Clearly . . all is beautiful. The foundation of all this is my 
 considering nature to be God's act, instead of things : what He does, 
 instead of what He created. I perceive that I divide God's action into 
 two parts creation of spirits, or beings ; and a deed wh we perceive 
 as the universe, but I think truly. 
 
 We wrong the Bible, and we wrong ourselves, in representing happi- 
 ness and misery as the ' ideas ' of heaven and hell, we appeal to motives, 
 and adopt a principle, in reference to religion and the future that we 
 scorn for the present ; and one wh we know indeed would utterly fail : 
 for what more certain way is there of being unhappy than making hap- 
 piness our object ? Only right can be the basis of our thought, for 
 this world or the next. Even in respect to Science this idea of happi- 
 ness misleads us ; we make too much of it, it is a part and symptom of 
 our materialism. The conception of God's goodness in creation rests on 
 this, the enjoyment of His creatures. We err altogether, and go astray : 
 enjoyment is a trifle ; not an object at all, but e result: Tightness is the 
 fact, and before we can either think or feel aright we must banish the 
 former, and substitute the latter. They bear the relation of phn to 
 fact. Bightness is the result of holy action. The happiness of the 
 creature is the result of the holy action of God. It is holiness, not 
 benevolence, we must learn to see in nature. 
 
 The United States are sacrificed to prove slavery for ever to be a 
 wrong. So any man, community, nation, is sacrificed to prove any sin 
 to be evil. It is sublime to think of : the history of sin is written in 
 death. Each man, each nation, sacrifices himself, or is sacrificed by 
 nature. Sacrifice, i. e. life, is the universal fact. 
 
 What a glory it casts over the working of the laws of nature to re- 
 gard them as expressions of holiness ; how it changes them from dark- 
 
 E 2
 
 444 
 
 ness into light, and renews the face of the earth. God will not do 
 anything for any one, nor save any one from any evil (as we see He will 
 not), except according to those laws ; not because there is anything in 
 the law, hut because it would be wrong. Ko necessity is in the laws, 
 only rectitude in the deed ; no iron bonds of matter, but only free choice 
 of right. This we do not tremble at, nor submit to, but love. Fearful 
 and appalling are those laws wh work generally for good, but do harm 
 sometimes ; and with a lurid ludicrousness superadded, because they are 
 represented as binding the very hand and heart of God. Because it wd 
 ' be wrong otherwise, it is that God drowns him who saves others from a 
 watery death ; that God cuts off by quick disease or wasting penury the 
 best and noblest men, capable of the highest deeds ; that He gives no 
 success save by means adapted to secure success. It would be wrong : 
 and .. we who suffer thus are glad, and will rejoice. Co-operation with 
 God in the laws of nature is choice of right : the spirit's life. These 
 bodies and minds of ours are not matter and mental substance, moulded 
 into an abode for us, and to our welfare alone devoted ; they are 
 God's deed, and must be, not happy, nor healthy, nor comfortable, but 
 holy. 
 
 It is a curious conception, this of the spirit as a real being, yet, as it 
 were, nothing except as acted on with God ; conscious, yet only con- 
 scious of passion in it ; active, yet only acting in respect to such passion, 
 wh is the act of God affecting it. Its power of acting being precisely 
 that of controlling, or resisting, and thereby directing ' passion.' How 
 far can the spirit be said to be, or to exist, except as acting ; how far is 
 the inaction, wh is sin, ' annihilation ?' 
 
 The materialist has a right instinct to make our moral action one 
 with nature ; but an inverted process. "We must start from our con- 
 sciousness ; there can be no other basis : now our consciousness is of the 
 spiritual and moral. The physical, the material necessity, is a phn only, 
 and a very indirect one. The moral is the only thing that is real. Our 
 consciousness is not only the necessary starting point, but it is the 
 ' continent,' of all for us ; we cannot get beyond, nor shd we wish : 
 first, last, and for ever and alone, stands and remains spiritual or moral 
 action. The only true knowledge must consist in bringing everything 
 into conformity or union with our consciousness [wh is of the spiritual]. 
 
 Each thing, each particle, has its 'properties,' its power of resistance ; 
 this is the 'substratum' doctrine in the correlation theory. Then, surely, 
 1 1 ' also, the spirit. This power of the spirit, the man the conscious- 
 ness of it is the basis and source of all the powers, properties, &c., 
 attributed to matter ; it is the one and only reality, i. e. in respect to 
 powers and properties, this spiritual power, or act. The material pas- 
 sive ' property ' is an impossibility ; we trace back and back, and have 
 no resting place: where we end, i.e. where it begins, is a spiritual act or 
 power. And this, as it is the beginning, is the middle and the end also : 
 all ' action ' is spiritual deed. Now, the acting right is the ' property ' 
 of spirit. I like this : that is its' quality, its * specific resistance,' its 
 nature. When a spirit does not act right, exert the right control, or 
 sins, it is as if the properties, the resistance, of any matter or thing were 
 wanting ; as if the germ did not resist the chemical passion, the wire the 
 electricity; this is the wrongness, the unnaturalness, the death. There is 
 no sin in nature ; it is holy ; for this resistance never is wanting ; the 
 right ' direction ' never fails.
 
 445 
 
 Again I come to the question, how far right action and existence, in a 
 spirit, are the same. For observe : a spirit cannot act wrongly : sin is 
 inaction ; is yielding to passion. A spirit's act is holiness. There is no 
 wicked act, only wicked not-acting. The ' property,' the characteristic, 
 of a spfrit is right action. Indeed, one sees at once, phenomenally also, 
 that the essence of sinning is yielding to passion. Here returns the 
 problem : what is the spirit, apart from God's act upon it, or its pas- 
 sion ? At present, at least, this is my ' limit :' here I meet again the 
 mystery I seem to have rolled back : and here again, as ever, the limit 
 of our knowledge [not absolute and final, but present] is marked by a 
 paradox ; and again, as ever, the advance of knowledge will consist in 
 the unifying of the apparent contradictions, showing them to be one. 
 The spirit seems to be the ' substratum ;' and its spontaneous activity 
 its power the property. It is a representation of nature; wh thus is 
 the image of the spiritual ' fact.' In truth, the ' properties ' of the sub- 
 stratum pushed to their real origin, can be only spiritual action. The 
 passion, passing from spirit to spirit, is antitype of the force passing 
 from matter to matter ; and the resistance and direction of the passion 
 by each spirit aright, is the conversion into new forms, the production of 
 the life of nature. 
 
 Think, now, of God's sympathy as involved in His absolute know- 
 ledge ; His hatred of sin flows from and is part of this, His love. His 
 sympathy with, and love for, Being, for spirit and its action, is the origin 
 of, necessitates, is the fact of, His hatred of the absence of it : for that 
 is sin, the non-existence of the spiritual ' nature ' wh God love?. It is 
 just as in proportion to a man's knowledge and love of nature would be 
 his grief and sorrowful surprise if any ' property,' or natural process, 
 were wanting : if any part of the order of nature were wanting, any 
 ' resistance ' were deficient where it ought to be, so that the conversion 
 were not effected, and that life were to fail. Th : s is God's sorrow at sin ; 
 sorrow that must be moral anger, being sorrow for moral wrong. God's 
 sympathy with life is His anger at sin. It is precisely our sorrow over 
 premature death and decay : our disappointment at finding death where 
 life should be. That is : sin is what such death in nature appears to us : 
 in nature truly is no death. 
 
 And God restores that life by the sacrifice of His son. This is exquis- 
 ite beauty : here in the highest form we see the universal fact, that 
 sacrifice is the life ; is the fact of nature ; and in the spiritual, self-sac- 
 rifice. God's act also is self-sacrifice. This is the holy act. Holiness 
 is self-sacrifice. Creation and redemption are one ; no supplement, no 
 new dispensation ; God gave His life for the world's life on Calvary : 
 God gave His life, gives His life, for the world's life in each moment's 
 creative act. Creation also is God's self -sacrifice. Can it, must it not, 
 be ? All creatures thus draw life from Him, even as we in our death of 
 sin from the Saviour. [Life for life : ' the universe expresses God's 
 passion,' just as each life expresses, is, some former life, and arises from 
 some death.] 
 
 God's holy act in the creation of the universe rather the holy act wh 
 constitutes nature is best so called by us. It is holiness in the sense of 
 our holiness, self-control, self-sacrifice. Not that this is a full expression, 
 but is it not the best for us ? It is that wh we slid be conscious of, if
 
 446 
 
 the passion were in us : not the very fact, but the truth of the phn. 
 It is a nutrition, expressly for interpretation ; and a glorious interpreta- 
 tion it will be that shall show us what that reality of God's action is, 
 that best appears to us as self-sacrifice. 
 
 There are two respects in wh sacrifice constitutes the fact of*life. and 
 .. of nature : 1st, as life is resistance to passion, opposition or restraint 
 of tendency ; as each ' life ' or development fails of its perfect carrying 
 out to constitute another life ; and 2nd, as life is actually ' transmitted,' 
 results from the giving up of a previous one. Does not the former ap- 
 ply to us in respect to spiritual or real lif e, the latter only to God ? In 
 creation God gives His life. Is it not even as a man's life is in his 
 works ; as a man ' puts his life into ' a work of Genius ; well .. called 
 4 creation ?' The world is a work of Genius ; God's life is in it ; and so 
 in redemption. As said, ' There is in God, as it were, both force and 
 resistance :' this is most true, tho' not so meant. God's love, or passion, 
 is the force : God's holiness is the resistance. This is the great fact 
 imaged universally by the force and the resistance ; the great polarity : 
 And the world is the ' function ;' the third of the triplet, the offspring or 
 result. Cause, condition, and result : God's passion, God's holiness, the 
 universe. Love and truth, we may say ; that is the idea of the ' resist- 
 ance ' ever rightness. This is God's self-control in His creative act ; 
 passion, or love, or energy, controlled by right. God's passion, or love, 
 controlled by holiness, it is that is dimly re-presented by all the force 
 and resistance in the world. Hence issues life. This is the universal life ; 
 passion controlled, God's passion controlled by holiness. Love, the male ; 
 holiness, the female. How true to humanity : man is passion, woman 
 purity : man energy, woman the right control. Woman is the type of 
 God's holiness : with man, type of His love, the fruitful mother of life. 
 [But, also, each has both characters, in different aspects.] Has not 
 Swedenborg lowered this great truth, substituting goodness and wisdom 
 for holy love ? 
 
 Surely I am approaching a view more adequate and true of the re- 
 demptive work of Christ, and one that embraces what I said so long ago 
 of the vicarious character of human suffering : that the afflicted bear 
 the burdens of the happy, are sacrificed to the completeness of the whole ; 
 as all failure, want, imperfection, are nutritive : each thing in nature 
 losing its life for the life of others. I cannot but believe that Christ's 
 work will be found to be the reality of wh all this is the type. 
 
 Acting selfishly is not having our way ; the right way is the only way 
 that can be ours. 
 
 There is a great interest in the questions of pleasure and happiness : 
 how passion in us causes pleasure or pain, and we .-. seek pleasure, and 
 4 selfishness ' opposes our acting. Consider, the seeking of pleasure is 
 not the spirit's act : that belongs to all nature ; the animal, all the uni- 
 verse, in truth : it is the universal passion perceived by the spirit. Man 
 does not seek pleasure ; it is his body and mind he perceiving the pas- 
 sion. Then, the question is, will he act or not ; will he exert the right 
 control ? The universal polar attraction, existing throughout nature, is 
 perceived by man, in his body and mind, as pleasure and pain, desire and 
 dislike. But these are not his ; the perception only belongs to the spirit ; 
 when these operate uncontrolled he does nothing save the sin wh there 
 is in doing nothing.
 
 447 
 
 I advance in this : it is interesting why this passion is thus perceived 
 as pleasure and pain, tho' not absolutely mysterious : only so can the 
 attraction and repulsion be perceived. Hence the Tightness of the im- 
 aginative view of phna, wh attributes to them human ' passions :' our 
 passions are these very ' passions ' of nature, nor can they exist in, or 
 affect, a spirit, i. e. a being, in any other form. Or, rather for this is 
 the truer perception of it all these passions of nature, which we 
 speak of as physical and psychical, are passions in spirits : i. e. are these 
 very passions of wh we are conscious, and nothing else. Our seeing 
 them as physical and psychical [or unspiritual] is the false seeing them. 
 I cannot express true the sight that flashes on me ; yet it is the very 
 fact. The material and psychical world is [as I have seen it must be] 
 passion in spirits ; i. e. conscious passions, emotions : it can be nothing 
 else. Therefore it becomes ' in us conscious passions, i. e. passion in 
 our spirits ; we are surrounded by an universe of feelings, sensations, 
 hopes, fears, sorrows, joys ; an universe, in a word, of ' passion.' Here 
 is the foundation of poetry ; here the truth of imagination ; here their 
 marriage with logic and with Science. This I have been saying so long, 
 and did not know it : that the universe was passion in spirits, not seeing 
 that this is sensation, thought, emotion. Thus is it not that we have 
 no words for spiritual things, but those derived from physical, because 
 the physical are spiritual. 
 
 Consider now the relation between pleasure and pain, wh are in the 
 passion, and are merely perceived ; and the happiness and sorrow wh at- 
 tend right and wrong action ; what are these ? The joy of life, the 
 grief of death ? These pertain directly to the spirit ; these are what 
 throw the chief light upon the spirit itself. 
 
 The imaginative view of G-od that wh attributes to Him the human, as 
 '[passion,' < the world a work of Genius,' and so on is that wh goes 
 to the heart of theology ; not itself the truth, but the road to it : the 
 introduction of fictions, the theory wh leads to interpretation ; it is the 
 living theology : even as the imaginative view of things, wh attributes 
 to them the human, is the truest. But, alike in respect to things and 
 to the Deity, it shd be remembered, that this imaginative view is not 
 final, but only a means to an end ; that it is the introduction of 'fictions,' 
 necessary, indeed, to enable us to grasp the phna, but whose design is 
 not to remain for ever, but to reveal the fact. [This idea was seen 
 afterwards to be one with that of the calculus.] 
 
 It is truly therefore mind, design, thought, emotion, that are at work, 
 and embodied in nature ; even as in our thoughts, feelings, and so 
 called < actions.' And surely our mental passion may appear ' a world ' 
 to other beings. It is design and feeling that are in nature ; but not 
 God's. It is His act, His holiness, wh becomes feeling, emotion, and 
 all those human passions, when it becomes passion ; i. e. as it affects 
 created spirits. The design, the goodness, the wisdom, are in the pas- 
 sion, the result ; not iu the act : they are phenomenal, passions of 
 spirits : the passion, however, being the act as it affects us, or other 
 spirits. 
 
 But passion in spirit is not so merely feeling, emotion, &c., as I have 
 represented : our own bodies are passions in us. So, the passion in 
 other spirits, doubtless, is in like manner a universe, and body and mind, 
 to them. Thus it seems to come, that the denial of a real matter is the
 
 448 
 
 true affirmation of the reality of the universe. Where the obscurity 
 lies is in the ideas of sensation and thought, and material things ; it is 
 only apparent, and in me ; and will soon be clear. 
 
 The universe is an universe of conscious passion ; of thought, feel- 
 ing, sensation, emotion. It is that, and that only. But all this I have 
 been saying ever since I said that it was God's spiritual act upon 
 spirits ; this involves it all, though I did not see it. How this glorifies 
 the universe, and yet how natural ; what else shd it be ? Passion in 
 spirit is necessarily conscious passion. 
 
 We feel that sin is not-acting, is utter loss and death ; and our com- 
 mon language expresses it. We say, he was a man ; act the man ; 
 meaning, do right. And when we look at those who have yielded to 
 tsmptation, and those who have acted the right part, as in case of 
 martyrs, is not our feeling always of sadness for the yielding, of pity as 
 for death ; that there the man was not ; and that he alone who bore and 
 and resisted the trial truly lived and acted ? We say of a selfish youth 
 or wicked man, mournfully, ' what a pity :' so does God. 
 
 What we do morally, or spiritually, forms part of the universal life of 
 the great humanity; part of the human 'passion.' Therefore may not 
 that unmoral passion wh constitutes our physical and psychical life, be 
 truly the moral acts of spirits ? Then, is this all holy, or is not some 
 also unholy ; i. e. disease and premature death ; even as our sin is the 
 disease of the humanity ? 
 
 Surely, as all will is holy will ; all spiritual act, right act ; so all re- 
 sistance is the right resistance. The fact of the resistance, or control, 
 involves the Tightness, even as the spiritual act is right, and only can 
 be so. All other motives are yielding to passion, and not spiritual act 
 at all. Eight belongs to the essence or nature of spirit, i. e. of all true 
 being : where being is, there right is. 
 
 The fallacy that has perplexed the question of free-will, or spiritual 
 action, is the idea that man acts when he yields to passion ; that he can 
 act in two opposite ways, can choose how he will act : his choice is to 
 act or not ; but his act can be one only. And facts prove the power : 
 sometimes passion takes its course ; sometimes we resist. 
 
 Spiritual action i. e. action as such being ever right action, we un- 
 derstand the use of the word spiritual in the Bible, where it is ever used 
 as one with holy ; and the word ' eternal ' also : the far-sight of Scrip- 
 ture again shown. 
 
 There is one rule for Science and for morals : make common things 
 right. 
 
 It spoils even the moral relations of nature to view it from an arti- 
 ficial moral point of view ; as Swedenborg, e. g., has done. The intel- 
 lectual view of nature is also the truly and only adequately moral one. 
 Xature does not want a moral put into or extracted from her : she is 
 not moral, but morality ; not holy, but holiness ; not true, but truth. 
 Nature is a right action, and, when understood, is seen to be so : in her 
 relation to the human spirit she is nothing else. 
 
 What madness can be like that of living in the midst of eternal verities 
 and busying ourselves exclusively with a few subjective phna, as if we 
 and our thoughts were all ? Matter, and the sciences founded upon 
 matter, are subjective, and touch not the real basis of things : our know- 
 ledge is but a well-ordered dream, until, opening our eyes to the real
 
 449 
 
 light of heaven, we see that each thing has its place as a mor al d 
 forms part of a holy act ; is that. "What we perceive it as, relates not to 
 its essential nature, nor is the question true science takes cognizance of, 
 except to enquire why we so perceive it. We are not mind and matter ; 
 we are spirit, and our true concern is with moral beings, and moral 
 action. To that all things tend ; all material, all mental knowledge is 
 but a stepping stone. The bringing all things into relation to the spirit 
 seeing them as moral is the end and meaning of all knowledge and 
 all experience. Until things are spiritual they affect not us ; they are 
 outside us ; far, far away, as material things, nay, even as intellectual 
 things ; dreamy mysteries, unintelligible, strange, fantastic ; in wh ve 
 see a glimpse of meaning here and there, but the whole is a riddle : 
 filling us with joy, yideed, but with a joy mixed with awe, almost with 
 terror, and full of strange misgivings. If we can see nature to be a 
 spiritual deed, a holy act, then we understand her, then she is ours. A 
 right act ? There is no mystery in that ; that is native to us ; what 
 we were born to and would do. It draws us absolutely : not one thing 
 too much, not one too little, if it be right ; our inmost spirits claim it 
 all for ours ; the mean and the noble, the painful and the pleasant. If 
 it be right it is man's, it is human ; it is our very own. God has done 
 it for us ; for we, had it been our place, would ourselves have done it. 
 Yes, this world we would have made, with its darkness and pains and 
 sorrow?, its mysteries and doubts, its aspirations that end in disap- 
 pointment, its temptations that rule with a sway so bitter. 
 
 The love of nature is man's instinctive and unalienable joy in right 
 action ; it is the attractiveness of virtue, but working as yet blindly, 
 and without a just appreciation of its objects. And, in truth, herein 
 lies the real meaning of that relation of nature to man, wh so many 
 have expressed under the image of a marriage. Nature is the bride of 
 the soul : not wedded yet, indeed, but to be wedded. And is it not 
 with man's love for nature ever as with love ? Beauty excites it first ; 
 it is an irresistable drawing towards the lovely : but that is not its end. 
 Its end is for the inmost soul. This play of charms is the scaffolding 
 of the building ; it leads us on through a path of flowers to most seri- 
 ous duty. When man truly weds nature he will find that he has taken 
 to his heart, not a beautiful body, but a deep and earnest spirit ; not 
 his sensuous or intellectual faculties, but his spirit, his conscience, will 
 be mated there. 
 
 In the chain of causes we ever go back infinitely, never coming to 
 the first 'force.' Each 'permitted ' implies a producing, each produced 
 implies a permitted to ' transmit ' the force. It is this inherent 
 ' vibratile ' character of passion that involves this infinitude of antece- 
 dent. Does not this show it to be phenomenal ? Through all the chain 
 of causation we get no nearer to God's act, because it is already close 
 to us : by seeking it at a distance we go away from it. The chain has 
 no end, because it has no beginning. 
 
 I see more and more that the great fact is the fact of the control, wh 
 is ever the right control, and that passion in least resistance is a phen- 
 omenal view; not the reality, but that wh right action appears to us. 
 Think of the words right and wrong; and of my confusion when I say that 
 nutrition is rightly wrong, or right in being wrong. Yet, right and 
 wrong together must surely be a polar union ; in truth, an embracing
 
 450 
 
 of opposites ? "Wrong is ' wrested,' turned aside ; right i8 ruled ; 
 is not the idea of both ' controlled ?' Phenomenally are they not 
 one ? 
 
 Man's necessary devotion to material things seems a degradation, and 
 his excessive devotion to them is an absolute degradation to him : yet, 
 is this only phenomenal. "What a glory is cast over this physical ma- 
 terial life of ours, by the knowledge that tho' to us it appears as 
 matter, it is in reality a spiritual deed. It is no real degradation, we 
 are in a palace of spiritual beauty ; but our eyes are holden that we 
 think it a material dungeon. Here is the glory, the lightness, of our 
 attention to material duties : as our right action is a spiritual act of 
 ours, so are the material things and works a spiritual act, tho' not ours. 
 We grossly err when we neglect material duties for what we call spirit- 
 ual pursuits : the material is the spiritual. Our spiritual passion our 
 conscious life, and our moral deeds I am persuaded are perceived as 
 1 things,' as parts of a universe, by other spirits. So, the ' things ' we 
 perceive are the spiritual passion and moral deeds of other spirits. But 
 two views may be taken of all : either as a spiritual act of God, or a 
 spiritual passion in other beings ; both views are correct according to 
 the manner in wh we speak. But ultimately it is God's act, all that is 
 not the act of created spirits. 
 
 The ultimate icTiy for each thing is the moral reason, or to show how 
 it is right. This is the work of Science ; not to discover physical or 
 second causes, nor final causes or uses : but higher still than either to 
 point out spiritual or actual causes, to show why each thing ought to be 
 so, what law of holiness demanded it. I think this must be the real 
 work of Science ; when it shall have discovered the physical laws and 
 processes of all things, and seen that Nature is ' self-evident,' and no 
 longer difficult or too large, then its work will be to trace out why each 
 fact in Nature is morally right what attribute of holiness is manifested 
 in the whole and in each minutest part. 
 
 All things in Nature are by virtue of motion in least resistance, but 
 the work of Science is to show it in each case, and trace the operation 
 of this fact from last to first. So all things in Nature are because of 
 Eectitude or holiness ; they are right acts ; but the work of Science is 
 to show in each case that they are right to trace the holiness from 
 first to last. 
 
 As in a musical composition each sound exists because the musician 
 chooses it. but each is as it is because it is right ; and to show each note 
 to be the right note is to show the cause or reason of its existence ; viz. 
 that the musician composed rightly : so Nature is music, and each vi- 
 bration in it is such because it is the right vibration : the only reason 
 for its being is that God chooses so to act ; but acting, God acts so be- 
 cause that is the right act. Herein appears again the likeness of Nature 
 to a work of Genius. Both are right : but the Tightness of a spiritual 
 act is Holiness. That other Tightness of material adaptation flows from 
 this, and expresses it. It is a secondary thing, having relation only to 
 those Beings who perceive God's act as matter. 
 
 The laws of Nature, as we call them, are the relations or connections 
 of our sensations. They are beautiful, nay glorious ; they are well 
 worth knowing ; they must be known ; they constitute the very basis 
 of all our knowledge. They are what bring us into relation with God's
 
 451 
 
 action, wh is the thing to be known. But they are not themselves the 
 the objects of knowledge, but only a means to it ; as we use colors and 
 sounds for learning optics and acoustics. That, in our sensation, motion 
 must take direction of least resistance, and all motion be vibration, and 
 develope by interference and subdivision, and follow in the definite order 
 of cause and effect, and so on, is beautiful, interesting, and absolutely 
 necessary to be known, But all this is not what we want to know. 
 This is not the fact ; this is the effect upon ourselves : it is the cause of 
 all this that is the true object of knowledge ; what is it that thus 
 affects us ? 
 
 Nature being thus a representative and expression of moral Tightness, 
 how she justifies and repays an unbounded love ! Bight is the only 
 Ihing we cannot love too much. Will it not be a good thing when the 
 separation of the love of Nature from the love of holiness is no longer 
 possible ? Shall we not be willing to submit, and to take part with 
 her ? Do we not acquiesce, nay do we not rejoice ? Can we not lay even 
 our torn and bleeding hearts upon that altar ? 
 
 The present physical Science is an analysis and arrangement of our 
 sensations, preparatory [of course] to an enquiry into their cause : of 
 course so preparatory ; whatever incidental and subordinate uses it may 
 have being entirely inferior, and not pertaining to the great object, wh 
 is to ascertain their cause. The facts or ' things ' of Nature all that 
 we perceive of course are sensations ; and that motion is in least re- 
 sistance, &c., are laws of sensation: valuable, and indeed the means by 
 wh must arrive at a knowledge of realities, but not the things we are 
 in search of; wh are not anything subjective, not laws of our own 
 minds, but the very facts themselves wh cause our perceptions. The 
 question of Science in respect to everything in Nature must be, why 
 and how God's right action necessitates and produces that. 
 
 Man constructs Science as the bird builds its nest ; i. e. to arrange 
 things in a way accordant with its nature, and its sensations ; it does 
 what it must, it carries out its laws of thought, just as man does in 
 Science : it puts them right, it groups them in what appear to it their 
 natural and necessary relations, solely with reference to themselves and 
 then it is a nest ! So Science becomes a moral nest, in wh man's spirit 
 reposes. 
 
 Were the dark ages, so called, when Science was made almost a matter 
 of religion, a sort of type of the moral phase of Science humanity an- 
 ticipating itself, as it were ? Or what means the constant opposition 
 of religion and science, except that they are polar, and destined to 
 be one ? 
 
 Seeing Science to be subjective opens up a new world to us the 
 world of true reality or of moral action. Morals bear the same relation 
 to the knowledge of Nature, that Science, ordinarily so called, bears to 
 our crude perceptions. These are the steps : first crude and unordered 
 sensations ; then classified sensations, ordinated ; then Science [physical] 
 or laws of Nature. Again : first such a Science as ours ; crude and un- 
 ordered groups of facts, unformulated sensations not reduced to unity : 
 then classified, ordinated facts ; such as motion in least resistance and 
 its correlated principles ; these are ordinated sensations : then a refer- 
 ring of these to moral principles, or true Science ; a knowledge of causes 
 and meanings, of the reality wh produces the appearances : two series
 
 452 
 
 of three steps, parallel to each other ; the highest of the first being the 
 lowest of the second [thus making a five ?] 
 
 It is a wonderful prospect thus opened ; when man shall cease to look 
 on Nature as a series of things, or material phna ; but knowing her 
 laws, seeing that all natural facts are but expressions of an axiom [ex- 
 pressing, therefore, in one word, and knowing as it were a priori, all 
 that our present Science labors and yet despairs to attain], we shall 
 look through the phna to the spiritual action wh they are ; the moral 
 principles wh they express shall live, thus, not in a world of beauty 
 and of mystery, but in a world of holiness and clearly expressed spirit- 
 ual principles. Must we not then be better ? Come, blessed day, when 
 knowledge shall mean perception and appreciation of goodness ; and the 
 sad divorce of intellect and character no longer be a possibility. God 
 means and has promised that man shall yet be good and happy on the 
 earth ; it is written in His word. But works he not by means ? "Was 
 not even His Son, the Saviour, born, and by human throes ushered into 
 the world He was to save ? 
 
 This idea of Science too how it glorifies the work of past discoverers ; 
 how much higher their work was than they thought. How God has 
 used man for higher purposes than his own. Nothing he has thought 
 of less, in the advance of Science, than the attainment of a moral end, 
 but that has been the real end, nevertheless, all the while. Man's love 
 for Science is an instinct, and has a use of wh he never dreamt, nay wh 
 does not appear, and cannot, until the work is complete. Science is de- 
 signed for moral purposes, i. e. for truly human and spiritual purposes. 
 
 Science has been an instinct the doing a thing for its own sake wh 
 had a higher and hidden tendency but if an instinct, then a polar at- 
 traction. This is worth thinking of : man's love of Nature, or Science, 
 a polar attraction, i. e. Nature and Thought a vibration ? So of Art, 
 and all things ; are they not instincts and tending to moral ends ? 
 
 Surely Science and religion are polar a kind of 'paradox;' and com- 
 promise between them proposed, &c. : it is the very doctrine of the de- 
 velopment of thought over again. Eeligion and Science are to be married 
 and made one ; they are one ; law and liberty. 
 
 The reason Nature at first appears to us as an arbitrary, and not a 
 moral fact, is that we do not understand it. So everything appears to 
 us until we know something of its ' laws.' And again, we do not see 
 Nature at first in its real bearings ; our conception is too limited. "We 
 do not perceive that it is a means to an end, and .-. must be, 1st, as it 
 is ; and 2ndly, right or wrong. It is not a mere arbitrary creation, but 
 a deed done for a purpose ; wh includes us as part of the means. 
 Again, our fancy that God does some things in Nature differently from 
 others, rests upon the idea wh tho' so strange is yet natural before re- 
 flection that different things in Nature really are different to God : 
 e. g. some large and impo.tant, others small. How can we think of God 
 except as like ourselves, at least at first ? "We fancy e. g. the commence- 
 ment of an order of animals different from its perpetuation ; but we can 
 find no reason for this idea anywhere but in ourselves. 
 
 The strongest feeling in human nature is our response to right : deepest 
 in man's breast, and uneradicable, lies that fundamental passion : it is 
 king and ruler, and tho' driven from the actual throne by meaner feel- 
 ings, never abdicates its authority. ' People will fight for truth and
 
 453 
 
 justice or that wh they think to be such,' says the Times. If we can 
 therefore but make Nature embody to us the idea of right, how much 
 more it will be to us : how much profounder and more over-ruling our 
 love. 
 
 The human instincts are ever right, illogical as they may seem : be- 
 cause science and religion are one is the reason that they could never 
 be kept apart ; the destined marriage has been foreshadowed in quarrels. 
 
 Science henceforth surely must take a twofold direction : one the true 
 Science, or enquiry into causes, wh is moral or religious, having respect 
 to the moral principles embodied in Nature ; the other, matter of detail, 
 not a question of causes or principles at all, but of showing the appli- 
 cation of the physical axioms to particular cases : such as ' physical 
 morphology,' &c. In these two tendencies of Science will be found 
 scope for the two polar mental qualities ; and really they are one work : 
 the showing how Nature is, is the foundation for showing why it is. 
 
 He who knows how and why a thing is right, has penetrated into its 
 inmost secret. He knows the final and ultimate reason of it ; there 
 causation terminates. God does it because it is right ; no further ques- 
 tion can be asked, nor answer given. Imagination cannot picture any- 
 thing anterior. Therefore God chose it and it was. 
 
 Can we more clearly see how and in what sense these laws of Nature 
 wh constitute Science [these secondary ' perceptions ' as it were, by in- 
 tellect], how they are truly sensations. I see it is so ; but the^ exact 
 thing rather escapes me. Is it thus : that whereas the primary sensa- 
 tions, as those of color and the like, are bodily sensations, the ' laws of 
 Nature ' are mental sensations ? No one thinks of denying that our 
 bodily sensations receive their character from our bodies ; so it is equally 
 clear that our ' mental sensations ' receive their character from our 
 minds. And the alteration that takes place in both, with alterations 
 of our bodily or mental states, is strong evidence. The inductions of 
 Science are mental sensations : so we speak of the eye of the mind, 
 grasping an idea, perceiving, seeing, feeling. They are sensations 
 passed through, the body into the mind ; but still sensations : the same 
 fact, or action, in reference to the two halves of the vibration constituted 
 by nature and thought. Therefore as nature tends to variety and 
 thought to unity, it is, I suppose, that as facts incessantly accumulate 
 and become more diverse, so ' laws ' tend to unity. The essentially vi- 
 bratile relation of nature and thought is seen here, and all that depends 
 on it. 
 
 Then of course the true question of Science is the cause, or meaning, 
 of these ' mental sensations.' And these laws, or mental sensations, [in- 
 cluding under the term ' law ' all knowledge of facts not gained directly 
 by the senses, but inferred, as the doctrine of vibrations, &c.] are pre- 
 cisely similar to the facts, or things, primarily perceived, only in the 
 opposite vibratile relation : they must be dealt with in the same way. 
 They form the elements of induction : also they are not real things in 
 in themselves ; they are subjective, the sources of knowledge, not 
 knowledge itself. 
 
 Is not ' matter ' also [and all the ' forms of thought '] a ' mental 
 sensation ' ? 
 
 M suggests whether evil spirits have not an agency in producing 
 
 many evil physical phna ; so that some of those wh appear parts of
 
 454 
 
 nature to us, are not really God's action, but the acts of other spirits ? 
 
 We are slaves to our logic, whereas we ought to be its masters and to 
 use it. We feel bound to accept as true any logical inference wh may 
 be drawn from that wh we receive as true. This acts in two ways : (1) 
 it makes us receive many opinions wh we wd not otherwise ; (2) it pre- 
 vents us from receiving many opinions wh we otherwise should, because 
 consequences wh we cannot admit logically flow from them. This is a 
 double error, and quite an abuse of logic. [It is another form of the 
 polarity of opinion ; these two modes of treating the same question con- 
 stitute the polar opinions : receiving it with its bad logical consequences 
 is the male ; rejecting it on account of them is the female.] We should 
 use our logic, not obey it. It by no means follows that the most per- 
 fectly logical inference from the most indubitable truth is therefore true. 
 The relation between logic and truth is like that between cause and ef- 
 fect, it depends altogether upon the conditions. Some unknown element 
 may altogether vitiate our logic ; in fact ever does vitiate it ; this is the 
 nature of the limit, and the cause of the polarity of opinion. Both 
 polars succumb to this common error : those who follow logic to bad 
 consequences, and those who reject truth for fear of them. The unknown 
 conditions, the elements to be added, require to be respected. Coleridge, 
 with his instincts, refused to admit all logical deductions from facts wh 
 he held, tho' I do not remember that he gave the true reason for it. 
 We shd say, ' I do not admit the truth of that logical inference from 
 this which is true ; we are here at the [present] limit of our know- 
 ledge, and require to add some elements wh will make the logical infe- 
 rence quite other' : practically applying the doctrine of the 'limit.' 
 Thus I come round to an intellectual appreciation of my old instinctive 
 practices refusing to believe that wh was logically proved, &c. 
 
 Why does the silkworm produce silk ? Because it acts out its nature. 
 Thus all truly great and valuable deeds are done : all such are great and 
 glorious, all equally so. It is God that acts when Nature acts, whether 
 it be the nature of a worm or of a man. In relation to God, these acts 
 of Nature are moral acts ; they are His spiritual and .*. holy deeds. 
 If -we wd act like Him, we too must act morally : in spiritual activity 
 lies our capacity of acting as God does. Here is the true difference be- 
 tween men : the difference between a great poet, an artist or philosopher, 
 and the most untutored laborer who does his work but rightly, is none ; 
 it lies only in appearance, their acts are the same thing from a different 
 point of view : but between a man who acts rightly and one who does 
 wrong, the difference is wide as the poles. Do we thank the silkworm 
 or the bee ? Not so : we take all they do as a matter of course, and 
 thank God. Just so shd we deal with the works of Genius and of men 
 of eminent capacity. No thanks are due to them ; they have simply 
 done what it was their nature to do. Take all that as of course, and 
 thank God. 
 
 Is this idea worth anything : may not God's act be the creation [ra- 
 ther the act] of spirits ; the eternal creation the present ' Doing ' of 
 spirits ? and all other action be the act of those spirits ? Not that God 
 makes spirits, and acts, they being effected by that act : but that God's 
 act is spiritual existence ; God's act is creative, wholly and ever, and 
 none other. Then all the passion wh we see, and wh I rightly call spi- 
 ritual act, is action of these created spirits. Consider the eternity of
 
 455 
 
 God : we cannot separate the creation of spirits, and then their suste- 
 nance and His acting on them. Again the phenomenal conception of 
 time deludes us. God's act is creative ; i. e. creative of Being or spirit. 
 This helps to clear up many ohscurities. God's act is the existence of 
 spirits ; all else is the act of these spirits. The passion in us [which is 
 the universe] is the act of these spirits, with wh our our own acts go to 
 make up the universe. 
 
 Then may not the rightness of Nature be the holiness of these spirits' 
 actions ; and the evil in Nature, if any, be the moral evil of their acts ? 
 Consider the words of scripture in relation to evil spirits, and to the 
 bondage and corruption of Nature ; also what I see about sin being like 
 premature death, and the disease constituted by our sin. ' Natural evil 
 the sin of spirits ' ? This saves us from affirming in too absolute a 
 manner the goodness of Nature ; permits us to see a true evil : yet not 
 evil in relation to Ged, for sin is death to the spirit that sins, but there 
 is still no death in relation to God's work. And all sin is but faction. 
 But does not this remove our earthly life too far from God. Can we 
 then truly say of everything that God does it ? is it not introducing 
 other Beings between us and God I 
 
 With regard to God's act being spiritual existence, and all passion the 
 act of those spirits, I think I see farther. Is it not thus rather ; that 
 created spirits act only on or in passion, as we are conscious is the case 
 with us ; and that God's act is at once, as it were, creation of spirits 
 and passion in them ? i. e., as we might say, God's act is spiritual 
 Beings in a state of passion. Now this it seems to me is parallel to the 
 expression wh occurred in my thoughts about Matter ; that God's act 
 was matter in motion. And will it resolve itself into something worth 
 
 Man ' comprehends ' Nature in right action. He wants no teaching ; 
 conscience teaches him all. Conscience is indeed the voice of Nature 
 within him, that says to him continually, ' be one with me.' Is there 
 not a revelation about conscience here ? Is it the attraction, the passion, 
 of man and Nature, [not the phn but the deed] of wh the love of beauty, 
 truth and good are phenomenal representations ? the love of these 
 being only, in fact, love of passion as such, or ' phenomenal being ' ; for 
 evil, ugly, false are want or absence of passion, even as sin is absence of 
 action. Thus conscience is to the real what love of beauty, truth and 
 good is to the phenomenal : attraction to Nature ; to being or to 
 action. 
 
 Whence its authority ? Surely it is the authority of the real over 
 the phenomenal : to seek the phenomenal beauty or good against con- 
 science is to seek the evil, i. e. the not-being instead of the being. 
 Conscience presents sympathy with action ; opposition to conscience is 
 preferring inaction to action ; action being passion, whatsoever is is to 
 loved as such. Whence the joy of a good conscience, the suffering of 
 remorse ? Happiness is in action. 
 
 Thus is not right action the effect of love ? a polar or sexual union, a 
 marriage, and .-., and so, the cause or producer of life. The (right) con- 
 trol of 'passion in us, is it not the union of us and Nature ? 
 
 The doctrine concerning sin and misery as its punishment, and the esca- 
 ping from the suffering of hell, is as opposite to real religion, to common 
 sense, and to to the Bible, as it is possible to be. Sin is the greatest,
 
 456 
 
 the extremest evil ; nothing can be worse, more to be dreaded, more to 
 be avoided. Sin is Hell : the punishment, the evil, is Sin. The very 
 first step towards a man becoming better is that he shd come to regard 
 sin as the greatest of all evils ; as worse, incomparably worse, than any 
 pain, than any punishment : till he feels this he makes not one step to- 
 wards any real goodness. Thus it is that the Bible is so true to nature, 
 so productive of true piety. It does not seek to frighten us by pain ; it 
 points to the evil of sin, of death, and offers life, or holiness. It speaks 
 of facts ; theology substitutes phenomena for .them happiness and mi- 
 sery for life and death. 
 
 Into what glory it throws life or action as such how it shows, that, 
 God being what He is, existence and action are therefore infinitely and 
 unsurpassably excellent in themselves this thought, that the worst of 
 all possible evils is inaction or death. Things are not good and bad ; 
 Being not partly excellent and partly evil ; only non-entity, inaction, 
 is or can be evil : evil is only sin, and sin is not living. Whatsoever 
 is, is perfectly good, because God is good. 
 
 I conceive that the necessity of Genius to do as it does the necessity 
 because it is ' right ' is the best and likest presentation to us of the 
 necessity of God to do as He does ; i. e. in creation, in the act of Nature. 
 Deeply is it true that the world is a work of Genius the working of 
 Genius is the phenomenal type of the actual, of the holy necessity of 
 God's action. All ' necessity ' means, or re-presents, holiness : this is 
 the necessity, the one primal necessity of the universe whence all 
 others spring, the holiness of God. That wh is ' right ' must be. Action 
 is holiness. Hence also the unbounded variety of Nature. The work 
 of Genius is like Nature in that : it is all one, and yet no two forms 
 alike. There cannot be, because each one is determined by every other, 
 and .. must be different : i. e. in God's act all is one ; in human work 
 of Genius [or phenomenally], every succeeding is determined by all the 
 preceding, and .-. each different. Thus everything is determined by 
 everything else in Nature, and in Genius; just as in the 
 formation of the living body motion in least resistance makes each par- 
 ticle mutually determine the development of every other. That is vital 
 development. This is the truth of the ' development theory ' : regarding 
 organic nature as a living whole ; and seeing the mutual dependence of 
 all its parts however apparently dissociated. 
 
 Are not the happiness of well-doing, the misery of wrong doing, the 
 phna, or effects upon ourselves, by wh action and inaction are revealed ? 
 
 Sin also is a phn : what is the cause of that effect on us ? is the 
 question. The great difficulty and mystery there have been about Sin 
 surely have arisen (as in all cases) from considering the ' phenomenon ' 
 as actual, and framing hypotheses whereby it may be considered as 
 actual and reconciled with the necessary demands of our intellect. The 
 theory of Sin, as a real existence, is impossible ; an < interpretation ' is 
 that Sin is inaction. 
 
 The secret of all ' phenomenal ' religious views I conceive is the at- 
 tempt to get the phna put right, considering them as real : and their 
 use is to show to us that the phn is unreal, and to reveal to us its cause. 
 It is as in Science ' theories ' are attempts to put right, or grasp, the 
 phna considered as real : and the great and most untractable phn, in re- 
 ligious Science, is Sin. The object of religious ' theory ' is to reveal the
 
 457 
 
 fact of wh Sin is the phn ; and this is that it is death or inaction : 
 what the Bible has told us all along, but we could not see it until we 
 had found it out for ourselves. It is impossible to tell a man anything 
 till he is able to receive it ; till he can know it by sympathy. 
 
 I cannot have an arbitrary God : I deny and reject Him. Such a God 
 were worse than myself; who, when I act arbitrarily do so in conscious 
 weakness, being not truly myself and dignified thereafter by remorse. A 
 God who, in His perfectness, and unremorseful, acts arbitrarily, is worse 
 than none. Give me a God whose every deed is right, or relieve me 
 from His presence. 
 
 The necessary is the right ; therefore the right is necessary. The al- 
 ternative is not to be right or wrong, but to be right or not to be. The 
 awfulness of sin is to reveal to us, by the horror of not-being, the excel- 
 lence of being. A man cannot be arbitrary ; either he acts right or he 
 does not act act at all ; arbitrary is not. Is not our right action God's 
 act in us ; our very being, indeed, wh is God's act ? There is no ques- 
 tion of the 'existence* of a spirit that is sinful; its right action is its ex- 
 istence. Wonderful is the part thus borne together by God and man : 
 God's act in man's right act, man's will. Yet is it the Bible statement : 
 ' Work . . for it is God that worketh in you.' But what then is 
 our own individuality and moral character ? It is a great help to re- 
 member that there is no time ; that existence is absolute, i. e. eternal or 
 spiritual. 
 
 This is an unification ; it embraces, and so far is good : ' In Him we 
 live and move ' ; and also the pantheistic view, that our actions are 
 God's actions; and God the Doer of all things. This wd be a blessing, 
 to find a true unification of our moral Being with God's doing all things. 
 I feel it in my heart ; how we, in acting right, act with God at once 
 God's act and ours ; ours in being God's and God's in being ours : that 
 we ' have sympathy,' a common passion, a common act, with God. 
 
 And again, this is the truth of the materialist instinct, which I have 
 before recognized as right, [if properly seen] ; viz. to make our moral 
 action one with nature. To see nature as a moral act of God is partly 
 a fulfilment of this ; but more perfect to see our moral act as truly God's 
 moral act ; for that is nature, and our act and nature being both God's 
 moral act, are strictly one, identical in the most absolute sense. Thus 
 again appears the sympathy of holiness and nature, the oneness of them ; 
 and how right action ' comprehends ' nature, being the same. And how 
 glorious thus I see the universe, how infinitely bright ; full of the ma- 
 jesty of God, yet without denying or lightly regarding the awfulness of 
 sin. Man's willingness too is God's deed ; the will given and the deed 
 done. He does our acts, yet not sin ; for sin is our own not acting. 
 
 If we could get our eye right I think we shd see that God's absolute- 
 ly universal act and .-. God's act in our act and our moral personality 
 are one and the same thing: [again not although, but because.] 
 When we act we use God's power, as it were ; we permit it to flow 
 through us. So our right action is in tiuth, ' permitted.' 
 
 Surely God is blessed in His works, even as we are blessed in ours : 
 in Him also passion-producing, as in us. Has not God made us like 
 Himself, and even as creators ? Our holy act, passion-producing like 
 His ; life-producing in us. That thrill of happiness is it. The work 
 of Genius is like the right act. The right act alone has power, it is
 
 458 
 
 one with love, the ruler. The Tightness of Genius is the type of holi- 
 ness. How glorious to see that holiness and love are one. 
 
 It comes to this, wh is an axiom, that all action is passion-producing; 
 the words mean it: and this also is wonderful. All action .-.is right 
 action, as I have seen ; the wrongness, the nutrition, is phenomenal 
 only ; exists only in relation to us, even as evil does. A happy revela- 
 tion it is. The nutrition, the force- absorbing passion, exists only in 
 relation to us ; i. e., as I have seen, the vibratile character of passion 
 is due to us. Vibration is the effect of God's (infinite) act on us, being 
 limited. And that especial part wh is emphatically phenomenal, or 
 due to us, is the nutrition : the function is so in different sense only. 
 Thus the function is true to nature ; like or corresponding with God's 
 deed. Is it not God working in us ; and, in its analogy to right action, 
 does it not help to show us how our holy action is one with God's act ? 
 I must think of this : as all action is passion-producing, so the passion- 
 absorbing motion the nutrition must it not be virtually inaction ? 
 
 Consider what is the life of God ; of Him as ' the living God.' 'Living' 
 means something ; and in Him too, as in us, means holiness. Is not 
 God's life, as ours, the result of holy action ? It were beautiful to 
 think : God's life the result of that holy action wh produces the uni- 
 verse as effect or phn. So, if our right act is God's act, is not our 
 spiritual life one with the life of God ? This, too, is scriptural : God 
 gave us His life in Christ holiness and life are not quite interchange- 
 able; perhaps the chief idea of life is that of power to act; right action 
 gives functional power ; power to produce God's act. 
 
 Thus it is, because the world is a work of geuius, and not of talent, 
 that it was so long before there existed any natural science. This is 
 the reason : works of genius excite passion, emotion, life, in us ; and it 
 is long before we begin to analyse them, and trace their structure ; 
 works of talent excite only our admiration and pleasure in them as 
 works of skill, beauty, &c., and we begin at once to analyse them, to 
 see how they are constructed; to treat them 'scientifically,' in fact. 
 And people are very apt even to treat works of genius in this same 
 ' scientific ' manner ; never feeling them at all. The common ' natural 
 theology,' wh traces God's wisdom and goodness so cleverly, is just the 
 same sort of thing : a mistake and degradation, surely, wh proves, and 
 can prove, nothing but the absence of soul and sympathy in the 
 critic. 
 
 Talent, the human ; that which is not correspondent with nature or 
 God's act ; the selfishness, the wrongness, the fictitious, the non-entity, 
 the evil, the absence of action. More true, is only more : wrongness, 
 falseness, is only deficiency or absence. This I have long seen : error 
 is only deficient knowledge ; where our knowledge fails there we see 
 wrongly ; so our knowledge must ever be terminated by paradoxes : we 
 must not be afraid of this nor of them, nor shrink from attempting to 
 reconcile paradoxes when they exist. It is by this our knowledge ad- 
 vances. This is ever the relation of nutrition ; it expresses us, as func- 
 tion expresses God or nature. In what sense is it inaction ? Is sin the 
 expression of the creature ? 
 
 All being is one with action ; i. e. co-existent with it, and only so, 
 but not .'. the same thing. That only exists wh acts, but it must ex- 
 ist in order to act ; the action is not the existence. Our phenomenal
 
 459 
 
 necessary for a ' substratum,' I think, is proof of this. But still, that 
 only really (or spiritually) exists wh does spiritually act, i. e. is holy. 
 The action cannot be taken away without the being also. The spirit 
 in sinning ceases to be. But may we not say that the receiving or re- 
 jecting of God's act in us are equally acts of the created spirit ; and .. 
 it exists altho' it sins and has not life ? 
 
 The tendency in us to put wrong right, to overthrow the false, to cor- 
 rect the evil in the phenomenal, is, as seen, the very type of instinct, 
 or the tendency to function. And is it not the same with our hatred 
 of, and tendency to correct, moral evil, our instinct to overthrow sin ? 
 Is it the tendency to unite ourselves with nature, make ourselves one 
 with God's act ? Man's ' function ' is to overthow, put an end to, or 
 rather produce good out of, evil? 
 
 The difficulty of man's free or moral action is considerably cleared up 
 by this view, I think : e. g., with regard to man's taking part in God's 
 action : it is not so, but all is God's act. It is, as it were, that God acts, or 
 abstains from acting, according to man's will. This is the best I see at 
 present. It throws a new light, perhaps, upon the verse, ' He could 
 not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.' So, if 
 man will not, God withholds His action : if man be willing, God acts 
 in him, and the man's act then is one with nature. 
 
 Consider again that unbelief; as if the sin wh prevents God's action 
 were essentially a want of trust, or of recognition that it is God. Is 
 not our non-willing(or sin)ever unbelief? Are not belief and willetymo- 
 logically one word ? This is a* thought I like : sin is mistrusting; not 
 being willing that God shd act ; essentially and ever unbelief unbelief 
 of conscience wh says to us ' I am God ; will my action.' If we can 
 once truly see and feel that doing right is God acting in us, shall we 
 not be better ? Shall we not see that a right act is success ? ' confide 
 ourselves ' to God, and be willing He shd act ? How constantly people 
 say, ' Let God have His own good way :' then let Him have His way in 
 us : let us do right, and, so far as we are considered, He has His way. 
 The prayer ; ' Thy will be done,' is not mere resignation. 
 
 But now, speaking philosophically again, what is our relation to God 
 that His act in us is thus dependent upon our ' willing ?' And how can 
 God's act be eternal or one, without succession, if it is thus determined 
 by us ? Does not pantheism follow ; that we are parts or forms of God ? 
 I see the difficulty here, but I do not shrink from it : the moral person- 
 ality of man remains unaffected by such logic : it is not likely we shd 
 ever solve the relation of created beings to God. Also, the pantheistic 
 argument is not at all stronger on this view than on any other ; its 
 logic is equally conclusive, in its own way, whatever ground be taken. 
 Also, the language of the Bible is open to the same objections. And, 
 lastly, I expect to be able to carry this question farther back, and to 
 see the oneness of our moral personality, and God's act in us. 
 
 Sin is being servant of the phenomenal : but here is the beauty ; this 
 is equally God's act ; so, whether we sin or are holy, all is equally 
 God's act, i. e. equally and absolutely right and perfect. Sin is no blot 
 on the universe ; and thus do I not see better how our free will and 
 God's act, in our right action, are compatible with His one and eternal 
 act ? It is God's absolute act equally in each case. And in the 
 spiritua 1 is no succession ; our ' acts ' have an eternality about 
 
 F 2
 
 460 
 
 them ; are not in time ; time is only phenomenal. 
 
 Of course, wrong or evil has no potcer ; it is free-absorbing ; there is 
 no power but in right and good ; i. e. in love, in function. ' By strength 
 shall no man prevail'; there is no power in that wh we do ; only in 
 that wh God does in us : none in self-seeking, only in yielding our- 
 selves instruments to holiness. How wonderful it is that sinning seems 
 to us to be having our own way ; right, submitting. This is phenomenal : 
 nutrition seems ; function is. Is it thus : if we allow God's act in us, 
 His act. controlling the passion in us, gives life to us ? 
 
 This seeing that all the things that seem most emphatically to dis- 
 play God's special design, and care, and skill [as repair of injury], are 
 mere motion in least resistance : what does it show but that God does 
 everything ? Wheresoever we can see a physical necessity, or clear 
 chain of causation, we shd hold it fast and prize it infinitely, for there 
 we have hold of the very fact of the holiness of God. There His in- 
 most Being, His heart, is revealed : nor shd we rest till we can see that ; 
 for wheresoever we see not clearly the cause and the necessity we are 
 under an illusion. God seems arbitrary to us. 
 
 God's act is not the cause of things but the fact of them. When we 
 ask for the cause, we ask for the cause in time ; that wh preceded it, wh 
 was and is not : wh God's act cannot be, being eternal. The idea of 
 cause, thus, I see to be wholly phenomenal. 
 
 There are two things connected with the conception of cause as wholly 
 phenomenal : one that seems right, the other difficult. (1) If the idea 
 of cause relate only to the phenomenal * we see better the idea of free- 
 will : better that spontaneous action is the property or fact of Being. 
 But (2) does it not seem to undermine the argument for a God ; to go 
 against the postulate that the effect on us must be produced by some- 
 thing without ? Cause being only a phenomenal relation, how can we 
 affirm that the phenomenon demands a cause ? This is an old argument 
 enough in another form. I used it long ago when I said that the exist- 
 ence of cause and effect throughout the universe did not imply that the 
 universe was caused. In fact I have come now to the truth of the doc- 
 trine that ' Cause ' is merely derived from experience as an invariable 
 sequence. But this difficulty will give place to perfect clearness ; it is 
 not yet fully seen. But this I see, that tho' God's act is not the cause 
 of the phn in such sense, and the argument from causation does not 
 hold, yet still it is a good argument that something exists ; that there 
 is a fact or reality wh the phn indicates : and this is God's act. It is 
 altogether a different relation ; and the rejection of the argument from 
 cause only gives place to a clear perception of the fact. That something 
 produces the effect on us wh we perceive surely is certain ; even more 
 certain for the proper interpretation of the idea of cause. But I should 
 like to see how : it must be by virtue of that reality wh produces our 
 idea of cause in respect to phna ; by virtue of that necessity, of wh the 
 phenomenal necessity [cause and effect] is the result and type. 
 
 We are made to enjoy, and therefore to have passion, in order that we 
 may have life. This is the meaning of our love, our longing and passion 
 for happiness. Had we not this, there wd be no life, for life is passion 
 controlled. ;Is not this the secret of humanity ; the wlnj we are tempted, 
 and must be ? ' The ways of God to man ' flash upon me. Is it not 
 beautiful ; this passion or tendency, wh in conscious Beings is desire or
 
 461 
 
 love [and existing, in truth, only in such beings, is ever and only sue)) 
 desire or love], is that wh is given to them wherewith to obtain life, 
 eternal life. The passion in spirits is that force wh will be life in 
 them, if they will, by God acting in them ; if they will not, then are 
 they dead. Now, even the relation of the created spirits to God, and 
 the connection of their ' existence ' with their life or holiness, become 
 plainer. Is not the created spirit, as it were, a channel through wh 
 God acts ; a portion of Himself ? I shudder at the words, yet how car 
 I say otherwise ? I maintain at once that God is all in all, and that 
 man is an individual, moral, responsible being. But it will be 
 clearer. 
 
 Thus I see, temptation is not so strictly to sin : nature does not tempt 
 us to sin, but it produces in us passion, wh, if we rightly control it, is 
 our life ; if we do not, it is death : but nature is ever holy. Sin is not 
 in the thing done, but in the refusal to control our passion ; the refusal 
 of God, in fact. 
 
 Now how beautifully I see the universe, the life that it is : all the 
 passion is conscious desire or love, all is spiritual life or death, but per- 
 ceived by us as ' phenomena :' yet even so exactly re-presenting our 
 own spiritual life and death. It is the same thing, different though it 
 seem. And may not sin, thus, and felt evil and temptation, exist in 
 all ? No real evil is it, but phenomenal evil ; spirits living and refusing 
 to live ; or only here do spirits refuse to live ? What then are the evil 
 angels ? Are they quite evil, yet existing ? 
 
 The great wrong seeing is our seeing sin desirable and right unde- 
 sirable ; the great ' theory ' is our trying to make sin good ; the great in- 
 terpretation is our seeing sin to be hateful and right lovely. Further, 
 sin looks good to us in itself, but is seen evil when seen in its relations. 
 Now, hero is an analogy to what I have seen respecting physical beauty 
 and good how that wh is ugly to us is so only because it is not seen 
 in its relations, not seen largely enough ; and we rise to see that that 
 wh we first saw as beautiful is not truly so, but only the whole : only 
 that wh takes in all relations and rises up to the moral fact. 
 
 In respect to final causes, in physiology, &c., we must invert our 
 teaching, and instead of saying, this is so because its being so is so use- 
 ful and advantageous, we must say ; ' this is necessary ; that is, it is 
 right [the Tightness and the necessity being one], and therefore how 
 good it is : good because it is right ; it exists for the Tightness of it, 
 but being right, behold how good, how exactly as it shd be.' Thus our 
 Science would teach ever a moral lesson : do right, and the result 
 shall be perfect good. As it is, its lesson is not only un-moral, if it 
 were fairly taught it would be immoral ; being ' act arbitrarily and any 
 how, so as to obtain your ends.' Science perverts the moral sense ; 
 makes the end the object, instils insidiously and under the guise of re- 
 ligion a fatal poison. The secret lies in seeing that necessity is moral 
 Tightness. That revelation sheds an unutterable glory over the uni- 
 verse, and makes Science and piety one. Righteousness and truth have 
 kissed each other. AVe no longer need to manage and contrive lest 
 Science affront religion ; they are wedded, and have now a mutual 
 honor and mutual interest : each going his or her own way they walk 
 together. For, in truth, Science and religion are polar : hence their 
 temporary hostility, their final union, as ever with polars.
 
 462 
 
 I make one the two ideas that we only know good, &c., by its oppo- 
 site, and that all is perfectly good. Both are perfectly true, because we 
 perceive some good as evil [and indeed learn to see ever more evil be- 
 cause capable of a larger good]. The doctrine was monstrous that there 
 was real evil for us to learn good and beauty by. 
 
 Science by her false idea of real matter, and therefore of real or effi- 
 cient causes, has driven God's act up into a corner, and pious men cling 
 to it in a few exceptional cases, there apparently in vain. It is like 
 damming up water into an enclosed space : you can get it up into a 
 corner and enclose it there, but you cannot annihilate it. It is as if 
 the effort to annihilate it altogether caused it to break the dam and 
 again to overflow the whole. Scientific men have driven the idea of 
 God into a corner, but in attempting to exclude it altogether, the 
 barrier breaks, and it again overflows all nature. 
 
 Is it thus by right action spiritual life is produced [as it were, the 
 phenomenal made spiritual] ? Therefore in those thus having spiritual 
 life there is a continued existence apart from the phenomenal : but in 
 those who have not this spiritual life, is there no existence apart from 
 the phn ? As if the conscious existence (wh is the only real existence) 
 of the being were inseparable from passion in it ; wh may be either 
 spiritual or phenomenal life, but must be one or the other ; our spiritual 
 existence involving the existence of passion [or action on us], i. e. of 
 life ; so that if we do not obtain spiritual life existence ceases with 
 phenomenal life. 
 
 God is the doer of nature ; man is the lawgiver of the phn. It must 
 be that the laws are from man and have sole relation to him, for they 
 can exist only in time ; the term is unmeaning if there be no succession, 
 ..they are phenomenal only, .. as the phn, they spring from the passion 
 in man. 
 
 As the three-foldness in unity, involving two, or succession in the 
 very fact of oneness, is an exhibition to us of the fact of eternity, or 
 the non-reality of time ; so is it not, in some way, God's eternity or in- 
 finitude that causes Him to be to us Triune ? For may we consider 
 this to be a phenomenal representation ; as the Bible ever and rightly 
 speaks phenomenally. 
 
 How sad is this view of evil : that it is ' essentially a narrow finite 
 thing, thrown into remotest obscurity by any comprehensive view of 
 the infinite.' Alas, what fatal indifference, yet what miserable consola- 
 tion: evil is ' real ;' yet it is not much; no need to make account of 
 that ! Alas for the poor sufferer whose longing ear is mocked by such 
 words ; ten thousand times alas for the poor sinner who utters them. I 
 thank Thee, oh God, that Thy deed and Thy word alike teach me a 
 different lesson : that evil is not, but that all is absolute and perfect 
 good, being all Thy act : yet that sin is awful, being refusal of Thee. 
 Therefore awful, .. hateful, .. exceeding sinful, and beyond expression 
 full of shame and horror, because it is that when Thou offerest Thyself 
 man will not have Thee. Are not the absolute Good, the absolute evil 
 of sin ; the unsullied right, the incalculable wrong, thus made one ? In 
 sin, as it were, the passion runs on, and is not turned into nutrition by 
 limit [or moral control]. And see the nutrition is the ' character ;' the 
 animal is the union of the passion, and itself resisted the opposite. 
 Our ' passions ' are as the chemicity ; the result of self-control is as the
 
 463 
 
 vegetable ; then there is the union of the passion, or instinct, with the 
 resisted passion. Do we not see it in ' regulated indulgence ' ? This is 
 the idea of the animal, in relation to moral life ; it produces function 
 in an organization. 
 
 Here is again an unification. The spiritual life in us, the accumula- 
 tion of power or tendency, arising from our control of passion, is God's 
 act in us ; and our acting by our will, i. e. permitting these tendencies 
 to come into operation and produce so a function, is God acting in us 
 according to our will. Our phenomenal life presents an exact image of 
 it. But this is not complete. When the spiritual life is attained by 
 control of passion, it may be thus ; but what is the power by wh the 
 
 Cion is first controlled the beginning ? For when once life exists 
 uch control, God's act in us may operate according to our will in the 
 control of passion ; i. e. in producing more life. This also is seen in 
 the phn : life is its image. But I do not see the first ; the origin of the 
 spiritual life. Cannot this also be known ? May it not be first by ex- 
 ternal agencies ? 
 
 God's act in us is those powers wh we employ : the natural passion 
 wh by control becomes our spiritual life is God's act. There is an unifi- 
 cation here, but it needs to be more distinct. See the three stages : 
 (1) That we act by our own powers. (2) That it is God's act in us, ac- 
 cording to our will. (3) That God acts in us in these ' natural powers' 
 wh are His act. The ' power ' is of God. Even as in our bodily functions 
 it is God that acts in us. We will, or seem to will, but the ' power' is 
 the affinities of our bodies wh are God's act. Thus the highest spirit- 
 ualism and simplest common sense are one : no mysticism, or neglect of 
 common means comes from seeing that ordinary means, natural powers, 
 are God's act : yet an infinite elevation. Try now and see how it is God 
 worketh in us to will ; and how first ? 
 
 As phenomenal life originates from without, a form of the universal 
 life ; so surely our spiritual life is one with the universal spiritual life, 
 and originates in us from without. This is the lesson of nature. God's 
 act begins, originates 'our life, as the life or vital resistance of the germ, 
 the first vital resistance or organic life, is the same life that was, and is, 
 external. So our spiritual life originates from God's act : He worketh 
 in us to will, but it is by his ' ordinary' action. We raise the ordinary 
 so high that the extraordinary is lost in it. If we could really feel it 
 what glory would absorb and swallow up all pettiness. But it is at 
 first just as when we say : God creates us as He created Adam really 
 and directly, ' people think we say : ' God no more created Adam than 
 He creates you.' How must we emancipate ourselves from this 
 slavery ? 
 
 The spirit should limit passion, making it thus become the polar op- 
 posite. It is contrary to the spirit's ' nature ' that its passion shd be 
 uncontrolled. God's act in the spirit wh is its ' nature ' limits or con- 
 trols passion. [Is not our sense of right our consciousness of God's act 
 within us ?] The idea of the animal is ' regulated passion ;' the very idea 
 of Tightness. The animal life thus represents God's act ; that is, the 
 whole, or nature. Regulated passion is above all the idea of man, and 
 thus man is the type and continent of the universe. And he ' destroys 
 himself ' by refusal to regulate his passion ; his self, his being, is this 
 regulated passion.
 
 464 
 
 Do I not see here the mystery of being ? This will of ours is our 
 Being, derived from God ; being God's act. God's act, I have seen, is 
 the being or existence of spirits. Surely the substratum is simply the 
 limit, the resistance. In physical Science this is the conception : we 
 want no substratum, but the resistance. That is the idea of the sub- 
 stratum, or substance ; a resistance wh ' converts force.' So do we 
 come to the conception of the being as the will, and that God's act. I 
 think I am arriving here at a ' nutritive' view, wh may be unified with 
 the instinctive, and give me the truth. And see ; this < nutritive ' view 
 arises by limit ; it is the ' suppression ' of the other ; and it causes the 
 tendency for the other to re-appear in the ' organization ' thus effected. 
 It is exactly a nutritive view ; polarly opposite to former, and produc- 
 ing functional power. 
 
 Do not the laws of thought appear beautifully here [one also with 
 the mathematical process wh has proved itself so true to nature] ? Surely 
 it puts an end thus to disputes, heartburnings, accusations of folly and 
 falsehood. The thing is known : opposite thinking is the necessary 
 means of arriving at truth ; and not to be suppressed, but united. Nay, 
 further, the instinctive or superficial view, wh it is necessary to oppose 
 or suppress for the sake of nutrition, is to be opposed only for sake of 
 such nutrition ; not as wrong, but as partial ; and with a constant view 
 to its being re-embraced in the bipolar interpretation. For all instincts 
 are right : the instinctive view [ the length ? ] can never be perma- 
 nently suppressed ; nothing will be annihilated : it must be embraced 
 and absorbed for peace. This will not make men less earnest in pursuit 
 of truth, but more so, and more believing ; and both more earnest and 
 more loving in opposing error. "Will give us united labor for a common 
 object, instead of quarrelling : each one doing at his best his own work, 
 but with a loving appreciation of, and a willing subordination to, his 
 neighbours. When this law of the mental life is seen the 3-fold 
 process, two opposites and an union of both in all our thinking, 
 then will the war between religion and all forms of Science be finally 
 healed. 
 
 Religion represents the instinct ; Science the nutrition. Not only 
 will these be made one, but even when they seem opposed there will no 
 longer be enmity ; it will be seen that this is only the road to a more 
 perfect union. And I think the belief in a revelation and all the most 
 decidedly Christian doctrines, as depravity, atonement, may be clearly 
 shown to be truly instinctive, and as such necessarily to re-appear in the 
 true development. Christianity, of course, was not to alter this men- 
 tal life ; and surely Christ's sacrifice shall avail for those who 
 have most opposed in honesty of heart the ' instinctive ' view of His 
 being and work. 
 
 Our feeling of dislike or wrongness in respect to opinion, is only the 
 limit or resistance wh is nature's universal means of producing nutri- 
 tion. It is not that the things are bad ; this is only the conscious Unit. 
 Nature suppresses passion by its polar opposite, but she does it lovingly, 
 and in order that it may re-appear in higher form ; and so shall we 
 when we see that this feeling of wrongness or badness in, or aversion to 
 any natural ' passion ' whatever is only the limit conscious to us : only 
 what nature feels for chemistry, &c. e. g. when she produces organic 
 life ; we shall lose the badness of the feeling, and work in all
 
 465 
 
 ways better. As nature developes, so will human nature. 
 
 So in childhood ; children quarrel at first, but afterwards grow up 
 in mutual help ; at the same time the oppositeness continuing. As I 
 have said, the baby knocks down the child's tower at first to his anger ; 
 but afterwards the brother builds the tower for baby to knock down. 
 The same thing is done, and Letter done ; but in how different a spirit ; 
 the love comes from the quarrelling. 
 
 In nature, ingenuity seems to be the cause of the Tightness ; in truth, 
 tightness produces the 'phenomenal' ingenuity. Ingenuity is the 
 phn ; Tightness the cause, so also in the work of Genius. 
 
 Here is the paradox again : our "Will is our act, and yet also God's 
 act : then if it be at once our act and God's act, are not God and our- 
 selves one ? How is this to be seen, our moral personality and yet our 
 will God's act in us ? I say our will is God's act, for only right will is 
 will at all : but then what is our refusing God's act not ' willing ' : is 
 not this our act at all ; is it not our will, our choice ? The idea of 
 Sin will not come distinctly ; there must be the wrong act surely, or 
 wrong will ; or can we separate ' choice ' from will ? Can we say we 
 choose, prefer or love ; and that as we choos.e or love so God acts in us 
 to will or do ? Then the Bible says to us, Do you choose or love the 
 right ; for if you do, God's act in you will be your will, and your per- 
 formance of the good. Then man's part is the loving ? This I think 
 may be a step ; our will, our act, is God's act in us : our ' love ' is our 
 part ; our love separated from our will. Then Sin is not loving God or 
 right. Is the spirit .. love; Love the source of life, of spiritual life, 
 as it is of all phenomenal ? And this is good also here ; the fact of 
 love is spiritual life ; love the being or fact of spirit : for only God and 
 right can be loved ; nothing else is. To love or not to love, is to be or 
 not to be ; or, wh is the same thing, to be holy or unholy. When Paul 
 says, ' Work, for it is God that worketh in you ', how plainly he says 
 that these natural powers of ours are God's act. And how we may know 
 that we shall not fail : these puny powers of ours are God's infinitude ; 
 only by refusing God's act can we fail. Better than special aid and 
 help, here is constant, never varying, absolute ; it is only for us to love, 
 to be. 
 
 The essential idea of a created Being appears to be that of a ' limit ' 
 a limit viz. to God's act. 
 
 I have conceived that in the ' eternal world ' all will be spiritual to 
 us : .-. it wd not appear that God's act necessarily becomes a phn to us 
 in its present sense. Then if so, why are now the phna ? Here I ap- 
 proach to see the true reality of matter ? Are we not in relation to 
 passion in other spirits wh is the substratum as it were of the phna, by 
 means of wh we perceive the phna affecting us ; is it not this, causes us to 
 perceive the material world ? I think this may be : that wh is God's di- 
 rect act on or in us is the moral ; and when all is God's direct act all is 
 moral, or spiritual. Thus we are truly placed in a phenomenal world ; 
 that wh causes us to perceive the universe being not God's act directly, 
 but passion in other spirits. 
 
 The view of evil as nutrition favors the idea that evil will continue 
 to exist, but not individual evils ; nor evils in the same sense. So long as 
 life lasts there must be nutritive wrong arrangements, but life progresses 
 [Miscellanea, 9. See pp. 230 238.
 
 466 
 
 and developes, becomes higher ; the nutrition becomes of higher grade ; 
 and evils wh formerly existed exist no longer ; having produced their 
 function wh is itself a higher nutrition. But when evil ' ceases we 
 shall cease to advance, as there is no life when there is no vitally wrong 
 arrangement. 
 
 God does not let the smallest atom be placed in opposition to its affi- 
 nities or tendencies but to effect a higher function ; not one is allowed 
 to suffer but for a vastly higher end. And so with man not one pang 
 is inflicted upon him, not one felicity withheld, one tendency restrained, 
 but for the purpose of nutrition and subservience to a function. We 
 must liberate ourselves from the thraldom of thinking that we are the 
 object of creation [i. e. phenomenally considered]. We are part of it; 
 elements forming part of the universal life ; we must be content to bear 
 our share of nutrition, and offer up ourselves willing instruments in the 
 production of the function ; yield gladly our bodies to suffering, our 
 hearts to sorrow, our desires to disappointment ; bear our part in the 
 great life, ennobling and exalting it by willing subservience. 
 
 In life there is no particle that has not at last its tendencies and affi- 
 nities fully gratified, carried completely out. But by the violence done 
 to them, the restraint imposed upon them, it is made to form part of an 
 organism ; and by obeying its affinities, by carrying out its tendencies, 
 it effects the function. So, surely, in respect to the nutrition effected by 
 violence done to human affections, restraint on human tendencies, all 
 shall come right at last. 
 
 With regard to the supposed loss of seeing Nature to be phenomenal 
 only, and not real, observe : the phn never was anything more than a 
 phn, and cannot possibly be made anything less. It will still feed and 
 clothe us, show us beauty, afford all sensuous delight ; nay more, it will 
 still perform its highest object, viz. teach us what is the reality yea, 
 this true use we can derive from it only when we know it to be pheno- 
 menal. 
 
 The idea of inflammation as increased ' vital ' action is truly a phe- 
 nomenal view effect for cause. 
 
 What is the true meaning of the connection that exists between the 
 bodily form and the mental character and moral agency ? How won- 
 derful it is that all these ugly things, serpents and loathsome animals, 
 shd be the necessary result of God's act on us, perceived as motion in 
 least resistance. The evil psychical facts of Nature, as of lower animals, 
 are also so produced. Surely this is not due to man's depravity ; [there 
 was a serpent in Eden.] It is a marvel when we consider what motion 
 in least resistance is ; and what are among its phna. The solution 
 doubtless is that the evil in these things is solely from our relation, and 
 that this relation to us is a good. 
 
 The universe disowns the sinner ; it has no place for passion uncon- 
 trolled. Every portion of God's wide dominion says to him 'Depart; 
 you are not of us, we have nothing that is not contrary to you and we 
 refuse your presence.' Nowhere but in farthest hell can the sinner find 
 a home. 
 
 Does not science tend in favor of the non-existence hereafter of the 
 wicked ? If no spiritual life, what is there to exist ? 
 
 How good is Emerson's remark [Swedenborg] about the impertinence 
 of introducing foreign images for sacred purposes. Of course, familiar
 
 467 
 
 objects of old -were used for religious illustration in order to teach us to 
 do the same. That is the reality of the Bible, wh we sacrifice to the 
 phn. The 'cause' or reality is the use of familiar objects (generally) 
 for sacred thoughts ; the result or phn is the use of the particular object. 
 We stick to the phn and use the same object, instead of learning from 
 the phn the reality and acting it ; thereby losing not only fresh advantage, 
 but even the possibility of entering into or understanding the old : for 
 that meant then what the familiar object wd mean to us, and only the 
 familiar object could mean. God gives us an instance of how familiar 
 objects are sacred ; and we instead regard these [to us unfamiliar] ob- 
 jects as the only sacred, and the familiar as having no sacredness. Thus 
 we take the sacredness from Nature by the very means that were de- 
 signed to teach us how to consecrate her. We take the phenomenal 
 view of the Bible, and then we charge our errors upon it : as if we were 
 to charge Nature with the errors of our Science. Is it not so also with 
 regard to Jewish history ? that is written not as exceptional but as ty- 
 pical ; given as an example of all history. This was familiar history to 
 the Jews, their own history. We can only understand it by seeing ours 
 as sacred. What construction is rightly to be placed on the miraculous 
 passages of Jewish history and the special Divine providences ? I think 
 here we have also a phenomenal view. 
 
 The Bible is not worthj of God while misunderstood ; even as Nature 
 is not while misunderstood ; but we persist in referring both to God, 
 even tho' misunderstanding them and we do wisely. If we understood 
 Nature or the Bible at first, how could we be raised by them ? It is 
 necessary that they be misunderstood first and afterwards interpreted, 
 in order to elevate us and teach us that wh we could not otherwise know. 
 And this has been the fact. Scriptural knowledge and scientific know- 
 ledge have had parallel development. In particular, may we not thus 
 interpret the ' evil ' things done by command of God ? Does not the 
 fact that evil [not being moral evil] is phenomenally evil only, or nu- 
 trition, help towards that ? 
 
 Those who deny the divinity of the Bible are parallel to the atheists 
 who deny the divinity of Nature. For atheists do not assert there is no 
 God, but only that He has nothing to do with Nature. And the reasons 
 have a parallelism. Atheists may see that Nature is not such as a Di- 
 vine Being must have made, &c., wh in the present state of Science I 
 think is a just argument tho' a false conclusion. Even so in respect to 
 the Bible in our present view of it. It is a great error for us to try to 
 maintain the worthy divinity of our interpretation of scripture, and it 
 sets us wrong. The Bible is divine, as Nature ; but we do not under- 
 stand either. The moral argument (internal evidence) for the Bible as- 
 sumes a new force to me : that is really an entire universe the question 
 ' Did God create it ? ' rests upon its own evidence alone. 
 
 We (i. e. our minds and bodies, all but our spirits), are parts of Na- 
 ture and share her perfection. To a man who thus acts with Nature, 
 failure is not nor can be. He does not succeed in life : his life is suc- 
 cess. Even as Nature is not moral, because it is morality. Success 
 cannot have success, even as morality cannot have a moral. Success is 
 yoked to his steps and cannot leave him ; nothing can bring to him other 
 than constant good. Nothing shd be able to disturb such a man's equa- 
 nimity, for all wrongness and loss are nutritive, the means of higher
 
 468 
 
 ends. Whatever happens, my Life has been and is : Nature has accom- 
 plished her ends, God has accomplished His ; and therein I mine. My 
 will is done because and while it is one with The Will expressed in the 
 Act. This is success, to find, in all events, my Life. It lies not in the 
 result but in the deed. Life ever succeeds and must succeed. It laughs 
 to scorn opposition, failure, loss, for these are not her contraries but her 
 very being : they are the means of her progress, the willing instruments 
 of her achievements. But that this may be true for us, it needs that 
 we have life ; and sin is death. To sin is to sacrifice and cast away 
 but for God's grace, for ever) this joy, this triumph. Sin has no part 
 in life, nor he that sinneth. It is the right deed only that succeeds ; 
 wrong is death, despair, and horror, in itself, not in its results. Tremble, 
 as at the thought of a sudden precipice beneath your feet, at the first 
 thought of sin, and thank God that you have escaped. Yea, at thoughts 
 of the most doubtful wrong for the most certain gain ' what shall it 
 profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own spirit ? ' 
 Granted that the world is his : but if he be not ? There is no earthly 
 event that shd have power to make a man unhappy. But this is not 
 said of sin. He who sins is not above grief but below it, and should 
 thank God that he may rise thro' grief again to holiness. 
 
 It is putting ourselves in the centre that puts us so wrong : the true 
 view is to see ourselves as a very small part of the reality. To see the 
 phn to be subjective makes us less, not more. It removes all that ap- 
 pearance of direct relation and subservience to ourselves : it humbles us. 
 How different things are from what they seem ! when first we say Na- 
 ture is the result of a subjective passion, we seem to be exalting our- 
 selves; we are in truth humbling ourselves. Astronomy shows it. 
 
 It is remarkable also that the seeing matter to be unreal is the very 
 thing wh gives the most powerful arguments for the necessity of an exact 
 observation of material phna. It is imperative that we shd do this in 
 order that we may learn the reality, wh so nearly concerns us. Just as 
 in astronomy the phenomenal motions become doubly interesting and 
 more imperatively demand study when we know that they reveal to us 
 the earth's motion. As mere external facts the phna are simply matters 
 of curiosity wh we may study or not as we feel disposed ; but as re- 
 vealers of a cause wh produces in us such a subjective passion they are 
 all-important to us ; their study can be considered optional only by a 
 fool. There is this difference also : if the phn be real, we can, as it 
 were, be influenced by it or not at our own discretion ; we use it, and 
 can, if we like, let it alone. But if it be merely the evidence of a cause 
 acting upon us, our relation to this cause is absolute ; we are influenced 
 by it whether we will or no : it must be of interest to us to know what 
 is this power, that, constantly acting on us, constitutes our very life. 
 
 Are there not three classes of men corresponding with the three forms 
 of mental life 
 
 Doers. Knowers. Lovers or Feelers. 
 
 [Are the artists, musicians, and poets, the Lovers ?] 
 
 Do not these correspond with the three bodily constitutions ? 
 
 Muscular. Glandular. Nervous. 
 
 Are these the three temperaments ; with admixtures making up seven,
 
 469 
 
 as in colors of spectrum ? so three colors correspond with the three sys- 
 tems of mental and bodily life ? this relation of the three forms of mental 
 life to the other triplets is instructive. Thus, length, breadth and depth. 
 As we say length ' of view, ' depth ' of feeling. Then all the three in 
 each; as, 'far-seeing' mind, 'broad' view, 'profound' conception, and 
 so on. But can the rectangular relations be traced in the mental 
 triplet, or any light be thrown on the three colors by constructive or 
 perceptive, intellective, and emotional ? How far is yellow intellective ? 
 
 Is not the word to ' know ' as wonderful in its meaning as ' compre- 
 hend ' or ' understand ' ? is it not con-nasco, to be born or grow 
 together^? 
 
 Children form an emotional ' organization ' ; and thus their death, wh 
 is itself but a mere physical change, produces a new and emotional 
 function. 
 
 That Nature is subjective, while it does give a reason for its- unity and 
 shows that we give its laws, yet is no reason for our not studying her, 
 or for supposing that we can know anything about her a priori ; but just 
 the reverse. It is absurd to argue about the ' nature of things ' and 
 how creation must be. There is no basis for any such talk ; there are 
 no ' things ' to have a nature. The phna are such as the act wh produces 
 the passion in us ; and what can we know a priori about that ? We can 
 only learn it by finding out what the phn is. The making the phn de- 
 pendent on us affords the demonstration of the necessity of its objective 
 study. Indeed the study of phna is truly a subjective study ; it does 
 away with the opposition of objective and subjective by an unification. 
 I want to study the laws and being of my own mind. Then study the 
 phna ; there they are and there alone. Science as phenomenal is sub- 
 jective ; it is only as causal that it is truly objective. When the phn 
 is seen to be subjective, we ask of the reality wh is not so. Well seen 
 in Nature teaching motion in least resistance ; wh is purely subjective ; 
 Then also it is true that every man who says anything worth hearing 
 necessarily speaks of himself. 
 
 The only proof of the truth of an interpretation is that it is one, that 
 it does interpret the phna, i. e. puts them into the simplest and most na- 
 tural relations : it is a mistake to think of any other proof. 
 
 Evil is not real evil ; but its appearing evil answers another and a 
 higher end, servivg as a moral discipline. The physical and mental evil, 
 pain and sorrow, not only constitutes the nutrition of our < human ' life, 
 and affords the conditions for the highest functions of the physical and 
 mental man, but it operates upon the destinies and welfare of the spirit, 
 teaches moral lessons, warns from sin, subdues to penitence, strengthens 
 to virtue. This is the true meaning, the only meaning not abhorrent, of 
 evil being necessary for good ; or that we can only know good by evil. 
 Not that anything in Nature is really evil, in any sense, but that our 
 special relation makes some things appear evil. To my eyes it lends a 
 new lustre to creation, that good thus appears evil to us for beneficial 
 ends ; that we perceive good as evil for our good, because it is necessary 
 for us. Perhaps this is the most wonderful instance of Divine wisdom. 
 As we perceive a solar system vh wd be intensely ugly if it were as we 
 perceived it, so we perceive things wh wd be intensely evil if they were 
 as we perceive them. But that which we perceive cannot really be, be- 
 cause we cannot perceive that which really is, but only its effect upon
 
 470 
 
 ourselves. It in the effect upon ourselves that all the ugliness and evil 
 lie. 
 
 asks, ' But then must not that wh we perceive he the same as 
 
 that wh produces the effect in us ? ' Yes certainly the same ; the phn 
 corresponds with the reality and by study will reveal it to us. It is 
 the same, ' hut oh, how different.' The apparent motions of the sun 
 are the same as, corresponding with and accurately revealing, the mo- 
 tions of the earth ; hut the former are false, the latter true ; the former 
 wd he ugly, the latter perfect in heauty. So these evils are the same 
 as the reality wh produces them, and if we study them they will reveal 
 to us this reality. But then they are evil, the reality perfect in good- 
 ness. This is the problem we have to solve ; to translate evil into good ; 
 then the phn has done its work, has revealed to us the reality. As in 
 Science it is to translate error into truth. This is the task of the ' In- 
 terpreter of Nature ' to translate ugliness into heauty, error into truth, 
 evil into good. 
 
 I see a great living humanity, built up of human hearts, an organiza- 
 tion effected by such restraint to passion, resistance to love. And wil- 
 lingly borne. 
 
 says, ' All poets vibrate between inspiration and aspiration.' 
 
 This is good : it is nutrition producing function and function nutrition. 
 The aspiration, the learning, produces nutrition ; this nutrition at length 
 resolves itself in the function : the function being at once a new nutri- 
 tion and causing more vigorous nutrition in its own organ. This is just 
 how Science vibrates from interpretation to observation and again from 
 observation to interpretation [or from theory to interpretation]. This 
 is the development, the advance of life. But it is only because the in- 
 spiration, the interpretation, the function, fails and is felt to fail, that 
 the vibration takes place. Here is the blessing of inability to express ; 
 it makes our life ; it is that discontent wh causes new mental nutrition. 
 If power to express were perfect, where wd be the aspiration ? This were 
 to be inorganic and instinctive instead of living and rational. The in- 
 ability to express (or to interpret) only shows that the nutrition is not 
 perfect, that the organization is to be higher. 
 
 I think I may aid the reception of my views (so far as they deserve 
 to be received) by taking pains to point out to a large, and one of the 
 best, class of men that what I say really only embodies their own views, 
 tho' beginning by apparently opposing ; that I enable them to say fully 
 and consistently what now they say partially ; in short, that I only 
 break the bonds laid on them by a false Science. I must show that 
 what I overthrow is that to wh they can attach no value, and that by 
 doing so I affirm in a fuller sense the truths for the sake of wh they 
 live. I know my demolitions go against them at first because they have 
 contrived an artificial system to reconcile the false with the true ; and 
 to overthrow the false by breaking up the system seems at first to 
 threaten the true. But they will see that it is not so ; e. g. with re- 
 spect to eternal life and death. 
 
 The wrong use of analogy is when an unknown thing is represented 
 to be, or to be like, a known : as when the brain is said to be like the 
 galvanic pile, nervous force like electricity, &c. The right use is when, 
 a thing being known (or the true nature of it discovered) it is seen to 
 be the same with another thing, or many others to embody the same
 
 471 
 
 essential fact in another form : as when life, when understood, is seen 
 to be like a pendulum's motion, &c. These two modes of usin ganalogy 
 are opposite to each other ; the former is an attempt to anticipate, the 
 latter is a revelation ; the former seeks to dispense with accurate exam- 
 ination of the facts, the latter results from such examination. The for- 
 mer is theory (and often bad theory), the latter is interpretation. It is 
 because there has been so much of the former that the just use of ana- 
 logy is regarded with suspicion, but it must be put in its right place 
 again and distinguished from the counterfeit ; being indeed the very 
 soul and essence of science. Another distinction between the two lies 
 in this also, viz., that in the false analogy when an unknown thing is 
 said to be like another thing, the analogy is referred to that which is 
 special the peculiar condition instead of that wh is universal : it is 
 doubly abused. For all things are one thing under many forms : the 
 true use of analogy is to recognize the one, omitting the individual 
 forms ; false analogy, not seeing the essential one, tries to make a re- 
 semblance of forms. 
 
 The physiology of the ear is to be found in the heavens and all around 
 us in the earth. This is the great error people have, that a thing can 
 be understood by looking at it alone always we must learn it by some- 
 thing else. If we want to open a door we must have a key. 
 
 Dec., 1856. Hegel's Subjective Philosophy: p. 16. 'That the 'me' 
 is but the sum of the ideas, not a Being.' What the ' ago ' then ? 
 Again : the ' me ' is not a thing, as horse, or cart are. Here is a clear 
 source of confusion enough ; how odd, calling the phenomenon substance ; 
 the ' I ' idea. Surely an entire inversion. The reality of the physical 
 is the great stumbling block (p. 17) : the curse of all the philosophical 
 ' theory ' is the attempt to account for a real matter affecting the ' me.' 
 How simple and self-evident is the spiritual act on us causing us to per- 
 ceive the phn : it demands no suppositions but of what we know well does 
 constantly take place ; no chimeras. Thus it is, again, that we ought 
 to study the universe as a whole : it is one ' the phenomenon. ' The 
 idea of it as external to us a thing sets us on dividing it, and study- 
 ing it as many ; and with this good, that only thus do we learn the 
 unity ; the unity is only learnt from the variety, as the variety flows 
 from the unity : ever we learn causes from effects. (P. 22.) Hegel's 
 idea of absolute coexistence of general, particular, and individual, is 
 the threefold-ness: we may call it 'force, resistance, result,' it is the 
 same thing in the psychical. 
 
 It is very interesting to note in such works [as Hegel's] the same 
 ' life ' as in the physical world, the source, in truth, of the physical 
 world, reveale'd to us by it : e. g., 1st the dialectic force of an idea by 
 wh it limits itself? and suggests, or becomes, its opposite. Here the 
 fundamental conception of passion as vibration ; and again the 3-foldness 
 of thought [page 28]. Identity of cause and effect, A is B : in fact, 
 the oneness of the universe involved in intuition of the universal cause. 
 It is .-. one act, because cause and effect are one or identical. This is 
 worth thinking of. That idea of a ' dialectic force ' in an idea also 
 is excellent : it is simply that thought or psychical passion, as motion or 
 physical, never ceases. Thus the psychical universe ' developes,' just as 
 the physical, or rather the physical is phn produced by the psychical. 
 God' act (eternal) on us is psychical passion not ending. Ideas by 
 [Hegel, 1.
 
 472 
 
 dialectic force become judgments : is it not by twice turning by limit it 
 forms an one ; the judgment being the 'thing,' or the 3-fold unity ? 
 So are all mental ' things ' judgments, and .-. the 3-foldness of all'phy- 
 sical things ; in psychical life ever 3 vibrations at right angles, as in 
 physical. 
 
 Hegel certainly gives [p. 29] exactly the development : each idea first 
 its opposite polar (from limit), then that a third, ' better defined,' &c. 
 In fact, this third is the union of the two, or depth, or development ; 
 more true because a polar union of opposites. In fact, a judgment is 
 idea, its opposite, and a polar union ; making opposites one. Hegel is 
 right : here is the source of the physical world. 
 
 Is not the ' general idea ' [p. 43] as the soul of things, like what I 
 affirm the physical and psychal universe corresponding ? And is not this 
 psychical universe, in truth, that psychical passion wh I affirm to be the 
 cause of, or to become, the physical universe'? And this not the psy- 
 chical passion wh we ordinarily mean as thought and wh results from 
 the polar union of this psychical and physical, again from limit. The 
 psychical passion is that, in itself unconscious, passion wh is only per- 
 ceived as the physical universe, or phn. Xow, from union of this with 
 the physical comes the mental life. Our study of nature is exactly the 
 bringing these two into union. Thus it is that knowing is making one 
 "with ourselves ; uniting the phn with our internal and psychical passion. 
 Thus also it is that we give the laws to nature, and our 'understanding' 
 her is seeing in her our own life. 
 
 See the effect of the limit : first producing the opposite polar, then 
 causing the union of the two polars. Yet both come under the one ex- 
 presssion that at, or by virtue of, the ' limit ' the two polars become 
 one. Does the 'mental life ' arise in man as the limit the end of the 
 physical ? 
 
 [Page 43] The perversion of view is curious: 1st the absolute or 
 eternal is held to be the ideal ; the particular or phenomenal is held to 
 be the actual : the actual existence is the individuality in time and 
 space : but the absolute reality comes to be the ' abstract idea.' So this 
 philosophy comes to be so abstract and repulsive to common sense : God 
 and all the eternal is the ' idea.' The partial Tightness of it makes the 
 wrongness : the real existence of matter it is that vitiates the whole. 
 But see that ' matter ' is phenomenal only, or passion in us, and the 
 real or actual is the spiritual or eternal, acting on us, and all is right. 
 The external is the actual ; the phenomenal the idea. 
 
 It is very strange, but exceeding instructive, that the belief in re- 
 ality of matter or that ' things ' are ' realization ' is the source of the 
 excessive ideality, and, in a word, of the wrongness, of 'the German 
 philosophy ; making them put the ideal above the real. If they saw 
 that the material or the phenomenal flows from the psychical it would 
 be right. They would see then that the real is the spiritual. This 
 . is, indeed, their own doctrine, if they could see it ; the me becoming 
 the 'not-me' is the subjective passion becoming objective, or the phn, 
 by limit : an eternal act, an infinite succession of phenomena ; it is 
 plain enough. Indeed, they have well observed and represented the 
 facts of the mental life. They are good, as other observers, only this 
 unfortunate illusion puts them wrong. 
 
 [Page 92.] Very interesting is the old logic, 'never its own contrary;'
 
 473 
 
 and Hegel's logic, ' a thing is at once that wh it is and the contrary 
 of that wh it is.' But Hegel did not see the limit, and the becoming 
 the polar opposite because not ceasing ; not going to the root, like New- 
 ton. Are not Kant's polar opposites, wh he does not attempt to unite, 
 like our paradoxes now, forgetting the ' limit ?' It is tJod that we hu- 
 miliate when we speak of the weakness and boundaries of our reason. 
 It is His act that we suppose to cease and to be so small. If His act 
 be eternal, then is our passion unceasing, and must go on, ever and for 
 ever into polar opposites and unions of them. 
 
 I believe Newton must have got that idea of a limit from nature, or 
 inductively ; I doubt if it is to be obtained a priori. It is too sub- 
 jective itself to be arrived at otherwise than by study of our own pas- 
 sion, i. e. of phna : a priori reasoning takes us too directly and at once 
 to things out of ourselves ; to the infinite and unlimited. It is only 
 from the study of the passion within us the phna, or physical world 
 that it can be seen. Thus it is truly a fruit of the Baconian, or ex- 
 perimental Science. And how good is that word ' experimental ' as ap- 
 plied to the study of nature. It is derived from ' experience,' i. e. 
 from the passion wh is in us. No one will deny that experience is 
 subjective or in us; and therefore experiment also ; and experimental 
 Science altogether relates to knowing that wh is within us ; effects on 
 us. The term ' external world,' surely is not good ; it shd also include 
 our own bodies, to wh alone it is external : that is a misleading word ; 
 it rests on a contrast with a supposed internal world. God's act on or 
 in us, then [surely the two must be one], is our moral Being : our 
 phenomenal Being is passion produced in us by passion in other 
 spirits. 
 
 See : the elliptic form, wh is the absolute law of form in nature, in its 
 interweavings, results in absolute diversity. Absolute law is ever ab- 
 solute freedom ; absolute law and absolute freedom are one in rightness, 
 alike in thought and in morals. 
 
 All moral action in the universe, surely, is God's act inspirits : God's 
 act under limit ? Can this be the conception of God and His moral 
 Being ; His moral action, the action of all spiritual Beings ? No, it 
 cannot be. See how these thoughts appear to lead me to make all 
 created spirits one with God pantheism ; but with this difference, that 
 God would be the spiritual Beings, and the universe His act. I see 
 that this is false and wrong ; but I do not .-. stop ; the way to get 
 wrong right is to go on, to go on under limit, wh is to come to the op- 
 posite. By going on unfearing and unswerving, I shall come to the 
 union of this doctrine with the instinctive view of our moral personal- 
 ity. That is the ' depth ' at wh we want to arrive : how God's act in 
 us is also our act, truly, and in a necessary sense, and self-evidently. 
 This will be the interpretation of the paradox of free will. It has re- 
 mained a paradox so long, partly I believe, because people have stopped, 
 being afraid. But what need : is not conscience stronger than logic ? To 
 be natural we must never stop ; nature is a passion that never ceases. 
 Yet, really, no time is lost ; it is but an apparent stopping ; the excess 
 to which each passion goes before it becomes its opposite. 
 
 More and more I find holiness to be the fact ; it involves idea of ac- 
 tion, of free or uncaused action, i. e. eternity : it is the necessity. All 
 is to us only a varied presentation of the one fact of holiness. The free, 
 [Spirit See p. 465, &c.
 
 474 
 
 < uncaused ' action of man is most instructive. If uncaused, certainly 
 not in time ; it takes us at once to eternity : but eternity has nothing 
 to do with duration ; it is not ' not-time,' but an absolute, from which 
 time, and cause, or phenomenal necessity, are by limit. Only the holy 
 act is uncaused ; only that it is wh exists necessarily, eternally. 
 Every evil act is caused ; it is the effect of the passion to which it is a 
 yielding. The sinful 'act,' so called, is merely phenomenal. I think 
 Being and acting are inseparable, one and the same ; for there is no 
 real Being but eternal, but necessary, i. e. holy ; and holy only in 
 acting. 
 
 What our conscience disapproves is the absence of God's act ; there- 
 fore contrary to our nature : therefore the pain of remorse. For sin is 
 passion not in accordance with our true being. That uncontrolled pas- 
 sion produces an effect on MS which is like disease to the body, a partial 
 death, and causes pain. 
 
 Sin, then, is the reversal, the causing not to be, of a right or neces- 
 sary action; wh .-. is in another form : and the tendency to or necessity 
 for, that action remains, and it must come at last, or re-appear. "What 
 a curious view is given me here : (1) of right as the only necessary, 
 and (2) as if the right action had truly been, but was reversed or un- 
 done by the sin ; if not so how could it ' become ' the nutrition ? So 
 sin again appears to be refusal of God's act. It is none the less, for the 
 nutrition [the opposite] that results is but itself in another form. Only 
 in us is it wanting. The sin is exactly that not-being, or suppression, 
 wh in respect of any thing or idea or passion, causes its polar opposite 
 to be. 
 
 If our passion were not really spiritual, how could our moral act re- 
 sist or control it ? only like ' forces ' can resist each other. It may be 
 argued that our moral act is only such passion, all being phenomenal ; 
 but if it be granted that both are one, that is enough. 
 
 There are two actions, as it were, phenomenal and moral ; and we 
 choose between them : we perceive the former in our liking, our sensu- 
 ous or emotional nature ; the latter in our conscience, or spiritual nature, 
 and according to our choice either prevails ? Both are equally right, 
 equally God,s act, but in relation to us different ; and this is the precise 
 difference I want to arrive at. It is not, as I seemed to see before, that 
 God's action was or was not according to our will, that is only the re- 
 lation of the act to us. Thus is not the question of free-will narrowed ? 
 I believe it will be given me to know it ; i. e. in its present form : to 
 interpret it, and raise our conception of it to a higher grade. 
 
 Again : Sin is selfishness ; it is our passion preferred to, permitted to 
 prevail over, God's act. Here may be found the difference between the 
 phenomenal, or pleasant, and the real or right ; in the difference between 
 selfishness and self-sacrifice the former is, as it were, within us, the 
 latter without us. By thus accepting God's act, receiving it within us. 
 we truly take more into us ; we receive from without and are true and 
 real gainers : by yielding to our passion we give away our life, as it 
 were ; we die. 
 
 In what sense is the passion we control in right action, ours ? This 
 may be not so difficult ; we have seen it as the passion in other spirits 
 becoming passion in us : then, in what sense is our right action, or ac- 
 cepting God's act, a ' function,' or re-appearance of a resisted passion ?
 
 475 
 
 Surely since all passion is God's act, and since our resisted passion be- 
 comes our spiritual life, it muy be that our moral action, or function, 
 originates from some other form of passion, rises to this higher form by 
 virtue of nutrition and organization ? That is, it may be so phenome- 
 nally: all this development, or succession, being but phenomenal. 
 Eight action is a function ; the sense of right a tendency to the re- 
 appearance of one primary act of God, suppressed, and having formed 
 nutrition and organization ? What then is the original right action 
 from wh the spiritual life arises? Am I not here at an infinite chain 
 wh is in fact the Eternity ? 
 
 It is in this free will, this uncaused act of ours, that we perceive 
 truly the eternal; have presented to us the difference of the phenom- 
 enal and the eternal ; are able to comprehend do, indeed, comprehend 
 or have within us the absolute ; that wh is not within the chain of 
 causes and effects. The absolute, or eternal, is Ihe right. This, surely, 
 is the secret of that respecting wh philosophers have striven so long. 
 Have they not been trying to make an absolute out of the phenom- 
 enal, when it stood plain before them, the very primary and most 
 simple fact of their consciousm-ss ? The phenomenal and the real are 
 action and passion, the moral aad the perceived. That wh does not 
 exist under the law of cause and effect is the morally right; the 
 problem is solved within us every minute : this is the absolute. 
 
 And see the beauty : we know the phenomenal is only the absolute 
 under certain conditions, wh disguise to us its real character. So all 
 the phenomenal also is really moral; only not so appeariag tons. How 
 then is that wh is phenomenal deprived as it were so far as we are con- 
 cerned, of its character of reality or moralness ; becoming merely pas- 
 sion ? For this is the difference between the real and the phenomenal ; 
 the real is action, the phenomenal, passion. The former primary 
 Being : beyond wh we cannot, need not, go : the latter, a chain of 
 causes and effects ; nothing in itself, but only a presentation, in time, of 
 something else. I think I have a clue : I conceive the phenomenal to 
 be the actions of, or passions in [perhaps I shd say God's act in], other 
 spirits, affecting us : producing .. in our spirits merely passion, or 
 phn. The actual is God's act directly and immediately in us ; and this 
 we feel or are conscious of as our own act. This is reality to us ; ab- 
 solute ; requiring nothing before it ; no longer a chain of causes and 
 eflects. God's direct act in us we perceive as action, or reality. So all 
 may be moral or real in the ' eternal world.' 
 
 Is not the unification thus effected between the affirmation of nature 
 as God's act, and the instinctive view of the physical world as a thing 
 external to us ? For the argument is surely perfect : if our bodies be 
 passion in us, as spirits, then, certainly, the external physical world, 
 being the very same thing, must also be passion in spirits : and the ex- 
 ternal world, of course, is phenomenal to us, because it is not us [as 
 spirits] that it influences, but only the passion in us our bodies just 
 as we see motion affects, and produces changes in, motion. 
 
 In this view how mistaken appears the idea that we can never know 
 anything but phna. In our moral consciousness we do now actually 
 and all of us without effort, and by necessity, perceive, know, and com- 
 prehend the real. Our ' comprehension ' of the real Being is, in truth, 
 the source and means of our perception or knowledge of the phenomenal. 
 
 G 2
 
 476 
 
 The real is the very thing we do know, and the phna are only to teach 
 us to know it more and better. Doubtless we cannot express in words, 
 or explain (at present), this conception of moral right ; but this is no- 
 thing ; and certainly there is no other conception, no phenomenal con- 
 ception, of wh we have better understanding. The idea of right takes 
 us to that ultimate and absolute of wh we are in search ; perhaps we 
 can never get beyond it, nor need we wish. To account for it, or trace 
 it, were to destroy it. 
 
 In the germ, its proper ' action ' is its vital resistance ; but this exists 
 before it has been exercised as regards that individual, as it were. So 
 in our spirits, this 'moral capacity,' in some way, exists prior to our 
 first moral act. This is what I want to trace. In the germ it is merely 
 mechanical construction : what is it in the spirit ? Thus the phenom- 
 enal passion is external, being our life by control : but this external 
 passion is the very same as the internal control ; the vital force is the 
 very same with the chemical or external forces. How clearly I arrive 
 at the true and absolute moral nature of all the phenomenal. 
 
 So, as the seed grows by sympathy with nature, or external forces, 
 but controlled by its vital force ; so is our spiritual life attained by 
 sympathy with the phenomenal on one hand, or passion ; and sympathy 
 with God, His act within us, on the other. Kow, in what sense is the 
 phenomenal thus without us? Consider how it affects us ever 
 as external forces do the seed or organic body, by producing function 
 within us. 
 
 Our great error is the thinking our bodily, or mental, comfort or en- 
 joyment of importance : not so much now meaning selfishness as mis- 
 take : we think it of importance, wh it is not even as mere matter of 
 fact, and phenomenally. Luxury does not add to enjoyment ; even 
 sensuous enjoyment is not truly promoted by it. This is a delusion ; 
 just like the 'delusions of the senses,' and designed for the same purpose, 
 having the same good. For thus passion is produced, wh becomes our life. 
 Without the delusion there were not the passion, and .-. not the life. 
 It seems good to us, we desire these pleasures, in order that we may 
 have passion to control. It is one error with that of our sense ; putting 
 the phenomenal for the real.- At first we think that knowledge or 
 mental life is to be gained bv taking in to ourselves, having, introducing 
 ourselves: afterwards we learn it is only by interpretation, wh is giving, 
 sacrifice of ourselves. Our effort to get happiness by these earthly 
 things is like our theoretical Science, trying to make the phenomenal 
 stand for the real; and it fails like it, and like it reveals the 
 real. 
 
 Man is diseased, it is true ; that is his depravity : his depravity is 
 the reality of which disease is the type or phn. In our references to 
 nature we put the phn for the reality, and say sin is like disease. Or, 
 worse still, to try and reduce the reality to the phn, and say that sin is 
 a mere passive thing, such as disease is. This constant tendency to put 
 phn for reality is the one delusion of the senses. 
 
 . Conscience is parallel to the instinct of self-preservation. Sin i s 
 giving up our life ; it is yielding it to that wh, by an illusion, seems to 
 be our?, our own selves, but is not. 
 
 Easily we can conceive being without succession, or cause and effect : 
 .the moral shows it to us ; there all is holy. That wh has no relation 
 Spirit^ 111.
 
 477 
 
 to cause, is right. So the eternal punishment, eternal death of the 
 wicked, what is it but unholiness this is eternal death ? Eternal, 
 causeless, death is moral death, hut what that involves of misery I 
 know not. 
 
 (Those who stop must receive their own doctrines in quite a 
 different form from others ; that is their punishment for not go- 
 ing on.) 
 
 What is the true scriptural idea of the devil ? It cannot be ' evil 
 spirit,' for sin is spiritual death. Is there not some clue in sin being 
 yielding to external passion, slavery ? So we are ' led captive by the 
 devil at his will.' Yet when we are tempted, we are drawn away ' by 
 our own desires.' These two passages must be unified. There must 
 be something more meant under the idea of Satan than we conceive. See 
 how Paul says ' The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit 
 against the flesh ;' is not this something of the contest with Satan ; and 
 as God's act in us is our natural powers, so is not satan's act in us also 
 our natural passions ? How these words agree with the two opposite 
 things in us : our passions and God's act, one reversing or suppressing 
 the other, and being our spiritual life or death, as we choose 
 God's act to control the passion, or the 'passion' to overcome and banish 
 God's act. 
 
 Every man who tells us anything worth knowing, tells us one tiling : 
 so every true man may be known for what he is ; his idea may be re- 
 cognized. The greater he is the more decidedly is this the case. It is 
 like nature, who presents to us one fact ever and only. 
 
 An unending action produces an effect on us ; this effect being neces- 
 arily vibration, because we are limited. Itself being absolute holiness, 
 it produces in limited Beings phenomenal right and wrong, the two 
 halves of the vibration : the right first ; the passion wh being resisted 
 (by the limit, and thus turned on itself), becomes the nutrition. Thus, 
 I see, male ever precedes female ; and the development of the phn en- 
 sues from the repeated meeting and subdivision (or two in one) of the 
 opposite passions. Thus, there being vibration, there arises succession 
 or time, and extent or space. 
 
 The hyperbola and ellipse are polar to each other, and become one at 
 the limit ; as polars do. "Would not an advantage be gained by treat- 
 ing the ellipse always as a diagonal, recognizing its element of 
 depth, and that its true length is less than its major axis ? 
 
 Seeing mind and body to be polar, is it not natural that the polarity 
 shd be relatively opposite in them also; male body, female mind, and v.v.? 
 . Do I not come to this, that the Divine act and the psychical and phy- 
 sical passion are the three ? Cause, condition or limit, and effect. I 
 am not clear about this : I do not like it. If so, they constitute the 
 unity are one : it seems including things that differ, and not right. 
 Trace and see if the parallel will hold of inorganic, vegetable, and 
 animal worlds ; the physical world, then, answering to the animal, 
 or bipolar ? 
 
 People in the vegetative age let go their dynamical priciples, are 
 passive, yield to the phn or appearance '; have no instincts, that say this 
 must be so because it is my nature ; I will have it so, and no other way 
 Metaphysics, 271, See p. 342.
 
 478 
 
 as the animal does. They have feeble instincts, like the plants ; light 
 influences them somewhat ; but the animal sees by it ; knows and acts ac- 
 cordingly, i. e. phenomenally. [Genius, as animal, gives laws to na- 
 ture, and .-. to mankind]. The influence of light on animals and plants 
 illustrates the difference of talent and Genius. Genius sees and says, 
 and goes up and takes the thing : talent feels the influence, is invigor- 
 ated and directed in its growth, but sees nothing, and dares not stir. 
 Talent-men do not see, have no opinion, or but a doubtful one, cannot 
 tell how the case may be, find many pros and cons. Of course, it is 
 their place to grow, and they shd act according to their nature ; but 
 they shd remember that sight also is natural ; and that as the vegetable 
 exists for the animal, they exist for the men that can see; and 
 that the animal raises also even the development of the veg- 
 etable. 
 
 As all development is the union into one of two different and opposite; 
 so is the griffin, wh is the perfect union into one of two, and of two in 
 some sense polar to each other ; corresponding animals of bird and 
 beast : the griffin is the very type of development, and the instinct wh 
 led to its conception is remarkable, as if it were felt that the higher must 
 come just that way and no other. When we reflect how simple and 
 perfect a means it is of development it is almost self evident. And in 
 the union of polars how simple the conception. In each the exact ad- 
 aptation for and tendency to such union. Can we trace in union of mental 
 polars, the mutual adaptation and attraction ? In one sense the observa- 
 tion is the resistance ; the logic comes with its force, its tendency to 
 unify ; and meeting witji this opposite polar, (which is true 
 to the phenomenon), it fails of its unification, unites itself with it 
 into one. 
 
 I consider the third or depth as embracing both the polars ; therefore, 
 if I consider the animal as the third, must I not consider it as uniting 
 inorganic and vegetable ? And see how it is related to both ; comes in 
 one sense between them, as it were ; inorganic in function, vegetable in 
 nutrition. The properties of the inorganic world are connected with those 
 of vegetable and animal, and mutually dependent, as the three 
 ever are. 
 
 See, the three colors are not in one vibration at all, but are two, and 
 necessarily two ; and when the eye demands complementary colors it de- 
 mands the equivalent of two. As length, breadth, and depth are from 
 two vibrations, passion turned twice at right angles from two 
 limits. When we see either we demand all three. Then, how do we ad- 
 mit white alone ? Consider the inorganic, vegetable, and animal, as from 
 two vibrations. 
 
 Must not the colors of bodies be from two vibrations ? Does not this 
 render them more intelligible, and more right ? In everything in nature 
 we must think of two vibrations, i. e. two limits producing polars, in 
 wder to get the three dimensions, without wh nothing can exist in na- 
 ture. I think this will simplify the colors of bodies very much, though 
 I do not see it yet. Also, will it not apply to the qualities of tones of 
 sounding bodies ? Will it not help in those odd cases of bodies wh are 
 of different and even of oppositely polar colors ? To reduce all colors, 
 even those of bodies, by absorption and reflection, to union of two, or
 
 479 
 
 interference, would be grand ; we shd get at the heat, chemicity, &c., 
 produced by absorption : the variety arising from the two polars and 
 the bipolar in all sorts of proportions. As all colors are from three, 
 produced by two vibrations, so surely all the chemicities are from two 
 vibrations; and are there three primary chemicities two polars and 
 one bipolar ? Thus the idea of length, breadth, and depth (twice turned 
 by limit), is the clue to all. Chemicity also developing in many 
 grades and forms, in each of its three forms, like life. For life also, 
 vegetable and animal, must have this three in it, and in each grade or 
 presentation of it. 
 
 Now comes this thought, wh I think goes deep into the matter the 
 nature and reason of this universal three-foldness. It involves two vi- 
 brations, i. e. succession ; and yet is not only one but is essential to 
 unity. Does not this reveal to us that the reality is eternal ? What we 
 call succession is involved in oneness : each unity necessarily contains 
 succession ; all this succession is in truth a one, viz., an eternal. Succes- 
 sion is the way in wh, with our limit, eternity is presented to us, or is 
 possible to our perception. Yet that eternity, and not succession or time, 
 is the reality, is embodied in this that only in succession can even we 
 find a true or possible oneness. The succession .*. is really one eternity; 
 revealed to us in that succession, that three-foldness, without wh there is 
 no thing. 
 
 In chemical union have we not two polars becoming one ? "What, 
 then, is this chemical compound thus formed [the force given off in 
 other forms, heat, &c.] ? Can it be a development ; two united in one, 
 having not the properties of either, as the higher grade of animal 
 has? 
 
 By observation and formulas, or instruments and rules, we grasp the 
 phna but we cannot thus get the dynamical relation wh is cause, and 
 wh effect. This must be effected by the bringing the manhood to bear 
 upon the subject, the instinct : just the work of Genius. Effect is first 
 seen ; and observation cannot alter this relation ; thus the need 
 of interpretation. The theory or nutrition is ever an attempt consist- 
 ently to consider effect as cause, by observation of phna and application 
 of f rmulas; whenever the right causal relation is established this is done 
 by the opposite process, interpretation. Here is the continual process of 
 mental nutrition and function. The observation of phna, and referring 
 them to right causal relations, are these two processes ; wh, when once 
 done, we do as a matter of course and unnoticed, just as our habitual 
 bodily functions. Doing this for the first time is development. 
 
 As the vegetable must stand between the inorganic world and function, 
 so theory must come between phna and interpretation. The vegetable 
 is ever the same thing (except the little function in flowering and 
 fruit). The animal goes on from one thing to another. Does not the 
 progress by depth, wh as two in one is new beginning, involve the in- 
 crease or development ? For the depth is as new length ; and the next 
 depth is, of course, double that ; so the progress and development ; more 
 is involved in each. In this the idea of the whole development of nature 
 is included. Each new length is preceding depth, i. e. two of the pre- 
 ceding length. So the boundless complexity arises. 
 
 In nature the function seems to be assigned to the third or bipolar,
 
 480 
 
 viz., the depth ; the function is performed by the animal world (not 
 inorganic or vegetable). 
 
 The polar relation must be rectangular, not directly opposite ; because 
 motion does not cease. It is turned at right angles for the very reason 
 that it is turned at all ; the continued motion, as we always see. pre- 
 venting the direct rebound. The direct rebound is ever from elasticity, a 
 fresh motion produced ; the polar motion is at right angles, and demands 
 depth added to make unity. 
 
 Passion does not cease, alike in psychical and physical worlds (or 
 truly in the physical, because in the psychical). Therefore there appears 
 to be in both an inherent and unceasing source of force or passion, a 
 power within ; as we speak of living nature, matter endowed with pro- 
 perties, powers, &c. ; and mind also. The truth being that the act wh 
 produces the passion is eternal or unending. I have been thinking as if 
 the passion which we call physical, caused our psychical passion ; the 
 fact being that the psychical half- vibration has preceded and caused the 
 physical. It is a gain to see this ; ' but still I think this extends to our 
 minds and bodies only, not to all the universe : I fancy still that this 
 is psychical, and consequent physical passion, in other spirits. We 
 must unite these two thoughts The physical universe is result of, i. e. 
 polar opposite to, the psychical passion, produced, as I see, by limit. 
 These .-. are length and breadth. What follows? A polar union, 
 depth. This the function, the development. The union of the psy- 
 chical and physical is our Science, our mental development. Man's psy- 
 chical love for nature is truly polar attraction ; and from man (psychi- 
 cal) comes woman physical (bone of bone, flesh of flesh), and they 
 marry in love. The polar union, physical and psychical in one, is 
 depth or development all that nature does for man ; the production of 
 his intellectual, social, moral, yea, his emotional, his religious life. Of 
 nature it may be said : ' She was taken out of man.' 
 
 As the physical in us is the result of psychical in us, so the physical 
 universe surely is the result of psychical passion in the spirits to whom 
 it is, or in whom it is. . This psychical passion (in spirits) was the 
 psychical half-vibration that preceded and produced the physical 
 universe. 
 
 The physical in us is nothing more than our body and its changes ; 
 all else is psychical ideas ! The thought that the physical world is the 
 psychical, becomes oppositely polar by virtue of its limit, seems to em- 
 brace and make one all the elements that require to be embraced. 
 Long ago I saw that they were polar, the physical female to the psy- 
 chical. This itself, in truth, decides the question of cause ; for when- 
 ever we have two polars standing in relation of cause and effect, it is 
 always the male or convergent is cause of female or divergent. And 
 this causal relation always appears to us inverted. We always have to 
 bring out the true relation by our instinct, the act of our manhood. 
 This inversion of the apparent causal relation is the fact of interpreta- 
 tion. It is just this wh wants doing now in respect to the physical 
 and psychical world ; this is where the stoppage always comes, and 
 the world waits for Genius, as the organization awaits the func- 
 tion. 
 
 To put things in right relation of cause and effect is the interpreta- 
 tion; as the making of the phn to be real, and introducing fictions
 
 481 
 
 accordingly, is the theory or nutrition. And see another parallel in ma- 
 thematics : scientific theory is by introducing fictions, thus nutrition is 
 effected ; so in mathematics; fictions are introduced, and thus a nutri- 
 tion is effected the fiction of considering a thing to be its opposite, 
 &c. Thus mathematics belongs essentially to the nutritive Science ; it 
 takes no part in interpretation as such. []S~ote : that is, in respect to 
 the external phna ; it is, of course, interpretative in its own processes.] 
 Interpretation is effected simply by the manhood, the common sense ; 
 it is ' seeing,' or function. Observation of facts and application of for- 
 mulas cannot effect this inversion of apparent causal relation. They give 
 the details and apparent relations of the facts wonderfully and beauti- 
 fully ; but wh is cause and wh effect they do not touch in the least : 
 nor can by any possibility. This is quite another process and generally 
 done by another man, by instinct. And thus it is that the interpretation 
 (or placing the facts in right relation of cause and effect) may be accom- 
 plished in the most mathematical sciences by a man who is no mathe- 
 matician. For the instinct of manhood does it, not the formula. The . 
 formula gives the exact facts, upon wh any man may exert his ration? 
 ality. If the mathematicians know the facts, they can say them so 
 that others can know them too ; and the other man, thus knowing them, 
 has equal opportunity (or better) of interpreting them. 
 
 This is the very question with respect to real matter. There is a 
 physical and a psychical world of wh the relations are polar ; and the 
 physical seems to be the cause. Which is the cause of the other ? The 
 instinct of humanity must decide by means of knowledge of the facts. 
 It is exactly the question of astronomy in the time of Copernicus : if 
 the physical is the cause of the subjective, what a complicated theory 
 is necessary. If the subjective is the cause of the physical, how 
 simple, natural, certain. Choose : life or death ! 
 
 Bravery, timidity polar opposites are united in depth, as prudence ; 
 both. The true idea of a mean is not something between two opposites, 
 wh wd be nothing, having neither. The ' golden mean ' is the union of 
 two opposites it is depth. See again how these two opposites are male 
 and female ; representing truth and beauty. And they become each 
 other thro' a limit : bravery at its limit is timidity. Bravery, true : 
 timidity or shrinking, beautiful prudence, good. True, beautiful, and 
 good, are one ; i. e. not three forms of the same thing, but strictly make 
 one together. Thus the two polars are derived thro' a limit, the female 
 from the male. They imply one another : indeed any one implies the 
 other two the complement. 
 
 Must I not make another interpretation here ? I am considering the 
 union of psychical and physical as the cause of our mental life. Must 
 I not invert this ? is not our mental life the cause of the psychical and 
 physical and their union? Or is this not so? the interpretation done before ? 
 Our conscious life or passion seems to be the mental : now surely, the 
 mental, i. e. the conscious, must be first. Is not the mental the cause 
 of the other two, altho' it appears to be the result ? as psychical is the 
 cause of physical, tho' it appears to be the result. 
 
 Look again at this polar male becoming opposite or female thro' limit. 
 It is as it were being becoming not-being ; a motion that exists becomes 
 at limit a motion that does not exist. This brings back again the idea 
 of nutrition as wrong, as inaction. The female thus produced by limit
 
 482 
 
 is nutrition, i. e. not-being ; it is the type of Sin ; nothing from it but 
 tendency back again ; no power, no force inaction. Yet it is empha- 
 tically the beautiful ; it has absorbed force. Here is a wonderful thing : 
 not-being is produced by being; inaction by action. It shows obscurely 
 a wonderful glimpse. Being or action is the fact ; inaction or not-being 
 is result of force. Bravery is the force, the being; not-being or timi- 
 dity is beautiful. In short this not-being is truly being in another 
 form. Not-being cannot be, it is either function or nutrition : not being 
 one thing is being the polar : because passion cannot end ? 
 
 The true .-. is that view wh brings into one the logical and theoreti- 
 cal views on the given subject. It is the time quoad that, it is the 
 depth of it ; but it is itself only a new length, a logical view in respect 
 to the succeeding mental passion (or life). The logical becomes the 
 theoretical by limit ; but the true is first the logical of the larger life. 
 The theoretical comes ever from the logical (by limit). The polar 
 union of opposites gives first, the new logical view, or true, not theoreti- 
 cal or beautiful I had not sufficiently thought of this : just as an- 
 imal function produces, not vegetable, but inorganic or chemical, which 
 again becomes vegetable. This is a great help. The debris of animal, 
 result of interpretation, is logical or cuemical; the function itself having 
 gone on to higher forms ? Avhat, in mental life ? Thus surely Newton's 
 views result of animal function are chemical, becoming by limit ve- 
 getable. So I found with respect to his view of light, that two steps 
 were required ; first a partial interpretation for theoretical view (of 
 simple vibration interfering, and altered forms); then an unifying of this 
 with his by another interpretation into animal form, viz. the elliptic 
 motion, or length, breadth and depth, together. 
 
 lu mental life also, this threefold process and twofold interpretation ; 
 first gett ing theoretical out of logical then bringing logical and theoreti- 
 cal into one. (Chemical into vegetable ; vegetable and chemical into 
 animal). Then, besides, the animal function. This is essentially true, 
 but it does not exactly touch the fact. Is this what is seen in astro- 
 nomy : in the two interpretations ; first the planets round the sun, then 
 the earth also round the sun ? I do not clearly trace the relation. 
 
 Note the three effects of the limit : (1) all passion being vibratile ; 
 (2) length turned at right angles and becoming polar breadth ; [this is 
 transcendental mathemat ics] ; (3) length and breadth united and made 
 one in depth. Practically it is the latter two processes that we are 
 concerned with, that we have to trace in Nature and in our mental life, 
 but the former also is most important to remember, it is the basis 
 of all. 
 
 A part cannot be one ; only a whole ; or if we consider the part by 
 itself or as one, we do thereby assign to it a wholeness.* Science and 
 poetry I find to be one ; thus producing from these, wh are polars or 
 opposites, a depth what is that ? spiritual science ? Yes, physical sci- 
 ence and poety are length and breadth of wh spiritual science is the 
 depth. From this a new opposite, i. e. a new poetry, and a new depth ? 
 
 How rich a meaning is in these words; length, breadth and depth. 
 
 * ' The Universe is expressed by the symbol 1. But sometimes 1 stands for, not 
 actual Universe but Universe of Thought; ' i. e. the whole subject thought of. 
 Socle's ' Lawt of Thought? Note by Editor.
 
 483 
 
 1 Length ' in mental Kfe ever means a badness, more or less. A thing 
 that is ' so long ' is undeveloped ; insufficient resistance to turn it into 
 breadth and depth. [See in physical morphology how the head is 
 formed by turning length into breadth and depth]. Breadth is better, 
 but it does not satisfy ; it is felt to be undefined, untrustworthy tho' a 
 progress. But by depth we mean the good ; to be admired, to be trusted. 
 "We never use depth for badness, except ironically. In moral life we 
 speak of ' deep ' abyss, &c., but this is by contrast, for depth is height 
 equally. Man tends towards and loves depth, as Nature tends to deve- 
 lopment. [In these references to common language I only refer to the 
 ordinary and natural use of words, not to every sense in wh they are 
 ever used]. 
 
 Truth or logic is the idea of Science, as beauty is of Art ; therefore 
 I see that in mental life Science precedes Art. I have thought that Art 
 preceded Science ; but I see not, in theory. Practically, every higher 
 science is from union of preceding science with art or poetry ; the logi- 
 cal and theoretical ; so that Art is seen as mother to Science each 
 
 length being depth of preceding. How good that expression of L *s, 
 
 * without poesies there can be no facts ' : as no men without women ; 
 but then woman was taken out of man : so Science is father of Poetry. 
 
 Length and breadth, or male and female, are both on a level. Depth, 
 or better height, is equally above both. For depth shd I say height ? 
 
 It is well to see in the organic life that each limit involves some in- 
 terpretation, some convergent passion or partial polar union : vegetable 
 nutrition does ; so also animal. Do I clearly see the animal nutrition 
 and the animal function, their separateness and relation ? 
 
 Whatever we make out by thinking (without seeing that it must be 
 so) is nutritive ; at best it is theoretical or vegetable. So my theory 
 of simple vibration of light ; so now doubtless my view of the colors aa 
 a separate presentation of the three dimensions. This I think out, 
 make by aid of analogy, and no doubt it is not the thing. [Consider- 
 the separate presentation of the chemical, vegetable and animal worlds, 
 their relation to each other and to the one ; how they become each other 
 by limit, mutually live on each other, &c.] It still maybe an interpre- 
 tation in some sense, but it gives the theoretical vegetable view; and is 
 opposite to the former, rejects it. The true is that wh embraces both 
 in one. 
 
 Our functions, physical and mental, constitute a life. Though they are 
 permitted merely in themselves, in relation to us they are more or lesa 
 result of effort and design ; and in so far as they are so they are nutri- 
 tive ; and a function results from this nutrition also. We do things for 
 a certain purpose ; but a purpose much higher is effected ; e. g. we 
 make Science for its own sake, and find it reveals the spiritual to us. 
 So in social life, &c. What a beautiful light this throws on all nutri- 
 tion in the universe: all effort and design surely effecting a higher object 
 or function. This is instinct ever ; when we see an effort effecting a 
 higher object than was designed, we may always know that there is a 
 life. 
 
 Surely the phenomenal world external to us must exist as passion in 
 spirit, altho' existing as material only from effect on us : even as there 
 are sun and stars, altho' their motion as seen by us results only from a 
 passion in us ; wh passion in us is produced indeed by the very motion
 
 484 
 
 of wh they part8ke,i.e.by a motion one with their true motions. So tho' 
 there is no material world, yet surely there is passion in other spirits the 
 same as that wh causes us to see the physical world ; and we see the 
 physical world because we partake of that same passion wh is in them also. 
 
 By effort and design we can effect only nutrition ; hut surely nutrition 
 by interpretation. Even as in bodily life, we effect nutrition by the 
 exertion of our functional powers with design and effort ; but these 
 functions individually are only permitted. We neutralize the resist- 
 ance, and so by function form nutrition. In thought also may we not 
 by effort and design neutralize resistance and permit function, so effect- 
 ing a nutrition by function ; that which is produced by force being a 
 theory, that wh is permitted, a function. Thus in physical, social and 
 mental life, our functions are instinctive, and produce ends beyond us ; 
 for in truth any end we can attain (always being by force, and no force 
 but from function) must be a new nutrition. The instinctive or unde- 
 signed effect itself, being from function, is a new nutrition and leads to 
 a higher end. Instinct is universal as life. We have a functional life 
 also, all life being in truth functional ; i. e. result of preceding func- 
 tional passion, or recoil. Is instinct the function of life ? 
 
 We exert a force in effecting our functions, though the functions are 
 passive or permitted. Thus we employ the force resulting from the func- 
 tion in producing a new nutrition. Is not this indicative of the nature of 
 spiritual life ? we acquire functional capacity by right action or control 
 of passion ; an organization wh we use by our will. In truth, our em- 
 ploying by our will the power thus given us in spiritual life, is not this 
 the very fact of God acting in us? This passion, wh becomes thus ours 
 to use for function by our will, is God's act. Our using our bodies and 
 minds is the very type of it : thus also God acts in us and according to 
 our will. 
 
 The nervous system, or passion, is the depth, between, and connected 
 with the other elements of the body ; as the mental life is depth, con- 
 necting psychical and physical. 
 
 All force is suppression of passion, which therefore tends to re- 
 appear ; i. e. it is nutrition and produces functional power. As all 
 force (or result of function or convergence) opposes tendency, so it sup- 
 presses fact or passion. See it in mathematics ; it allows construction 
 or working of problems. See it in organic (and inorganic) Nature. 
 Can we see it in mental life : how timidity (or suppression of 
 bravery) produces organization ? I think not by itself : the external 
 resistance or passion is necessary for the organization. 
 
 I think Newton made mathematics organic ; the vibration continuous 
 instead of transitive. For the force, or fact, must have produced its 
 ' opposite ' before as in organic nature ; but there is no result which ap- 
 pears to us worthy, no functional power, because no organization. New- 
 ton obtained organization by making the vibration continuous. His 
 epoch marks the origination of organic life in that form : can we see the 
 law of its origination ? His mental life, his organization, introduced 
 the resistance ; i. e. two of the same sort ? 
 
 The nutrition or theory, in every form, .is the result of the intro- 
 duction of the human element ; the simple statement of what was 
 seen, being suppressed owing to resistance of the human mode of
 
 485 
 
 thought ; the opposite passion of the human mind rejecting the com- 
 plexity, or irrationality, of the phn ; simplifying by force in the first in- 
 stance, but producing organization. That which is at first, and in 
 idea, merely preventing something from being, becomes a great thing 
 itself; because the thing will be. The idea of force or preventing al- 
 ways is in this nutrition or breadth. But the depth, the union, is at 
 one with both ; embraces both ; it is repose : the phenomenal fully pre- 
 sented, the argumentative fully satisfied. "We see that that is right, 
 and it can only be seen. But this which is bipolar in relation to these 
 polar elements is itself the beginning of another polar division ; and so 
 onwards. 
 
 The physical and the mental are one. There is no obscurity as to 
 how the material becomes or produces thought : psychical, physical and 
 mental are the one, the unity. The physical is one with the psychical 
 as being the produced half of the vibration ; it is the nutrition or effort. 
 Also the physical world, as being the nutrition from the psychical, is in 
 fact the suppression of it, the not-being. 
 
 The character of matter is inertia; is the physical the absolutely passive: 
 no power. Yet by virtue of its being such it constitutes a nutrition, an 
 organization, tending to reproduce the psychical in a function. The 
 very idea of the divergent half- vibration is thus seen exactly to apply 
 and belong to the physical world: and, united polar- wise with the 
 psychical, produces development, depth, the mental. Is not 
 here a reconcilation of the utter hatefulness of sin, and yet the 
 perfect good : non-being seems to us to be, and as we gain true know- 
 ledge it seems evil ; even as a shadow seems to us a thing. Sin is not- 
 being, but then the not-being is the sin ; it shows the sin, the refusal 
 of God's act. Matter, wh is inertia, seems real being. This inertia 
 matter this not-being wh we perceive as a thing, or substance, is the 
 type of sin. In philosophy how often all badness is laid to it. Even 
 Christians have said its inherent badness (or something) will not allow 
 the full display of God's attributes. 
 
 The psychical passion in us, wh produces the physical world by limit, 
 is itself unperceived ; i.e. is perceived as the physical (cause by effect) ; 
 even as the passion produced in us by the motion of the earth is itself 
 unperceived, i. e. is perceived only as the motions of the sun, &c. It is 
 revealed by the interpretation of the appearance into our motion, and 
 this again reveals its cause. So by interpretation of the physical world 
 the passion in us is revealed, viz. passion in least resistance, or passion 
 directed ; and this again reveals its cause, God's holy act. Do not time 
 and space and cause belong to this psychical, unperceived, unconscious 
 passion ? Our motion with the earth is only perceived by motion of 
 other things, requiring the phenomenal existence of those other things 
 for it to be perceived at all. So our perception of the external universe 
 (physical) wh is the result of our subjective (psychical) passion, pro- 
 duced by God's act ; may it not require the existence of other things . 
 for us to perceive it ? Only from the external resistance comes the or- 
 ganization which gives the function : that is, passion in other 
 spirits exists also, whereby we perceive a phn resulting from our 
 passion. 
 
 Here is the physical, the ' suppression ' of the ps jchical wh re-appears
 
 486 
 
 in function ? The physical is opposite to psychical principles ; but the 
 reappearance of them in connection with the phn is the mental life. 
 This comes as the physical also reaches its limit ? hut affecting at the 
 same time hoth. The length is not first completed, then hreadth begun 
 and completed, and then depth ; from the first all three are co-existent ; 
 only in theory is length first. So the psychical, physical and mental 
 life are actually co-existent from the first. The limit is operative from 
 the first ; in respect to the eternal act there is no time. The phn is 
 opposition to, or suppression of, the psychical ; so it is wrong ever. It 
 shows variety for unity ; beginning, for chain of cause ; specific tend- 
 ency for necessity. 
 
 Should there not be traceable such a succession as psychical, physical, 
 and true ? Is not this seen in the history of Science as we have it ? 
 1. Greek and mediaeval (psychical) ; 2. Modern (physical) ; 3. Future, 
 from interpretation or union of both : true, i. e. spiritual. The first 
 mental passion is male ; ' abstract;' not phenomenal ; it produces the 
 phenomenal wh suppresses it and causes organization. Bacon marked 
 the limit of the psychical mental life. Is not now the limit of the phy- 
 sical 1 And as length, breadth and depth are contemporaneous, so in 
 truth is all this human history: it is not mere succession. Do the abstrac- 
 tions of time, space (cause) belong to the psychical or physical form ? 
 
 In chemical affinity the tendency is to unity; in vegetation to separa- 
 tion; in animal, both. The same things may be at once male and female in 
 different relations. Are science and metaphysics male and female ; or 
 in relation of body and mind ? All the polars are to each other as body 
 and mind ; or at least as psychical and physical. May we not call the 
 length and breadth, wherever we find them, one body, the other soul : 
 or are there the three ; is ' mind ' ever the depth ? In metaphysics, is 
 not Berkeley's view the female or theoretical ? and I make it one with 
 the phenomenal, of the reality of the world ; God's holy act being the 
 two in one : reality of universe non-reality of matter ? Berkeley's 
 view is a suppression of the opposite, producing organization ? 
 
 Is there not mind and body in mental life ? Metaphysics and Science 
 respectively; and .*. the same views oppositely polar in respect to the 
 two. The old subjective Science was male or length ; our objective 
 science is female, from limit. The spiritual Science, uniting both in 
 one, constitutes the development. 
 
 The course of ' Science ' corresponds with that of individual thought. 
 The primary form is not the outness of the sense, but subjective passion. 
 This is the child's first form of mental life, I believe, even as humanity's. 
 He learns to look at things phenomenally, even as humanity did. Our 
 perception of the world as external is from ' limit ' to the subjective 
 form of perception ; even as our study of Nature as without is from 
 limit to the subjective or a priori. I must try and trace this in children. 
 
 The physical world is the effect of, rises from, the psychical by limit, 
 even as the experimental Science rose out of the speculative by limit. 
 
 Trace the instinct or force in mathematics : the force wh produced it 
 is a function of some preceding ' life.' When by limit this fact (e. g. 
 two lines approaching) is made opposite and suppresses itself, still the 
 instinct remains ; so it tends to reappear and produce function is this 
 function the depth ? I think not fully ; rather reproduction than deve- 
 lopment ; and that mathematics is yet susceptible of this higher form,
 
 487 
 
 another limit, as it were. This is development : it does not yet exist 
 in physical human nature, prohahly cannot ; this the sum of the passion 
 possible to us, I suppose, or man wd not he the ' I.' But then man is 
 only a small element in a larger whole. [Is not every ' I ' a man, as 
 Swedenborg says ; every complete passion, every threefold passion in a 
 spirit = humanity ?] Surely all is humanity ; the one fact of human- 
 ity, but an infinite variety of forms. Hence our sympathy with all. 
 Now do I not see that all real Being, created, is Man, [even as all pas- 
 sion is elliptic ?] and in all is the threefold-ness : psychical, phenomenal, 
 spiritual. [I say * phenomenal,' not ' physical* : I do not know that 
 the phenomenal necessarily takes the form of matter.] 
 
 The a priori Science had, as shown, two forms before it reached its 
 limit : the Greek, and a renewal in the mediaeval. I have seen some- 
 thing like this in other processes of thought also. And this double pro- 
 cess seems to be the chemical life in relation to vegetable and animal ; 
 as if there were a double procsss there two nutritions in the inorganic, 
 with function in between : as if that chemicity wh becomes vegetable 
 life were produced by a development of a previous chemicity. I have 
 had the idea before obscurely. The limit wh limits the ' length ' or in- 
 stinct, is but another instinct : the experimental philosophy arose from 
 the Greek and mediaeval, surely ? not exactly from polar union, but 
 from one, as it were, acting as limit to the other. Thus I see the limit 
 as another instinct, or another ' chemicity ' : the ' nutritive ' being the 
 effect of two chemicities, not united into one, but one acting as limit to 
 the other, and turning it into opposite polar form, suppressing itself,&c. 
 So in every form of the life, two instincts, one limiting the other, cause 
 the nutrition. In the spiritual life this sense of right, by wh we con- 
 trol our passion, is also an instinct or passion ; God's act in us. May 
 we not trace here the origin of organic life, in the origin of the experi- 
 mental science from the Greek and mediaeval : the mediaeval, acting as 
 limit to the Greek, made men by their ' sense of right ' go oppositely 
 to that, studying nature from without, instead of within ? 
 
 Ought I not then to trace our sense of right as arising from, and be- 
 ing, God's act ? Am I not here getting into a theoretical view of moral 
 action, opposed to that instinctive one of the origin of our acts in us? 
 a nutritive view wh by polar union with the former, seeing how it is 
 at once God's act and ours will give me the truth. And see, how I 
 did not come to this until, having seen the three-fold mental life, I cd 
 understand how a view shd be opposed to another and yet one with it. 
 I cannot see the truth of the ' phenomenal ' free act of man until I have 
 also seen the opposite, that it is God's act. I am not afraid .-.of com- 
 ing to see that our free act or will is God's act ; from philosophy and 
 scripture I am prepared alike to accept it. The Bible says 
 both are true : philosophy says the truth can only be that which in- 
 cludes both. 
 
 This psychical, a priori view, answering to chemistry, is well called 
 inorganic : the organization results from the opposite, the nutrition or 
 suppression. The former comes to nothing, produces no function except 
 the nutrition : the nutrition when effected unites with the instinct to 
 form the true [or animal] : and see again, the animal represents the in- 
 stinct ; the function of the animal is only to produce a new nutrition. 
 Chemicity, then, is instinct ; it represents the functions of an animal
 
 488 
 
 life : the three-foldness of chemicity is the three-foldness of the animal 
 function. This chemicity, wh is length in respect to vegetable and ani- 
 mal, is depth [or animal] in relation to the preceding life. Is not this 
 the secret of chemicity, that it is the functional aspect of a preceding 
 animal life, or world ? Is heat the vegetable world to it ? then what is 
 the inorganic electricity ? And as two instincts or chemicities produce 
 vegetable, as passion and limit ; so in what sense does the same apply 
 to animal functions in reference to the nutrition they produce ; where 
 are the force and resistance here ? 
 
 See how the belief in reality of the external world is theoretical, in 
 opposition to, suppression of, instinct ; and from a sense of Tightness, 
 and necessity to attain our objects : we do knowing violence to logic, 
 just as in mathematics, but without this violence we cannot get on ; a 
 true nutrition it is. 
 
 Men think Genius wonderful because they think Genius forms ' opi- 
 nions ' as they do ; ofjan infinite possibility selects the best or true : 
 they do not ' see ' that Genius sees, and sees only one, and does not 
 choose at all : and that the reason of his seeing is the tendency of the 
 things themselves, not his effort or choice. It is decomposition in his 
 ' organization,' wh restores, or unites, the nutritive with the logical : 
 for all true interpretation is this union of opposites. [Trace this in 
 Newton's mathematics ; or was that only rising to vegetable the first 
 vital stage ?] 
 
 There is this difference in the production of nutrition, and the" pro- 
 duction of animal function ; in the former, tho' resulting from functional 
 or permitted passion, this passion is limited [rendered continuous] , or 
 at least the polar opposite results in a corresponding nutrition. In the 
 animal function it is different : there is a complete decomposition [to a 
 certain extent] and casting off, the force being given externally ; the 
 difference between digestion, wh is also a ' function,' and muscular mo- 
 tions : i. e. an oppositeness, tho' with a similarity in one point. The 
 mental life, as a whole, represents the animal, and I suppose developes 
 as the animal world ; tho' it also contains the analogues of chemical, 
 vegetable, and animal ; as indeed every ' one ' [i. e. every three] does. 
 And shd not the ' three ' be called best by these names : chemical, veg- 
 etable, and animal, if we want to speak with understanding ; even as 
 polarity is best called male and female ? 
 
 Is not all psychical vibration also 'elliptic,' and .-. indeed the physi- 
 cal? Are not time, space, cause, the three 'dimensions'? surely time an- 
 swers to length ; space to the polar opposite or breadth; causefthe depth 
 or union; time and space have a polar oppositeness : they are compensa- 
 as it were, in motion. I think 'cause' is the idea of the animal life, the 
 animal type of cause : it is the phenomenal ' doer.' 
 
 The nutritive, or theoretical, surely is an attempt to make the phn 
 actual ? It is the introduction of hypotheses or fictions from ourselves, 
 as in our Science ; ' if the phn be real, such things must be :' these are 
 the chimeras. So comes a tendency back to a simpler, wh does not take 
 effect until in a higher or animal form ; and so a function. 
 
 In the mental life, also, the universal principle is the dy- 
 namical : no upward or nutritive passion, save from downward or inter- 
 pretative; as every latter demands also previous existence of the former.
 
 489 
 
 But the former is the great point, as in physiology, to recognize the nu- 
 trition from decomposition or chemical passion. This is an absolute 
 principle: all the/orce is the instinctive, the approx or interpretative; 
 this is the source of all passion ; the nutrition reproduces the tendency, 
 and the permitted passion the force. 
 
 Surely it is an error to confine the term 'chemical' to the affinity, to the 
 approx half- vibration. It shd be extended to embrace the chemical 
 ' nutrition ' as well as function ; and then we must find the previous 
 approx passion ; and so back endlessly, or at least to movement: sidereal 
 movement I expect. All the inorganic forces want a revision with that 
 idea. Yet on the other hand it is well to set before us the idea of the 
 approx or force-producing passion, as especially that of chemicity ; it 
 places it in right relation to vegetable and animal ; the vegetable being 
 especially nutritive, and the animal both. We call vegetable decompo- 
 sition, not vegetative, but chemical. 
 
 The idea of nutrition, or distension, giving rise to a tendency to recoil 
 wants a little more study. I seem to regard it as ever a separation of 
 polars that attract, and shd consistently consider organic bodies as com- 
 posed of such male and female particles that constantly tend to unite : 
 perhaps it is so. But the mental life seems to place the idea before us 
 in a simpler point of view. The instinctive passion, by limit, becomes 
 the opposite ; i. e. the passion is suppressed, reversed, and the ' tenden- 
 cy ' re-appears. Now here I see the nutrition does not involve exact 
 separation of polars that are attracting, but only a reversion of the 
 process, or passion, and tendency to its re-production. Is there any real 
 difference ? 
 
 How beautiful it will be when, in respect to the mental world as to 
 the physical, we recognize the three forms and their mutual subservi- 
 ence : the chemical, vegetable, animal ; and admire each in its place ; 
 not l opposing ' them because they are opposite, but seeing the mutual 
 dependence and total oneness. It will not be so difficult to recognize 
 the distinction at once and instinctively, for all practical purposes, 
 when we know it. We shall be able to see, at once, of anything in the 
 mental world whether it be 'instinctive,' theoretical, or true [inorganic, 
 vegetable, or animal] remembering also that forms are not fixed in 
 the mental as in the physical world, but that the mental jlife is still de- 
 velojnng. Strange, this appearance of succession to us ; that the mental 
 life only began when the physical was completely developed [or reached 
 its limit]. So did not the physical, as we call it, only begin when the 
 ' psychical ' had reached its limit ? Thus each repeats again that wh 
 has preceded ; the physical repeats the psychical, the mental the physi- 
 cal. Yet is the succession only phenomenal : in reality it is all 
 one ; an ellipse, in which each form is equally present at every part, 
 and at every time. Also in relation to the mental can we find what an- 
 swers to the inorganic world below the chemical? 
 
 As in the steam engine divergent force is used as the force resisted 
 to produce nutrition, [or in a watch] ; so also in the mental life is a 
 sort of parallel: obtaining a 'nutrition,' using this again as a 'tend- 
 ency,' and by resistance again obtaining another nutrition. Where is 
 the parallel to this in the material world ? I think I have noted, in 
 the living body, resisted tendency to vital passion as productive of 
 power ; e. g. in blood ? its power to nourish partly arising thence ; it 
 developes in the tissues as permitted ?
 
 490 
 
 "What we do by design and effort is force, and therefore suppresses 
 some instinct, prevents or undoes some passion. Therefore, surely, it 
 constitutes a nutrition ; it is ' -wrung,' and causes a tendency to reappear- 
 ance of the passion suppressed in the organization it has produced, and 
 so a higher effect or function. So our labors while carrying out prima- 
 rily our own designs bring about a higher effect, wh is their function ; 
 i. e. our labors are also instinctive. It is pretty to see how all function 
 is thus instinctive and must be ; because all force resists passion; is .. 
 nutrition; .-.produces organization; and the passion, necessarily re- 
 appearing, effects necessarily a function. This is beautiful. And this 
 function again effects a nutrition, again a higher function, in unending 
 expansion, in infinite ellipse : in fact in eternity. It is God's one act. 
 This is the development wh is involved in the conception of passion. 
 
 The mere transmission or continuance of passion seems perhaps to in- 
 volve a partial polar union : see ordinary reproduction. Is this before 
 reaching the limit ? like the passing of a force from one body to another 
 without conversion. This does not make a whole ; there is no whole 
 until the limit is reached, then true polar union or development. So 
 the human race is not a whole as yet ; it is only two unipolars [as if 
 length and breadth without depth]. See in this how succession in time 
 is absolutely unreal : we see succession of length, breadth, and depth, 
 which yet we know must be one and co-existent, and cannot be alone : 
 past, present and future are really one. These unipolars are only 
 wrongly seen as isolated, and successive ; and .'. seen as wrong. This 
 is our phenomenal wrongness : we see, as imperfect parts, that wh is a 
 perfect whole. Yes, it is beautiful : our seeing these parts as wrong or 
 evil, and making them, as we say, right or better or good, is the very 
 means by wh the perfectness of the whole is attained : or rather, not so : 
 this is phenomenal ; but it is included in the perfectness of the whole ; 
 it wd not be a perfect whole without it. In our making right, the ad- 
 vance comes by bringing the whole into our view ; not really bring- 
 ing it to pass, but coming to see it. This working of ours against error 
 and evil, is our coming gradually to see the whole of wh before we saw 
 a part. 
 
 ' Cause ' arises with time. One fact, one deed [eternal or not in 
 succession], perceived in succession, must be a chain of causes and 
 effects ; i. e. must be the same fact in many successive forms. Cause 
 is unity in succession. The theological argument does not rest on cause ; 
 that is as bad as if we used time for it : not on idea of cause but on 
 consciousness of acting. The proof is that God does nature ; that He 
 acts : not that He must be the cause of the first of the causes ; if so 
 He must be the same as the causes. 
 
 Is time succession, space co-existence, cause co-existence in succession? 
 And so too an opposite polarity between the worlds to which time and 
 space chiefly apply ; the psychical being the unity ; the physical the 
 variety ? Now do I not see how the physical world comes to be, see- 
 ing whence the idea of space ? given space, and the physical world fol- 
 lows down to minutest iota. Space from time (by limit) ; and time 
 necessarily the effect of an eternal act on limited being. 
 
 Space is a suppression of the succession ; an infinite present, as it 
 were : a turning of time at right angles, spreading out before us, as it 
 were ; just as present is to past. The present is the past turned at
 
 491 
 
 right angles. Instead, of a long stream, a lake extending out broad before 
 the eye ; not truly separate, or separable, of course, any more than 
 length and breadth are. All the length has all the breadth, and vice 
 versa ; and yet are length and breadth different and polar. Thus have I 
 not space ; and therein that baffling question, the wherefore of matter 
 and motion ? So of Cause : we look back and trace cause and effect ; 
 that one could not be without the other ; that tho' in succession it is all 
 identity ; that our succession, in truth, is one-ness. Yet the same im- 
 possibility of real cause (as we conceive it) as of real time, or of real 
 matter. 
 
 Space, as it were, suppresses time ; supposes, or gives scope for, the 
 whole succession together. In infinite space, we, as it were, see it all at 
 once. The succession, regarded as all at once before us, is space : the 
 succession suppressed becomes infinite space. It reaches its limit, and by 
 means of the human element introduced from our feeling [of desirable- 
 ness, rightness, &c,] gives us the polar opposite, infinite space. The 
 space is the ' organization,' as it were, effected by that suppression, that 
 nutrition. 
 
 ' Cause ' is the affirmation at once of real oneness and of real succes- 
 sion ; the meaning of wh, as eternity, is clear. There is, even in the 
 conception of cause itself, sufficient evidence that it is not real : one-ness 
 and succession are opposite ; the chain of causes is an eternal fact. So 
 we in tracing, and working by, cause, do but attain successive forms or 
 views of one fact. Ever the eternal looms upon us ; it is only our inability 
 to see it that causes us to see succession. But I do not seem to have the 
 right relation of time space, and cause yet ; as variety, unity, and both. 
 It shd surely rather be unity, variety, cause : i. e., as it were, the space 
 shd come first, and time from it. And as all knowledge begins from the 
 physical, is it not so ? There is more reason for this relation, inasmuch 
 as the ' function,' as it were, of cause is the unity. The succession, the 
 nutrition ; the unity the function. 
 
 Striking is this tendency to unify as the functional power ; the force 
 resisted, is that wh is ever to be assumed : and it comes to exist as a 
 tendency, or power, from its opposition or suppression in nutrition, in any 
 form. Is here a key to the mental life ? This tendency to unify comes 
 from the original unity, turned into variety by limit ; so producing nu- 
 trition, and ever .'. has tendency to recur. What evidence is here : the 
 unity is the fact : wh suppressed, and becoming variety, ever tends to re- 
 cur. Here is proof of the fact of unity, of eternity ; this tendency in 
 the mind ever to unify proves the original fact of unity. 
 
 Now I get another step about space and time. Certainly the unity 
 the idea corresponding to space is the first : it is the present. We place 
 time before space, as past before present, and derive space from time, as 
 present, from past ; whereas in respect to our conception of them it must 
 have been the reverse. The first to us is the one, made variety by limit ; 
 and then the order is, as it were, inverted ; as ever we learn cause from 
 effect and have to invert the order of our conceptions. 
 
 The polar opposite is that wh must be in order that the other, having 
 been, may not still be : this is the relation of effect to cause ; and shows 
 the necessity of absolute or universal causation. 
 
 Why have the planetary motions been considered first as in a vacuum ; 
 
 H 2
 
 492 
 
 so impossibly [i. e. nutritively] ? I must look thus into the mental 
 life ; tracing its every manifestation to necessary developments of life : 
 each fact and form must find its meaning even as in Nature. 
 
 All forms of all things are elliptic if alone, and when not so it is 
 from influence of other things, these alterations being also elliptic : so 
 that the ellipse includes all possible modifications of form, all irregular- 
 ities and defects. 
 
 Is is not curious that Newton, who saw that an ' idea,' limited, became 
 the polar opposite, and that this was the key to Nature shd not have 
 seen that a motion becoming by limit its polar opposite, shd be the fact 
 of Nature ? that the tangential motion e.g. was gravity, becojning its 
 polar opposite by limit ? 
 
 The upward motion of the pendulum is not the polar opposite of the 
 downward ; that is mere negation, it has no power ; .'.it is 'nothing ': 
 it is nutrition, and is the type of moral wrongness. It is the destruc- 
 tion of passion, as it were ; and the tendency to it .-. re-appears. The 
 true polar opposite, the thing that exists, is that wh is caused to be by 
 this negation ; viz. the movement at right angles. So in the vegetable 
 world the polar opposite to chemicity is not the not-being, or suppres- 
 sion of the chemical passion, but that arrangement of the elements wh 
 results from that suppression [an arrangement perhaps at right angles]. 
 
 Consider further : the opposite motion, causing the downward not to 
 be, is a type of Sin ; see how it is produced by force ; is as it were, an 
 act, yet, in itself, only destroys, causes not to be. And is it also in one 
 sense the yielding to passion the passion carried on ? There is again 
 an intermingling here ; but I must think how sin seems to be an act, 
 yet is only the production of not-being [save in the nutrition effected]. 
 Have I not been in error in speaking of the nutrition as wrong or evil ; 
 the nutrition is the resulting fact, not the negation or suppressing. 
 
 Consider too : are not phenomenal right and wrong, or good and evil, 
 polar : the true good is the union in one of phenomenal good and evil ? 
 the evil retained in a higher form as nutrition; the good reappearing 
 in higher form as function. The good out of evil is higher good by the 
 union of evil with good. Shd I not attempt to distinguish between the 
 evil or wrongness, as the mere 'upward' movement suppressing the good, 
 or causing it not to be, and the nutrition wh it effects, but is not itself? 
 The whole is good : the nutrition, or the lower good suppressed and 
 re-appearing even the very good that was lost in higher form, and 
 only in this higher form by such sacrifice and loss. Here again appears 
 the analogy to spiritual life. 
 
 I might write a ' Plea for the Extension of the Baconian Philosophy '; 
 for in truth it is the limit placed on the inductive method by men of 
 science that is the great obstacle now. Only in details is it pursued : 
 so many questions, and these of prime importance, are entirely settled 
 a priori, and in a manner worse now than ever, viz. precluded from dis- 
 cussion. For the a priori method is at once adopted and denied ; so 
 that a whole class of subjects, first settled one way a priori, are then 
 set aside from investigation as beyond the province of induction. Some 
 of these I wish to bring within the domain of reason: such as ' matter,' 
 ' organic life,' &c. It is interesting that exactly Bacon's work now 
 wants doing again to make people abandon their a priori methods and 
 look at Nature. This is ever the difficulty, it is effecting the nutrition
 
 493 
 
 and requires force ; f5r people cling with all their might to their a pri- 
 ori (psychical) conclusions and methods, and never more than when 
 they do so unconsciously. 
 
 The unity wh is our first ' passion ', hy limit, producing or becoming 
 variety, but ever tending to -re-appear in union with the variety, consti- 
 tutes the mental life and functional power. The ever repeated suppres- 
 sion of this unity, and substitution of the oppositely polar variety, is 
 the nutrition. So comes mental development, bcause ever more variety 
 is thus included in the unity. And from this we learn something of 
 the physical : that the tendency to unifying gravity, chemical affinity, 
 and every form of polar attraction is the tendency to re-appearance of 
 an unity suppressed. I thin! I see this in some sense ; and it agrees 
 with an old idea that all this polar attraction is merely tendency to 
 retuiii. 
 
 How evident is the ' becoming ' of the physical from the psychical : 
 absolute unity, limit, variety ; and so on, again and again ; unifying, 
 from suppressed unity, and new variety again, for ever. And the men- 
 tal life begins from the physical [even as the animal world begins from 
 the vegetable, in nutrition], and ends in the psychical [as animal ends 
 in chemical or function]. Our study of Nature, or phna, as basis of our 
 mental life, is just as the animal is based on assimilation of vegetable. 
 Therefore in relation to our mental life the physical or variety is first ; 
 tho' in fact the unity or psychical is first. 
 
 Can parallel relations be traced in the inorganic forces ? 
 
 The suppression of the idea of time reveals to us eternity : this is the 
 nutrition. It is not the contrary idea, wh wd be no-time, the negation, 
 [the evil]. So in the suppression of matter; the negation is not the 
 polar, but God's act; wh, being suppressed, it becomes. Now what is 
 the ' third ' here ? what the re-appearance of the suppressed ? Is it 
 not the revelation of the holiness as seen in physical necessity ? So 
 does the unification of time and eternity also reveal a moral fact ? for 
 this it is necessary to have another ' organization,' wh corresponds to 
 seeing the deeper signification ? 
 
 Cause is neither in time nor space, neither in the psychical nor phy- 
 sical world, but only in the mental : it is from union of both. 
 
 In these views I see the philosophy of the sanatory processes : first 
 we try to suppress that which we want to get rid of, but it exists in 
 another form, wh is nutrition, and it tends to re-appear : we have to get 
 this nutrition into an organization, and let the first passion re-appear as 
 function. So in our social life : first we oppose or suppress, to get a nu- 
 trition, wh being connected with organization, the original passion re- 
 appears as function. This must be with the competitive principle, e. g. 
 It is so indeed now in social life ; the instinct to get all for himself, 
 first repressed, forms organization, and re-appears as the great agent in 
 social life. It is ' regulated indulgence ' : tendency fulfilled in an or- 
 ganization. But the same must be carried out farther : this is but a new 
 starting point. The instinct of getting, wh is society's present function, 
 must again be suppressed, again to re-appear in higher form as a more 
 universal function. Is this the key to Sociology ? Now the inorganic 
 forces are like the various stages or forms of the mental and social life, 
 and I must trace them. 
 
 "We say, God's act is the cause of the universe. Now the effect is the
 
 494 
 
 cause in the present ; the entire series of causes and effects is but the 
 same thing in succession. It is clear .-., that at every moment, the uni- 
 verse is, and has been, God's act in the present. Is it not plain, then, 
 that the universe is the ever-present Divine act ; i. e. the effect on us 
 of the ever-present Divine act ? God's act is cause in just the same 
 sense as secondary cause ; i. e. it is the fact of the thing : the putting it 
 at the origin, the truly first beyond wh we cannot go, is in fact making 
 it ever present, denying the succession ; for succession is denied when 
 it is limited. How wonderfully this breaks in upon me ; succession is 
 denied when it is limited. Is not this exactly the mathematical limit ? 
 Does succession at its limit become the polar opposite, eternity ? Our 
 placing God's- act at the origin, as limiting the succession, is the sub- 
 stitution of eternity for it. We actually do affirm the eternity seen as 
 time, tho' not reflectingly. Is this the three : unity (as present) by 
 limit becomes the polar opposite, succession (or time); this by limit be- 
 comes eternity, the union of present and succession ? [And both limits 
 are necessary, from our limited being]. The present and succession, in 
 one, is eternity : an everlasting present ; touching the succession on 
 the one side, the unity on the other, and arising thro' the succession. 
 The limit to the succession gives the ' depth ': the ' present ' re-appearing 
 with it. [Even as animal arises thro' vegetable ?] Now do I not ' ac- 
 count for ' the idea of eternity, have it as authoritative, no dream nor 
 mere fancy : it springs necessarily from the universal process of Nature. 
 Look at it in its parallelism with ' depth ' in all its forms. It is the 
 animal. Its 'function' is the re-production of the 'present-ness,' the 
 suppression of wh has constituted the succession, or nutrition : to make 
 God's act present to us. 
 
 If we consider God's act only as the cause of the origin of 
 the universe we deny the existence of His act, for the cause exists only 
 in the effect ; and the effect has all the reality, the necessity, the fact, 
 of the cause. The cause is not, and never was, more than the effect ; 
 the effect contains it in full. We have fallen into horrible confusions 
 from this word ' cause,' using it with so little understanding. I see it 
 now clearly ; and that it is above all necessary to separate from it all 
 idea of efficiency, that is, acting. "We have confounded cause with 
 actions. 
 
 Is there any force in the view that we can never know anything but 
 phna, or effects upon ourselves ? In one sense perhaps this must be 
 true ; as knowledge involves consciousness, and we can only be conscious 
 of an effect upon, or passion in, ourselves. But by the process of life, 
 starting from the phn or instinctive passion (perception), by resistance 
 or limit, nutrition arises, and from union of this with the former, again 
 by limit, is revealed the cause. This is the mental passion : now can 
 this mental passion, or perception of cause, ever correspond with, and 
 truly re-present to us, the* reality ? I think it may re-present to us, 
 consciously and truly, the very fact or Deed : and this not in itself, but 
 because we are spirits to whom the reality is, as it were, homogeneous, 
 and who may .-. from the phna truly infer the reality. This is the thing 
 to be looked at : the development of our mental life gives us true per- 
 ception of the reality, because we are prepared to know it, being spirits : 
 spirits can know the spiritual from the phn wh arises from their own 
 limit ? To reveal the spiritual is the function of the mental life.
 
 495 
 
 The union of the psychical with the physical gives us back the spi- 
 ritual ; and well and reasonably, because they are only effects of the 
 spiritual, the reality of them is spiritual. It is no such wonder that 
 we shd see them as they are : we only see them otherwise because of our 
 limit, wh causes them to be thus two polar opposites, instead of unity. 
 This idea that we can never know anything but phna rests on the basis 
 of the reality of the phenomenal. In truth there is no ' phenomenon ' 
 to be known ; there are phna to be perceived, but the knowing involves 
 that the thing known is no longer a phn. Knowledge is being one, ha- 
 ving one passion, with the fact known. Now our passion is spiritual, 
 so .'. must the thing known be. "We can never ' know* anything but the 
 spiritual. It is plain that all our knowledge tends just that way, to 
 be non-phenomenal ; the phn being merely a means to knowledge, never 
 the subject of it. All knowledge is sympathy one passion wh can 
 be only with spiritual passion therefore : and from knowlege of spiritual 
 passion I think it is possible to infer a spiritual Being or Agent, having 
 our own conscious existence and acting to help us. On this basis rests 
 the intuition of a God ; not on idea of Cause, &c., but on our own con- 
 sciousness of being and acting. 
 
 It is an important thing to remember that what we call ' doing 
 things ' [material] is simply perceiving effects on us and their relations ; 
 no real cause, or efficient force. All our doing, save moral doing, being 
 only such effect on us ; part of God's act, not our doing at all, only a 
 thing, or passion in us, perceived. We act, indeed, when we control and 
 direct the passion morally ; we refuse to act when we do not. But we de- 
 ceive ourselves with the idea of ' doing,' as if our bodily functions were 
 our act. We are perplexed, just as those men must have been who 
 trusted their ' perceptions ' with respect to the sidereal motions. 
 
 Even in respect to physical science how a priori are many of our con- 
 clusions ; the universal gravity, e. g. ; with what coolness assumed to be 
 a property of all matter, while Newton speculated on its cause lest it 
 shd be thought he deemed it so. It is like the Greeks making universal 
 whatever happened to strike them. In fact this tendency to unifying 
 will never be obsolete : it is the chemical affinity, the attraction, of the 
 human mind ; the only thing we have to use ; it is the fact, or passion, 
 from wh even nutrition comes, or wh by limit becomes nutrition. We 
 crawl on all-fours about some things, but attempt the wildest flights 
 about others ; not yet having learnt simply to walk erect : in all things 
 to be the interpreters of Nature, in none her slave. Truly wonderful 
 is our abuse of a priori speculation on some subjects, the result, I sup- 
 pose, of our slavish subjection to the phn in others : it is complementary, 
 surely ; if one extreme, there is sure somewhere to be the other ; it is 
 that secures the being of the whole. I must look more' into the com- 
 plementary colors supplied by the eye : there is something, and of wide 
 meaning, in it. 
 
 Surely our ' chemical affinity ' is gravity re-appearing in a more de- 
 veloped form, and in an organization wh gives it power to produce ' or- 
 ganic life ' ? Is it not possible that there are many kinds of gravity ? 
 
 In future times men will say, ' It used to be thought that there was 
 a true succession, wh had a beginning at some time when God created 
 the things or imparted the force : a doctrine, wh grossly phenomenal 
 and unscientific as it now appears, yet, we may see, was practically the
 
 496 
 
 same as that which is to us so simple ; that there is an Eternal Act 
 affecting us wh by reason of our limit we perceive as succession.' "We 
 say, ' it is so,' or ' was made so ' ; instead of seeking how it becomes so, 
 and what it becomes. Eternity in succession is ' infinite becoming,' or 
 cause and effect unbeginning ; just what we see. It is strange we have 
 not yet known it : that even now, as spirits, we exist in eternity ; this 
 chain of causes being but our successive perceiving of one thing. 
 
 Surely one great function of Painting is to disabuse our minds of the 
 fancy that we see ' things.' See Turner's masses of color as compared 
 with those clear and definite presentations of things and persons. One 
 is the interpretation ; the using, and ruling the phn ; the other is ser- 
 ving it. And this interpreting this ruling the phn is well called 
 ' right ' : it is the type of holiness for it is ruling our own passion. In- 
 terpretation altering by our manhood the phenomenal relation of cause 
 and effect [inverting the apparent relation] is a type of our moral con- 
 trol of our passion. 
 
 The conception of ' things ' is altogether in the mind ; and belongs to 
 the mental life, being from the union of the physical and psychical ? 
 We do not by the senses perceive ' things ' but sensations things are 
 wholly ideas. Here is the difference between a thing and the idea of 
 it : a thing as seen or felt is not a thing at all : here we deceive our- 
 selves again ; we seem to perceive by bodily sense that which has been 
 produced in us as a part of mental life. It is an unconscious act of in- 
 terpretation we perform. The ' idea of a thing ' is the only thing ; the 
 thing itself is a passion produced in us. "Why the one produces the 
 other is interesting ; but I think we may trace it ; e. g. in cases in wh 
 the process is not so entirely unconscious : as when in seeing a shadow 
 we perceive the interruption to the light of the sun. 
 
 This I must trace : how that idea of space, and thereby of things, 
 comes to be so instinctive. Can I trace it by that of cause ? When we 
 see two events, we perceive directly cause, yet we know the cause is 
 wholly supplied by the ' mind ' ; so that idea of a ' thing ' comes wholly 
 from within: and as our conception of cause rests on identity in variety, 
 or in succession, so on what rests the idea of a thing? on matter or sub- 
 stance ? What is that ' substance ' ? It does not satisfy me to derive 
 it merely from our own consciousness of being, any more than ' cause ' 
 from our consciousness of acting; both are more or less concerned, no 
 doubt : our idea of ' power ' in cause arises from our consciousness of 
 acting, but it has another and truer basis in that identity in variety wh 
 arises from, and belongs to, the act and its effect on us. So must not 
 that idea of ' substance ' be partly from the act, partly from us a kind 
 of eternity and limit ? Are duration, substance, and cause, all from 
 eternity and lijnit ? I have not yet arrived at this point, but in the 
 meantime I hold fast to the view of ' things ' being merely and wholly 
 mental, as distinct from the passion produced in us wh is the occasion of 
 our perceiving them. 
 
 What again is that seeing one's conceptions ? How plainly I see what 
 I clearly conceive ; what is that ? I think I have a' little clue : all in- 
 terpretation is the unifying : all arises from the suppressed unity ; now 
 if the conception of ' thing ' be an interpretation, a bringing together 
 of variety and unity, a making one, how is it ? what unification, of 
 what elements, [as ' cause ' is of identity and succession]. May we not 
 say, Cause is unifying of ' absoluteness' Being or existence with
 
 497 
 
 succession ; for that iflea of Being surely involves the oneness ? So is 
 not ' substance ' an unifying of this same idea with space ? This the 
 general idea of substance or thing ; then we perceive particular things 
 as we perceive particular causes : all sorts of forms of both ; but the 
 universal idea the same : one substance, one cause. Time has not this 
 variety of form : it is one in form as well as in fact. 
 
 Is cause union of time and substance : is it, rather, substance that is 
 our conception than space ? I must go deeper. Does not the conception 
 of space flow from the very fact of conscious being ? [and consciousness 
 of a limit ?] We cannot refer these primary conceptions, from wh our 
 ideas of matter e. g. are derived, to our having bodies, &c. The passion 
 is passion in us as spirits, and the necessity for our conception of space, 
 and substance in it, must arise from our spiritual Being. These modes 
 of passion are the cause of our ' having bodies,' as we say, and not the 
 effects. Why is our spiritual passion such as to involve the effect on us 
 wh constitutes space or matter ? It is indeed a puzzle. Shd I have 
 reference to the actual existence of passion in other spirits, external 
 spiritual passion, by wh we are affected, and by means of wh we per- 
 ceive our own ? 
 
 It seems clear on reflection that infinite space is a mode of obtaining 
 an ever-presentness ; all that has been in the past together in the space, 
 but then it is infinite too. Yet does the past apply also to the infinite 
 space ? It seems absurd to regard the present as a mere limit, when it 
 is necessarily the starting point of all ; the ' then ' or Time flows from 
 the now ; so the ' there ' space from the here : the not-now and not-here 
 producing the then and there. 
 
 Is not this the fact of life : unity by limit suppressed ; and becoming 
 variety, and ever re-appearing, in endless succession, as one with the 
 variety. And as this is the fact of the psychical, so it is of course of 
 the physical also, wh is its result : the ' attraction,' or unifying, in the 
 physical world being the same as, or re-presentation of, the fact in the 
 psychical. We see it in both its aspects, as attraction, and as a tend- 
 ency to unification ; but in both cases it is one fact, and has the one 
 cause : viz. the first unity being, by our limit, suppressed and rendered 
 the oppositely-polar variety; and unity .. tending ever to return. Does 
 not this same process take place in every child ? ' Now ' and ' here ' 
 surely are simply forms of unity : so are not now, here, one, the origin 
 of time, space, cause ? 
 
 Every interpretation is the re-assertion of the unity, the identification 
 of some variety with it; if.*, in any case we find the variety so unified, 
 we know the elements of the interpretation. Also every nutrition, or 
 variety, is from limit to preceding unity. But interpretations or unifyings 
 also, or 'putting right,' still may mislead us, or seem to do so, becoming 
 or causing nutrition. The idea of cause, e. g., wh is unifying of suc- 
 cession and identity, still seems to put us wrong ; we thinking we per- 
 ceive real causes. So in respect to painting, our perception as of real 
 things makes men paint wrong ; if they painted only color they wd be 
 right. 
 
 Perhaps I am attempting too soon to solve why we perceive the phy- 
 sical. The universe, the effect on us, is such as it is because God's act 
 is such as it is ; the former is to reveal the latter. 
 
 The distinction between the primary and secondary properties of
 
 498 
 
 bodies is a good one ; e. g. between shape and color : they are, respect- 
 ively, physical and mental. ' Things ' being wholly mental, it is only 
 the primary qualities, wh we perceive as being in and constituting the 
 thing itself, that belong at all to the ' thing ' : the secondary qualities . 
 are our physical sensations, quite of a different sort ; they cause us to 
 ' infer ' the thing, but have themselves nothing to do with it. They are 
 alike passion in us ; but one physical the other mental. 
 
 First is the subjective ; by limit this becomes the polar opposite, the 
 objective or phenomenon : and the life is the constant re-appearance of 
 the suppressed subjective, in union with the objective : this new nutri- 
 tion, or depth, ever becoming, also by limit, a new objective or pheno- 
 menon. Why the primary phenomenon is physical is another question. 
 I think this series may be traced into the details of the mental life 
 also. 
 
 Are the ' intuition of cause ' and the ' limit ' one ? 
 
 The psychical one, or unity, becomes the phenomenal variety : here 
 are two processes : the subjective becoming external ; the one becoming 
 variety. The psychical has become the physical, yet still is, and is 
 united with it in the mental. The tendency to the re-appearance of the 
 subjective, or unity, produces the mental life, because it becomes one 
 with the phenomenal, in an ' organization.' 
 
 It is not our psychical passion that causes the universe, any more than 
 it causes that universal mind wh we perceive. The physical universe is 
 the result of aggregate psychical passion ; of spirit or spirits of course. 
 The result of passion in us, or our bodies, brings us into relation with 
 a similar result of passion in other spirits. 
 
 The body is the result of God's act on spirit; .-. do I not see that all 
 the physical must be such human body, the universe making up such, or 
 many such ? These things, animals, &c., that we see, are parts of a 
 human body : and in each of our bodies there are all that is without us ; 
 the chemical, vegetable, and animal universe repeated ? 
 
 Nature is an infinite complication and interweaving of ellipses. It is 
 indeed wonderful that it shd ever have been unravelled, unless we re- 
 cognize the life and development, and the constantly recurring tendency 
 to unify, with ever increasing variety, wh arises from the first suppres- 
 sion of unity by limit. It is only the laying hold of the right clue that 
 enables it to be done : the vibration ; the passion becoming the opposite 
 by resistance or limit. Until quite recently I did not see what this con- 
 ception of the limit was, and considered the transcendental mathematics 
 as a mere series of tricks and contrivances. I must have been mistaken. 
 That wh interprets Nature is true to her must be fact. Yet that wh 
 this mathematics does is not really so great, tho' great to us ; or rather 
 is not every little thing great if it be true to Nature ; great in its results ? 
 She multiplies the seed sown ; to the smallest 'sympathy ' yields bound- 
 less fruit. 
 
 If we once get it into our minds that an effect on us, or passion pro- 
 duced in us, as sentient Beings, causes us to perceive material things, 
 there is surely no more difficulty about the material world. Then all 
 we have to do is to ascertain the cause of this passion in us, wh causes 
 us to perceive the material universe, and all is done. And this of course 
 is a work of induction : how is it to be settled without any trouble and 
 a priori ? I beg not to be so hasty, so inconsistent. I want to know
 
 499 
 
 what this is, that I am caused to perceive. If I wish to ascertain a 
 cause, all right reason teaches me to examine the effect. How is it 
 likely we shd be able to answer this question alone without taking any 
 trouble ? People say at once the cause of this passion in us is that a 
 material universe exists wh we perceive. Now I do not insist upon the 
 absurdity of this answer ; I will suppose it to be possible, and even ra- 
 tional : but I say it is a mere guess ; it is a priori : it is doing the very 
 thing wh the same men are never tired of abusing our forefathers for 
 doing. We argue from our senses, wh is the very thing that is under 
 dispute ; a most vicious circle. 
 
 Each depth has as it were a depth ; each animal an animal within it ; 
 each interpretation is to be interpreted ? 
 
 I conceive we our spirit have no ' properties ' only limit : from 
 that flows all : from that the vibration, which is life. The idea of the 
 created spirit emphatically is that of limit ; no properties save from 
 God's act ; God's act within it, as it were ? Is the spiritual Being, the 
 ' individual ' God's act limited ? This is not enough : the ' I ' demands 
 a separate actual Being. But so does not the psychical passion truly 
 present God's act ; no properties in us to alter it ? 
 
 In the mental life the ' limit ' of a thing or passion seems to be merely 
 our getting tired of it, or feeling or perceiving that it is no good ; it 
 fails and will not do. See Hegel's < dialectic force,' wh seems to be no- 
 thing but this feeling of ours of the necessity of something else ; we do 
 away with, suppress or reverse the one, and the ' polar ' necessarily is ; 
 it comes from it, or re-presents it ; being in fact the very thing wh we 
 sought to suppress. Surely here is the origin of succession, wh involves 
 also, necesssarily, cause the one in all the successive forms. 
 
 Is not our first tendency, generally, to unify forms instead of facts ; 
 to make one ' thing ' the same as another, misusing analogy [e. g. elec- 
 tricity and nervous force] ; or when we see anything fresh to say it is 
 the same as some other thing, meaning the same in form ? Is it not by 
 this means that we come to the real unity i. e. of the fact ? because 
 from this first unifying the nutrition or discrimination results (viz. from 
 its limit). Therefore this also is not bad or wrong ; it is the necessary 
 source of life, it only needs to be limited or controlled". 
 
 I have in this respect improved my idea of the external world : for- 
 merly, holding it to be God's act, I conceived it as truly affecting us and 
 being perceived : I put it, considered as God's act, first. Now I see that 
 it is last, not first ; that first is the effect on us, be the cause of that ef- 
 fect whatever it may ; then the phenomenon, as effect of this passion in 
 us. It is an important change. And consider again : our bodies are 
 the result of the passion in us : I think it must be clear that the external 
 world is passion [of course in spirits] affecting and changing that pas- 
 sion in us wh constitutes our bodies, and so causing changes in it which 
 cause us to perceive. And again : it is clear that that wh produces our 
 bodies, or becomes them, and that wh influences them and causes us thus 
 to perceive, is the same. Therefore as it is other passion wh influences 
 our bodies, and causes us to perceive, it must be also this same passion 
 wh produces or becomes our bodies. So I seem to have an unification, 
 or to approach one, of the instinctive and the theoretical doctrine : or a 
 real physical universe, and a divine act. In us, the phenomenal passion 
 alike our psychical being, our bodies, and our mental being are our
 
 500 
 
 participating in, or receiving, the passion of other spirits ; and our per- 
 ception of an external world is also our receiving this passion from 
 other spirits ; i. e. our perception of the external world is our conscious- 
 ness of this passion so produced in us. Our perception of our own bo- 
 dies is, of course, in the same way perception of passion produced in 
 us. But why are we only conscious of the passion produced in us 
 by changes of our physical passion ; not of the passion itself or of the 
 body itself ? 
 
 Certainly I shall end in a paradox : that ever comes at the limit for 
 the time being of our knowledge, but it is itself proof of future advance ; 
 and thus is proved in fact unending or infinite advance. The sign of the 
 limit of our knowledge is our perceiving the paradox : two opposite 
 opinions wh must both be true so far as we can see, but we cannot see 
 how : the next thing to see is the how, i. e. to develope, or get the two 
 in one. It is interesting to note that at the limit must ever be the par- 
 adox : because whatever our mental passion be, it can ever be suppressed, 
 is suppressed indeed, by the fact of the limit, and so the opposite exists. 
 Everything must have the two opposite forms [or polar] ; necessarily 
 the paradox exists at limit. 
 
 Those German philosophers admit things [the physical] to be real 
 the real, speak of it as realization of idea ; but then they [in their view 
 rightly] place the ideal above the real. But this is a misconception, a 
 real, not merely a verbal error. Suppose we called the motion of the 
 sun real, and the motion of the earth ideal ; this wd be as they speak, 
 and we see at once into what confusion we should fall ; speaking of the 
 < idea ' of the earth's motion as realized ' in the sun's motion, or that 
 wh we perceive. [Subsequently I found the word ' actual ' the precise 
 substitute for that use of the word ideal.] 
 
 We are in relation with other spirits, and the passion in them : .-. the 
 passion in us [the moral passion] produced by God's act, causes such a 
 relation of us to these passions of other spirits that we perceive the uni- 
 verse ? The physical is to be derived from the moral, instead of the 
 moral from the physical, as we think ; this is effect before cause. God's 
 act on us is the moral, and the moral only ; the passion thus produced 
 in us by God's act causes such passion in us to be produced by our rela- 
 tion to other spirits, and then moral passion, as is perceived as the phe- 
 nomenal world. It is not their moral passion in other spirits that we per- 
 ceive as the universe, but our relation to them under the influence of 
 God's act on us [our moral Being]. 
 
 Our moral nature is seen as root ; God's moral act as cause ; passion 
 in other spirits [God's moral action in them] as being the fact our re- 
 lation to wh causes us to perceive the universe. Thus is not the ' moral 
 passion ' [our moral consciousness ?] the first : this is the psychical wh 
 precedes the physical. [So we have not the ' unconscious psychical ' wh 
 was questionable.] All the truly primary properties the oneness, the 
 absence of time, space and cause the eternity belong to the moral. 
 Besides, I have seen that our moral action and consciousness is God's 
 direct act in or on us ; and this must be the starting point of all. 
 
 Till a child is a moral being .-. is it unconscious? Certainly until a 
 child is conscious of its moral power as agent, it cannot perceive an ex- 
 ternal world, cannot have any ideas wh rest on conception of cause. It 
 may be sensational, but not perceptive.
 
 501 
 
 See : I was giving up, almost regretfully, my view of the universe as 
 God's moral act, and this unifying is what I have for it. How can any 
 fancy of mine be better, more pleasing even to me, than God's universe 
 in fact ? This is how we ever advance by giving up our own ; self- 
 sacrifice produces our life. Thus it is : God acts on us and on all spirits : 
 the act in us we perceive as our moral life ; the effect produced on us 
 by the relation we are so brought into with the moral life of other spi- 
 rits, is our phenomenal life, and our perception of the universe. I 
 think this progress of my views is B good illustration of the idea that 
 the animal or depth arises from resistance to vegetable [or divergent, or 
 theoretical in mental]; for thus I unify, arrive at depth, by resistance to 
 my theoretical view. 
 
 To us the effect must come before the cause : for to us the present of 
 course must be first, and the effect is but the cause in the present. We 
 therefore must perceive effect first ; and may almost lay it down as a 
 rule that we must invert the order. So e. g. with regard to the depen- 
 dence of body and moral nature, may we not be pretty sure that as, to 
 us, the physical seems first, the moral must truly be so. 
 
 No man can tell you anything new ; for in knowing one thing you 
 truly know all, and until you know one thing no man can tell you ano- 
 ther. The one thing that is, and only can be, known is Life ; and all 
 that can be known is only life. More and more life you may be made 
 to know ; more can be told you, but not different, not new. 
 
 Are not' my views merely simplicity ; nothing new, nothing unknown : 
 the whole is comprised in leaving out [hypotheses or inventions], and 
 finding all in the best known and simplest conceptions or axioms ; in 
 truth in those most primary and simplest of all conceptions, right and 
 holiness. The idea of finding Nature, or facts, ' in the depths of our 
 moral consciousness,' is not so ridiculous if it had been truly the 
 moral consciousness that had been consulted : for moral Tightness is in- 
 deed the clue to all. 
 
 Our perception of matter, i.e. of solidity, seems to rest entirely on the 
 sense of touch ; now this is emphatically the sense of resistance. But 
 I have already identified this resistance with the limit ; thus it suggests 
 itself that it is by limit [of our own motion only ?] we obtain the idea 
 of matter or things. We are moving, and our force ceases to effect 
 movement, and thus we perceive a thing. It is founded on our percep- 
 tion of our own motion : it is our own bodily exertion failing to produce 
 motion in us, makes us perceive body. All our other senses are passive, 
 this is phenomenally active. Now surely there is a parallel to this in 
 the mental life. It appears that there must be motion limited or re- 
 sisted, for sensation: in the other senses, external motion limited or re- 
 sisted by our bodies ; in touch, motion of our bodies limited or resisted 
 without. Touch is the truly animal sense. It alone has this active 
 character, and man alone truly can be said to have it ? Does that part 
 of ' cause ' wh consists in identity in succession arise from the passive 
 senses ; that which involves idea of efficiency from our consciousness of 
 exertion of power ? We are conscious, as actions, only of those bodily 
 motions wh result from, or truly are, spiritual actions, i. e. effected by 
 our will ; so that we get the idea of matter (external things) from re- 
 sistance or prevention (limit) of our spiritual act, or the effect or mani- 
 festation of such spiritual act; what follows therefore but that, the act
 
 502 
 
 being spiritual, the resistance is spiritual also ? What we perceive as 
 matter is resistance, or limit, to our spiritual act. 
 
 Our ignorance of the truth of a thing, if we have any thought at all 
 about it, makes us think the polar opposite of that truth : our thinking 
 of the thing at all being the ' fact,' that so, by our limit, becomes the 
 polar opposite. It is impossible that we shd ever come to the limit of 
 our faculties ; as impossible as that passion shd cease. When we come 
 to the limit of one way of thinking, we can always think the opposite ; 
 and when we have two opposites we are quite sure to be able to unite 
 them into one. But does not each form of passion reach a limit, and so 
 human thought altogether 1 
 
 Perhaps this thought, that substance, or abstract Being apart from 
 moral Being, is altogether phenomenal, will be the clue that will guide 
 me to an unification of a real world and no real matter. There is a 
 material world, necessarily, because it is not : it is substantial because 
 phenomenal ; and because substantial and material, and consisting of 
 ' things,' therefore necessarily and only phenomenal. Is it not therefore 
 rightly called re-al thing-al ? 
 
 Genius and talent are as love and selfishness ; Genius is self-control 
 in the mental world ; exclusion of self, of effort. It is absolute sub- 
 mission to the right ; it is in respect to the mental what holiness is in 
 respect to the spiritual : and so love and holiness are one. 
 
 Surely a man who from folly commits an error and suffers in conse- 
 quence, however much reason he may have to be sorry, is certainly 
 better off than before, having learnt his error : he has gained mental 
 for physical, and has opportunity of making it a spiritual gain ; for the 
 folly wd be sure to have its full result. 
 
 God's moral act on moral Beings is all ; .-. all from it. If the moral 
 be alone the real, of course the phenomenal flows from it : and in truth 
 God's (direct) act on us being moral, we perceive as it moral it is our 
 moral life, in all its forms. And the phenomenal can but be the effect 
 produced on us (? as having moral life or God's moral act on us) by such 
 moral act of God on or in other Beings. Consider then : our moral life 
 is not all moral action ; it is conscience or sense of right, love of right, 
 and right action. 
 
 The process of thinking, the mental life, teaches also a moral lesson : 
 that of self-sacrifice, of giving up our own to God ; of controlling our 
 passion, abandoning that wh we like. We need never fear ; we never 
 give up anything in thought but we find a better. The great lesson in 
 thinking is to Jae willing to give up. 
 
 The compromise not to make opposites one, but to hold both dis- 
 tinctly will never do. Both must be all. says, ' this view must 
 
 be restrained from reaching its utmost limit.' No ! it must reach its 
 limit that it may become one with the contrary. Here is the proof that 
 we can advance farther, in the very fact of the paradox ; for two polars 
 can ever, and must ever, be married ; it is what they exist for : were 
 there not to be marriage there would never be men and women. So I 
 know, confidently, that it shall be known and seen, how it is and must 
 be, that our moral act and God's act in us are one and the same ; each 
 because the other, and especially ours because God's. For indeed i? not 
 even here a light : this, the moral being, the moral action, is what God 
 [Spirit, 112 See p. 477.
 
 503 
 
 gives us ; emphatically what He gives us, for all ours is so by His gift. 
 This simple view is surely a step : our moral action is what He gives to 
 us ; therefore Himself or His act in us. The gift of God is eternal life, 
 wh we do receive or refuse : eternal life or holiness. The phenomenal 
 is not so God's gift to MS ; rather His gift to others, affecting us. 
 
 Here is the fatal result of making the phenomenon real on the part of 
 Christian men ; they imperil their logical hold of all that is holy, upon 
 a hypothesis. The only safety is to show how the phenomenal flows from 
 the moral ; the absolute real, the illusory phn. [Newman's Theory of 
 Belief.-] 
 
 Nothing can he destroyed ; it still is, altho' suppressed ; if good was, 
 then it still is ; tho' may we say, made ' polar ' ; as cause and effect, wh 
 are one thing made polar by the ' condition ' wh represents the limit. 
 So is our sin, or refusal, the condition or limit whereby God's right act 
 becomes the nutrition ? So God does man's evil : the evil wh results 
 from man's sin is God's aot, only in its nutritive or polar form : [man's 
 passion yielded to being the suppression of it in its primary form, in wb, 
 it wd have constituted the man's own ' life.'] 
 
 I feel so strongly this argument : that Nature, which is one with the 
 passion in us our 'passions,' desires physical and mental must be it- 
 self in reality a moral act, because the passions in us can be controlled, 
 or resisted, by a moral act; wh could not be unless the two are homo- 
 geneous. Unless our passion [and .-. all Nature of wh our passion is a 
 part] were truly moral action, moral action could not oppose it : only 
 the same thing can be opposite. Opposites are two forms of the same 
 thing, necessarily. Therefore as our moral act is God's moral act in us, 
 so is our ' passion ' to wh that is opposite, God's moral act also. The 
 moralness of Nature is demonstrated by our moral control over our 
 passion. 
 
 Here is a new view open to me : that our passion and our moral ac- 
 tion, being opposite, must be polar. And this will expand. That is 
 the relation of our 'passions' and our 'will,' or moral action. And do 
 they not mutually become one another ; passions controlled constituting 
 our will, our spiritual life or nutrition ? This is wonderful : the desire 
 is ever a tendency to the re-currence of a former passion or fact. So 
 does it not truly come to this ; that our passions are our own moral 
 fact, having reached limit, become polar ? the moral ever first. I have 
 seen how our mental or perceptive Being comes thro' and from the mo- 
 ral ; the moral by limit becoming the phenomenal ? Consider, however, 
 how the passions or tendencies grow stronger by indulgence and absence 
 of control ; even as the moral power becomes greater by its exercise. 
 Nevertheless the germ of a truth has opened upon me here : the oppo- 
 siteness, necessarily the polarity, of our passions and our moral action ; 
 one opposing or suppressing the other, necessarily because they are two 
 forms of the same thing ; only so possible [as the opposite halves of two 
 similar vibrations alone can neutralize each other ?] Consider the rela- 
 tion of the vital resistance and the chemical passion in a germ ; is it 
 the same in polar form ? 
 
 God's act, given to us, is our act : it must be given as an act, or it is 
 not given at all. I shall see this ; shall soon be able to drop those in- 
 appropriate ideas wh cling around the word give. God's act.-, becomes 
 our act by His gift and our acceptance wh alone makes the gift possible ; 
 forced upon us, the very thing that is given wd cease to be. The idea
 
 504 
 
 of force involves cause, and is wholly phenomenal. God puts us in His 
 stead. This is our relation: almost clearly I see it, a relation of willing- 
 ness or unwillingness, acceptance or refusal ; i. e. of Love or rejection. 
 The question is not of our acting or not ; of nothing, hut simply whether 
 we love God. If we love Him we accept His gift ; if not, we reject it : 
 as we ever do. So our actions are but signs whether we love God or 
 not : if we love Him His act is in us, is ours, given by Him : we have 
 eternal life. Yes, Love is the fact, the soul and substance of our Being. 
 
 ' How hath she sinned ' ? 'In bartering Love ; God's love for man's.' 
 
 And yet again : see in the new life that is given us by Christ, how it 
 is all effected by Love ; God makes us love Him, and so receive again 
 His gift of holy action in eternal life, and in yet higher form : but only 
 by producing in us love ; no unnatural exercise, simply He makes us 
 love Him and we are holy by necessity ; His act is in that tender appeal, 
 that subduing power of all sacrificing love. No other way is there pos- 
 sible whereby God can give us life but by making us love Him ; and in 
 Christ the means. It is a miracle ; yes, the one miracle of Nature, the 
 eternal act of God, wh has all this one end, is all this one fact ; the 
 making His creatures love Him, that they may take His gift of holiness. 
 The work of Christ is to make His creatures love Him, and so receive 
 again the life, the gift, they have rejected. And this is by the natural 
 working of our powers and affections : it must be, because that natural 
 working is God's act. These passions generate the love ; the love re- 
 ceives the gift, wh receiving, we are holy. Cannot I now trace back 
 our moral nature as far as philosophy can demand, back all to Love ? 
 And is not the paradox of free-will gone? God's act and our act seen 
 as one. 
 
 All seems to be here, in this love : loving God, or our own passion ; 
 yielding to, letting be in us, one or the other. For see : not only do we 
 receive from the loved one, we also give ; we give ourselves, as God 
 gives Himself to us in giving us holiness, so we accepting that act, be- 
 cause we love Him, give ourselves to Him. It is a mutual giving, a 
 marriage. God weoes us even as a lover wooes his bride. We are His 
 Bride, the Bride of Christ. How much bolder is the Bible on our be- 
 half than we are : this love of man and woman is the fact of God's love 
 for man. [And as this marriage-love is the one fact, or love, of Nature, 
 so does this universal love of Nature, this attraction or passion, re- 
 present and flow from the love of God]. The love is the fact, the sole 
 fact on wh we come begin to explore where we will ; the first and only 
 starting point to wh we come attain. It is first phenomenally, because 
 in the reality it is also first. God is Holy Love ; and such He makes 
 us. Free or eternal love : this is the definition surely of spirit, of 
 Being. 
 
 Now how and why the pain of remorse ; why the instinct of revenge 
 and punishment ? 
 
 According to the marriage relation sanctioned as between Christ and 
 the Church, and thus between God and humanity a view clearly ex- 
 pressed also in other passages, do we not see that our relation to God is, 
 as it were, ' polar ' ? And is this from 'limit '? is the essence of our 
 Being the limit in relation to God ? Is this the creation of finite spirits 
 by the Infinite : the ^introduction of a limit, as a condition, causing
 
 505 
 
 polar opposites ; the created spirits to be united with God in true mar- 
 riage union ? [not re-absorbed, but how glorious a ' new creature ' thus 
 resulting] I think I see this : love is only between polar opposites, and 
 our oneness with God is thus reconciled with our moral personality : 
 polar opposites are ever two forms of one fact. 
 
 See therefore how ' unnatural ' is sin : it is the absence of love of 
 the polar attraction wh is the very fact of nature. Our love for God 
 is this ' polar ' love, because in truth we are one with Him ; but it 
 is a moral love because it is of the moral, the actual, we are speaking. 
 If we were not thus moral personalities we could not be one with God, 
 for that is what He is. In two ways does this view work ; maintain- 
 ing alike our moral personality and God's. "We are moral agents in 
 the strictest sense, because God is, and we are one with Him. So by 
 our moral being we truly know G-od, and only so. 
 
 Is it not simple ? by limit, Being exists in two forms with love be- 
 tween them. God, by His moral act, causing a limit to Himself, 
 creates thereby limited spirits ; which spirits must be moral personal 
 beings, because He is such. The Being of moral personality cannot be 
 less than infinite and eternal, being real ; and where God withdraws, 
 there must be the same in another form, else would God cease to be. 
 [I perceive that this is the present truth : will this also not become 
 again paradoxical, so that we may rise higher still ?] Thus the limit 
 seems to be the ultimate conception of creation, as indeed it must be, 
 for is it not of finitude, limitedness ? Creation is the limit, morally 
 acted, of God upon Himself, making thus creatures who shd love Him ; 
 Himself in other forms : Himself the cause, and they the effects. For 
 are not creator and creature also ' polar ' terms, involving that idea of 
 the limit ? In truth, how else can creation be ; how can anything be 
 added to infinitude ? We do, in fact, deny God's infinitude when we 
 consider Him as adding by creation to that wh before existed. Infini- 
 tude creates by limit to itself : there is no possibility for adding. In 
 truth, how could the limit be the key to nature, to the created, unless 
 it were the fact of creation ? Thus pantheism too is united with its 
 opposite. God is all in all ; and He is a moral person. God is so be- 
 cause we are [in way of * evidence']; we, because God is [as a necessary 
 consequence]. 
 
 This limit to the Divine necessarily involves the oppositely polar, 
 the creature, else would God not be. This ' creation ' is the fact all 
 nature re-presents unceasingly. Thus the unity becomes the variety ; 
 here the first origin of this great antithesis, and of the universal tend- 
 ency of the unity to re-appear ; of the creature to return to the 
 creator. 
 
 And yet farther ; the act that I have supposed of God upon the crea- 
 tures, does it not disappear ; i. e. become one with the creative act ? 
 [The opposite indeed involves succession or time.] God's creative act is 
 the one act and all the act ; this is His moral act on or in the spirits ; 
 it is their moral action. God's creative act is one with our moral or 
 holy action, and the moral action of all beings ; i. e. with nature [the 
 cause or reality]. God's eternal act is the creation of spirits ; which is 
 one with their moral being or action. Thus we see also how truly na- 
 ture (the phenomenon) represents God's act His creative, His eternal 
 act there is and can be but one.
 
 506 
 
 Yet again behold the wonder : this creative act of God is the very 
 fact of self-control, of holiness, of limit morally imposed upon Himself. 
 My heart is overflowed with awe and glad amazement : the very fact 
 and conception of holiness, even our holiness, stands thus as one with 
 God's creative act. Divine self-control is creation, is life. Veil does 
 nature present to us the one fact of self-control ; well does that consti- 
 tute our one action. It is the act, the act that constitutes the universe, 
 the act of God. God's self-control is creation ; and in this creation all 
 that is consists. I have seen hefore that what nature shows us is God's 
 self-control, His holiness ; not, however, true control of passion in our 
 sense ; to God is no ' phenomenon.' 
 
 So is it not true that God thus creates His life therefore the living 
 God : as a self-controlling man is a living man ? I do believe it. This 
 holy action, this self-control, or limit of God, wh constitutes creation, 
 constitutes His life. ' The creature,' therefore, the life of the creator ? 
 We the creators of life ? Can it be ? And this act of God in us : His 
 gift to us, one with His creating act ? 
 
 And see the infiniteness : life is given to us in Christ, but by the self- 
 sacrifice of the Creator, wh also is His very creating act : self-sacrifice 
 is the fact of nature, the fact of redemption, because it is the fact of 
 creation ; it is the one sole fact wherewith Science has to deal, where- 
 with all nature is full, wherein it consists. Blessed be Thou, oh God, 
 who bidding us sacrifice ourselves biddest us be one with Thee. The 
 union of creature and creator lies in self-sacrifice. 
 
 Are not the consciousness, the love, the action, the three wh consti- 
 tute the one, the spirit ; spirit being the union of these ? I think the 
 idea of Being or substance must be phenomenal altogether, not apply- 
 ing to spirit Is not the ' I ' phenomenal ? 
 
 How the usual idea of creation absolutely denies infinity : creation 
 by self-limit is the only creation possible to infinity, and this is infinite- 
 ly possible. In truth, I hold an infinite an eternal creation ; that God 
 creates eternally. The very name, The Holy God, expresses and im- 
 plies the ' creator.' How plainly I see this now, wh before I affirmed 
 so blindly. In right action creation is involved. 
 
 What scales must fall from our eyes before we can truly see this : 
 that holiness is the fact of creation. Yet how clear it is, how wonder- 
 ful and rapturous when we truly do see it. And how well .-. is it that 
 creation, the universe, shd express to us the one idea of law. Creation 
 is by law ; it is God, the law unto Himself. 
 
 Again we must be on our guard against that old practice of putting 
 the phenomenal for the real, and saying the moral or spiritual is like the 
 physical. I do not say God's creative act is a vibration, or like a vibra- 
 tion or life : these are a representation to us of the fact or reality of self- 
 control or creation. 
 
 Do I not see : the phenomenal is polar opposite to the actual viz., 
 cause and effect ; and ourselves the limit or condition. TVe are the 
 limit by wh the actual becomes the phenomenal. Is it not thus : the 
 phenomenal is to the spiritual as the creature is to the creator ? Again, 
 are we .-. justified in denying the reality of the phenomenal ? Can we 
 say the moral is the reality of the phn, any more than we can say the 
 creator is the reality of the spiritual creature ? From this polar 
 oppositeness see the. constant inverted relation. The whole question
 
 507 
 
 why and how opens out before us : moral being or cause, without us, 
 produces in us phn, or effect. 
 
 Must the love of God be conscious, or in loving right do we not truly 
 love God ? For do we not err somewhat thinking of God so much as 
 an individual ? 
 
 In the mental life Genius or the creative is self-control, or the sup- 
 pression of that wh is introduced from us. Now I see too how rightly 
 God is said to ' create ' each specific form. Here I unify again ; and in 
 a way very pleasing to me. See the wisdom of words again that speaks 
 of Genius as creating. The very fact of creation, i. e. of self-limit, is 
 seen in the origination of new species ; but it has a higher meaning 
 than was thought. The first or instinctive view re-appears in a higher 
 form. But this is what I was going to note : that Genius [wh is par- 
 allel, in the mental, to right action in the spiritual, viz., the giving up 
 our own ' passion ' for God's act] is the sacrifice, or giving up of the 
 chimeras, the introduction of wh produces or constitutes the theoretical 
 view, and .-. ever produces new specific form, or creates. The theoreti- 
 cal views, or chimeras, must represent the passion in us wh we control 
 in right action. And surely as in Genius this control or exclusion is 
 effected simply by the perception of (external) truth, so the sense of 
 right, by wh our moral self-control is effected, must be parallel to this 
 perception of right wh constitutes Genius. And is not this, in each 
 case, the perception of God's act ? Our passion wh we morally control 
 = the theoretical views wh we suppress in creation by Genius. Our 
 sense of right = the perception of truth by Genius. Right action is 
 highest wisdom ; it comprehends nature. It is Genius in the real or 
 spiritual. 
 
 See again how the theory and the Genius are one, essentially : so our 
 ' passions ' and our moral acts are also one. The Genius is more truly 
 the ' I,' than the chimeras ; so the moral act is more truly the man than 
 the passion. It is as in the physical world, each ' thing ' receives its 
 passion from without ; its control, its specific resistance, is its own. 
 
 Genius, or the self-suppression, ever is itself a function ; and so also 
 is right action, or control of passion ; and is not each from union of 
 polars ? the reality of all being love between God and the creature ; and 
 this arising from the polar separation wh constitutes creation, by that 
 limit wh is God's self control. 
 
 We trace up an endless causation, up to the moral or uncaused, which 
 is absolute. Thus it is that in Science, or the knowledge of the phen- 
 omenal, altho' we deal with an infinite chain of causation and no where 
 get to any beginning, yet we must always make our beginning from 
 the attraction, the function : there creation begins, and scientifically we 
 are wrong if we do not. We get a phenomenal whole, a consistent 
 unity [tho' artifically isolated], if we do so : if not, we are quite 
 wrong, as physiology is, that begins with the vital force instead of 
 chemical passion. Beginning with the divergent instead of approxima- 
 tive gives us a chimera instead of a fact : a 'force' instead of a 'passion,' 
 talent for Genius, ingenuity for Tightness : beginning at the permitted 
 passion, the effect of attraction, we begin, not at any real beginning in- 
 deed, but [if we recognize the true relations] we begin at the begin- 
 ning of that thing, i. e. of that ' form ' of the universal. In other 
 words, we, so far, put God's 'creative act first, before the creature or 
 
 r -2
 
 508 
 
 creation : the other is beginning with the creature, for this attraction 
 represents to us the creative act it is the life-producing. Love first : 
 that is what it is ; recognizing implicitly moral love as the absolute 
 source. Love first before separation ; sympathy before antipathy : to 
 us first comes the antipathy or separation, the phn : as ever we see 
 cause by effect ; the universal inversion of wh the instance the one 
 fact absorbing all others is our seeing God through and in His 
 creation. 
 
 In truth, if cause and effect were not polar, two forms of the same 
 thing, how could we learn one from the other ? If the ' creature ' were 
 not so related to God, how from it could we learn God ? How know 
 God, if we were not one with Him ? To know is to be one, to have 
 one passion, one being. 
 
 Yet again, this putting, in Science, the approximative, the love, first, 
 is truly, tho' phenomenally, putting right first ; holiness, wh the func- 
 tion represents. It is asserting that moral right is the cause of the 
 world. So Science bears in itself the image of the moral world, i. e. 
 asserts moral truths : true Science is but a way in wh moral truth is 
 piesented to us. 
 
 In the two-fold effect of love as limit, being the cause of life, by 
 our self-control, and as love bringing us into union with God is there an 
 analogy to the two-fold influence of the sun on planets ; attracting 
 them, and producing their life also : both by virtue of its ' polarity,' 
 its giving off of force ? 
 
 Truly this has been a time of sleep. Let us rub our eyes, and learn 
 to trust our senses ; our sense of true and right. Posterity will infal- 
 libly laugh at us, we cannot help that ; but let us as soon as possible 
 put away our follies, that it may be with a kind and appreciative smile 
 for follies honestly embraced and willingly abandoned. "We have been 
 dreaming ; with our eternity that admits of succession, and our infinite 
 that can be added to. We do not truly believe in either : our God is 
 not infinite, our heaven not eternal. Not that there has been irrever- 
 ence : humanity's heart is right, tho' our thoughts have been muddled 
 by a phenomenal Science. 
 
 That passage thrills through me : ' Without shedding of blood is no 
 remission of sins.' It is only this, that there is no creating without 
 sacrifice : that nothing can be added, but that whatever is caused to ex- 
 ist must exist at expense of, be another form of, that wh existed before; 
 even because God is infinite, and cannot be added to. It is but the 
 fact that creation is the creator's self-limit. For sin is inaction ; it is 
 not-being where Being ought to be ; remission of sin is the giving of 
 life, causing new being, and can only be from sacrifice. And God can 
 sacrifice Himself, and yet no loss; for He is infinite. Infinitude 
 cannot be made less, even as it cannot be added to : God is no less be- 
 cause creation springs from His bosom ; nor can be. [Is not this say- 
 ing that God is the creature still ? or the creature, rather, still God ?] 
 ' Without shedding of blood is no remission of sin ;' without death no 
 life, as nature with one voice teaches us : without self-sacrifice is no 
 creation. 
 
 How wonderful that instinct of self-torture ; how true the dynamic 
 element in it. What is that idea of merit, of pardon, of punishment, 
 and auger for sin ; How far are these conceptions phenomenal only and to
 
 509 
 
 be laid aside ? or rather, are not these primary ' instinctive ' views, wh 
 need first to become the opposite, and then to be united with that op- 
 posite, and re-appear in a higher form ? I think so ; first we must op- 
 pose and deny these conceptions, that we may see the very truth of 
 them. Is not this just what L is doing ? He is giving us the po- 
 lar opposite opinion to that of pardon and wrath, dwelling on the life, 
 the re-creation, tho' but partially and doubtfully. But this is only 
 unipolar too : the truth is not seen until it be seen that these two op- 
 posite conceptions are one ; that the second proves, and necessitates the 
 first. For this is a striking thing to note : that the theoretical [or fe- 
 male] proves, and shows to be necessary, the first [or male] ; not only 
 that it is a fact, but that it must be ; shows it to be right instead of 
 arbitrary. I must carry this far out : the female shows the male to be 
 necessary or right, but at the same time elevates. This is done by the 
 union of the two, making them one : the marriage does this. 
 
 Mentally one sees this in some measure : the ' male ' appears as a 
 fact alone, without necessity apparent to us ; arbitrary, but so. The fe- 
 male is the form this [arbitrary] fact assumes from the operation of our 
 thoughts, the ' limit' of our mental passion ; it is made as it were 'right' 
 to us, conformable to our perception of ' necessity ;' and then, when we 
 see that the first or arbitrary is one with the second or ' necessary,' we 
 see the first also to be necessary or right. Yet it is strange again, be- 
 cause the nutritive or theoretical view represents the effect of wrongness. 
 Is here a parallel of creator and creature : God seeming at first arbitrary, 
 but, made one with us by love, seen to be holy ? For the ' fact ' is not 
 made right by its union with the ' theory,' but we are made to see it right, 
 or necessary. [What in the physical world answers to this ?] 
 
 The point I have now to trace is this polar relation of creature to 
 creator ; how from the very fact of the limit, by wh they are, their con- 
 ditions are necessitated. See the likeness of the creature to the theo- 
 retical or nutritive : e. g. it has no power ; is an effect, not a cause, 
 power- absorbing, not power-producing ; it represents selfishness. Their 
 only power is in love, in re-union with the creator. 
 
 [Beautiful the inverse sexuality of body and mind in men and wo- 
 men; man the physical love or giver, woman the mental: and in body 
 woman's re-productiveness represents man's productiveness in mind : 
 woman nutritive body, functional mind ; man functional body, nu- 
 tritive mind.] 
 
 So I must try to find, in this relation of the female, the elements wh 
 characterize the creature. 
 
 How that idea of self sacrifice [as source of all life] is involved in 
 the ' correlation of forces ' : beautifully indeed ! ' Each force merging 
 itself as the force it produces becomes developed,' says Grove. This is 
 the very fact of creation ; the exact statement of that self -limit wh is 
 creative action. And this is the phenomenal, the ' instinctive ' view of 
 Nature. This has an exquisite beauty ; the instinctive view of Nature 
 is the exact fact of creation : a force giving up itself that another may 
 be. Well have I said that Nature, ever and in each of her changes, 
 presents to us directly God's creative act : this chain of cause and ef- 
 fect is an infinite presentment to us of self-sacrifice. And this instinc- 
 tive view is ever the true view ; false indeed in one sense, ne- 
 cessarily to be turned into the opposite, but only in order to re-appear
 
 510 
 
 in higher form. So Nature presents to us physical self-sacrifice ; des- 
 tined to be superseded by, interpreted into, moral self-sacrifice. This 
 is the threefold-ness that constitutes the mental life : phenomenal self- 
 sacrifice, physical necessity, moral self-sacrifice. Through necessity is 
 physical self-sacrifice seen to be moral self-sacrifice ; thro' the seeing of 
 Law, of Right, God's phenomenal action is seen to be His spiritual ac- 
 tion. [So I too have been too hard upon the folly of that view that one 
 force ceases to exist as such because it becomes another. This is the in- 
 stinctive view, designed to re-appear in the moral or spiritual form.] 
 
 Spiritual acts are truly assigned to matter ; this is the great error, and 
 yet not an error ; it is the proof that the reality is spiritual. We assign 
 to matter action, and necessarily : it is the only thing we can understand. 
 The spiritual is the only thing we can ' know ' or truly have within us, 
 or ' comprehend.' So I see now the reason, the Tightness, of all our 
 view of matter and its properties ; yes, the Tightness of this wrongness. 
 The only thing we can perceive, or think, is moral ; and we get so wrong 
 by introducing, with these necessary moral conceptions, ideas of matter, 
 &c. wh do not agree. Men represent a force, as by its own will and 
 power, becoming another. But this is exactly the fact of creation ; God 
 by His own will and power becoming the creature. The phenomenal 
 view is never wrong, only deficient ; we are never right till we get it 
 back again. 
 
 Is not our right action in this sense our ' function ' our going back 
 into God, reversing the effect produced by the limit ? In holy action 
 we are made one again with God, and the life exists in another form ; 
 this is our function. We fall back into God, but exist still in the spi- 
 ritual life resulting. The voice of conscience then is this tendency in 
 us, the tendency to be re-united with God ? I am embarrassed here by 
 the intrusion of the ideas of succession and cause ; these are moral ten- 
 dencies, and uncaused acts. 
 
 Truth consists in the generalization of the fact false speculation in 
 the generalization of the form. The fact being ever that of self-sacrifice, 
 or creation [for the two are one] ; the perpetual self-sacrifice of Nature 
 is God's eternal creation, and our introduction of a passive matter merely 
 acted on, and the chain of causes altogether, is a hypothesis, a chimera. 
 The fact which we see of constant creation or self-sacrifice is the fact 
 which is. 
 
 Surely here is the meaning and beauty of our ever seeing effect first. 
 In doing so we ever see self-sacrifice ; a giving up for the sake of the 
 being of another. So we see Nature rightly, as moral action. There 
 is an infinite beauty about this : for in truth the effect does come first. 
 The reality is. moral self-control for the sake of right ; for the sake of 
 the life so produced. We are not deceived by our instincts : this per- 
 ception of effect first, is in a measure a perception of creation. 
 
 We err utterly when we think of God as passionless. God is a Being 
 of infinite passion ; not such as ours indeed, not phenomenal, but .. the 
 more. It is God's passion, by Himself controlled, that is the fact of 
 creation. Well do we call creation a work of passion, alike of God 
 and man. 
 
 Are not our own ' functions ' phenomenal self-sacrifice ? 
 
 There are three thoughts with regard to the phenomenal world : (1) 
 that wh assigns it to supernatural volitional acts ; (2) that wh imagines
 
 511 
 
 it to be a chain of physical causes ; (3) that wh sees it to be a moral 
 act. This third being the union of both, and recurrence of the first in 
 higher form, and united with the second, wh also is in higher form : i. c. 
 law and liberty in one free act under law of right. Is this the three : 
 law, liberty, right ? 
 
 Yet here is a curious intermixing : I have said the hypothesis of phy- 
 sical law is the theoretical view, by introducing human conceptions ; 
 but surely that of the volitional, original, action is so also. Yet on fur- 
 ther thought it is not : we make the chain of causes, because we reduce 
 the real to the effect on us ; it is an effort to make the phn actual. It 
 is clear also how this scientific ' nutrition ' arises from the limit of the 
 instinctive view, wh makes all the phn volitional. 
 
 Thus I see whence and what this ' cause and effect ' ; it is a hypothe- 
 sis : the fact perceived is self-sacrifice (spiritual action) the j fiction in- 
 troduced is a chain of efficient causes, wh has to be excluded, but only by 
 unification, for it gives us the idea of Tightness. And thro' this nutri- 
 tion an arbitrary self-sacrifice, wh is the phn, is turned into a moral self 
 sacrifice or holiness ; and thro' the medium of law. Here the relations 
 of the < three ' are well seen, and deep connections with other things in 
 our mental life. 
 
 And we see also that it is essentially by our moral nature that this 
 nutrition is effected ; by our idea or sense of right, or of moral activity ; 
 from this the entire idea of cause essentially flows. I see now what 
 puzzled me before, how the idea of cause is unreal, and wholly ^from us. 
 I must trace this farther. And this now I perceive to be the question : 
 how the moral becomes the w??moral or the phenomenal to us. Or is 
 there is a ' spiritual ' that is not in itself moral ? is the moral the ' third ' 
 from union of two ? 
 
 We think (instinctively) the vital power is inherent, or primary in 
 the seed, &c. : in fact we instinctively regard it as spiritual or uncaused ; 
 i. e. as moral : it is only by reasoning by theory that we regard it as 
 physical and passive ; instinctively we think it active or moral. And it 
 comes directly from God, we think, and very rightly ; that wh comes 
 direct from God is certainly moral or spiritual ; our life is God's act in 
 us. It is beautiful to see the depth and value of this instinct wh objects 
 to have Life reduced to a mere physical process and referred to causes. 
 The reason is the moral, spiritual, bearing wh it is felt to have. But 
 the same must at first, and with equal reason, have been felt as an ob- 
 jection to any tracing of physical causes ; and indeed this tracing of 
 causes and excluding God's direct act is ' wrong ' altogether ; it is an 
 opposition to tendency or instinct ; it is nutritive, introducing chimeras : 
 it is only necessary from the limit, the defectiveness or insufficiency of 
 the former that it is arbitrary and in time, instead of moral and eter- 
 nal and the latter exists only for the sake of reproducing the first in a 
 higher form: as God's eternal act, as true, active or primary viz. 
 moral. 
 
 Also this ' nutritive ' theology, wh traces dynamic rather than moral 
 salvation, life instead of pardon, &c., is in the same sense the wrong ; 
 exists only because the other is too limited, and only for the sake of re- 
 producing the former in higher form. It is as creature to creator ; the 
 instinctive view is the final also, and will not be given up. 
 
 Surely it is not irreverent to say that as the perfection of the creature
 
 512 
 
 consists in union with the creator, so the perfection of the creator 
 consists in his union with the creature. [For there is no time, it is all 
 eternal.] 
 
 Is this true : our being is God's life : arises from God's self-control 
 or self-sacrifice : our life arises from our own self-sacrifice. For it is 
 life that resists passion and causes life. God's life, being us, is the re- 
 sistance of passion in us. So I shall see by aid of the phenomenal. 
 Existence is not moral, as existence ; but is the result of moral action. 
 
 The difference between talent and Genius is precisely that between 
 doing right for an object, as to obtain heaven or escape hell, and doing 
 right simply from love, or because we must do it [that ' must ' always 
 means love : it is the fact of attraction.] And so we see how it is only 
 by exciting love that man can be made truly holy : for the other ' doing 
 right ' is not holiness, it is but one form of wrong. So no Gospel but 
 one of self-sacrifice could have availed, no threats, no promises, no laws. 
 And thus surely the Gospel shd be preached : the curse of the law as a 
 necessary, i. e. a righteous act of God, and only to make evident the 
 love that gives itself for men : the death of sin to illustrate the sacri- 
 fice of life God's life for ours ; heaven not as an object to be obtained, 
 but as the best reward of love in union to the beloved. It is to raise 
 us from the death of sin that Christ has died in giving us the life of 
 holiness is His work. It is the Sin that is the death. This we should 
 hold out to men as the salvation. "We may have differences about the- 
 ology, we may think one thing or another about the Being and nature 
 of God and our relation to him, but which of us does not groan within 
 when he thinks of his bondage under sin, wh yielded to, eats away his 
 life. Here is the woe, the death ; the sore grief and ruin of humanity 
 is here. Here is God's remedy applied ; Christ shall give us life. He 
 shall make duty sweet, self-sacrifice delight : we, even we shall be holy. 
 Tell me not of joys eternal, of sorrows banished, of glories heaped upon 
 my head away, images of sense, that mock the longing soul. ' Then 
 shall I be satisfied, when I awake in Thy image.' In truth we do not 
 want the assurance of unending existence : if we are holy we have 
 eternal life. 
 
 All those questions about future punishment lose their importance 
 when this main point is seen : the life of holiness, the death of sin, the 
 moral nature of punishment. It has been this mis-apprehension that 
 has given them a fictitious importance ; and now it is simple enough. 
 God will do right, do justly : the punishment He threatens, and inflicts, 
 is moral, is eternal, death : other details how shd we know, why should 
 we wish to know ? nothing else is of importance. [Especially seeing 
 that unending time is self contradictory.] It may be that the wicked 
 may be raised up to die again, but all such speculative questions perhaps 
 had better rest, until the feeling wh the false conceptions of life and 
 death those wh have made them phenomenal instead of spiritual have 
 engendered, have had time entirely to subside. This is glorious to think 
 also : how all things that the imagination can conceive of good and glory 
 are involved in the holiness that God gives. For all creation is God's 
 holy act ; the phenomenal flows from the moral : a creation will ever be 
 to the holy : to the unholy, to whom is no life, what to them ? what 
 but blackness of darkness ? For even now the beauty, the very being, 
 of God's world depends on our moral state.
 
 513 
 
 "We cannot yet see about the spiritual existence, because of the ideas 
 of substance, &c., wh we have derived phenomenally ; we do not see 
 rightly yet as to the spiritual existence, we have that abstract ' sub- 
 stratum ' notion, of ' being ' apart from qualities and properties, and 
 apply it without the requisite spiritual conceptions. I do not know yet 
 how it shd be, but I feel that this is the embarrassment. I believe, 
 however, that this may be known ; for I believe that we may know 
 whatever we can feel that we do not know ; this feeling is the proof of 
 its knowableness. This is another difference between the right thinking 
 and the nutrition ; the former sees a thing, but finds of course a paradox 
 beyond it ; not therefore, however, does it give up what it sees ; it holds 
 what it has, and leaves the paradox, believing that too will be known, 
 and being sure that, when it is, it will agree with what it sees : so it goes 
 on it is in-finite. In the other way the nutritive when the paradox 
 is seen the thinker is frightened, and thinks he must have been wrong ; 
 he gives up, more or less, the thing he has thought, and tries to recon- 
 cile the paradox, to make all consistent ; rounds off the affair into a 
 whole wh is consistent with itself: viz. by introducing chimeras of his 
 own invention. In other words he does not go on ; he stops : it is 
 finite. 
 
 This in fact is just the difference between Genius and talent : Genius 
 holds its own in spite of paradox, because it knows it, it sees it, and 
 does not care ; the thing is so. Talent gives up at the sight of the 
 paradox : it has not seen the thing, it has only supposed it to see if it 
 will do ; and of course when it finds it will not, it gives up and takes 
 that wh will do best a compromise ; it is its business. It is necesarily 
 so : and this produces all sorts of differences ; Genius is bold, talent 
 timid : talent makes up, Genius throws open : talent seeks to attain on 
 object, Genius does the right, and the objects are attained. But the 
 great thing is this : Genius is one with the infinite, i. e. with Nature : 
 talent is finite, limited, expresses the man. For this is the point : Go- 
 nius comes never to an end, recognizes the infiniteness, the unbeginning : 
 talent makes a closed circle ; so it is talent that invents the chimeras, 
 wh are always beginnings ; the specific or inherent qualities, primary 
 properties, or God's especial act. Talent will ever have a primary be- 
 ginning : its chimeras are ways of attaining that : it is, and invents, 
 the arbitrary. Genius ever recognizes cause, i. e. Tightness ; ever carries 
 knowledge higher up, sets aside the chimeras and shows cause ; shows 
 necessity for arbitrariness, infinitude for finiteness : its end and true 
 object ever being the spiritual, wh it seeks under the guise of the ne- 
 cessary. It is, in truth, an infinite, an eternal, we have to do with : 
 talent shuts it up in chimerical beginnings and ends ; Genius thrown 
 down these barriers, progresses step by step, ever larger and higher, 
 towards the eternal : her goal is the spiritual ; ever as herself is rigl it- 
 ness, so her home is the Right. 
 
 There is a great interest in the transcendental mathematics reposing 
 so entirely on this doctrine of the infinite. This is emphatically the 
 work of Genius ; throwing down the boundaries, substituting the 
 necessary for the arbitrary. I must trace this farthur : surely it is 
 refusing the limit, the arbitrary 'fact,' that constitutes this mathemat- 
 ics. The refusing man's limit gives us the true limit ; i. e. God's. Yet 
 this mathematics seems so arbitrary ; but it is, in truth, tightness in the
 
 514 
 
 place of arbitrariness. Did not Newton feel that it must be so ; that 
 that was the only way in wh the thing could be ? He found Euclid 
 trifling ; surely with his fixed things ; he saw that the fact was that 
 these things were perpetually becoming ; becoming the opposite [surely 
 just as before, in physiology, chemicity and life were seen as opposite, 
 yet unconnected]. Are not the mathematical opposites one, just as 
 chemicity and life are one ? Surely Newton would not have this arbit- 
 rary being of a thing with its inherent properties ; he saw that each 
 thing was but a form of that wh was before. His dynamic sense com- 
 pelled him to the unity. I feel this in my heart. Why was it I saw 
 these things ? The ' phenomenon ' what we see, as we may say is 
 perpetually an existence [a being] limiting itself, merging itself into 
 another : do we need to ask any more why the phn is such ; why we see 
 it so? 
 
 I must trace how passion taking direction of least resistance 
 spiritual life developes ; the functional passion becoming the vital. 
 Resistance does not mean, so much, opposition as direction : moral action 
 consists wholly in directing mental passion ; we know we cannot by any 
 effort directly produce it. It is because passion takes direction of least 
 resistance we have the power of moral action. We have control over 
 our passions because of this universal fact. Is there not here an argu- 
 ment for the possibility of moral action ? The affections, or passions 
 truly so called, are the human life ; the parallel to the human physical 
 life. Now the true expression for nature is not so much passion in least 
 resistance as passion directed : this is nature ; this is physical and mental 
 life. Passion directed is also moral life. To be natural is to ' direct 
 passion.' This God does, and man shd do. Without irreverence we 
 might almost say, nature is God ' directing His passion ;' its Tightness is 
 His self- control, wh still is perfect freedom. Thus I knew the right- 
 ness of nature was moral Tightness. Hence the calming, rectifying 
 . power of nature upon the heart. It says to us : ' God directs passion, 
 this universal life attests the deed.' 
 
 And we direct our ' passions,' our feelings, as we direct our thoughts 
 in logic, by bringing into relation with them other passions ; by reflect- 
 ing, pondering, attending. The identity of process in nature and mor- 
 als is exact. We have moral power because passion takes direction of 
 least resistance ; it is . . that we are able to direct it. The source of the 
 direction is the only respect of difference : in nature it is God, in mor- 
 als it is the human spirit. Here alone man is like God. Our passions 
 certainly will go right if we apply the right resistance to them, just as 
 our thoughts will go logically. It is this that renders it possible for us 
 to act right. 
 
 But this necessity for self-control is confined to the region of right. 
 It leaves the scope of the secondary ' naturalness ' unimpaired : acting 
 rightly, we are then to carry out our nature ; our resistance or direction 
 is to be supplied where God leaves us to supply it ; there that is ' to be 
 natural.' This is the sphere of the spirit to direct the emotions, not to 
 interfere in physical or mental nature. As in the physical world man 
 alone is moral, so in the mental world, the emotions alone are moral ; 
 the emotions correspond to ' man.' 
 
 All physical and mental ' action,' as we call it, is proved to be pas- 
 sion and not action, by the fact of its taking direction of least resistance: 
 this is the nature not of true action not of cause but of effect.
 
 515 
 
 Life is the result of right action ; of God's right action and of man's. 
 All is life as all is right, save man's evil, and that is death, absolute 
 death. The reason death appears to us, is as a type of moral evil. In 
 nature really death is a part of life ; one step of the vital progress wh 
 we, seeing alone, see wrongly. But in man's sin there is that 
 in very truth of which physical death is a symbol to our eyes. 
 
 This resistance, which causes life, appears in the physical world as 
 pressure ; in the intellectual world as incompatibility, or contradictori- 
 ness ; in the emotional world as disappointment and failure [?], in the 
 moral world as self-control. God's act is life ; it is holy : holiness and 
 life are one. 
 
 We may see what act it is of God's that constitutes the resistance in 
 nature, wh is the source of physical and mental life, by seeing what act 
 it is of ours wh constitutes the resistance that is the source of moral life. 
 The two are one : and as the resistance in nature is the same as the 
 passion, so the passion also is thus seen to be God's holy act : all nature 
 is. Nature is passion resisted or directed ; emphatically not uncontrolled': 
 it is pre-eminently not doing what is liked ; it is repeated effort after 
 failure, improvement and development ; it is foregoing the present for the 
 future. 
 
 This moral feeling or consciousness of right, of moral obligation, may 
 teach us how God feels (in some poor measure) in reference to His work 
 as creator. When we do a deed because it is. right, we participate not 
 only in action but in feeling with God. We create life as He creates it, 
 and for the same reason ; even in form for the same reason : for God's 
 sake, for duty to God, we do it : God for His own sake, for duty to 
 Himself. But this also is His happiness, His delight, His ' passion ;' as 
 it would be ours if we were holy. 
 
 July 27, 1856. M remarks that nature (being passion in least re- 
 sistance) resembles rather doing that wh it is most easy to do. In na- 
 ture things go where it is most easy, while in morals it is the reverse. 
 This is true of nature because the resistance exists; in morals the. duty 
 is to supply the resistance : when the resistance is supplied right moral 
 action, like nature, is passion in least resistance. This is the great dis- 
 tinction, wh is unquestionably real and is felt universally. In nature the 
 due resistance or ' direction ' exists without us ; in morals we have to 
 supply it. But in both alike, universally, passion takes direction of least 
 resistance : this is the definition of passion, it cannot be otherwise. We 
 have to direct only when God leaves it to us. Do not the words which 
 indicate the nutritive, in the mental life, involve in their meaning, in 
 some way, that 'shutting up' and bounding ? The ' theory,' &c., are made 
 to suit us. Do we not see in the physical also this shutting/ up, making 
 complete in itself, in the nutritive? I think so : it is the ' individuation;' 
 gives the specific form, limited, defined, apparently isolated, a whole. 
 Yes : ' whenever we see a whole, we see life.' I think I trace the par- 
 allelism. 
 
 The life of Science is the transforming arbitrary actions into one 
 moral act. This is the function effected by the nutrition. How large 
 an analogy here. And the reason we thus perceive all phna as action, 
 is because we are agents : why we introduce the idea of law, or neces- 
 sity, is from our sense of right. Our moral nature is source of all : no 
 beings conscious but moral beings.
 
 516 
 
 The phn we ever see as an action an arbitrary action : action because 
 we are spiritual, arbitrary because of our limit [?] But we cannot have 
 this arbitrariness, it is non-spiritual, impossible ; our introduction of ne- 
 cessity, or laws, gives us action under laws ; i. e. right or moral action. 
 The entire work of Science is to raise arbitrary action [wh is the phu] 
 into moral action, which is the fact ; and this by introduction of human 
 elements, imaginations, nutrition. It is a life. 
 
 It is indeed absurd to talk of our only conceiving of things in time and 
 space, &c. We can only conceive of phna so, because they are phna only 
 from their being thus conceived : it is our introducing time and space makes 
 them phna. Therefore that phna can only be in time and space is clear 
 enough ; that is an axiom, a matter of definition. But I affirm that 
 this is artificial and secondary ; that our primary and natural perception, 
 or consciousness, is not in time and space, not under the form of cause 
 and effect. It is of the uncaused, of the eternal, i. e. of the moral. 
 The primary fact of our consciousness or perception [for I hold the terms 
 to be interchangeable] is of moral action ; to wh neither space, time, nor 
 cause apply, but wh being expressly exclusive of the last, is necessarily 
 also exclusive of the others. 
 
 It is our substitution of the phenomenal for the real, our setting the 
 moral as a thing apart, as not a subject of knowledge, &c., that has con- 
 fused us respecting space and time. Once to see that the moral is the 
 real and the source of all, that phna are only a result of it, owing to re- 
 lations to ourselves from the limit that we are will surely put it 
 straight : 
 
 [especially when we see that it is only ' forms ' or ' modes ' that are 
 
 in time, space, and cause ; not any facts, nothing that is ; all that is, is 
 
 eternal even now. It is only forms that pass, or succeed, or change ; 
 
 the act is one.] 
 
 For I hold that the right way of speaking of our moral consciousness 
 would be [at present] to say that we perceive moral action ; viz., in our- 
 selves, as all perception is of that wh is in ourselves. We perceive mor- 
 al action, just as we perceive phna ; i. e. we perceive what is free from 
 time and space, and uncaused. This is the parallelism of moral action 
 and phna, and by regarding them this way I expect we shall see better. 
 I assert that we do perceive, and thoroughly well know, the eternal ; and 
 that this knowledge is the basis and foundation of all our perception of 
 the phenomenal. [I have well arrived at time and cause : from unity, 
 by limit, becoming variety ; wh see.] In truth, it is only thus that we 
 know God, by perceiving what is in ourselves ; nor shd we ever know 
 Him [for we do know only ourselves and our own changes] if it were 
 not that we were one with Him. Here is a proof that creation is by 
 self-limit, in the fact of our knowledge of Him. 
 
 I take it we act as we feel ; viz., we are conscious of moral action, 
 i. e. we act, just as we are conscious of sensation, or feel. 
 
 A much better basis for all our thought is the ' ago ' than the 'sum.' 
 The perception surely is rather of acting, or of being acted upon, than 
 of Being : the latter is from the former ; and I conceive the idea of ab- 
 stract being is very much a false or phenomenal one. All the phenom- 
 enal flows from it was orginally and therefore is now spiritual action 
 [wh is also eternal] j the work of Science, of course, is to trace it all
 
 517 
 
 back to the spiritual act that it is. Carpenter and Grove virtually 
 affirm the forces to be spiritual actions or agents ; the point I see, in my 
 view of life, is that all are physical, come under relation of necessity, 
 passiveness, or cause and effect. 
 
 Our being is, as -we say, the result of God's moral act ; but that is, is 
 God's moral act. "We say the being ' must be before the act : but now, 
 as we are speaking of the spiritual or eternal, let us get rid [as we 
 must] of the idea of succession ; therein also we abolish cause and 
 effect ; cause and effect then are one. On the one hand, then, our be- 
 ing, being effect of, is God's moral act ; on the other, our being, being 
 cause of, is our moral act. Our moral act is God's act in us, and it is 
 our being also. Eternity is the solution. There is no cause because no 
 time. Is not "Whewell errant here ? So far from cause and effect being 
 without time or succession, the succession or time is the very source, 
 the fons et origo, of cause : the two are inseparable. In the spiritual 
 are not being and action one ? The idea of substance is an invention 
 parallel to time, space, cause and effect ; arises and ceases with them ; 
 is not in the spiritual. The true idea of spirit includes being and ac- 
 tion in one [?] ' Properties ' are arbitrary, and demand a substance to 
 inhere in. 
 
 Here also opposite ideas have to be made one. This is the perpetual 
 process : and it seems sometimes almost embarrassing ; but the thing is 
 to know it, and to use our minds accordingly. The mental life shd be 
 an intelligent life, and a loving one too ; as it must be seeing that all 
 opposites love, and nothing is to be rejected. "We must not be hamper- 
 ed in our thoughts, but push all modes to their extremes ; remembering 
 that the mean, or true, is not the place between extremes, but the union 
 of extremes : that it is by extremes that progress is made. We should 
 carry our logical and instinctive processes to their utmost extent, not 
 moderating but intensifying them : it is only by reaching their limit 
 that they attain their oneness, their development. "We see it in the 
 physical life : it is from the nutrition being perfected, carried to its ex- 
 treme, that the function comes. Because the nutrition exists only to 
 produce the function, is not a reason for going without the nutrition- 
 preventing that opposition to the affinities on wh the function depends ; 
 it is the reason why it shd fully take place. So because we know, in 
 the mental life, that the ratiocinative view exists only for the sake of 
 re-producing the former (instinctive) view in a higher form, is the very 
 reason it ehd be fully, and to its very limit, carried out. Let us use 
 our sense of right, our logic, to the full ; suppressing the old and bring- 
 ing in the opposite, in order that the old may re-appear with new and 
 higher beauty. Let us sow the nutrition that we may reap the func- 
 tion. [For practically there are only these two ; each depth being a 
 new length.] Thus it seems the logical sense is that sense of right, 
 that function, which suppresses the instinctive, and produces the 
 nutrition. 
 
 "What a wonderful thing is this tendency of ours to happiness, the 
 seeking happiness or pleasure. This is the passion, the tendency : how 
 and why ? what is suppressed here, that we have the tendency to seek 
 happiness ? But the ' passion ' is God's act : whence and why our de- 
 light and tendency ? what this feeling, consciousness, or sensation ? 
 And why so illusive ; why do we think to attain happiness, and yet
 
 518 
 
 never do, by seeking it ? why the duty to control, and only to attain 
 happiness thereby ? Our passion is not truly us, or ours ; it is an 
 effect on us wh we perceive ; it is our perception of the great ' passion ' ' 
 wh constitutes the phn. It is not a special thing or fact, but only a 
 special relation to us. 
 
 As in trying to tyrannize over women, man has instituted many evil 
 customs, but has failed of his object, that of having the superiority 
 over woman ; has only injured himself, or himself together and equally 
 with her ; just so it is in all evil deeds : we attain the immediate thing 
 we seek to do, but lose the object, the happiness. It is ever so ; we 
 only inflict an injury on ourselves in doing an evil, or grasping at a 
 pleasure, without attaining the object for wh we grasp at it. It is in vain 
 that we try to make any evil yield us good : it cannot be. "We have 
 died in the act. The eternal death is that wh we carry about in our 
 own bosom. Life is happiness ; the words are one. Now our object is 
 to attain happiness, or life; in a word, to create. And this we seek to do 
 by getting ; alas ! it is, and must be, an utter failure. Life is not so to 
 be created, that is death. The act of creation is self-sacrifice, only in 
 giving is life to be obtained. God is happy because He is the giver, 
 the self-sacrificer, or the living ; and so only comes happiness or life to 
 any. Our intellectual and our moral error have been one : we have put 
 design for Tightness, selfishness for giving. Not in what we can get, 
 achieve, or do, consists our life, but in what we can sacrifice or give. 
 We harve thought God created by adding to Himself, by getting, or 
 self-seeking, by His talent, or His power : we have thought we could 
 create, get life or happiness for ourselves, by adding to ourselves, by 
 getting, by our power or talent, and the indulgence of our desires. 
 "Why now this delusion ; why in seeking happiness do we so tend to 
 self-indulgence, and only learn so slowly and so late that it is the fruit 
 of self-control? 
 
 Our self-sacrifice is the sacrifice of what God gives us. This is His 
 goodness to us : He gives us 'passion,' by sacrificing wh we may create 
 a life. He gives us the passion, and acts in us to control it. "Were 
 there not the desire for self-indulgence there cd not be the self-sacrifice: 
 the temptation is needful for the holiness ; the strife for the victory. 
 But still what is this wonderful ' I like ?' our twofold share, as it were, 
 in God's creative act ; the external passion or desire ; the internal 
 will or deed, or sense of right. Is it not even as we have body and 
 mind ; the passion is, as it were, in them : in our having them consists 
 our having the ' passion ' or desire ? This connection, this identity, of 
 our passion with our body and our mind, is the thing I must ponder. 
 "When I can see how our bodies and minds are God's act affecting us, I 
 may perhaps better see how and what our ' passion ' is : our bodies and 
 minds, it is, over wh we have to exert our self-control. 
 
 Even in the lowest physical sense, all happiness is in giving ; it is in 
 the funct ions, wh are the giving up of the life of the body, that all 
 pleasure consists. The sacrifice of the life of the body, thus, in its 
 functions of sensation, produces the mental life. [Even as the sacrifice 
 of the life of parts in the nutritive functions effects the life of the 
 whole.] It is curious that we know our bodies only by their functions ; 
 i. e. in so far as we perceive them : viz., by the sensational func- 
 tions.
 
 519 
 
 In love and .action being the spiritual realities, do we see how the 
 phenomenal is attraction and passion, force and resistance ; passion 
 controlled ? 
 
 "What of this illustration : we say of our minds that they are ' with ' 
 our bodies, i. e. in this room : but our minds are not in any room, have 
 no relation to space at all, not being matter. So we say of our moral 
 act we have done it this morning ; yet equally the spiritual in us is 
 not in days and years ; it has no relation to time, not being phenom- 
 enal ? 
 
 Since nature is God's act, then by very definition, it is the right ac- 
 tion of other created spirits ; because God's act is the creation of spirits, 
 is the act of these spirits : as we have seen, the creatures' act is God's 
 act in them. For there is no time ; all is one. The action of spirits is 
 their creation, wh is God's act : it is at once God's act wh we perceive 
 [that is creation], and also it is the right action of spirits [created] : 
 thus I seem clearly to arrive at the idea that the creation and right ac- 
 tion of spirits is one and the same. But do I not err here as to the 
 eternity, or absence of time, in respect to the spiritual : do I not ra- 
 ther make eternal mean present ? as if, in denying space, I considered 
 everything as here. It is difficult to express, but I feel that my con- 
 ception of eternity is too much that of an everlasting present. 
 
 Nothing brings out so forcibly that Nature is God's moral action, as 
 the fact that our moral action in the direction of passion exactly 
 corresponds with it. What the spirit has to resist, or direct, is 
 passion tended to from previously resisted passion : these tendencies, 
 from previously resisted passion, being instincts. Now, by the bye ; 
 therefore chemical properties or tendencies are from previously resisted 
 physical passions or motions ; this is well to note. 
 
 I think in the word ' Holy ' is an instance of the rightness of common 
 language and a profound evidence of the root of my view of Nature 
 deep in the human heart. If I do not mistake Holy is wholly : a whole 
 is life, and life is holiness. Wheresoever we see ' a whole ' we perceive 
 a living relation ; there are no wholes but living wholes. The ' whole/ 
 or universe, is Life. The word 'Holy' thus is ' TJniverse-ly.' What 
 is this but ' Nature-ly '? The human heart, ever before philosophy, 
 knew long ago that Nature is Holiness, that to be natural was to be 
 holy. Its instinct is the voice of God. 
 
 And further the word ' right ' is from rego ; it means ruled, ' directed* : 
 (straight is quite a secondary meaning). It means, in truth, 'taking di- 
 rection of least resistance.' When I say that Nature is right I use a 
 synonym for motion in least resistance : I say ' passion directed.' The 
 word ' wrong ' seems not so clearly in conformity ; yet taking it as 
 wrung forced or twisted does it not agree ? Is it not forced ; against 
 the natural direction of least resistance rather than yielding to it ; as we 
 are apt to do, especially in education ? Can I not get some moral bearing 
 here : a wrong act is one opposed to direction of least resistance is it 
 not thus ; such an action as could not be, conformably to this law, if the 
 "right resistance were present ? it is the same definition as of ugly ; such 
 as could not be in conformity with passion in least resistance, i. e. con- 
 veying to us that impression ; it is twisted, distorted, unnatural : it is 
 passion in the case of wh we do not supply that resistance wh is requi- 
 site to bring it into conformity with nature ; such as wd occur if, in na- 
 ture, the resistance were to fail.
 
 520 
 
 This is very obvious with regard to truth, that it consists in conformity 
 with Nature : our thought is true when it corresponds with Nature ; i.e. 
 when it is natural : to think naturally is to think truly the perfection 
 of truth in thought wd be a perfect correspondence with Nature. Yet 
 to think truly is not to think as we like [save as indeed we always do in 
 the highest sense like and love truth and goodness] ; but laboriously and 
 with effort to gain knowledge and arrange it ; to discriminate and unify 
 our ideas ; to have the right resistance, i. e. the natural resistance, for 
 our intellectual passion. It is the same with Beauty. This idea is 
 clear before my mind : man's right moral action wd be one with Nature ; 
 being not one with Nature it is wrung, or distorted. For God's action 
 in Nature, and man's action in the moral world, are strictly homoge- 
 neous : viz. they are both spiritual moral actions adapted to make up a 
 true unity or whole. The worlds of Nature and of morals differ to us, 
 not because of a real difference, but because of our position in relation 
 to them : one is without us, the other within. God's holy action we 
 perceive as natural ; our own as right. 
 
 Are not these three a triplet : the sense of beauty, of truth, and of 
 right ; applying to the physical, mental and spiritual worlds ? 
 
 Is not the basis of the triplet in the fact of the existence of a three- 
 fold world, the physical, mental, and spiritual ? Hence, among others, 
 force, resistance and result ; which is striking in relation to our percep- 
 tion ; the physical world being result of spiritual action upon the ' sub- 
 stratum' of our mental being ? and is there not a triplet of processes in 
 each of these three worlds ? 
 
 Here this apparent inconsistency arises. I have said that passion in 
 least resistance is right, that the Tightness consists in its taking that 
 direction, and that it was because God's action was holy that it appeared 
 to us as motion in least resistance. Now I see differently ; that right- 
 ness consists in the presence of a certain special resistance, and that 
 both right and wrong are passion in least resistance : that is part of the 
 definition of passion. Thus I alter my statement of the Tightness of 
 Nature, and find it to consist in the fact of resistance ; and further, for 
 strict Tightness I demand a special resistance, wh seems not always to 
 exist in Nature, i. e. in the physical and mental world. Do I thus deny 
 the absolute lightness of Nature ? or what is the true reconciliation ? 
 Can I maintain the Tightness of Nature without maintaining the right- 
 ness of Sin ? I conceive so perfectly ; but the matter must wait a little. 
 
 The development of thought up to truth is parallel, as I saw, to the 
 development of the animal creation : in both are imperfection and gra- 
 dual progress ; but now I see the reconciliation I spoke of. In Nature, 
 although there is varying resistance, and periods of incompleteness and 
 comparative error and ugliness, yet is the resistance ever right, because 
 ever in right proportion. The resistance in Nature is ever right though 
 ever varying : the Tightness of Nature consists in proper self-control, for 
 the resistance is from, is part of, herself, and the proportion of passion 
 and resistance in Nature is ever such as conducts to the perfect develop- 
 ment. This view is strictly applicable to morals. 
 
 Beauty aud truth are as it were, without us, or passively in relation 
 to us, what moral Tightness is within us, or in relation to us actively : 
 bnt the true relation to us is the relation to that wh is within us. Na- 
 ture is bound to us not esthetically or intellectually, but morally.
 
 521 
 
 Again, beauty and truth are things not truly acted, or done by us, but 
 only perceived or passively performed ; therefore to us they are not mo- 
 rally right, they are excluded from the sphere of our moral action, but 
 they are moral in the Being who does them. Beauty and truth are our 
 perception of God's holiness. 
 
 How different a conception of God's holiness I have in seeing that 
 creation is His holy act how much larger, more intense. I see more 
 the active character of that holiness, more of its identity with holiness 
 in us, its analogy to self-control. On our general view, we, as it were, 
 confine God's holiness to our own sphere of morals. In what does it 
 consist but in loving right and hating wrong, in governing aright, and re- 
 warding and punishing justly. But how little here to love. How in- 
 adequate an idea of a holy Being : even a good man has a more varied 
 sphere. Think of creation as a holy work, and what a new God it 
 gives us. 
 
 Our moral action is homogeneous with Nature, and part of the same, 
 and essential for its completeness. God gives to us the privilege of 
 completing and taking part in His work ; His great and holy work in 
 wh His soul delighteth. It is the outpouring of His passion, the ex- 
 pression of His love, wh He thus commits to us, and we spoil it : with 
 ruthless hand we spread the corruption of our death over this fair scene 
 of life : yet God looks on and allows. Oh great calm Heart, oh Hand 
 restrained, oh anger turned to pity. Well saidest Thou, oh God, of 
 Love ; ' it beareth all things.' 
 
 God's bearing and allowing Sin, as He does to our view so mysteri- 
 ously, is but another example of His self-control. That is what Nature 
 is : 'He maketh His sun to shine on the evil and on the good. ' 
 
 Our consciousness of moral action is Nature felt within ; our percep- 
 tion of Nature is moral action perceived without : but to make our con- 
 sciousness truly Nature felt within, it shd be only right ; what we feel 
 within is too much discordant with Nature. 
 
 Nothing is more delightful to me than the constant reconciliation I 
 find in my views of opposed opinions, and the recognition as true of old 
 and rejected ideas. Thus I reconcile the opposed views of moral action 
 as truly moral, spontaneous on the part of the human spirit ; and that 
 moral action is a mere part of nature. I find both to be true, but I in- 
 vert the doctrine : I add the new element to our knowledge, that nature 
 is moral. Also I like to see that I thus embrace again the old idea of 
 the unity of man's action with the general Being of the universe, but 
 now disarmed of its sting, and giving a higher tone to morals by means of 
 a dogma that has been used to destroy their foundation. I must endea- 
 vour to trace historically, wh I hope may be done, the development of 
 knowledge by such union of opposite opinions. 
 
 At each epoch before an advance is made there must be two classes of 
 facts, one in favor of the established view the other inconsistent with 
 it : hence two wrong theories ; 1st, that wh violently subjects the latter 
 to the former; 2nd, that wh for the sake of the latter subjects the for- 
 mer. The true theory, the higher mental life, is a true reconciliation 
 of these, showing both to be one. 
 
 This is the lesson of Nature, due self-control. This is Nature, self- 
 control yet no restraint. It is perfect liberty ; absolute, self-enjoying 
 freedom. Oh wild luxuriance of beauty ! forms of perfect loveliness in
 
 522 
 
 infinite diversity, wandering at your own sweet will, creeping over 
 earth or towering to heaven, making space resonant with gentle laughter 
 and radiant with smiles. Ye speak to my heart of passion wisely ruled, 
 of affections directed to the right. Due self-control, ye testify ever to 
 reluctant man, is life, is joy, is liberty. What gentle entreaties, what 
 earnest admonitions, what solemn testimony, ' God does thus,' have ye 
 uttered all the ages past, are ye uttering still. Ever ye say to man, 
 ' Be free like us ; make not thyself a slave.' I do believe that if I can 
 show that this moral meaning is the true meaning of Mature ; if I can 
 connect these thoughts with natural objects, not as an arbitrary, ideal 
 association but as the reality of them ; it will be a means in the hand 
 of God of making men better. 
 
 In every thing it seems to be one of the last achievements of Science, 
 and sound understanding, to let Nature alone. But in morals we cannot 
 let Nature alone : it is for us, there, to create Nature, by introducing 
 the resistance. We by control have to make the moral region natural 
 and living which else by our default is unnatural and deathful. 
 
 It seems to me that spiritual action, i. e. all true action, is on self: 
 that wh is acted on is ever the actor's own Being, or love : a limit on 
 our love, self -sacrifice ? Surely the true conception of spiritual Being 
 is best to be gained by pondering wliat it is that God controls ; and in 
 what sense the passion that is in us, and wh we control or limit in self- 
 sacrifice, is our Being. Does the Being the action suppressed, become 
 rather the necessity, law, nutrition ? as I have seen, the nutrition is 
 ever the Law, i. e. the phenomenal. The phenomenal perhaps is law ; 
 necessity in place of action, as its polar opposite. And why necessity, 
 or law, by suppression of the action or God's self-sacrifice ? It is rather 
 the effect on us than the act of God. 
 
 Can I derive our ' passion,' our choice or aversion, our physical plea- 
 sure and pain, from the spiritual elements of our being ; love, action, 
 sense of right ? [One need not add consciousness to these, it is involved 
 in each of them]. Surely physical and mental pleasure and pain are 
 only love and sense of right in the phenomenal form : but how do they 
 become phenomenal thus ? I think I may best trace this through the 
 mental life ; our sense of logical Tightness and wrongness, or theoretic, 
 as of beauty and ngliness [both wh are in truth of arbitrariness or ne- 
 cessity] ; Can we not see how the sense of right, and love, operate in 
 the mental world in its various forms, and its connection therein with 
 pleasure and pain, desire and aversion ; then we could see better its 
 operation in the physical world, and its connection with physical plea- 
 sure and pain. This is the task : to trace the emotions from their 
 spiritual reality into their phenomenal forms. 
 
 I begin to see more about this moral right ; duty and the sense of it, 
 the ' ought ' : it is the thing wh God does ; it is self-sacrifice or giving. 
 This is necessary in God, it is the only thing possible to Him, because 
 He is infinite : His action is thus necessarily and in itself creative : i.e. 
 self-sacrifice. Self-sacrifice is God's act ; essentially and by definition. 
 God being infinite, His action, wh is creation, is self limit. Now this 
 in us is right action : holiness and self-sacrifice being one. This action 
 wh is thus necessary or essential in God, is right or duty to us. "Why 
 felt as duty : whence this sense of ought ? For see ; to us also it is the 
 only possible action; we 'act' only in acting right. And it comes to
 
 523 
 
 this in truth, that the sense of ought, or duty, is the sense, or feeling, 
 that we ought to act. Can we conceive such sense of right, of duty, in 
 God ; as being not indeed the cause of, hut present in, His act of self- 
 sacrifice, His creation? Consider the various forms wh this sense of 
 ought, or must, assumes to us ; especially in the work of Genius : the 
 mental elements must be the right way, &c. Is it not indeed only an- 
 other form of love : is it not the love that does, and only can, lead to 
 self-sacrifice ? For self-sacrifice cannot be done selfishly. 
 
 Thus I see the true source of all right action i. e. of all action 
 love. How plain an axiom this is ; and how plain in nature : all pas- 
 sion is from love; i.e. from attraction. Is not this the meaning of what I 
 discover in the phenomenal ; that to see it aright it is necessary al- 
 ways to start from, or begin with, the approximating passion ? the ne- 
 cessary and only starting point is love. So that sense of right has its 
 ultimate relation to the presence or absence of love ; its absence being 
 felt as sin. Perhaps it is the nutritive view ; suppressing this idea of 
 right [as being" itself in a sense arbitrary, needing to be accounted for?] 
 and so obtaining the opposite, or love. Surely, then, the truth will be 
 the union ; the idea of right or duty re-appearing in a higher form, as 
 one with, and involved in, the love wh thus seems to take its place : 
 making thus the right and liking one. Am I to show how doing 
 right and acting out our nature are one ? 
 
 In another view, we may consider right as our doing as God does, 
 being one with Him. What then is this consciousness of choice ? How 
 can we say that right action is necessary in God, if it is volitional in 
 us ? Surely it is no other way necessary in Him than in us : i. e. the 
 only possible action is right, i.e. self-sacrifice, alike for God and for the 
 creature , but alike also for both is the free choice whether the action 
 shall be or not. God only acts from moral choice, even as man. God 
 is holy ; the necessity of His acting is only His holiness. Action is es- 
 sentially holy : this is the glory, but surely not thus independently of 
 God. How to distinguish God from the essential nature of things, and 
 to put His holy will for all, I do not see yet altho' I feel. An infinite 
 glory is here : that all in God's universe is holy because it is action. 
 Had God been unholy, He had refused to act to limit control or sac- 
 rifice Himself and no universe had been. Action is holy : holy be- 
 cause self-sacrifice, because from love. It was God's love that made 
 Him act. Here we come to the same point again : doubtless we may 
 rise higher yet, but at present I can go no farther. Is not love the op- 
 positely polar to right : love in relation to God, right in relation to the 
 creature ? Then holiness is action springing from love, consisting in 
 self-sacrifice. 
 
 Here again is a curious relation, parallel somewhat to the mental life : 
 the moral control or suppression of our passion constitutes our own life : 
 the suppression of the not-me, as it were, produces the me. Is not this 
 as the suppression of the phenomenal or subjective, in Science, &c., 
 gives us the true ? This subjective passion, or the phenomenal, an- 
 swers precisely to the passion, desires, pleasures, wh we suppress in 
 self-control. The ignorant man who lives in appearances is a type of the 
 sinful man who yields to passion : as the phn is to the reality, so is our 
 ' passion ' to spiritual act. In truth, both are one : the intellectual 
 phn, and the emotional phn; the former called nature, the latter passion; 
 
 2 K
 
 524 
 
 the former the subject of mental life, the latter of moral life : the 
 ' sense of right ' operating in hoth. 
 
 These three, the physical, the mental, and the moral, surely all are 
 one : one process goes on in them. In the two former God does what 
 we have to do in the latter. 
 
 Our passion, desire, or liking, is like the phn ; an inversion of the 
 reality. It is seeking for self instead of giving : this appears to us 
 like action, whereas the only real action is giving. Just as in the 
 phn, arbitrary actions or facts appear to us to be, whereas the facts are 
 necessary ; the phenomenal seems to us to exist for itself, whereas it is 
 in truth a constant becoming or merging itself . It is one delusion ; 
 and in both cases for the same purpose, in order that so the ' passion ' 
 may be 'food ' for us ; may become our life : just as it is in the physi- 
 cal world, and according to the parallel I have traced between it and 
 the intellectual. Is it not necessary in relation to the emotional that 
 we shd first perceive, or be affected by, the spiritual, as passion ; even 
 as, in relation to the intellectual, we are first affected by it as phn ? It 
 is as the nutrition of each body is from its control or resistance of pas- 
 sion ; all life thus begins from passion answering to the phn, or desire, 
 or pleasure ; the sense of right answering to the vital resistance ; or 
 love, the vital cohesion. 
 
 We have to turn the phenomenon into reality passion into holiness ; 
 first changing the apparent arbitrary act into necessary inaction a pas- 
 sion in obedience to law and then into necessary or right action. So 
 our passion, our arbitrary action, first suppressed, is inaction in obedi- 
 ence to law, then becoming action in obedience to law, i. e. love. We 
 turn the phenomenal into reality, passion into holiness, in both cases by 
 our sense of right. This is to interpret. 
 
 Also in the physical : first is chemical ' action,' arbitrary ; by resist- 
 ance made nutrition, i. e. as if it had not been ' inaction in obedience 
 to lav ' ; then in function, again action ; but now action in obedience to 
 law. This parallel gives, as the female, Tightness, law or necessity i 
 the nutrition or organization. Thus is the necessity polar, to the 
 ' action ' ? 
 
 The ' phenomenon ' is selfishness, or ' passion,' in us, out of which we 
 have to construct our life ; as our bodies have out of the chemical pas- 
 sion, wh is the physical 'phenomenon.' It is done by interpreting; wh 
 is first from controlling, or suppressing, and then uniting both. This is 
 our ' function ' : that for wh we exist ; to substitute right for arbitrary, 
 love for selfishness. So our passion re-appears in higher form bi- 
 polar : now neither ' arbitrary action,' nor ' necessary passion,' but 
 ' right action.' This is the holiness. And love produces love, as, in the 
 physical, life produces increasing life. 
 
 We cannot give ourselves life, not give ourselves love : Christ gives 
 us this Yet we can act rightly ; we can come to Him; and receiving 
 Him so obtain life ; and thus being created anew by Him, we can per- 
 form deeds of true self-sacrifice, of true creative action. Is the sense 
 of right, self-sacrifice for self; a sacrifice of the lower to the higher in 
 ourselves ; union to Christ, sacrifice of ourselves for Gi-od ? 
 
 Thus God punishes sin by withholding love, i. e. by withholding life. 
 This the fearful misery, the Hell ; the sinner has not lore, the word for 
 joy. Death is the punishment for sin ; the absence of love. The
 
 525 
 
 absence of being is that whereby God avenges inaction. Is not this the 
 ' spiritual ' Talent and Genius ? I have it in my heart. In us are both 
 love and sense of right ; these are polar opposites, the two forms of the 
 same thing [wh are ever one to God]. The sense of right being ever 
 from the love by limit. In our spiritual as in our mental life there is 
 this twofoldness ; this polarity, ever resulting in the union. 
 
 I see I have not been right in putting ' talent ' as parallel to sin ; it 
 is parallel to our works of duty, Genius to our works of love. Nature 
 affords no parallel to Sin, for no death is truly there. 
 
 We have not to resist our ' natural ' passion because it is evil, tempt- 
 ation to sin, or in any sense bad : it is only like the chem passion in a 
 seed ; not evil, but the very elements of our life, that from wh alone 
 our life can be ; it is our life, if it be controlled. The duty is of hope 
 and encouragement, not of fear and mere abstinence ; we resist passion 
 not so much that we may not sin, as that we may have life. Our pas- 
 sion is a good like other good things, i. e. if it be used. But then this 
 is only'true of a ' natural ' passion ' ; from indulgence comes corruption. 
 It is like the corruption of a seed. 
 
 Our sin being the cause of our d^eath, is this : that it makes it right 
 that God shd withhold from us Life : this being ever the meaning of 
 Cailse, that it makes it right for God to do the effect. 
 
 How we say (and quite naturally) 'produces' want or absence, 
 showing how absence, not-being, appears like being to us, like a thing, 
 or reality. Indeed, emphatically it is so : perhaps there is nothing that 
 appears so much a thing to us as a shadow. Hence our strong persuasion 
 of the reality of matter. Is it not so even in physical things, till we 
 are instructed to the contrary ; till we have learnt, do not the shaded 
 appear especially the substantial parts ? Thus it is, I conceive, that 
 we see Sin so decidedly as action : it is the inaction, the negation, that 
 especially appears to us as action or will. That wh is mere yielding, 
 or not acting, we think especially to be acting, i. e. opposing God ; wh 
 in truth it is, but only inasmuch as it is not acting and not not loving, 
 while God acts and loves. 
 
 I think I see a clear conception of moral agency, a reconciliation of 
 our necessarily doing what we like to do, and the Tightness and freedom 
 of our action. Doubtless love is the source and only source of action : 
 we do right because we like to do it. But then doing right is acting : 
 doing wrong is not acting. Thus the question comes to be : Do we or 
 do we not like to act ? i. e. Have we or have we not love ? Again we 
 see we are moral agents, not although we inevitably do what we like 
 best to do, but because we do so. If we have love, and act [as we must 
 do, having love] then we are holy ; if we have not love [therefore not 
 acting] we are unholy : the Tightness or the wrongness consists not in 
 the outward deed but in the having or not having love. Our acting 
 (doing right), or not acting (sinning or yielding to passion, i. e. to the 
 operation of phenomenal love, wh is not our love) is the result or test 
 of our having or not having love ; which constitutes our moral 
 character. Having love is holiness : it is this that constitutes God holy. 
 He is Love He acts, or sacrifices self. So He is the Living God : 
 truth, Life in Himself. His life, His holiness or love, does not arise 
 from self-control, as ours does ; it is essential to Him it is Himself. 
 God is Love : man receives love, as He receives His Being, from God.
 
 526 
 
 Sin is not acting ; this is why it produces such sad effects, and seems 
 a thing so real and powerful. For it is inaction in the midst of action ; 
 inaction where action shd he. Inaction where all around is inaction, of 
 course, is nothing ; and can have no effects ; hut inaction occurring in a 
 course of connected action is the most powerful possible of disturbing 
 causes. The due action of all parts and elements seems to us like in- 
 action ; all is order : let the action he wanting somewhere, and instantly 
 powerful changes ensue wh of course we attribute at first to correspond- 
 ingly powerful actions. So Satan must be the spiritual inaction ; in- 
 action where action shd be, the great disturber. 
 
 This is the point. A man does what he likes best, and yet is morally 
 good or evil according to what he does. ; i. e. according to whether he 
 likes to act, or not to act, wh is whether he has or has not love. Now 
 can this argument be pushed farther back, and the question be raised 
 whether a man can or cannot have love ? 
 
 Thus I see better how all the ' passion ' (as it appears to us) wh sur- 
 rounds us, is truly moral or spiritual action like our own, in wh t>urs 
 takes its part. In truth we with our ' passion ' or tendencies and im- 
 pulses, and our power of control,are justly to be likened to a machine 
 the tendency, and the resistance ; the right operation of the two give 
 the function : the absence of the right or due resistance is ruin. We 
 are in fact living in this sense also. Is this the living soul of man : the 
 tendency and resistance ? Only man is a living soul, for in him only is 
 the whole. Is it God's own moral nature ? Not absolutely, I think ; 
 God is not life ; it is His act wh is life or produces life. God the one ; 
 the nutrition and function, or life, are from the limit. But is it that 
 the human soul, the created spirit, is a life ; and as such is God's act, 
 God's act being life ? It is not quite so. 
 
 May we not trace better also the ' sense of right ' itself: is it not, in 
 part, the being correspondent to the rest of that of wh we are a part ; 
 one with the universe, having a common action with it, taking our part 
 in the accomplishment of its ends. It must be so because Nature is a 
 holy act, an act of love or sacrifice, and only thereby can we be one 
 with it. Thus too this action of ours is a ' function ' again, a tendency 
 to the re-appearance of suppressed ; we are one with nature originally, 
 and tho' as it were separated, the oneness tends to reappear? As if a di- 
 vergence, or nutrition, were in us ; this being the passion, or phenome- 
 nal love, the tendency to do that wh wd not be one with nature, or for 
 inaction to be. I seem to see dimly here, as if this phenomenal our 
 passion were nutritive in respect to us ; our control, or right action, 
 being the function of that nutrition, and producing so a higher life. 
 
 Nature comprehends also God's forbearance with Sin. He controls 
 His anger : for ' He is angry with the wicked every day,' and this re- 
 sisted passion also constitutes a life. It coheres, and is one, with nature. 
 It is Life that we see as this black mystery that God permits evil f the 
 vastest, sublimest form of life, too vast for our eye to scan its fair pro- 
 portions. It is perfect life ; there is no excess, no undue restraint laid 
 on the Divine prerogative of Justice. Life, perfect in symmetry, as 
 shall be seen hereafter when its full form shall be revealed : life majes- 
 tic, beautiful and glad, even to us, as nature is. ' His judgment tarrieth 
 not.' What a function shall that be for wh this Divine self-control 
 prepares. How many years shall have rolled by, how many generations
 
 527 
 
 shall have played their part before that Act shall come, at sight of wh 
 the astonished yet rejoicing universe shall say, ' It was for this, that 
 Justice held her hand and Pity stood with averted eyes : for this that 
 Eighteousness refrained so long to avenge, and Love to interpose.' That 
 judgment comes not, is the proof of judgment to come. Nature testifies 
 it ; Life lives it : Man cannot speak hut he utters it, nor raise his hand 
 hut he calls heaven to attest its truth. So surely as the function justi- 
 fies the life, or the flower ripens into the fruit, so surely shall retribution 
 accomplished vindicate retribution withheld. ' His judgment slumbereth 
 not ' ; it is not too long : wd we have Life stop short of its development ; 
 and sacrifice the truth, the power, of the man, to the prattle of the babe? 
 These tortured frames and souls sunk hopeless are but the nutrition wh 
 is to make up the life. Look at life where our eye can grasp it. The 
 songs of martyrs, the crown of life, the joyful consummation when God 
 is all in all, is now to Him. The same idea of life applies to the delay 
 and failure of man in obtaining his rights ; to earthly as well as hea- 
 venly justice. 
 
 This taking nature as the type of spiritual life, is a safeguard also 
 against the tendency to excessive self-restraint ; the right being the 
 truly natural, each thing exerting its due resistance. 
 
 Surely the sense of right must be from love reaching its limit : [as 
 the vital force from chemical passion] : but then what is this 'limit,' wh 
 thus turns love into sense of right ? Surely it is the limit of us, as 
 spirits, i. e. a spiritual limit, wh is a moral limit. [But am I treating 
 here spiritual things phenomenally ? Of course this is absolute : there 
 is no cause, no succession. Yet in this thought there is good, if it be 
 only carrying it to its limit, that it may be suppressed ; for this treat- 
 ment of the spiritual as under cause and effect surely is 'instinctive/ and 
 to suppress this gives the polar opposite ; and then will re-appear this 
 instinctive in better and higher form. But the way to arrive at this is 
 not to cease, but to push on the instinctive, that reaching its limit the 
 polar opposite may ensue.] The limit of us, as spirits, is it not the same 
 self-applied moral limit which is also God's limit to Himself in the 
 creature ? 
 
 Our sense of right, and self-control therefrom, is from love of right : 
 is it not the polar form of love ? "We say ' I love pleasure ; but I love 
 right better.' It is our moral, original, uncaused, or spiritual limit to 
 love causes it to become love of right: but this is not the primary sense 
 of right ; not the primary moral control ? But here I must not attempt, 
 perhaps to go farther ; this is the very ultimate fact, the very Being of 
 of God existing in us ; the mystery of the Divine is here. If we could 
 say how and why we exercise moral control, we could say how and why 
 God is. That is the absolute Being. 
 
 The spiritual or real is the cause of all the phenomenal, as of course 
 it must be ; and it is the key to it, also of course : first revealed by it, 
 then casting back on the phn an all-revealing light. The interpretation 
 of nature is the seeing how the phenomenal flows from, and images, the 
 real or moral. All the phenomenal is as it is because the spiritual is as 
 it is. For God ' creates ' the phenomenal through the spirit ; i. e. 
 through us. 
 
 I have said cause 'makes it right for God to do the effect,' and speaking 
 as in time this is so. But in truth both cause and effect are part of the 
 one act ; there is in ^truth no succession. Thus it is, I conceive, that
 
 528 
 
 there is no incompatibility in God's foreknowledge and man's moral 
 freedom. In the spiritual is no time : God's knowledge and man's action 
 are alike absolute. If God knows the spiritual at all, He must know 
 it eternall,y it being eternal : therefore, speaking phenomenally, He 
 must ' foreknow.' As it does not exist in time so it cannot be known 
 in time. 
 
 From the view of right action as acting the 'proper,' or correspondent, 
 part, I see that God's act, being holy, must be right also in this sense 
 of perfect adaptation. But this is one with passion in least resistance ; 
 it is simply another way of regarding the same thing : thus I come 
 again to see that passion in least resistance is holiness. I invert my 
 first step from the phenomenal to the actual. As before from the former 
 I inferred the latter, so now from the actual I see that the phenomenal 
 flows. If we are to perceive holy action as a phenomenon, only so can 
 we perceive it as perfect adaptation; i. e. to say as organization 
 or life. So Nature is life, or living. Have I not thus laid hold of the 
 clue wh will show me how we must perceive God's act as the physical 
 world, even as it must be passion in least resistance ? But here I must 
 wait. How was it I felt that this phenomenon is Holiness ? The 
 , sense of right is from love limited ; ' like ' and ' ought' are polar oppo- 
 eites ; but the ' ought ' must resist or control the ' like '. Not ab- 
 solutely however : the ' ought ' shd control the ' like ' as the vital does 
 the chemical : only that it shd re-appear in a higher form. 
 
 [Note in 1862.] A thought arises here : in us there is this strife and 
 control, but it is not truly in nature ; that is only the phn. In nature 
 force is not, nor .-. the control ; these are by a negative. So, truly, 
 does not this strife and need for control, in us, prove our life to be in and 
 of the phenomenal ? So do we not learn what our life shd be when the 
 strife is no more in us ?] 
 
 We have such a tendency to refer things back, and rightly, as we 
 begin from the phenomenal : but we apply it to the spiritual too, and 
 here we have to limil ourselves. Beyond the moral we have nothing 
 to arrive at, we are at the absolute and unconditioned. In short, this 
 is it : we have the two conceptions of action and of necessity ; we have 
 to make them one. Now when we have made them one, i. e. arrive at 
 ' necessary action,' this is moral, or right action, and then it is done. 
 Everything leads us back to something else until we see it so as at 
 once necessary and action ; and then we are content : arbitrary action' 
 will not do, nor necessary passion. For both must have a cause ; an ac- 
 tion for the passion, a Tightness (i. e. a necessity) for the action ; and 
 so we go back and back, necessarily, with the phn, until it becomes 
 right or necessary action ; i.e. one with our own being or nature : then 
 we know it, comprehend it : it is done, and no carrying farther can serve 
 any purpose. What it is, then, may interest us 'more than ever ; but to 
 ask why, is to stultify ourselves. 
 
 And is it not pretty to see the ' spiral ' process, ever enlarging : first 
 an arbitrary action, this made a necessary passion, but this is again an 
 arbitrary action, only larger ; now including that necessary passion wh 
 the former was seen to be. Again this larger passion is made a necessary 
 passion, and again a larger, until at last when the whole is seen as a 
 necessary passion, there is revealed the right action and all is done. And 
 this shows how we cannot rest in mere passion at all, however necessary ;
 
 529 
 
 before the passion we must put an action : the ' I ' will have it in spite 
 of ourselves. We will not begin at the end ; come how they may to us 
 we will have the cause before the effect, only give us time ; just as we 
 will have Tightness or necessity, and not arbitrariness, for our action. 
 
 It is beautiful to trace this working of our spiritual nature ; how we 
 are rational because moral agents : the love demands the action, the sense 
 of right the necessity : we will not be put off with phnenomena. 
 
 In respect to the actual, are not love and sense of right force and re- 
 sistance ? Our being limited, as spirits, of course means a spiritual or 
 moral limit : is not that limit this very sense of right, wh thus belongs to 
 our nature constitutes us as created Beings ? We are 'created' in that 
 moral limit to ourselves ; that moral sense of right, is our Being ; i. e. 
 our conscious Being : as I have seen it is the basis of the ' I,' and surely 
 therefore of sensation also ? Is this self-imposed limit our conscious- 
 ness as it were of God's creative act, and our act, also, for that reason ? the 
 creation of a spirit being necessarily its moral Being, or moral action. 
 Thus it is that our act is God's act, i. e. God's creative act ; for all 
 God's act is creative. Our moral act is God's creation of us : but now, 
 what is this ' sense of right,' apart from our act, wh we can refuse to 
 obey, and yet still ' are,' and have power to obey ? Here is the paradox 
 again ; and I cannot yet make the two one. I have the nutritive view ; 
 I have suppressed the 'instinctive,' wh thus still reasserts itself, and I 
 have to bring it in again and show how it is most asserted by, and in- 
 volved in, this view wh is the opposite. 
 
 We only limit passion in ourselves, not our own action : that wh we 
 limit thus by moral control is not our own action, but merely action on 
 us. But in God, alike the limiting and the action limited are His own 
 act. God limits or controls thus morally His own moral act; not His 
 passion, but His moral, i. e. spiritual Love. 
 
 Thus the phenomenal depends on, flows from, or re- presents, the spi- 
 ritual. The universal force and resistance in the phenomenal world are 
 from and because of, are only another form of, this spiritual force and 
 resistance : Love and right. And from this Life of the spirit, this nu- 
 trition and function, the universal life of Nature flows. The phn is life, 
 because of our life ; i. e. we know it so ; in truth our life is part 
 of that universal life wh affects us as the phn. In truth here is the re- 
 ality wh, in the phenomenal, we perceive as passion in least resistance : 
 love controlling love, even as we see ' force controlling force ' ; love con- 
 trolling love rightly, even as force controls force necessarily : or rather, 
 our moral or spiritual love controlling our phenomenal or passive love ; 
 [being opposites or polar ?] 
 
 This ' limit ' to God's universal act, wh is in us as our moral act, our 
 sense of right, constitutes us Persons, Individuals. 
 
 Is there anything in this : that we are obliged to think according to 
 our ' sense of truth,' but not to act according to our sense of right. But 
 then we are not compelled to produce our Art according to our ' sense of 
 beauty.' 
 
 What is at first a mere passive resistance, as in instinctive modesty, 
 and as in the ' resisted ' fall of the earth, becomes a true self-control. 
 Here education is symbolized ; first mere external restraint, leading to 
 a true power*. 
 
 Modesty seems to stand as the very type of all resistance and control ;
 
 530 
 
 and all the ' senses ' wh recognize the due control, the esthetic sense, 
 the rational sense, the conscience, may be regarded as but so many 
 forms of modesty. This is because all passion is [in the universe as we 
 know it] result of polar attraction of wh the union of man and woman 
 is the very summit and crown: the polar attraction is pre-eminently the 
 great fact in life, and felt to be so. 
 
 Necessary, or right, action at once the necessity and the action 
 needs neither ' hypothesis ' (for arbitrariness), nor substance (for iner- 
 tia). The mind rests satisfied; here are united and harmonized our 
 consciousness of action and our consciousness of necessity. It is a 
 striking proof how the phenomenal does indeed flow from, and repre- 
 sent, ourselves ; that we cannot rest till we have thus recognized it as 
 one with ourselves. Neither arbitrary action, nor necessary passion, 
 will do : in both something is wanting, i. e. something which we feel 
 within ourselves, and seek ever to supply [as the complementary colors 
 by the eye]. The spirit supplies the complementary elements to make 
 the phenomenon complete; i. e. like itself. It is only then we 
 know it. 
 
 This is our moral Being love [typified by attraction], wh, when re- 
 lated to external passion, is, as we see in the physical world, resistance: 
 and then is felt as right or duty. But as there is no phenomenal or 
 external passion to God as all is Himself and His own act so no 
 sense of duty to God ; in Him all is love. Though the limit is truly a 
 moral limit and right ; love and right are only our two ways of seeing 
 one thing (polar). So that ' sense of right ' is feeling our love [i.e. our 
 \>eing\ opposed by phenomenal passion ; from which, of course, 
 comes our life if we resist, death, corruption, and destruction, if 
 we do not. 
 
 The object of Science is to tell us what life is, therefore of course it 
 is moral. How deeply founded is the instinct wh sees the moral and 
 spiritual in life, dreads to have it reduced to mere physical laws and 
 causes, lest it shd be robbed of its moral Being ; or perhaps (more just- 
 ly) rejects with scorn physical modes of explaining life, because it feels 
 the moral so infinitely above them. It is true that life is moral, and 
 has no dependence whatever on ' physical causes ;' but this wise instinct 
 plays us a sad trick : we fear chimeras ; physical ' causes ' are a device 
 wholly of our own inventing. Let us learn what the physical or phen- 
 omenal life is, physically oy phenomenally, then shall we know better 
 what is the spiritual or moral life. The phn is beautifully that wh it 
 shd be, as being a spiritual act, or spiritual being : we see it, e.g. as self- 
 sacrifice, as one in many. And does ii not, at first, appear to us as indi- 
 viduals acting, endowed with resistance and life; or such as the universe 
 of created spirits, the actual universe? And as we come to know more of 
 it, aa we examine it more deeply, so we find a deeper accord with the 
 spiritual existence. Science, unwittingly, as she advances, ever ex- 
 presses in her generalizations more and more of the facts which con- 
 stitute the spiritual or actual life. 
 
 The questions : ' What is right, and why is it so regarded ?' are good. 
 I think I have answered them : right is love, or being ; and it is felt 
 as ' right ' when it is opposed to ' passion.' 
 
 Now this is, in truth, the impulse wh produces Science ; this seeking 
 for right, the ultimate and final ' reason.' Science is the child of the 
 Spirit [continued].
 
 531 
 
 spirit : it is the ' tendency to re-appear ' of the spiritual, from the sup- 
 pression of which the phenomenal arises ; and this seems done hy 
 means of the ' sense of right' or trne ; which is the ' phenomenal con- 
 science.' 
 
 Might it not he well even to suppress the idea of right, to hring it 
 hack in higher form ? 
 
 If the phn he God's act [i. e. if this be its cause], it is God's crea- 
 tive act ; but that, by definition, is the act of the created spirits : so 1 
 find that to affirm it to be God's act and the act of other created spirits, 
 is in truth to assert one thing. Is it not striking how, from the phen- 
 omenal, I have arrived at that absolute one and identity wh men have 
 aimed at so vainly by withdrawing themselves from the phenomenal ? 
 The true mode of arriving at the one the unity or identity is the op- 
 posite ; i. e. practically, though not in principle. In truth, do not I do 
 what they wished to do, but did not through the error that the phen- 
 omenal world was truly external ? They said, ' withdraw into your- 
 selves, look into the subjective ;' and instead of doing it, they sent their 
 imaginations every where but at home ; for the subjective is the phen- 
 omenal. The subjectivity of the phn is the great key ; it puts all our 
 thinking right. 
 
 Men will not be satisfied with matter and rest in it; they will get some- 
 thing 'above' it, and 'important' in respect to it as trivial ; therefore if 
 they think matter ' real ' and external, they look for that wh is high 
 and valuable within, and place the internal above the external, wh is 
 exactly wrong. It is the external wh is highest, and our right attitude 
 is in so regarding it. And that is because the phenomenal, the physical, 
 is subjective. That .-. we can truly know; with that we must begin. 
 From that we can learn the external, the divine. 
 
 There are two things that are within us, or subjective:-: the moral 
 and the phenomenal. These are our starting points : we have in truth 
 to interpret the phenomenal by, and raise it up to, the moral. We 
 must begin with that wh is subjective, or can be truly known ; viz., 
 the phenomenal : this being an effect on us of course reveals the cause, 
 or that wh is without us. So the mystics and the mere inductive men 
 affirm one thing a common error that of the externality of the phn : 
 one false hypothesis [one ignorance, in fact] has given rise to two polar 
 opposite opinions : the mystics hold the logic, the scientific men stick 
 to the right result. Putting the two polars together we find they are 
 one whole. Only give up a hypothesis, viz., the actual existence of 
 the phn. Both parties condemn themselves, and establish the pos- 
 ition wh the other ought to occupy. The mystics prove that we ought 
 to begin from phna, and wholly to rest on them : the inductive men 
 prove that we ought to advance beyond them. The one have been 
 saying, look within ; and trying to look without : the others have been 
 saying, look without ; and have been really looking within. The prac- 
 tice of one party and the opinion of the other make up the right : look 
 first at the phna and go beyond them. But also, we know absolutely 
 the moral : and indeed we know only that wh we perceive to be moral 
 or spiritual. There is no knowing but seeing the known thing to be 
 one with our spiritual being ; only then do we know the phn, when we 
 perceive it to be the effect on us of moral act. 
 
 Mysticism rests on the reality of the physical external world, and ..
 
 532 
 
 comes the exaltation of the ideal, or ' subjective' so called, above it. 
 It puts man quite wrong, looking within, seeking self and from self, in- 
 stead of looking without, and giving. Men will not be bound down to 
 matter ; if it be without, they will go within ; if it be within, they 
 will go without ; i. e. where they shd go. Trust humanity ; show that 
 * matter ' is within and man will rise to God. 
 
 I perceive I must distinguish the Being and the act, alike in respect 
 to God and ourselves : else for ourselves is the difficulty of consciousness 
 without moral acting ; and, in respect to God, pantheism if I assert 
 nature to be God's act and the act to be the Being. Yet the distinction 
 is surely only for a higher unity. It may be that the act is one with 
 the. existence, that the two are inseparable, and yet God is not action. 
 In fact, am I not here embarrassed by an unreal, i. e. a phenomenal, 
 distinction, using the word ' act ' in a sense not properly applicable to 
 the spiritual, separating it from the being or substance as if it were 
 a property, or ' the properties,' as physical action or ' powers ' seem 
 to be ? 
 
 Love acts as sense of right only in relation to the temporal, i. e. the 
 phenomenal, ' passion ' that it opposes. In the eternal world is there 
 no such phenomenal passion ; no opposition whereby life is made to be 
 felt as duty? no succession, no objects to be gained, no desires for fu- 
 ture happiness, no fear of present suffering, no balancing of one thing 
 against another and calculating results ? but eternal love, eternal 
 Self-sacrifice, absolute delight in acting ? even like God's shall be our 
 Being then. And how striking the change, then, in our view of the 
 temporal : as what a wonderful delusion, yet of what beauty, and to what 
 glorious ends shall we then perceive it ! To look upon the moral life 
 and see it one with eternity, but with an illusion of time or succession 
 in it! 
 
 Even that worst thing in thought, the banishing of God from the 
 universe is right also. God is not in the phn ; in it we see ourselves ; 
 not God. Good is that instinct wh connects ' matter ' with evil and 
 laments over it because God is not directly acting in it: and efforts to 
 bring God back into the phn and say He does it, are not only futile but 
 mistaken. The remedy is in going on, not going back. God's direct 
 act has to be restored to the universe, indeed, but in a higher form ; 
 made one with the denial of it. This exclusion of God from the uni- 
 verse is exactly a suppressing, producing polar opposite, or nutrition. 
 Now, bringing back gives a higher form of the instinct. The life 
 is here. 
 
 What I have been noting as the re-appearance of every form of 
 thought, the nutritive as well as the functional, are simply instances of 
 the fact that a nutrition is produced, and function attained, by resist- 
 ance to any passion, equally whether in itself divergent or approxima- 
 tive : but none the less does any given passion always begin with the 
 approximative. 
 
 Do we not, in respect to the spiritual, fall into the same error as in 
 respect to the physical ; in putting statics before dynamics ; substance 
 or being before action ? As Coleridge puts it, the thing or phn flows 
 from, or is effect of, the actions or forces. So spiritual existence is the 
 action. % 
 
 All anti-religious, or ' dangerous ' philosophical systems are only like
 
 533 
 
 nettles ; they sting and harm us if we are afraid of them, but there is really 
 no power in them ; they only require to be boldly grasped, and they not 
 only lose all their virus, but become useful. They are all true in- 
 deed ; there is not one of them that does not add force to some essen- 
 tial religious doctrine, which else we should not so fully appreciate. 
 Pantheism, e. g., has no harm in it: God is all, because all is 
 moral. 
 
 The one thing that I have done ; the formula wh expresses the whole 
 is 'necessity is Tightness.' 
 
 To see that all things that are are good, and must be for good, does 
 not want faith, still less sanguineness; only common sense and humility: 
 especially humility, to conceive that what we see may not be so certain- 
 ly the exact fact. It is pride that makes us cling to the phenomenal, 
 love of ourselves : we cannot believe that what ' is to us ' is a delusion, 
 'imaginary.' [Glorious word this 'imaginary:' see it in the sun's 
 motion ; it is imaginary an image of something, at once true and real, 
 and yet false and unreal.] Pride makes us think we cannot be deceiv- 
 ed. Genius, too, is humility ; giving up that wh is to us, and repre- 
 sents ourselves : servant as well as interpreter of nature. 
 
 How interesting it will be, with these views of the physical as the 
 image of the spiritual, to trace the meaning of the incarnation, and other 
 events in Christian history. They cannot lose anything of their value; 
 a ' phenomenon ' cannot be made less. Because the body is an image 
 of a spiritual fact it is not .*. less a body ; it is a body because it is 
 such an image. That is the meaning of the word body. Consider too 
 the symbols of the Old Testament : just so is the universe a symbol ; 
 and the great fact of all the Scriptural symbols is that of sacrifice, so 
 is the great fact of the symbol-universe, of nature, ' sacrifice'.' 
 
 Spiritual self-sacrifice is not (like the phenomenal) a ceasing to be, a 
 loss : it is the very being ; it is the act that constitutes the being and 
 the life. In giving ourselves, emphatically we have ourselves, we are : 
 so Christ's self-sacrifice for us : so God's self-sacrifice in creation. It is 
 no loss. The self-sacrificer the Creator, the Eedeemer is in the crea- 
 ture, in the redeemed ; is and lives in, and by virtue of, His self-sac- 
 rifice. Even we say, ' I live in that wh I love ;' that to wh I have 
 given my being, my soul. 
 
 C said : If God is angry with sin is there not ' passion ' in Him? 
 
 Now, God's anger with sin is only another word for His love, as I have 
 seen. Must we not conceive action and passion to be one in respect to 
 God ? Or is it not right thus to think as of passion in God, arising 
 from the creature ; not grossly," but truly thus : God creating the crea- 
 ture produces thus beings, from whom a reflex influence, as it were, is 
 imparted to God ? So truly God has ' passion' in respect to the creature : 
 as I have seen, in deferring judgment God ' controls His passion.' But 
 no time is to God ; and is not ' passion ' only in time ; passion only to 
 beings that are in time ? 
 
 I have a feeling that we can arrive at much by seeing what and why 
 the senses are : why we hear see, touch, &c. ? Because these are truly 
 spiritual faculties, wh thus express themselves as it were in the body. 
 HowAve speak of them all in spiritual senses, perhaps except smell ; and 
 why is this excepted ? Can we not see how these bodily ' senses ' are" 
 involved in the spiritual passion ?
 
 534 
 
 Another instance of spiritual life is faith in God, as opposed to anx- 
 iety. The tendency to anxiety is the passion wh must be controlled 
 to produce a living faith. We must truly believe that all things work 
 for our good by God's good and wise action, then our faith, controlling 
 our tendency to anxiety, makes a spiritual life of trust in God, of con- 
 fidence. The tendency to anxiety is the source of life. If God created 
 the world ' because He is good ' [Plato, Timceus], that is also the reason 
 for the creation of each part, of each minutest detail. The reaso n 
 everything is, is that God is good, that holiness demands it. The 
 question why is a thing so, is why is it holy, or right, that it shd be so? 
 Science asks no longer a physical but a moral question. The universal 
 answer, physically, is that it is motion in least resistance. And I ask 
 the moral question. I enunciate it as the question of Science; but I do 
 not answer it. That is not what I profess to do. The facts must be 
 collected, the discrimination made, before the spiritual question can be 
 answered. That will be the next function in the mental life of man, 
 but the nutrition must come first! Next must come a period of moral, 
 or spiritual, observation and discrimination, or induction. Facts indica- 
 tive of the moral reality of nature must be collected, examined, and ar- 
 ranged ; there must be a moral Science of nature, similar in character 
 to our present physical Science, and then the time will come when to 
 the moral question why is each thing so, our simple answer may be 
 given. But that time is not now. 
 
 When a child, before it has knowledge of right and wrong, manifests 
 passion, or other ' evil ' feelings, this of course is not morally wrong in 
 it ; it is the natural polar tendency. But to make it good, the parent 
 must introduce the right control, or resistance ; it is evil, it is death, if 
 unresisted ; and in the parent who refuses to apply the resistance it is 
 sin. By this training, a ' life ' is formed in the child, a self-control ; 
 for life consists in a control of the chemical passion in the being itself ; 
 the child is thus ' developed.' It is as in the physical world, the em- 
 bryo is developed by the resistance of a uterus ; without that resistance 
 the embryo would never develope, but would be a mere mass of cells. 
 Just such the influence of parental or other control, duly exercised, on 
 the embryonic moral life. How 'natural' it is to control a child, and not 
 to yield to its unregulated desires. Nature never does : our passion 
 never avails to alter her right action, there is no ' natural ' relation of 
 cause and effect between a child's passion, and his gaining his object : 
 to gain our object, in nature, we must go the right way, and seek right 
 objects. 
 
 It was from the very first, in reality,' a moral element that was in- 
 troduced into Science in that idea of resistance, tho' I did not perceive 
 it then to be so. It is essentially, and every where, moral control of 
 passion. Science truly became moral as soon as it was said that life and 
 functional power consisted in resisted tendency. And the great defect 
 of Science, hitherto, has been the omission of this (essentially) moral 
 element, the resistance. Men have seen and dealt with the passion 
 alone, omitting the control. They have, in their theories, dealt with 
 death. Passion controlled is life. 
 
 And the introduction of this idea of resistance, or control, comes with 
 is made necessary by the giving up of the idea of primary ' forces,' 
 or powers, in the physical, containing their own ' direction ' in them-
 
 535 
 
 selves; such as the 'vital force.' Refcognizing all in the physical 
 as passive, this universal recognition of 'resistance' is necessary 
 too. 
 
 In God's creative act there is, according to our necessary forms of 
 thought, both talent and genius. To say that the universe is a work of 
 Genius only expresses half the truth. It is true 'the universe* is a -work 
 of Genius ; it is the function of a permitted passion ; but there was 
 first a work of talent wh constituted the nutrition. There can be no 
 work of Genius without first a work of talent. God's primary act, so 
 far as we can conceive it, must have corresponded with nutrition : as I 
 have before seen it produced the vital ' divergence ' of the universe. 
 ' Then God . . . diffused the whole into the fluid form/ G-en. i. And by 
 function, consequent on and determined by this nutrition, arises the 
 universe : the power of God passing on transitive. 
 
 What an union of absolute law and perfect liberty is true Science, aa 
 I think I see it, alike in its method and in its result (or its fact). It 
 is the most absolute strictness of logic in mode of thought, with perfect 
 freedom in following any where or any how the clue (in method). Then, 
 in the fact of it, it is at once an absolute axiom, necessity ; and yet un- 
 bounded freedom any thing and any how. And see ; first is law, 
 then liberty, and then the union. Liberty is ever from law, variety 
 from unity ; the absolute ever precedes the freedom. Frst is right, 
 first real or moral, then phenomenal. Does this tend to show that our 
 ' free will ' or liberty is secondary from an absolute or law ? Does it 
 help me to that mystery, how our action, our moral being are ? whence 
 first our will ? Am I not erring in applying the idea of cause to the un- 
 caused, treating the real as if it were phenomenal ? 
 
 Where shall we find a man who studies the whole universe ? Talk of 
 attending to one thing, what one thing can we find but the 
 universe ? 
 
 Men of genius all want, and have wished for, not our admiration, but 
 our love. They, one and all, wrote and worked from the heart. They 
 ' gave themselves for us ;' the due return for wh is love. And in truth 
 we do give ourselves to them in return. This, in truth, is the idea of 
 human love, and of all Natures': the man first gives himself for (or to) 
 the woman, then the woman gives herself to the man. Are not creation 
 and redemption here ? God gives Himself for the creature : the crea- 
 ture gives herself to God. The created (the spirit) is female. Can I not 
 see why the phn the passion ? is it not the nutrition, wh constitutes 
 the creature as female ? Our ' function ' is union with the creator ; the 
 clue to all is the femaleness of the creature? 
 
 This self-giving, first of man to woman and then of woman to man, 
 is re-presented throughout nature, in every polar attraction, wh ever 
 begins from male. See in sun and planets : the sun gives its life (its 
 force) first to the planets; is it not the effect of these forces on the plan- 
 ets [the passion resisted by them, and becoming divergent or life] that 
 causes them to be attracted to him, to give themselves to him ? Is it 
 not the same with the ' nucleus ' in living tissues, wh operates precise- 
 ly as the sun ; giving its life, and so causing attraction [of the female 
 elements] to itself ? So the Creator gives His life for the creature. 
 The creature gives, thereby [having so received life from God], himself 
 to the Creator ; is united to Him, one with Him ; even as wife is with
 
 536 
 
 husband ; absorbed in Him, yet not losing personality : only by retain- 
 ing that is the union so sacred and so blest. It is an union of spirits, 
 which necessitates personality and moral being, else is it spirit no 
 longer. 
 
 Here I seem to want more. The force given by male, resisted by 
 female, produces that 'nutritive' polarity wh causes the attraction. Can 
 I see this in our relation to God I Is our passion God's ' life ' given to 
 us, which resisted by us, giving us spiritual life, causes us to love God 
 and be so united to Him ? ' He that doeth right cometh to the light . . 
 his deeds are wrought in God.' What is this 'wrought in God' be- 
 fore he comes to the light ? But there is more here ; for our control, 
 wh makes our life, is also God's act in us, and is produced in us by love 
 of Christ. 
 
 Is not the omniscience of God that we speak of one with His creation ? 
 Seeing is saying, just as Being is acting : they are not cause and effect, 
 but one [separable only by a 'not']. It is the doctrine of self-sacrifice 
 in another form ; that ' getting is only in giving.' "We know only in 
 expressing, just as we are only in sacrifice. Not-expressing is negation 
 of the knowing, as not-loving is negation of the Being. 
 
 In the spiritual, the act of giving is the fact of Being. May we not 
 say, God only is in giving, in giving Himself for His creatures ; i. e. 
 in creating : God is the creator, in creating only exists ? God is love, 
 but no love unless an object loved : save as creating, God is not ? In 
 truth, this is involved in the ' eternity ' of the spiritual ; the distinction 
 of nutrition and function of right and love pertains only to creature. 
 Physically this is so also : ' matter' only exists in attracting ; matter 
 is only 'that wh attracts:' so 'spirit is that wh loves:' this is the 
 interpretation. 
 
 Do we not see Christ and His work better in relation to the great 
 humanity ? May I think thus : Christ is the re-creation of that hu- 
 manity ; for it He sacrificed Himself ; Christ heals the humanity by 
 giving life to the individual men ? Is not redemption creation, because 
 sin is not-being is not the redeeming of men the creation of man ? 
 Must it not be so ? Consider : there is no succession, and we see ever 
 last first when seen in succession. Creation and redemption, are they 
 not creation seen in time ? We see redemption as after creation, but 
 in truth is not creation rather a result of redemption ? We have in- 
 verted, as we ever must. Man is created by redemption ; our relation 
 to redemption is our way of knowing our creation. Thus ever God 
 creates, even as we see. Thus, but not ever as in our case, for we are 
 truly sinful. Creation is ever the same fact, but the form may be dif- 
 ferent. What a view this opens to me ! I am filled with awe. The 
 creation of moral Beings, of spirits, must be moral creation. It is not 
 a physical passive thing not even being created ; even as being newly 
 created in Christ is not : it is a moral act, a yielding ; it is having love; 
 loving is being. God creates us by making us love. It must be : it is 
 marvellous because true : our creation is our act, because it is God's act 
 in us ; we are, even as God is. God is by His own act ; and so are we. 
 That is God's moral being, because He loves : by His love He is. As 
 we exist by acting, so does God ; His is not a passive, necessary, 
 existence. Is our redemption the phenomenal experience of our 
 creation ?
 
 537 
 
 There is no necessity in respect to God save by His own act : the ne- 
 cessity for His being is that same necessity which is in respect to us as 
 duty, as moral right, or love it is the only necessity. All other ne- 
 cessities ' wh we perceive or imagine are results or derivatives of that, 
 ways in wh we perceive it, images of it. 
 
 Now surely I see the origin of the word ' spirit ' ; it is not the ' thing ' 
 wind, or air ; but the ' act,' breathing, or blowing. It refers not to the 
 tenuity of the ' substance,' but the continual activity of the deed. Spi- 
 rit is breathing, moving ; spiritual is active. We have corrupted the 
 meaning from an action to a thing : this has been a materialistic processl 
 Shall we not find the idea of love also in this ; and perhaps of light 
 also? Emriru 
 
 I have arrived at a better view of the difficulty as to our 'existing,' 
 altho' we do not act ; of our being, tho' sinful : the fact indicated by 
 remorse. It is thus : the sense of right is love, as I have seen. Love 
 is perceived as sense of right when it resists, or is opposed by, passion. 
 [Love by negation, or in contact with it, becomes sense of right or 
 ' ought' ? i. e. moral being is by negation]. The sense of right .-. is 
 love ; i. e. is action : action in the form of resistance ; and the sense of 
 right is what constitutes our personality, our Being. And so I see how 
 it is that spiritual Being is one with action. We are, as it> were, in God's 
 act; viz. in the moral sense, the sense of right, the conscience or con- 
 sciousness. But truly to be, that act must be our own, by our obedi- 
 ence, by our right act. Thus spiritual Being is action or love, and yet 
 we are tho' we do not act ; i. e. tho' we do not act. We are in God's 
 action, ve live, in our own ; wh two are truly one. One sees clearly 
 how love is equally action, whether in form of acting or of resistance ; 
 of right doing or of conscience. And how well this agrees : I have 
 seen that all our consciousness, our perception, is based on our moral 
 consciousness, or sense of right : that we are perceptive or rational crea- 
 tures because we are moral agents. So now I see. that all our conscious- 
 ness, all sensation, is God's act ; God's creation of iis ? Sensation is 
 image of the moral sensation. 
 
 Man has a passive existence in his sense of right ; but this is not the 
 true spiritual existence, wh is acting : man only becomes a truly spiritual 
 Being in holiness. God has no passive existence ; His active Being, or 
 true spiritual existence, is absolute, self-originated. 
 
 We entirely think wrong when we attribute physical power to God, 
 as if He could do physical things, e. g. move the earth, &c. The idea 
 is not appropriate : of course He not only can do but does, it all ; but 
 not physically : it is by moral action that physical things are done in 
 that higher, truer sense. E.g. how could the motion of the sun be 
 stopped ? in two ways : either by stopping the earth, or altering man. 
 We see, the sun's motion cannot be stopped, as such, there is nothing 
 to stop : it is an image. Just so of physical things ; God can alter 
 them or may be conceived as altering them only in one of two ways : 
 altering His own moral act, of wh they are the image, or altering us 
 who perceive his act so, by virtue of our being and relation to Him. 
 God has not ' physical ' power in our sense : that is wholly phenomenal, 
 that belongs to matter ; only that which has motion can produce or stop 
 motion in that sense of physical force. Look now at miracles : How is 
 it that miracles are effected ? It is right that God shd do them.
 
 538 
 
 Love of the phenomenal is but another fojm of self-love ; the phn is 
 from us. It is passion, not truly love or action. 
 
 Here in the spiritual love is plainly the source of the universal three. 
 The force; the nutrition from its control ; the function : viz. the spiritual 
 fact or Being, Love ; the spiritual nutrition or life from control of pas- 
 sion ; the spiritual function from the nutrition ; viz. higher love, love of 
 right, self-sacrifice in joy producing so new force ; reproducing the 
 first in higher form. 
 
 The phenomenon [the universe] is one great nutrition and function, and 
 in infinite repetition, because the spirit is so. It is from the nutrition 
 and function wh constitute the spiritual that the phenomenal springs ; 
 this is its source. Because of the spiritual nutrition end function the 
 universe is such. The spiritual act on the spiritual. Being is phenomenal 
 nutrition and function. Is not this Creation ; the spiritual nutrition and 
 function ? It is clearly an act, not a ' thing.' Why and how is God's 
 act thus two in the creature ? Surely there is spiritual development too ? 
 I. think I see how there must be a spiritual universe answering to this 
 physical, and cause of it of wh it is image and symbol in whole and 
 in minutest. This is the reason and fact of each phenomenal thing and 
 process : it is an image, a corresponding thing, to a spiritual fact wh is 
 right. It is ' passion controlled ' because the fact is holiness. 
 
 The very chief thing seems to be to banish the idea of ' substance ' 
 from spirit. If God, e. g., be a * substance,' then it is by a physical, 
 passive, necessity He exists, and all our ideas are at once perplexed. 
 Here too is a true teaching of the phenomenal science, both physical and 
 metaphysical, that we have perception, or knowledge, of nothing but 
 action. Here is the truth of those metaphysical systems [Hume's e.g.] 
 wh reduce all to mere sensations, &c. This is .another ' stinging nettle.' 
 Quite true is this reduction of all to < action,' and exclusion altogether 
 of substance. But then the action is moral action ; that is the fact 
 that remains for ever. 
 
 And again here is the truth of the mystical view, of God of the 
 Divine as above ' Being ' ; of the Nothing. The error was the not 
 seeing that this, wh was alone Being, was moral, was Love ; that it cd 
 not be substance or thing because that cannot be moral. The existing 
 Is action, not substance ; and as we approach it the more does the sub- 
 stance disappear. Person, or personality, is incompatible with sub- 
 stance : substance is essentially ' in-ertia,' inaction ; .. not being that 
 wh is ' substance,' is not. So as all spirit is action, all action is spirit ; 
 i. e. personal. Our child's instinct is right, that every thing that acts 
 is * person.' 
 
 I have here a help to the idea of Sin [as action] : it is the suppression 
 of love [not-acting, for the love and the action are one], but suppression 
 is not annihilation ; it is the polar opposite. Sin is the polar opposite 
 to love. It is inaction, but not .-. nothing ; it is the act of Sin. So 
 death is not annihilation, but the opposite to life : physically, it is the 
 chemical passion unrestrained. The idea of opposite from suppression, 
 is that wh explains the facts to me. There can be no annihilation, no 
 not-being : the infinite Being of God excludes it ? Being and ceasing 
 to be do not apply to spirit ? they are phenomenal only. If spirit 
 ' ceases to be ' what does it ' become ' ? Ceasing to be is the doctrine 
 of efficient cause, of succession.
 
 539 
 
 Of two incomprehensible things it is not by any means immaterial 
 wh we adopt : the question whether the necessity in respect to God is 
 physical (passive), or moral (His own act) is not an indifferent one. 
 
 It is striking that Cuvier's idea of life shd be a 'vortex:' the sug- 
 gestion of chemical action resisted seems to bear the same relation to 
 that idea as that of two rectangular forces bore to the Cartesian 
 vortices. New species [of animals, e. g.] are really a new form of 
 vital action, a subdivision of motion. We practically look on the form 
 and structure of the animal as the primary fact, as the new thing which 
 has been created ; not perceiving that the form of each animal is but 
 an effect of that particular vital action under the law of least resistance. 
 The problem of development is not to account for new animals, or spe- 
 cific animal forms, but for new forms of vital action. But this is 
 identical with that of the origination of new forms of non-vital 
 action. 
 
 November, 1856. Since all things contain or embody the two ele- 
 ments of motion and resistance, and nothing more, these two elements 
 must form the proper basis for classification. And they are to be re- 
 garded in two points of view. 1st, the absolute amount of each : 2nd, 
 the proportion between the two. These give the distinctions, first of 
 grade, and secondly of form, as before defined ; which are the dis- 
 tinctions into different orders, and into different species, under those 
 orders. And again, into species and varieties, &c. The practical re- 
 sult would not vary so much, perhaps, from the actual classifications, 
 but it would have a scientific reason, and be surely much simpler. The 
 double name would be presereed, and, probably, one uniform series of 
 terms might be substituted for the second, indicating a constant varia- 
 tion of proportion throughout nature. 
 
 Also as all attraction is polar i. e. sexual attraction and as in sex- 
 ual action the male part is the force, i. e. the motion, the female, the 
 resistance, so surely in chemical union it is the same force and resist- 
 ance. And .-. chemical classification would be the type and pattern of 
 all, it indicates the very elements on wh all classification rests ; the kind 
 or grade of force, and proportion of force and resistance. The various 
 elements are the grades, the orders ; the compounds of each indicate the 
 various proportions. And as the compounds of each element with the 
 others form a corresponding, if not identical, series under each element, 
 so the various proportions would form corresponding series under each 
 grade or order, &c. For the resistance is but a form of the force : each 
 is each : each may be alternately either. So the elements represent at 
 one time force, at another resistance. Heated or expanded air and cold 
 air are the types. All things must be classified in octaves, with in- 
 termediate notes and corresponding divisions, throughout nature, begin- 
 ning with movement. 
 
 Here is a basis for a real classification of living species; viz., the 
 production of a new grade of life, by union of two into one. Here is a 
 principle, not arbitrary as the ordinary basis of classification, nor in- 
 definite as the proposed limitation of a species to the descendants of a 
 single pair, or those not differing more than such descendants. A new grade 
 of life consists in the union of two into one : a subdivision, as we may 
 say (just as in the inorganic world, interference must normally produce 
 [Life, 290. See p. 98. L 2
 
 540 
 
 such subdivision of one motion into two of half size). Here is the real 
 principle of differentiation in the living world : where such change 
 takes place is really a new 'grade' ('grade' better than 'order 'or 
 'species'). It is like the different octaves in music. Here is something 
 satisfactory to the mind, and tangible also to the sense, for anatomy may 
 with certainty decide where this polar union, this subdivision, takes 
 place. The orders will be octaves, but the notes of the octaves will all 
 correspond to each other in each order; each note being the octave of the 
 same note in the lower (octave or) grade : so we can trace down to the 
 lowest animal grade ; and through the vegetable and the various forces, 
 down to ' movement.' 
 
 So my view of life was simply seeing that two equal opposite motions 
 do constitute a vibration. I find all things to be life ; but thereby I 
 do not deprive life of its special beauty, but extend that beauty to all 
 things. That wh we think common and inorganic, rough, and wanting 
 in that gentle delicacy wh living matter has, appears so to us only be- 
 cause our eye cannot penetrate far enough to see the whole. And here 
 in the two opinions about life that wh limits it and that wh extends 
 it to all things is another instance of the nature of thought : put the 
 two together, and the deficient element, or knowledge of life, is 
 supplied. 
 
 Chemics embraces one series of vibrations ; life another series of 
 vibrations : they are not opposed to each other, but parallel. All the 
 changes and acts of life belong to the three classes of motion. The 
 functions and the instincts, or polar attractions, are parallel to the facts 
 of chemistry : and the identity of vital with the ordinary processes of 
 nature becomes quite clear. Thus the polar attractions, or instincts, or 
 functions of chemical substances, by the action they produce, generate 
 forces such as heat, wh re-produce the nutrition, separate the compounds 
 produced, and give capacity for new function. The heat produced by 
 oxidation deoxidizes, but of course part of the effect of each form of 
 action passes to other forms above and below. But I see how chemistry 
 is life ; the chemical substances are species with their functional power 
 and instincts, neutral bodies or compounds are 'dead.' They 
 have no longer capacity for action, they have acted, like machines 
 that have run down. But what is special about life? the parallel seems to 
 go only to a certain extent ; there is nothing like the building up and 
 decay of the living body, subordinate to its functional power. 
 
 In thinking of life we must remember what an immense subdivision 
 and aggregation of many actions into excessively small compass exists 
 in the higher forms. It is that wh makes it so wonderful ; there is so 
 much in the space, subdivided and subdivided and put together again 
 and again, before it assumes the final form of a man ; through the in- 
 organic forces, chemistry, vegetable life, and all the grades of animal 
 life, doubling itself again, and again. Each step doubtless simple and 
 plain, as may be seen when our ideas are a little more true, but the re- 
 sult an enormous condensation. I shd not wonder if there be really 
 as much action, in the total, in a man as in a planet altogether, exclu- 
 sive of animal life. 
 
 Life, presenting pre-eminently the spiral form, suggests also the idea 
 of vibration in two planes at right angles, wh agrees with what I have 
 before seen. The spiral forms of life indicate progressive vibration 
 polarized.
 
 541 
 
 Polarization taken as the turning of a motion at right angles, and 
 causing it to become continuously vibratile, appears to be the very 
 thing that I have defined life to be, in relation to chemical action. So 
 far as I can see, life is rightly to be considered as ' polarized chemical 
 action.' But then, since polarization is not truly ' development ' of 
 force, life would not be different from and above chemicity, as light is 
 different from and above heat, but only chemical action become, by sta- 
 tic resistance, continuously vibratile. I am not satisfied with this, how- 
 ever. Certainly life does not seem to be exactly of a different grade 
 from chemicity, inasmuch as changes, which we cannot well call other 
 than chemical, do constitute part of the living action ; viz., the func- 
 tional. In life the motions are made continuously vibratile, but still 
 are chemical ; as the planetary motions are continuously vibratile, but 
 still are gravitating. 
 
 On this view various questions arise concerning life. First, how it is 
 that the chemical tendency is controlled for such long times in living 
 bodies ; why the decomposing action does not always ensue directly 
 after the nutritive, as the descent of the pendulum after its rise ; why 
 a stimulus and oxygen are necessary for function ? There are, however, 
 plenty of analogies for this. Secondly, why living bodies grow and in- 
 crease the capacity for assimilation. This, perhaps, is best treated as 
 why life vibrates ; attains a maturity, and declines. It is periodic, and 
 must be looked at with other 'periodicities.' Thirdly, the death and 
 decay of living bodies. This also is not so unlike other things. When 
 we consider the solar system, e. g. as a part of the sidereal system, its 
 absolute stability seems impossible. Has not it also grown ? Is it now 
 growing ; or verging to decay ? These questions about life would be 
 well studied in relation to a single cell, say a blood globule. 
 
 The process of nutrition itself and of development, must be regarded 
 as going on by resisted action, and therefore by ' tendency,' and as 
 permitted : there is a ' vital tension ' in the body wh causes nutrition 
 and development, as well as a ' chemical tension ' wh causes function; 
 both when permitted. Thus, in society, its development is carried on 
 by such balanced forces and restrained tendencies, and is ' permitted ' 
 when the ' resisting forces ' yield to the ' forces of movement.' 
 
 I perceive wherein the essence of life consists : life includes both the 
 force and the resistance, the two opposite motions, i. e. the vibration. 
 It is the whole wherever the whole is there is vibration ; there is life. 
 Thus the entire universe, the total act so to speak, the total motion, be- 
 ing vibration, is life. God's act is life ; and all portions (being essen- 
 tially vibratile) are also life ; motion being essentially vibration, is es- 
 sentially life. But here is the distinction also : vibratile motion is of 
 two kinds ; either continuous or transitive, as long ago noted. To ap- 
 pear as life, the vibration must be continuous : that is all ; at least in 
 the wide sense of the word life, such as includes the solar system and 
 machines. Inorganic chemics and life are respectively transitive and 
 continuous chemical vibration. So the fall of a planet to the sun wd 
 be a transitive vibration ; i. e. the opposite action would be of another 
 kind : a planet falling beyond the sun, and therefore moving away from 
 it again, is a continuous vibration ; the opposite action being of the same 
 kind. So in the fall of a weight to the earth, and the same fall of a 
 pendulum. So in the movement towards each other of chemical
 
 542 
 
 particles, producing heat, &c., as the opposite action, or life nutrition. 
 Thus, taking a just view of things, we still see every thing to be life. 
 We only need to trace out, and take into consideration, the opposite ac- 
 tion under its new form (in transitive vibrations). Then we have still 
 before us life wheresoever we look. And thus surely we must learn to 
 look upon all things. With regard to life specially so called, I have still 
 to gain a comprehension of the power of assimilation, the mode in wh 
 the vital action and living body are increased. 
 
 Remember, with respect to the continuous vibrations, that a part of 
 the motion is ever transitive ; i. e. passes into another form instead of 
 becoming the same motion in an opposite direction : so a pendulum pro- 
 duces heat at its point of suspension, and motion of the air as it falls ; a 
 part of the motion of the weight passing into these forms, and less .. 
 becoming the opposite motion. So with the planets, a portion of their 
 motion must have passed into a motion of the resisting medium. 
 In fact, the very resistance wh causes a motion to become a continuous 
 vibration (by preventing its completion) involves the changing of a por- 
 tion of such motion into another form. 
 
 Life is continuous chemical vibration : and it takes place primarily 
 only in elements wh have lowest equivalents, C. O. H. N. Surely I ap- 
 proach the reason why these elements are the organic ones ; i. e. why 
 their chemical motions chiefly are resisted, and made continuously vibra- 
 tile. Does not the same question meet us in many other forms ; e. g., 
 why some portions of matter united together to form suns and planets ; 
 but the planets' motion towards the suns was resisted and made con- 
 tinuously vibratile, and of moons towards planets, &c. 
 
 Does one thus come closer to the idea of life : O. and H. uniting, form 
 water : vibrating continuously, they form again only O. and H. But now 
 add carbon [and I conceive an essential point is that the C has affinity 
 both for O and H ; a mistake surely to look on starch, &c., as C and 
 water] ; these three elements, when they vibrate continuously, form a 
 new or vital compound ; they do not resume their previous relation of 
 utter separation as it were, but are united, though at a distance, and 
 mutually united, each to each. As in the solar system, the gravitation of 
 planets from a great distance, while producing a continuous vibration 
 does not carry them again to that distance, but into a modified relation 
 an union, though at a distance, and a curved and definite motion. I 
 wonder if the elements in living tissues are united as in the solar system; 
 i. e. one of one polarity, and many of the other : say one male particle 
 [H], and many female [C 0, &c.] ? Considering that chemical attrac- 
 tion is ever polar, there must be something polar in vital union, but it 
 may be of different degrees of polarity, or by induced polarity, &c. This 
 must be traced in the inorganic. 
 
 It appears there is no life without three elements ; but may there not 
 be a truly vital relation of two, though we have not yet clearly ascer- 
 tained it ? How comes it that more and more elements enter into the com- 
 position of living structures as organization advances ; so that almost any 
 element may form part of living tissue ? Do the varieties of organized 
 matter correspond in any way to the varieties of inorganic com- 
 pounds I 
 
 Inorganic chemistry is like the fall of bodies to the earth ; life is like
 
 543 
 
 the fall of planets round the sun. Now it is instructive surely to con- 
 sider what things cause the one or the other result ; the vibratile motion 
 to be either transitive or continuous. In the instance quoted, the vibra- 
 tion is caused to be transitive for such reasons as these ; the too great 
 size of one of the attracting bodies ; the too small distance between them : 
 are these really valuable analogies ? Resistance to action there ever is 
 it arises from the very fact of the limit, or the vibratile character of the 
 action and what determines the vibration to be continuous or transitive 
 is the sufficiency of the resistance to prevent the completion of the action. 
 Here is a step towards an explanation of death surely : at least, perhaps 
 of that death wh results from too great a change in the conditions, say 
 of a planet : possibly the effect of such change is to weaken or destroy 
 in some way the resistance. 
 
 One difference between vegetable and animal seems to be this : the 
 vegetable vital and decomposing actions succeed one another directly, 
 like the successive beats of a pendulum as it were, performing no func- 
 tion, nor possessing an accumulated tendency or power (i.e. for function, 
 apart from mere decomposition). Tn fact, the functional apparatus, or 
 mechanical arrangement, is wanting. [There are exceptions, of course, 
 as in irritable plants, wh are .. especially interesting.] The animal on 
 the other hand, is like a machine, in wh the vital action restrains the 
 chemical, and it comes into play, on stimulus (or without), in connection 
 with definite mechanical arrangements, and results in function. Can 
 I trace how this follows from the view of animal life as the union 
 of two vegetables? 
 
 Life re-produces itself in a continually increasing quantity ; because 
 one resistance may produce hundreds of other similar actions, wh then 
 are all of them resistances. The ' life ' comes from the chemistry ; all 
 that is wanted is to make the chemical action a continuous instead of a 
 transitive vibration, and one such continuous vibration has power to 
 make many more transitive vibrations continuous. It is easily conceiv- 
 able that a very slight impulse may suffice for this ; and then the force 
 of the continuous vibration is not proportionate to the force of this im- 
 pulse, but to that of the chemical action. Thus conceive a planet, grav- 
 itating with enormous velocity towards the sun a very slight impulse 
 may cause it to pass by the sun instead of to it, especially if it be already 
 somewhat deflected. But then the impetus of its motion from the sun is 
 proportioned, not to the impulse wh deflected it, but to the velocity with 
 wh it gravitated. So the intensity of the vital action, is proportioned to 
 the intensity, &c., of the chemical action wh becomes or constitutes it, 
 not to the impulse or resistance wh has caused it to become vital. Thus 
 I see how life has an indefinite tendency to multiply itself ; one vital ac- 
 tion tending to produce innumerable others, by causing what wd be tran- 
 sitive to become continuous vibrations. 
 
 Also I see somewhat distinctly how this process consists in a constant 
 succession of individuals : one ceases to be vital, while many others be- 
 come so ; the vital action of one becomes the vital resistance of many. 
 Life is a constant succession : life, death, life ; each life being vastly 
 greater than its predecessor. Hence also is involved development, from 
 the mere fact of life having limits. The development of the animal 
 world as a whole, is as clearly involved in the fact of life as
 
 544 
 
 the development of a single animal, or of any single tissue of an 
 animal. 
 
 The impulse, or resistance, wh causes the vihration to become con- 
 tinuous, need not theoretically arise from such a preceding continuous 
 vibration, need not be vital : it may be passive resistance, or any im- 
 pulse from any other kind of motion ; the only demand is that it shd 
 prevent the action being completed. 
 
 May it not be that the solar system has even gone thro' such a pro- 
 cess of growth ; that the planets have absorbed into themselves much of 
 the ' resisting medium ;' have fed upon it, have vitalized it ; losing 
 thereby part of their own ' vitality ;' are heavier than they were ? 
 Hence, perhaps, the alteration of their orbits? Now being 
 ' adult ' ? 
 
 May there not be a light thrown by these thoughts on hereditary 
 disease, hereditary phthisis, e. g. Is it not an inability in the vital 
 action fully to vitalize the new material ; the primary vital action being 
 insufficient to afford the requisite resistance to a sufficient amount of 
 chemical action to make it vital. Hence, perhaps, the most frequent 
 age for phthisis about puberty, or from 40 to 50 ; and the remedy, 
 plenty of food and air. 
 
 May not indeed parallels to all our (natural) diseases be found in the 
 heavenly bodies, or in other forms of continuous vibration ? "Wd it not 
 be well to try and trace such parallels ? 
 
 This is an important principle, that while the vital passion is pro- 
 duced by the chemical is the chemical indeed yet the kind of vital 
 passion, the curve of it the orbit I must say is determined by the re- 
 sistance, i. e. by the previously existing vital state, and the influence it 
 has had in preventing the completion of the chemical action. Thus the 
 very same food consumed by different animals produces quite different 
 living structures ; the same chemical passion becomes different vital 
 passion. Now the differences of the digestive fluid, &c., are something, 
 as modifying chemical passion itself ; but these differences of vital pas- 
 sion are doubtless chiefly determined by the different resistance imparted 
 by the different ' lives.' Here is a step towards assimilation: thus we ar- 
 rive directly at the diversities of blood ; and it is but another step to 
 see the reason of the nourishment of each tissue by like, i. e. of true 
 assimilation. 
 
 It is surely good, this regarding the different forms of life as different 
 ' orbits,' or curves. Thus a very slight resistance, or low degree of life, 
 implies a very eccentric orbit ; greater resistance, or higher life, a 
 rounder orbit. But this must be held consistently with the doctrine of 
 grades : two vital passions ' developing ' by union [or subdivision] into 
 a higher grade. It is the very idea of musical development again ; 
 notes and octaves ; the notes being the ' curves ' or orbits, the octaves 
 the grades. Remember also that in these ' orbits ' of the particles in the 
 living body there are all the three directions of motion. They are 
 ' spiral ' revolutions as the earth's is ; describing 3 ellipses round each 
 other. The varying porportions of the three diameters, having much 
 to do with determining, doubtless, the kind of life. The different tissues 
 thus resulting from special resistances are, in reference to one living 
 body, just what different species are in reference to the living world 
 considered as one body. The vital passion is, as it were, restraint ; the
 
 545 
 
 functional, freedom ; but free passion again restrained, and producing 
 again the vital is not this the meaning of respiration : that 
 the ultimate union with 0, wh takes place externally to the body in 
 the other excretions, in respiration takes place within it, and so the 
 heat it produces is retained ? And is not this the difference between 
 lungs and gills, that in the latter more of this heat, arising from 
 oxidation, passes off externally ? 
 
 And is not Besemere's process for purifying iron, as it were, parallel 
 to the substitution of lungs for gills : an inversion of a process formerly 
 external, causing the heat produced by the oxidation of the excreta to 
 be retained within the organization, instead of being dissipated extern- 
 ally ; so producing a ' function ?' And by means of similar mechanical 
 conditions, viz., that the oxidation takes place within an enclosed space: 
 as we may say, within the body. Here is an indication of parallelism 
 between practical mechanics and life. Surely mechanical science devel- 
 opes even as life does. And is not the advance of mechanical contri- 
 vances to be looked for, as in life, by more passion in same space, and 
 by retaining force within the ' organization '? This is the problem of 
 mechanics ; to construct organization, and concentrate and retain force. 
 In life these two go together by nature of passion itself ; mechanics has 
 to do the same by intelligence : wh, however, is also passion in least 
 resistance, and man's progress is as necessary a result of ' passion ' as 
 the growth of a living body. The one repeats the other. In life the 
 organization involves, and constitutes, this concentration and retention 
 of force. The triumph of Science would be to construct machines wh 
 shd do the same. 
 
 In using the chemical tendencies of inorganic matter, we use virtually 
 the very same force as when we use living labor. This shows how che- 
 mistry is a life ; how chemical tendencies affinities which are ready to 
 operate are a ' functional ' capacity. I must try and trace the resist- 
 ance wh has produced and produces the tendency or force, the availabili- 
 ty for producing passion. Cohesion, or whatever it is prevents the opera- 
 tion of these chemical polar attractions, is the vital resistance in chem- 
 istry ; the means we employ for producing chemical passion are stimuli 
 applied to a living organization producing functional passion. Chemical 
 union is function, and produces nutrition wh may be a kind of external 
 effect : heat, motion, sound, light, &c. (transitive vibration), or it may 
 be vital passion of the same sort (continuous vibration) viz. chemical 
 decomposition, of wh we have plenty of instances ; chemical union pro- 
 ducing chemical disunion. Thus the life is maintained. And those 
 forces wh produce chemical disunion (as heat, light, &c.) produce 
 chemical ' life ' : this is an instance of force becoming ' vital pas- 
 sion ' by resistance. The life ceases not, nor diminishes; because all 
 passion is vibration (i.e. is life), each approximating producing new di- 
 vergent : each function a new nutrition. The death of one organization, 
 or living structure, imparts life to another, and the former will re- 
 participate : ever wrongness giving way to rightness, and Tightness pro- 
 ducing wrongness. But as it thus goes on progress results ; life devel- 
 opes ; the passion ever becomes higher : that is, considered as existing 
 in time. 
 
 Since the animal body is the 'element,' or particle, of a living frame, 
 we may surely learn from it and its various passions what are the pas-
 
 546 
 
 sions of the particles of each living frame. The taking food, the assi- 
 milation, the decomposition, effecting function and transmitting the 
 passion externally as it were to other ' elements 'of the organization, 
 are clearly the same in each, the animal and the particle ; but I think 
 we may go further, and see in the various passions of the animal body 
 (considered as animal) analogues of that wh takes place in the minutest 
 particles of the living frame : the apparent fun, pleasure, contri- 
 vance ; in short the psychical as well as the physical passions of animals 
 must be in the particles : not of course consciousness, that being spirit- 
 ual ; but the ' psychical ' must be as universal as the physical, must ex- 
 ist everywhere throughout nature. If it did not exist in each particle 
 it could not exist in any whole. Why is it apparent to us only in the 
 animal ? lN"ow here is the basis of Imagination surely, or seeing human 
 emotions in all things. In every physical thing and fact there is such 
 passion, as, if it were perceived, i. e. if it existed as such in a spirit 
 or conscious Being wd be such emotion. All is in the objects except 
 the consciousness. The passion wh exists in them, if perceived, wd be 
 such moral or psychical emotion. But all this passion is passion in a 
 spirit, and tho' each spirit is conscious only of that passion wh pertains 
 to his body as a whole (?) yet the passion in the particles constitutes 
 his health and enjoyment surely. A violet is modest in the same sense 
 as a chicken is hungry ; these are the only forms in wh we are conscious 
 of, or know anything about these passions, and .. can truly say them, 
 but they are fictions right theories to reveal the reality. 
 
 Polarity, or sex, seems to be a relation of passion only, i. e. of vibra- 
 tion: Surely Beings, or spirits, have not sex. Wheresoever there is 
 'passion ' being essentially limited there is polarity. 
 
 Does not existence of ' form' demonstrate the limit ? or the actual re- 
 sistance to all motion now in the world demonstrate the absolute resist- 
 ance, i. e. ' limit ' to motion as such ? 
 
 I see some glimmering of why the organic elements enter into Life, 
 and only those : they give most result in proportion. Obscurely I see 
 they are chemicity most developed ; next to life in grade ; most in least 
 space. 
 
 Are not all threes and fives polar ? and .*. right and left are so ; right 
 and left leg and arm, and side of head ; this will help to account for 
 the differences of the two sides of the body : the heart e. g. female on 
 left side ; lung, male, on right ; the spleen and liver, &c. Either the 
 separate or united two may be highest, e. g. the two ears to double nose, 
 or the two legs to double head. 
 
 May it not be that only the food assimilated decomposes in the body 
 and is the cause of function, the basis or structure of the body remaining 
 unchanged and .--. growing old ? And is not this also in mind, and in 
 universal life ? 
 
 I see the idea of an organic body ; it is a wave which begins with the 
 upward motion and ends with the downward. This is the living body ; 
 the nutrition and the function, involving many and complex subordinate 
 vibrations, but all expressed by one such vibration. We begin with the 
 raising of the weight, and end with its fall ; begin with expansion, and 
 end with re-contraction, &c., thro' all possible forms of force. It is no 
 real beginning or ending, but it fills the eye ; it is an apparent whole, 
 and in truth it re-presents, and is the same as, the absolute whole : for
 
 547 
 
 the universe is just that thing. There is therefore great significance 
 and beauty in a living hody standing thus as a whole hefore us. It is 
 the universal type. Now we can trace the life in the inorganic world : 
 anywhere we may see it : take together a divergent and its corresponding 
 approx passion. We are apt in relation to the inorganic world to begin 
 at the other part, and take together an approx and its divergent : pos- 
 sibly by looking the other way at the inorganic world we may come to 
 see it in an entirely new light, ever beginning with the divergent, the 
 produced or nutritive passion. And in the mental world we are apt to 
 begin with the work of Genius the right way is to begin with talent. 
 The talent and genius make up the universal life, not the genius and 
 talent ; even as the nutrition and function (not function and nutrition) 
 make up the individual physical life. So we see again how life (organic) 
 is but a form of the ' passion ' derived from, and produced by the ex- 
 ternal passion, and re-producing it. But observe, derived from external 
 passion only thro' the medium of chemical passion. Is this to be more 
 widely traced ? Altho' the organic life arises from other passion, still 
 it constitutes an individual. Further it is good to see how the indivi- 
 duality is constituted by the passion, not by the matter : the individual 
 is a vibratile passion, the materials varying indefinitely ; just as a wave 
 is a persistent vibratile motion, it may be, in constantly changing par- 
 ticles. But now why does organic life seem so different to the inorganic ? 
 Is it not only more complex, many of such vibrations in one, interwork- 
 ing? hence all the variety of function. For a stationary wave in 
 flowing water entirely represents the individuality ; and the organic life 
 like a wave is a continuous vibration : complexity only is added. 
 
 Thus I see the relation of a crystal to an organic body. It is not 
 corresponding but converse ; the same thing taken the other way. In 
 the formation of the crystal the approx comes first, and the divergent 
 results in form of heat, &c. In the organic world we regard the form 
 produced by the divergent passion ; in the inorganic, that produced by 
 the approx : for both produce form, as indeed all motion must. Let us 
 try and look ever, and first, at the form produced in the inorganic world 
 by the divergent passion, and then we shall see both alike and discern 
 without difficulty the oneness. We look at a crystal as an individual, 
 just as if we looked at excreta as individuals, or at the results of function 
 as they exist in the tissues. There is a sort of inverted relation to our 
 eye. In the inorganic world the form resulting from the divergent force 
 is obscured to us and mixed up so that we cannot well trace it ; in the 
 organic world the form resulting from the approx is so. 
 
 The devouring of animals by one another is but part of the process 
 of growth in reference to the great life ; a true replacement, such as 
 ever takes place in the organic body. It is no source of pain to the 
 spirit ' ; but our evil treatment of them may be, that is another thing 
 morbid passion or violence. In our bodies one ' element ' is truly de- 
 voured by another : and the death of animals, the transmitting of force, 
 is it not a function, a part of a greater life ? I feel how the nations of 
 the earth are organs of a living whole ; how the formation of nations is 
 truly the organization of humanity. 
 
 I must apply this idea of 3 length, breadth and depth to all the 
 theories, and especially in respect to life. So the three functions mo- 
 tion, secretion, nervous passion ' ; these are rectangular ; and the depth,
 
 548 
 
 wh surely is the nervons, is the union of both the others. And the se- 
 cretion and motion are polar ; they are the male and female ; representing 
 function and nutrition ? And see the relation of the nervous to both ; 
 as of man to the inorganic and vegetable. So throughout ; the depth is 
 the bi-polar and related to both ; e. g. in the mental life esthetic, in- 
 tellectual, and emotional. Admirably it applies to the three forms of 
 life : the chemical, the vegetable, and animal ; the chemical and veget- 
 able are exactly polar down and up : the animal clearly bi-polar, re- 
 presenting np and down in one. And from higher vitalization of veget- 
 able in animal there is force for reproducing vegetable in the results of 
 the decomposition wh has produced animal function. 
 
 This threefold life chemical, vegetable and animal is ellipse: and the 
 vegetable arises exactly from from 'limit' to chemicity (wh is resistance 
 to polar union) ; the length and breadth here are clear. Vegetable life 
 is simply chemical passion (as length) becoming breadth, and animal life 
 embraces both as depth. For again, may we not consider the mathema- 
 tics of limit as mathematics becoming organic, the vibration rendered 
 continuous by limit ? Is it a vegetable mathematics, as the former was 
 chemical ? surely it needs to become animal, i. e. union of both. 
 
 But to return : I seem to see chemicity becoming vegetable 
 life, or polar opposite, by limit ; whence and what is this limit or 
 resistance? As Hegel says, ' limited by itself ' ; surely the resistance is 
 opposite chemicity. Can we trace it in simpler cases, e. g. in music : 
 is not the division into three, the depth union of tonic and octave ? 
 This resistance necessarily arises, because all passion is vibration; from 
 that primary limit. Chemicity becomes vegetable life from resistance 
 of two opposite chemicities, because chemicity also is necessarily vibra- 
 tile. We raise chemistry up to life instead of drawing down life to 
 chemistry ; just as the phenomenal must be raised to the moral, not the 
 moral lowered to the phenomenal. 
 
 The production of female from male in the first instance of course is 
 the same thing as function : the new nutrition or life re-presents, or is, 
 the divergent passion in wh function consists, and in the same way it 
 comes from decomposition in the male, a continuous instead of a transi- 
 tive vibration (as tumor is to inflammation); and of course this produc- 
 tion of female commences from the first even as no length can be without 
 also breadth. The male at first origin is depth bi-polar, as it were 
 the female involved in it, and immediately rising out of it. The new 
 form is indeed perhaps only then perfect when the female has arisen 
 from it. Is the female from partial death of the male, and therefore 
 the male diminished as it were by so much: or is the male function ever 
 equivalent to the production of female, only a difference of form in the 
 function? I like this latter view: it is easy to see that the external 
 function wh re-presents so much of the life (of the male) might be a 
 new life in the form of corresponding female ; not at all more wonderful 
 than ordinary reproduction, in wh case the life of the female is given 
 in the same way. It is only like partheno-genesis ; and see the two 
 germs wh become one animal, as it were, re-appear again ; that is all : 
 the process of reproduction continued a little longer. Can it be a gem- 
 mation of female from umbilicus? from the point at which an 'axil ' is? 
 Why after such production of female has the male no more reproductive 
 power ; only for function ? and why female only from union? The
 
 549 
 
 double power, wh was in one before, is now divided. Is it not so in 
 each first new animal ? Woman was taken out of man, and must .-. 
 have been m man. Adam was man and woman before the creation of 
 Eve. God made them male and female and called them Adam. Think 
 again of the parallel in the instincts of some animals, as bees, in which 
 the reproductive faculty is clearly exchanged with the external instincts. 
 Is not this parallel to ' functions ' now taking place of the production 
 of the female ? the reproductive capacity supplanted by functional (in- 
 stinctive) operations the new nutrition being mechanical, &c., instead 
 of being of other bodies like its own. 
 
 Is there any mental ' function ' except development ? I fancy not, at 
 least not perceived by us; if any be performed (wh it is perhaps) it is 
 function of other spirits, and forms part of other life ? 
 
 Surely magnetism, electricity and chemicity make up a three, of wh 
 chemicity is union of magnetism and electricity ; i. e. it is magnetism 
 re-appearing in higher form. Then magnetism is the glandular system ; 
 electricity the muscular ; chemicity the nervous. Magnetism the chem- 
 ical ; electricity the vegetable ; chemicity the animal ; chemicity the 
 animal with its manifold instincts. And are not heat and light empha- 
 tically the functions of chemicity ? and chemicity itself is a life or nu- 
 trition ; it is essentially a divergent process. The polar attractions, or 
 tendencies, result just as the instincts or functional tendencies of 
 animals. 
 
 In chemicity, even as in animal life, there is an organization, whereby 
 functions result, and 'instincts.' The organization is the essential 
 point in chemistry as in the animal world. See how chemicity comes 
 also apparently directly from heat and light. [Do electricity, heat and 
 light form another three ?] We know so little, so few details, about 
 these inorganic forces ; that makes them obscure : there are probably 
 entire worlds there, as large and diversified as organic life. In chemi- 
 city there is ' organization ' as in animal : and this organization must be 
 the result of motion in least resistance, must be elliptic, must be an ad- 
 vance by form and grade in octaves ? 
 
 That animals are not conscious, or do not feel consider sleep, in wh 
 our functions go so far with no consciousness. What again is in the idea 
 of animals not being conscious with regard to the function of the brain? 
 It has nothing to do with consciousness ; but we are conscious of it as 
 of other functions. Its function in animals may be clearly traced and 
 so we may know it in ourselves. 
 
 It is the active sense, or touch (by wh we perceive resistance) that 
 seems to be the primary or universal. What does this indicate ? 
 clearly it has a subjective element in it. Second comes taste, wh still 
 involves action [or does it necessarily]? then smell, sight, and hearing or 
 the social sense. What is the relation ? and why the increasing passive- 
 ness ; for hearing is the most passive (most emotional ?) of all the senses. 
 Smell e. g. is only during respiration, and very dependent on contri- 
 vances for ' smelling.' Thus it appears the perception of ' substance,' 
 or ' matter,' is the lowest ; as the senses rise, the more they become dy- 
 namic. This is interesting : we touch, taste, smell, see, things [though 
 less by sight, save by habit] ; we Aearonly sounds : clearly the highest 
 sense. Think again ; as we are more passive so our perception is more 
 purely dynamic : i. e. of action only ; not of substances. Here is a
 
 550 
 
 parallel in the mental life : our science becomes dynamic as we are 
 passive ; this is Genius : the passiveness of Genius makes the dynamic 
 science ; the activeness of Talent makes the substantial (hypothetical) 
 science. Substance, alike in physical perception, and in mental con- 
 ception, is from our activeness, represents some condition of us : action, 
 or that wb is true to nature, arises from the permitted passion in us 
 Genius. 
 
 The ear is emphatically the interpretative sense, the sense of Genius : 
 so it is social, even as Genius ever is, i. e. deriving its materials and its 
 power from the work of other men. 
 
 It is most interesting to note that this perception of substance by our 
 senses is from a condition of ourselves, answering exactly to ' hypothe- 
 sis.' We perceive substance just as we perceive the motion of the sun, 
 (for the very same reason), viz. because we are in a state of motion ; 
 we never get at substance save by some condition of ourselves. 
 
 How the theory of ' Intermittence ' is only a phenomenal view of nu- 
 trition and function as vibration ; and how this law of intermittence in- 
 cludes the mental life also, the alternations of the modes of thinking, 
 wh Positivism ignores. 
 
 The nutritive process is ever the differentiating one ; development is 
 an advance ' from the general to the special,' and so is nutrition. But 
 on the other hand, development seems to be a putting together, an uni- 
 fying, in one sense, and polar union too ; is it in some sense a functional 
 process ? Is development the ' function ' of the general life, as special 
 functions are of the life of individual parts ? 
 
 That the greater nutrition of an active tissue is only chemical action 
 continued under the form of vital, needs no argument ; it is certain in 
 the nature of the case : there is no other cause admissible. 
 
 I see how chemical passion is turned into vital how life developes at 
 the expense of chemicity viz. by the vital motion of one particle being 
 turned into the vital resistance of many ; the motion of one being the 
 chem motion, and sufficing of course for many resistances : the vital 
 motion of each resisted particle being not the resistance but the chemi- 
 cal motion itself continuing. And indeed the less the resistance, provi- 
 ded it be sufficient to prevent the completion of the chemical passion, 
 the more vigorous the resulting vital motion ? So also in mind, is not 
 instinct converted into a ' developing ' reason ; and in the spiritual 
 world, mere ' passion ' converted into moral power, or living character ? 
 
 ' Living waters ' are flowing waters, waters whose gravitation is con- 
 trolled, directed, partially resisted. Waters precipitated down a preci- 
 pice with unresisted fall, are not what we mean by ' living ' waters. 
 
 I think I have drawn too absolute a contrast between the transitive 
 and the continuous vibration. The fact is not only that the transitive 
 vibration is truly continuous if our eye were in the right relation 
 not only that all Nature is Life but that both are both. Life also is 
 transitive ; as the transitive is but one form of life. The two are one. 
 There is beauty in this, that life also is transitive ; a step to another 
 and higher. The transitive vibrations are the means of development, 
 of rise in grade, of alteration from one form of life to another. It re- 
 presents the developing vital process. But this appears like absence of 
 life to us, because we do not see the continuance of the motion, or re- 
 cognize it as a continuance. By death we mean a real loss and cessation
 
 551 
 
 of action at least that is our instinctive idea and it applies only to 
 moral death, the result of Sin. There is no real death in Nature ; only 
 that wh, falsely seen, images it for moral ends to our eye. The effect 
 of the divergent half of the vibration is the same whether continuous or 
 transitive ; viz. to resist, control, or direct approximating passion. 
 
 Common language cannot go wrong ; at least, it would seem, not posi- 
 tively and absolutely wrong : it may be deficient, but will not bear wit- 
 ness to the false. We have no word for un-living Nature but inorganic, 
 of wh the opposite is organic. To ' living ' there is no contrary, for 
 death is also a negative term, relating only to the cessation of organic 
 life ; we never apply it to inorganic Nature. Humanity bears witness 
 that all Nature is living ; it refuses to say the contrary. The true con- 
 trary to life is Sin. 
 
 Surely the union of polar opinions wh causes the advance of opinion, 
 is the function in mental life ; it is the unifying. Here I see two 
 things ; this putting together of two opposite opinions seems to be 
 the polar attraction ; the operation of the restrained affinity, which con- 
 stitutes the ' molecular ' chemical change by wh function is produced. 
 The new theory is the external function ; but what then is the secre- 
 tive process ; what represent the ' excreta ' ? Surely it must be the re- 
 jected theories, the polar elements wh are cast off when the higher the- 
 ory is formed ; and here is an indication, surely, of one form of mental 
 disease ; viz. from retained excretions, which give rise to excessive 
 functional diseases. The function in intellection is this development of 
 the mental life ; the chemical change wh causes it being the union of 
 two polar opinions ; and it essentially consists in getting rid of these 
 elements (wh impart their life as it were). Then the nutritive process 
 must have consisted in the discrimination of these elements, seeming to 
 us like the rise of error. 
 
 And as the ' function,' in mental life, arises from the union of polar 
 opinions wh causes development of mental life, therefore development is 
 a function. And as I "saw development to be a transitive vibration ; so 
 now I see that all the functions are transitive vibrations ; the external 
 function being the divergent half of the vibration, of wh the chemical 
 change is the approximative. Nutrition is continuous vibration ; Func- 
 tion transitive : both are essential elements of life. 
 
 Because of this transitive nature of the vibration wh constitutes de- 
 velopment it is, surely, that the higher grade is at first of lower form ; 
 there being as it were a loss of vital passion in the achievement of this 
 rise. Also it is because of this lower form that the new life has its ca- 
 pacity for progress to maturity, for growth and completion. The lower 
 form is what permits this ; as all parts that are capable of independent 
 growth are lowly developed. So in mind : the higher grade of mental 
 life, the larger theory, is of lower form, and with a consequent capabi- 
 lity for growth and completion. It has to grow to maturity yes, and 
 to decay. 
 
 In physical life the nutrition is a process of control of natural tend- 
 encies, of passion in opposition to attractions : so in mental life is not 
 the same thiug not only present, but felt ? Is there not in the mental 
 nutrition often a conscious sense of restraint, of opposition to natural 
 tendencies ? that discriminating process an unsatisfying, mournful state, 
 a state of bewilderment and doubt, and inability to find any rest or
 
 552 
 
 certainty, ? Is not this very feeling the source of the functional power ; 
 of the energy wh gives capacity for attaining truth ? Surely this is 
 only conscious life : the sentient tendency to the play of the controlled 
 affinity. Is not here one element of the unhappiness wh so prevailingly 
 besets the minds of thoughtful young people ? It is life : that is all, 
 but it is well to understand. 
 
 And further, the dogmatism of youth is but an immature function ; 
 the result of their earlier vital passion, and tending by its very failure 
 to another and higher. So the life goes on. The nutrition is quiet 
 trial, the function is rejoicing energy. Both are right. How often ve 
 hear complaints of this sadness and darkness ; but they should be still : 
 the larger, the intenser that process, the greater the functional energy 
 that flows from it. It is life that is complained of. 
 
 The * continuous ' vibration causes ' continuous ' life ; the transitive 
 vibration only requires that we shd take in a larger scope, and it is life 
 still. It is life not because it is continuous, but because it is a vibra- 
 tion ; it is a nutritive view that represents life as consisting in a contin- 
 uous vibration that arises from our present point of view. 
 
 How gloriously Coleridge said in answer to ' what is life ?' 'What is 
 not life that really w?' His instincts led him to affirm truths of which 
 he did not see the mode, or strictly the evidence. 
 
 Is it not best to speak of instinct and reason as parallel to crystalliza- 
 tion and organization, rather than to make a distinction into living, and 
 not living? all are life. In the conversion of instinct into reason, by re- 
 sistance to its operation, by its failure in its ends, we do actually wit- 
 ness the origination of life. Art, intellect, and emotion, are all forms 
 of life produced from resistance to * inorganic ' passion : all develope. 
 And what are these three senses wh correspond therewith esthetic, 
 rational, moral parallel to in the physical world ? 
 
 Life is itself wedded life ; a marriage union : it consists of male and 
 female ; for nutrition is female and function male. Function and nu- 
 trition are man and wife : husband and wife constitute a ' life.' It is 
 truly imaged in the double stars : I have appealed to them as the ideal 
 of life, and so they are ; not only a male and female, but the very mo- 
 tions are male and female ; first approximative, then divergent, and so 
 over again ; alternate function and nutrition. Life consists of union 
 of male and female into one whole : this union constitutes life. Life is 
 wherever, and is manifest wherever we see, force-producing divergent 
 passion, and this permitting approximative ; wh again generates a force, 
 from wh force flows again a function: i.e. life is every where and is mani- 
 fest wherever we know how to look for it. And further : it follows that 
 the theory, the idea, of marriage is life. This union of function and 
 nutrition into one is meant to be life. What is the full significance 
 of this? 
 
 The idea of life is this : a restraint of any tendencies, a resistance to 
 any affinities, in order that when the passion so controlled takes place 
 it may produce a function : wh function is again an opposition to some 
 other tendency. And this life is universal, and it exists in every 
 minutest detail in the universe ; the whole is comprehended in it ; the 
 least comprehends it. This is the great triplet : the two passions of the 
 life and the function : life springing from life, and running on into life: 
 an unending spiral. And all this idea of life I conceive is involved
 
 553 
 
 in the idea of ' passion.' For passion involves a limit. It is only 
 God's act that can be infinite ; regarded as passion the limit is always 
 imposed. It is a limit applied to God's act, constitutes it passion ; 
 makes it a ' phenomenon.' Passion is therefore vibratile and vibration 
 is life, and includes all that constitutes life. Thus then it is that 
 life is the form under which God's act appears; the necessary 
 form. 
 
 And to make the marvel still more complete in its sublime simplicity, 
 the organization, and every detail of it, is equally involved in the idea, 
 being always the result of passion in least resistance. Thus again I 
 come to the first generalization. The universe is God's act appearing 
 as passion in least resistance ; and appearing thus because it is holy. 
 One may well be overwhelmed at the simple grandeur of the universe ; 
 and seeing it so, we can see for the first time the true glory of that nu- 
 trition wh Science has been so patiently accomplishing during these 
 last centuries, and of wh this revelation of God's glory is the function. 
 It was for this, and for more than this, that Science has existed : think- 
 ing all the while that she reached not beyond her humble earthly 
 sphere. This was her instinct ; its true end revealed at last to her glad 
 and astonished eyes. 
 
 Every vibration especially I see it in the progressive vibrations, e.g. 
 of sound is a life ; strictly so, consisting of nutrition and function. 
 The first impulse a function of some approximative passion is a nu- 
 trition, placing elements in relations opposed to their tendencies, the 
 function follows, viz., the return of elements to the natural state, ac- 
 cording to their tendencies. This is one vibration one nutrition and 
 function ; but this return re-produces the force another nutrition, wh 
 is another vibration. These simple vibrations represent fully, in their 
 various forms, the unbounded variety in unity, and simplicity in com- 
 plexity, of the universe. Any vibration may stand for the whole of 
 life ; that is for the whole universe, physical and psychical. To re- 
 mark a few things only : how a progressive vibration may represent a 
 succession of life ; a stationary vibration a living creature ; itself vibra- 
 ting, or reaching its maximum and declining. Does not a progressive 
 vibration, becoming a stationary one, from ' resistance,' represent ' de- 
 velopment ?' Thus is not a progressive vibration like a series of sep- 
 arate cells, all like one another, forming so many distinct animals : 
 these same vibrations formed into one stationary vibration, by an ex- 
 ternal resistance, represent these same cells, united into one animal of 
 a higher grade ; and so for each ' development.' And the stationary 
 vibration subdividing harmonically represents, the subdivision and higher 
 grade of the developed life. Each vibration, also, not only re-produces 
 similar, but causes vibration of different kinds around : each being not 
 only a life in itself, but a part of the universal life, and producing 
 effects on the whole organism. All passion in the universe is vibration; 
 all vibration is life. The child's tower, first built and then falling, is 
 truly a vibration : the only differences are of form. 
 
 There must be two forms of nutrition throughout nature, as in vi- 
 bration ; viz., the elements either separated or forced together, alike in 
 opposition to tendency: e.g. sonorous waves, and waves in water. So a 
 'nutritive' arrangement might be effected either by putting together sim- 
 ilar poles of two magnets, or by holding apart" the opposite poles.
 
 554 
 
 Nutrition consists in opposition to polar attractions or repulsions. 
 
 May we attribute any part of the expansion of freezing substances, 
 or water cooled below 40 degrees, to a polar repulsion, arising from 
 attraction of the ' male ' particles of the fluid for the relatively fe- 
 male air ? and so air embraced by the fluid in act of freezing ? 
 But as to the two forms of nutrition, from opposition to attraction 
 and to repulsion, I think this may be traced in the mental life : e. g., 
 in the relation of phna as cause and effect wh are not really so the 
 elements repel, but are forced into union ; and functional power is in their 
 repulsive tendency. Is not this the chief form of the mental nutrition, 
 a kind of inversion of the physical life ? For in organic physical life I 
 do not see the form of nutrition arising from resisted repulsion, organic 
 life consisting apparently in an opposition to chemical affinities or polar 
 attraction. So does organic psychical life consist in an opposition to 
 polar repulsion ? [Note : in the physical life the repulsive tendency of 
 N does appear to be restrained.] 
 
 The production of a nutrition, or tendency, by resistance to nutrition 
 itself, is another thing. 
 
 The idea of a structure falling by its own weight suggests to me, 
 that the more or less decomposable tissues may be related to each other as 
 a tower expanding towards the top is to a pyramid ; the latter, though 
 equally arranged in opposition to gravity, will not fall, except from the 
 influence of powerful causes ; will remain indefinitely in the 'organic' 
 state. And in the organic body indeed in every organization there 
 come, by necessity of passion in least resistance, to be structures of both 
 kinds, just where they are wanted. 
 
 The universe is, and must be, an organization, because it is the result 
 of passion in least resistance. Whatever is this is organization, and .'. 
 life ; and so all evils in nature, of whatever kind, must constitute a 
 nutrition for a higher function. All must subserve a worthy end ; the 
 function always justifies and shows itself worth the sacrifice involved 
 in the nutrition. 
 
 What a light the process of all development receives from the doc- 
 trine of replacement, joined with the view of the nucleus as male : that 
 is the ' differentiation ' of the blastima, the formation of male and female 
 portions ; and the cells precede the higher tissues (where they do so) 
 merely as part of the higher and higher replacements : the cells are no- 
 thing, and have no ' force,' they are one step in the progress ; first ' re- 
 place,' then are replaced. 
 
 The various grades of life are like the successive notes of music. 
 Those wh are truly formed by union of two are as octaves to each other ; 
 but there is an infinite series between them, as of notes between two 
 octaves, each of wh has its own octave. And besides, there are in life, 
 doubtless, other harmonic relations ; 3 and 5, &c. And as the various 
 musical notes can be traced to subdivision of larger motions, which are 
 'movements'; the lowest c, 16 vibrations in a second, is half, i. e., 'a sub- 
 division, of a motion double the size wh would be perceived as move- 
 ment only ; so are the a and all the notes between the c and its octave, 
 subdivisions of movements. But then, at the other end of the scale of 
 sound must not the same thing be repeated, viz., the whole of the last
 
 555 
 
 octaves of audible notes, by their subdivion, produce an octave of the 
 next force ; so that we are of necessity landed in an * octave ' of each 
 force ; i. e. as each new force is produced by the subdivision of the 
 preceding into two, there must exist in each force all the sizes of mo- 
 tion intermediate between the largest form of this force and its half. 
 I do not see how this inference can be avoided. But would it not result 
 that only the ear was able to appreciate these intermediate sizes be- 
 tween the octaves or halves ? Then the various notes or grades of life, 
 i. e. of the lowest octave of life, must be subdivisions of the ' octave ' 
 of chemical vibrations or motions. And if the octaval division or in- 
 termediate sizes between one motion and its half wh exists in sound, 
 re-appears in chemistry and life, must it not exist also in all the in- 
 termediate forces ? Then it wd appear that in respect to the majority 
 of forces we cannot perceive ' pitch,' altho' it exists, and the reason and 
 use of the complex structure of the ear appear at once. For in respect 
 to chemistry and life, the pitch is not itself appreciated ; but only its 
 results. And do we not see results of such difference of pitch or size 
 in other forces [in wh we do not directly perceive it], in the different 
 laws wh they seem to obey ; e.g. the different spectra of light the dif- 
 ferent transmissibility and chemical effects of heat, &c. 
 
 The higher orders of mind surely are an union of two : an eminently 
 male and female mind in the two parents, perhaps, may unite into a 
 developed mind (both in one) in the offspring, i. e. Genius. For a true 
 Genius originates a new mental or intellectual ' species,' wh surely as 
 much deserves the name of a distinct and specific ' thing ' as any mere 
 physical species can do. And afterwards this mental species propagates 
 itself ; and the intellectual ' specific form ' becomes by inheritance com- 
 mon to thousands. Yet the birth of a Genius is no miracle. That 
 peculiar cerebral organization is the result of the simplest laws. 
 
 Is it not a law that disputes arise from a common error, or ignorance, 
 in minds of different tendencies or likings ? 
 
 Here is a good arising from the scientific disproof of the existence or 
 possibility of laws in nature. Specific and peculiar laws being impossi- 
 ble there being no possible nor conceivable law impressible upon mat- 
 ter and motion save that of least resistance all talk about such laws 
 is vain : creation by law is a self-contradictory chimera. There are no 
 laws : motion in direction of least resistance is God's act : to say di- 
 rect ' would be pleonastic. 
 
 The idea of separate creations, as of animal species, and an arbitrary 
 filling up with intermediate forms, is a self-contradictory hypothesis ; a 
 true impossibility, a thing incompatible with the very conception of mat- 
 ter. Indeed the words have no meaning. To create material things is 
 to do that wh we see as matter and motion : that is, as motion in the di- 
 rection of least resistance ; that is, as a chain of causes and effects. 
 These laws of nature, or of matter, as we call them, are not imposed 
 rules or modes of acting ; they are the very things themselves : take 
 away the laws and the things are gone, or at least our perception of 
 them. These laws are our mode of perceiving God's action ; where the 
 laws are not, there, so far as we are concerned, is nothing, because we 
 do not perceive God's action. So soon as ever we perceive God's action, 
 there, and throughout it from first to last, are the laws. 
 
 M 2
 
 556 
 
 Matter is motion in least resistance [and here, by-the-bye, is a better 
 presentation of another idea it is not that all motion that takes place 
 in a material universe is motion under resistance, but that motion under 
 resistance alone constitutes a material being or universe]. Motion in di- 
 rection of least resistance (i.e. a chain of causes) is creation : i. e. its phn. 
 "What is not so is no part of nature, no work of God, no creation. It is the 
 same as it is with beauty : as beauty, being one with tl-e creative act 
 as it were, is the only possible in nature ; so with regard to cause and 
 effect, this also being the creative act is alone possible in nature. To 
 affirm this is only to affirm that nothing is possible to exist except that 
 wh God creates no nature without God, wh surely is pious enough. 
 To show that we perceive God's action as material cause and effect, 
 must surely set for ever at rest all question as to its absolute 
 universality. 
 
 To affirm special creation, is a step towards atheism. It is so even 
 theoretically, for tho' what in word is affirmed is a divine act, yet by 
 the nature of things wh is greater than words, and the essential consti- 
 tution of oui- intellect wh words avail not to alter, the thing affirmed 
 in reality is the very contrary, and God's act is denied in the very for- 
 mula used most forcibly to maintain it : and it is so practically, for the 
 certain effect of introducing God specially into the past is to exclude 
 Him just so much from the present : a reality exchanged for an idea ; 
 a seen and felt reality for an inconceivable hypothesis. It is a vibration; 
 the motion in opposite directions equal by necessity : yet how unequal. 
 The universe in truth is full of God, and by a rightly judging mind is 
 seen to be so : so full that nothing can be added thereto. No possible 
 mode of regarding Him as working can bring Him closer than He is. 
 Only those whose God is afar off can even conceive of Him as brought 
 nearer. It is our privilege, and a privilege full of exquisite joy it is, 
 to see that God does att things so directly, that it is impossible He can 
 do anything more directly. There is nothing between God and this 
 very last fact wk I now perceive. No cause, nor chain of causes, has 
 intervened ; God did it : God does it : just as directly, just in the same 
 sense, as He is supposed to ' create a species.' If any one says this 
 makes no difference, I repeat that he cannot know till he has tried, how 
 much he loses by referring God's immediate agency to the past. If that 
 idea has any excellence or virtue, if it be glorious or delightful, if it 
 be true, let us have it now. It sanctifies the world and makes it holy ; a 
 sacred, awful, joyous thing is that wh God is doing. ' Come and be- 
 hold the works of God ; what wonders He doeth in the earth.' 
 
 But the chief evil of the doctrine of special creation is that pious 
 people are thus committed to an essentially irreligious theory, and en- 
 gage themselves, with the purest motives, in the work of misrepresenting 
 the ways of God to man. Truly it was not only morally but even 
 logically better than the atheistic theory wh it was designed to oppose. 
 It is certainly a truer supposition that God directly does some things, 
 and indirectly others, than that He does nothing in any way. But this 
 was only the refutation of one error by another : both ideas rested on 
 the fancy of real efficient second causes. And it has done its work. 
 Because it was better to see a little of God than nothing, let us not by 
 mere effect of habit persist that it is better to see that little of Him 
 than much.
 
 557 
 
 But -worst of all, the best of people with the best of motives, are com- 
 mitting Christianity to a scientific hypothesis. It must not be. Christ- 
 ianity is too precious to be, not indeed imperilled, but impeded so. It 
 matters not whether the hypothesis be false, as we think it, or true, as 
 so many hold ; the point is this, that the oak shall not cling to the ivy. 
 No scientific hypothesis may be bound up with those best and dearest 
 truths, lest the weakness and uncertainty of Science even seem to attach 
 to them. The remedy for irreligious scientific dogmas is not to affirm 
 a contrary scientific dogma, but to show that nature is so full of God 
 that no scientific doctrine, rightly stated, can be irreligious. [I must 
 ascertain whether in the words let the earth ' bring forth' living creatures, 
 ' bring forth ' be the same Hebrew word as is used for plants bringing 
 forth fruit or animals their young.] Science teaches the same thing as 
 the heart dictates. We naturally see God doing every thing, but Science 
 (falsely so called) interposes its chain of second causes, and checks this 
 outflow of the heart. True Science flows with it ; puts only into defi- 
 nite expression the undefinable emotion. 
 
 If a man's present world is truly full of God, no more of God can be 
 introduced : if it be not full, then fill it, that is right and needful : but 
 bring God not into the past, but into the present. To bring Him into 
 the present (wh is the only] is to bring Him equally into the past as 
 well ; to bring Him into the past is to leave the present still unfilled. 
 ' My. Father worketh hitherto, and I work.' 
 
 That God is the direct doer of every thing in nature, that this 
 present world is full of Him, is not so much seen with the intellect as 
 felt with the heart. I feel it throb through all the pulses of my life. 
 I cast myself on the great ocean of nature, on my mother's bosom, and 
 feel God's arms around me, and His loving heart pressed to mine. It 
 is no longer nature, it is divine love and holiness that hold me in their 
 embrace. 
 
 No doubt one of the most important elements in the development of 
 the animal world has been the instincts of the animals themselves, wh 
 have been hitherto wholly overlooked. Yet even the continuance of 
 animal life, both of individual and of the race, is made wholly depend- 
 ent upon instincts. Suppose the question of animal life were treated 
 without consideration of the instinct to eat, or the propagation of ani- 
 mals without reference to the sexual instinct ! It may be difficult to see 
 how circumstances can passively have caused development of one species 
 into another. But it is not so hard to conceive that the instincts of the 
 one might, in the altering circumstances, have led them to place them- 
 selves in conditions that shd have a very great influence upon their 
 being. We see it in animals that now undergo development ; how con- 
 siderable a part instinct plays : the caterpillar, ere it spins, enters a 
 corner suitable for its coccoon, &c. And instincts are part of nature ; 
 they are the very same laws and facts, the same polar attractions, that 
 constitute inorganic nature, appearing in an altered form. [Do they 
 present an inverse order of development, as belonging to Thought ?] 
 Also it is a great error to draw so marked a distinction as we do between 
 an individual and a race: a race is as truly an individual, or one, as the 
 singlest and simplest of animals. The development of a species is 
 precisely the same as the metamorphoses of an individual : nature ig- 
 nores the distinction : and a similar instinctive agency surely has been
 
 558 
 
 developed for both. Surely the instincts may be inferred from the 
 results. 
 
 So also the human race is one ; may be regarded as one individual, 
 one man so to speak. And here is the root of the mutual adaptation of 
 individuals to one another : and indeed of all things in nature to each 
 other ; for the world, the universe, also is one [an individual] ; the mu- 
 tual adaptation of things is the adaptation of the parts of one. And 
 here is a proof also, if needed, that the law or being of nature is one ; 
 and that there are not and cannot be many ' laws of nature.' As the 
 human race is one, so the acts of the human race are the acts of one in- 
 dividual. E. g. emigration is like the pushing out of a limb ; or like 
 the growing out of a gemmation, or an organ. 
 
 The idea of instinct in development deprives it of almost all its mys- 
 teriousness. That two oppositely polar animals, in incomplete stage, shd 
 unite into one, and thus constitute a higher animal, or develope, is not 
 more wonderful than that male and female shd unite for propagation ; 
 nor indeed if we were to see it do I think we shd wonder much more at 
 it. It would seem to us (tho' unfamiliar) hardly less natural. And 
 indeed the opposite polarity wh I hold to have existed in the potential 
 animals that united into the higher, must have been essentially (if not 
 in exact form) a sexual polarity ; and not improbably, a sexual polarity 
 of ordinary form, or perhaps more universal : the male and the female 
 being throughout of opposite polarities ; the male wholly tending to de- 
 composition, the female to growth or nutrition, or something akin. And 
 perhaps the ' occasion ' of such making one of two might be merely 
 want of room or space [mechanically], wh might at the same time 
 cause the male polarity of the one and the fusion of the two. I see how 
 such things might most easily come about. If the ' aggregation ' idea 
 can be established as an admissible theory, it will present little diffi- 
 culty in details. Though perhaps the development- people might, 
 as things go at present, very logically and safely take this 
 stand : that a tendency to development is a- specific and inherent 
 property of life : that the animal race has developed just as the single 
 animal developes. There is as much reason in the one as the other, 
 viz., the fact that it has been so. The idea, I grant, is equally un- 
 meaning in both, and yet it is in both alike true in its way, and certain- 
 ly it holds good equally for development as for specific form. The 
 doctrine then would be that the specific form of the animal creation, 
 wh the Creator impressed upon it at its first formation, is all this pro- 
 gress, culminating in man. In fact the idea is equally false for both ; 
 development and specific form being, alike, no law nor tendency, but re- 
 sult of motion in least resistance. We have the same reason for saying 
 that each development of the foetus or youth is a special creation, as 
 each new species. 
 
 Is not this the ' idea ' of development : that it is a modification of 
 ordinary propagation ; effected by instrumentality of an instinct of the 
 same sort, in fact by the same instinct : but while, in ordinary propa- 
 gation, the parents continue to exist separately, as well as the offspring, 
 in development parent and offspring are embodied into one ; the off- 
 spring constitutes part of, co-exists with, the parents. It is more in the 
 same space, and therefore higher grade. Perhaps this is not so good, 
 however, as simply two potential (embryonic) polar animals in one ;
 
 559 
 
 and yet something attractive about the former supposition. What do the 
 anatomical facts seem to indicate ? Does not the solution of the first put- 
 ting together of two simple animal cells into one higher one, carry with 
 it the solution of the whole theory of development ? 
 
 The introduction of instinct as the cause of development, seems to be 
 an union of the two opposed theories, of special creation, and creation 
 by law. It is both in one. What pious mind would refuse to recognize 
 in such an adapted instinct the direct act of God ; and yet what can be 
 more perfectly in accord with the universal laws of animal life ? God 
 has recourse to one and the same means for the maintenance of individu- 
 al life, the re-production of specific life, and the development of higher 
 life. And in all it is His direct act that effects the result. Must we 
 not recognize God more clearly in our daily life if this mystery of de- 
 velopment thus turns out not to be an event far off, and different from 
 those we are familiar with, but of the very same kind as our common- 
 est acts and processes ? We do not recognize God in our instincts ; they 
 are matters of course ; but only in those by wh fishes become reptiles. 
 Fools, and slow of heart. We thank God often for our food ; why do 
 we not thank Him for wisdom to eat ; for the impulse toeat . We ad- 
 mire the provisions made for the development and well-being of the 
 babe ; why do we not see Him in the mysterious passion that draws the 
 male and female together. That is how He created species. He did it 
 long ages back, and we admire it ignorantly ; He does it every day be- 
 fore our eyes, and we ignorantly pass it by. Strange excess even of 
 human folly, that we can believe God to be only where we cannot trace 
 Him. While this satisfies the demand for a special creation of each 
 race of animals, it also makes the ' law ' of development more truly one 
 with present laws, than the most stringent assertion of development. 
 For the passive development by the influence of circumstances is utterly 
 unlike, at least, anything we now perceive. 
 
 The irresistible conviction that God must have directly created each 
 new species, is quite true and just ; its meaning is to teach us that God 
 directly created us, and works in us all those wonderful processes wh 
 maintain us in life, and continue us in our children. The history of the 
 past is written in order that, seeing God plainly there, we may learn to 
 see Him also in the present ; a lesson we refuse to learn even so, and 
 deprive the history of its moral by the insane distinctions that we draw. 
 Other ages, or other races, perchance will look back on this our common- 
 place period, and say ' truly God worked directly then.' Will they also, 
 sharing our infirmity, say ' but now there is nothing but a succession of 
 second causes f The new creation of races is only a more striking in- 
 stance [to our eyes, not to the truly seeing] of the same things that oc- 
 cur every hour of our lives. That is the reason geology unfolds its 
 wonders, and the animated world reveals its history ; to impress our 
 blunted senses, dulled by use, and deadened by the unceasing bounty of 
 God's gifts, and make us see, by showing us in more vivid colors and 
 less familiar scenes, what wonders of wisdom and of love surround us. 
 That is the moral lesson of geology, wh we cast away, or seek to barter 
 for the paltry doctrine that God directly acted once. It is the old fable 
 of the gold hidden in the vineyard, over again. We dig the fields of the 
 ancient earth in search of that glittering bauble a process of special
 
 560 
 
 creation ; but thank God, we are fertilizing, unwittingly, and 
 preparing for heaven's best influences, the very soil on which 
 we live. 
 
 With regard to the process of development, the problem is solved in 
 any case so soon as it can be traced how motion in least resistance wd 
 lead to it ; i. e. what 'resistances' have caused it : e. g. in tadpole ; 
 why is it least resistance for the legs to grow out, &c.? 
 
 Flowers are developed leaves : but they are many potential leaves on- 
 ly. And the pressure of the flower bud (like the skin of the chrysalis) 
 causes the development. So in the development of potential animals 
 into a higher form, there was surely some external resistance as in the 
 chrysalis or the bud. Also, in what sense does the flower consist of an 
 union of oppositely polar elements, and how far is the vegetable ' in- 
 stinct ' concerned in its production ? A sound ' physical morphology ' 
 can be the only stepping-stone to a true theory of progressive develop- 
 ment. We have been attempting it too soon. 
 
 May we not trace a parallel between the development of the germ 
 and of the animal world ; and not only in respect of form but of forces, 
 or causes the effect of the limit, e. g., and of polar attractions, or 
 ' instincts.' Can it be shown how the ' germ ' developes by instinct as 
 well as the races of animals : an essential as well as a formal identity 
 in the two processes ? May we clearly see how ' replacement ' in em- 
 bryo corresponds with the succession of a higher race to a lower one in 
 creation ; and in what way an ' instinct ' effects it ? The ceasing race 
 is the replaced organ ; the succeeding one, the replacing : then the suc- 
 ceeding organ is really two of the replaced one : one (male) decaying ; 
 one female, growing : united into one, sexually, i. e. instinctively. The 
 new or higher organ really is a substance the same as the former organ 
 in a state of growth, and the same in a state of decay ; two in one. 
 It really absorbs and embodies the decaying organ, as in fertilization : 
 and because there is not room for more of the same. So also in devel- 
 opment of races: the new or growing animal absorbs, as it were em- 
 bodies in itself the replaced or decaying animal ; is two in one : 
 and is it not because there is not 'room' for more of the same 
 [starvation] ? 
 
 And this is interesting : the development of animal is the pattern 
 and illustration of the development of tissues ; a higher tissue, replacing 
 a lower, bears to it the same relation as a higher animal replacing a 
 lower bears to it. Now we can trace this relation pretty well in the 
 animal, and thereby have a means of knowing better the relations of 
 the tissues. What a powerful instrument is this ' inversion of anal- 
 ogies.' 
 
 With reference to the differences of the particular tissues in different 
 grades of animals, is not that determined, in part, by the greater or 
 less general resistance : a kind of alternating development of the differ- 
 ent parts goes on, as any may be direction of least resistance ? Thus 
 take the vessels : in a certain stage of life they are developed to a cer- 
 tain point ; then before they are any more developed all the rest of the 
 body would be developed more highly ; then they again : and so there 
 is maintained, by the nature of action, an absolutely right proportion 
 of development for all the parts of every living thing. Whichever 
 organ is comparatively less developed, that is sure to be (in a healthy 
 [Development, 348.
 
 561 
 
 state) the direction of least resistance for the action. And surely this view 
 must be extended to the living world as a whole, and indeed equally to 
 the whole universe. Every where action in least resistance must lead 
 to that exact proportion and perfect adaptation wh we see in nature. 
 And indeed that minds, or thoughts, wd be in equally exact adaptation 
 to each other if ' nature ' had her free and perfect course, is necessary 
 from the fact that thought also is action in least resistance. 
 
 But to return to development : there is a key here to the study of 
 organization : each formation of, or change in, an organ or tissue, takes 
 place because then that particular mode of action is the direction of 
 least resistance for the vital action. And the condition actually exist- 
 ing at any time, is result of such an exact balancing of the total resist- 
 ances This also bears on special growth, allowing always for vital ac- 
 tion produced in a part by a special decomposing action. Thus, is the 
 reason some animals have more simple vessels, and others several coats, 
 &c., that in the former the general resistance was not sufficient to di- 
 rect the vital action into that particular direction ? But in insects the 
 the vessels are mere cavities, the bronchii elaborate, and so on. 
 
 How curious is the losing of parts in the higher animals, which is so 
 constant as compared with the lower. It is of course a part of replace- 
 ment. But it would repay much thinking of ; does it not represent the 
 destruction of the ' not ' or hypothesis, and in what sense ? 
 
 I see here, incidentally, how impossible it is that instinct should be 
 from thought in the sense of consciousness : animals having instinct of 
 their natural enemies, e. g. "What is there more wonderful than in 
 other workings of the frame, that certain seusuous impressions should 
 cause adapted actions ? There is no argument in the case what- 
 ever. 
 
 In the anticipations, as it were, of higher forms in lower [reptiles 
 behind fish, e. g.] have not the same thing as those anticipations of the 
 truth before the time function without the nutrition, as it were, like 
 Berkeley's wh are so constant in the mental life. Can I not understand 
 these by the aid of each other ? And what of the degradation coinci- 
 dent with the rise ? How pretty it is that the truth about development 
 is that wh unifies the two opposites, the development and the degrada- 
 tion. Make these one, and we have it. Both are the fact ; they do 
 not deny but assert each other. 
 
 Shells are spiral, because all things are so when not given any parti- 
 cular direction ; i. e. motion under ' abstract ' resistance is spiral : see 
 the spiral form of roots in water under light, spiral vessels, spiral ar- 
 rangement of particles in decomposing seed, &c. 
 
 All secondarily formed organs seem to be formed by a process expand- 
 ing out : so plant from seed, so glands from ducts, brain from nerves. 
 And are not these secondarily formed organs and bodies relatively female 
 to those wh precede ? Thus the female arises from the male. This is in 
 truth a form of replacement. And is not the female .'. always of high- 
 er grade ? So woman higher than man ? May it not be that being 
 higher she is less perfect, even as man is perhaps less perfect in his own 
 grade than the brutes are in theirs ? Is not this law of development 
 of one thing from another the universal law ; and every thing thus fe- 
 male to that wh produces or precedes it ; male to that wh follows it or 
 wh it produces ? Surely so the two forms run into one another. The 
 Morphology, 239, See p. 96.
 
 562 
 
 male of lower grade the highly developed curve produces female, or 
 lowly developed curve, of higher grade : this developes into highly de- 
 veloped curve, or male of that grade, and produces then a female, or 
 low curve, of still higher grade, and so on. Is this the development 
 of the forces from motion to life ; the conversion of one into the 
 other ? 
 
 The cerebellum is rightly a gemmation from the convexity of a 
 spiral. 
 
 The head surely consists of an octave, or seven, thus : 2 ears, 2 eyes, 
 1 nose, 1 upper jaw, 1 lower jaw : wh also shows the octave to be 2 
 Jives; viz., 2 ears, 2 eyes, 2 noses 2 lower lips, 2 upper lips, 2 noses, 
 for each of these are double, meeting in the fifth ; the fifth reckoned 
 twice. Where is the octave to be seen in the entire body ? 
 
 How organized bodies, in their general outline, have a crystalline 
 contour. In trees this is well seen ; the more symmetrical in form the 
 tree, the more crystalline the total form. So in animals worms, shells, 
 fish, and all up to man, in whom it is striking, and especially in woman. 
 What deep link unites these two classes of forms ; why the correspond- 
 ence based upon diversity ? 
 
 This forming of folds, by turning at right angles, is continually pre- 
 sented in new lights. In an acute spiral shell e. g. I observed that the 
 row of projections around the upper border of each turn, of the spiral 
 was mechanically the result of the acuteness of the spiral being less 
 than than that appropriate to the increase in size of the modiolus : il- 
 lustrated by a piece of tape wound round the finger ; if it be pushed up 
 so as to lie more transversely across the finger the upper border is raised 
 up and forms naturally just such a series of little projections. Here is 
 the very idea of the folds wh constitute striated muscle, the folds of the 
 embryo, &c. : the folds, indeed, wh constitute limbs ; for arms and legs 
 begin just as such mere prominences. 
 
 April 12, 1856. - In the Dandelion each floweret is a tube opened 
 within and spread out, dividing into five palpably 2 twos and a double 
 one. Now this is the hand : a spiral 5 spread out. I must trace how 
 the hand is thus unfolded, and the foot also. The flower of the dande- 
 lion is manifestly flattened so by mutual pressure ; the blossom consists 
 of many little round flowers mutually pressed out. Leaves are flattened 
 into one plane, surely, in a similar way. The five-fold leaf, as a rose 
 leaf, must surely be a circlet flattened ? And as the flattened dande- 
 lion represents the hand, does not the uwflattened daisy represent the 
 foot of the quadruped, i. e. the clawed ? Do not they walk upon their 
 toes, a little turned outwards ? Is not that the difference between the 
 foot of quadruped and the hand : that the former continues folded up, and 
 the toes only turned out ; (as in the daisy) ; the latter unfolded, as in 
 the dandelion. 
 
 Here we get also a new idea of the bones ; the metacarpal bones ma- 
 nifestly correspond with the ribs of the flower of dandelion. 
 
 This I observe, that so amiss has Science been going under that chi- 
 mera of specific properties or tendencies, that even real discoveries seem 
 rather to have misled than to have helped e. g. in Morphology, 
 the ' typical ' leaf or vertebra shd be only one form in which the law of 
 all formation manifests itself; it has this truth, viz., as showing that
 
 563 
 
 all parts of each animal or plant, and at least large classes of animals 
 and plants, are formed by one motion under one law. But it has been 
 supposed there was something magical about a leaf or a vertebra, so that 
 as if by some specific virtue all these other parts were obliged to conform 
 to them, ideally as it were, being transformed or modified for specific 
 purposes, &c. ! 
 
 Chemical and vital action are correlative, the one must be where the 
 other is ; they are the two halves of one form of action : i. e. whereso- 
 ever chemical action is partially resisted, there is life, And this partial 
 resistance is sure to occur does occur to all forces and forms of action 
 everywhere. So vital forms also are correlative to chemical forms ; the 
 two must co-exist : one is the supplement of the other. See the true 
 prisms in the spaces of fish's vertebraa, and the everted prisms in the 
 solid parts of the same the angular parts as it were fill up the curved. 
 And cell formation, &c., is the counterpart of crystallization ; thus the 
 revolving blood globule is a process of crystallization resisted ; the re?- 
 volution instead of aggregation in definite lines. 
 
 All organs and the entire body are one thing ; just as all Nature con- 
 sists of innumerable intermixed spirals, so the animal body is the same 
 structure again and again. 
 
 Psyche, at the Panopticon. Mar. 4, 1856. Surely the head placed 
 between the shoulders is the single leaflet between the pair a triplet. 
 And are not the four extremities and the head truly the quinary 
 arrangement ? 
 
 So the trunk in mammals is truly the petiole and the root ; the head 
 and limbs, &c., the leaflets. And the head is but a limb doubled up 
 upon itself ; note its formation by turning round : unrolled it wd be as 
 long as the arm : and further it is terminated on each side by five teeth 
 [becoming afterwards eight], i. e. by five digits. For the true head 
 terminates at the upper j aw ; the lower j aw is an appendage not resulting 
 from continuous formation, but meeting it in an opposite direction ; like 
 arms and legs, brought into apposition. Can this be really so ; the upper 
 and lower jaw appended to the skull, like arms and legs superadded ? 
 
 The root of the animal, instead of being continued in a line with the 
 stem, as in the plant, is doubled upward, parallel to it. The plant is 
 like a straight bipolar magnet ; the animal is the same bent into a kind 
 of horseshoe. This gives a good account of the intestinal canal ; it is 
 the upturned root. 
 
 Is it not likely that flowers are, sometimes at least, higher develop- 
 ments of leaves in grade rather than inform, and .-. even lower in form; 
 perhaps this is in one sense the rule : the flower the low note of higher 
 octave. And does this same view apply to relations of corolla, stamens, 
 pistil, and seeds ; are not the female parts of the flower a lower form of 
 higher grade ? The two elements are curve and size ; and in its musical 
 relations, as constituting the two elements of harmony in the fugue, in- 
 deed in music altogether, this idea is pleasing to me. In music there 
 are all the elements of variety in unity, or harmony, that there are in 
 Nature : harmonious and discordant diversities of curve, parallel curves 
 in different sizes, and variety of instruments, i. e. tone. 
 
 Some light is thrown upon the central cavity in the bud, by the cen- 
 tral cavity in the stalk of many plants, and the soft pith wh exists in 
 so many more [and every leaf or twig arises from this central portion].
 
 564 
 
 The question is the general one of the ' external skeleton,' and must be 
 resolved on a general principle. See the marrow in long bones. Why 
 is it that in the formation of living structures the firm tissues are ex- 
 ternal and the cavity (actual or comparative) occupies the centre ? 
 This is really the question of the formation of the cell, wh presents the 
 conditions in the simplest form. The cell wall is the external skeleton 
 the uterus in fact ; for this external skeleton is the uterus in the ex- 
 tended sense. The external skeleton and the generalized ' uterus ' are 
 two expressions for the same thing, or ' idea.' This is the mode of Na- 
 ture : a cavity formed in which new things are developed. This must 
 apply not only to ' life ' usually so called, but to the universal frame of 
 things. In living structures it is not so hard to see how ; the expansion 
 turned upon itself of course produces a cavity ; but to follow this into 
 details, and to trace it thro' ' inorganic ' nature is a good task. 
 
 The ovary, in plants, is a filling up of the central cavity owing to the 
 termination of the extension or growth. More pressure is virtually ex- 
 erted upon the parts in the bud than in the growing stem because it is 
 not able to overcome the resistance. This resistance .'. makes it ex- 
 pand ; not being able to go on the motion turns at right angles, and at 
 the same time is developed. Hence the corolla ; the calyx and external 
 leaves being merely the ordinary leaves wh continue undeveloped owing 
 to the insufficient force of the growing parts. 
 
 It is curious that I shd see so much of the form and formal laws of 
 Nature, who have primarily no eye for form whatever. "Who first in- 
 vented that idea of ' specific ' forces or tendencies ? I shd like to look 
 into his mind and see what sort of a machine it was : I cannot conceive 
 how it worked. I think I must make an exception on his behalf, 
 and allow that he really had a ' specific tendency ' of wh no further ac- 
 count can be given. 
 
 July 5, 1856. I rode outside an omnibus and saw this: The horse's 
 
 Ii. e. the quadruped's] head is to the human, as the foot is to the hand, 
 t is placed more or less at right angles to the spine, having one turn ; 
 the human head has two turns, wh causes it to be again in a line with 
 the spine. This also represents the foot and hand : in the latter is 
 more resistance, more turning, more development. In fishes and reptiles 
 there is no turn at all ; the head is in one line with the spine, and ac- 
 cordingly less development. May we say at all, the quadruped is 'leg,' 
 and man ' arm, ' of Nature or of animated world ? 
 
 It is remarkable how the higher repeats the form of the lower ; man's 
 head being again in direction of fish's. Is not this the law of the 
 higher grade repeating at first the lower form : the apparent or total 
 form is similar ; but there are, tho' unseen, differences of internal form : 
 two turns give, formally, the same ' direction ' as none ; but there are 
 really the two turns : these internal turnings constitute the ' grade.' 
 
 Is not man, indeed, of a low form ? just as the brain is of a low form 
 as compared with muscle or other highly developed tissues : might we 
 have a more highly developed brain, in point of form ; or wd it lose its 
 distinctive characters ? 
 
 I see also how the neck comes : the head is formed by the bending 
 upon itself of the anterior extremity of the spine ; after this the thorax 
 grows out ; but there is no room for snch growing where the head is ; 
 and .-. there the neck. Thus fishes and reptiles have no necks; their 
 heads are not turned down.
 
 565 
 
 Every constriction represents the neck an unyielding part surrounded 
 by a part that has undergone expansion. Thus the wrist is the ' neck ' 
 of the hand, &c. By the bye, looking at the wrist and ankle as 'necks' 
 to hand and foot, does not one see in the ' condyles ' and ' mastoid pro- 
 cesses,' limbs, like the fore limbs at the root of the neck, and something 
 of the same same sort in the condyles of all long bones ? 
 
 I perceive more how the ovary is formed, in plants : it is not gathered 
 in above the expansion, but the expansion takes place below, the resist- 
 ance there being less, and the shape is always elliptic. So the elliptic 
 shape of the earth is illustrated by an orange or an apple. This constnt 
 ellipse in nature has ever one cause, the turning of one motion at right 
 angles. In the rose the stigma passes up straight, and the ovary ex- 
 pands around it, forming a cavity, or uter.us, into wh of course the seeds 
 grow. Now why is it confined at the top ? The ovary is at first full of 
 down, why is this ? see the down wh is on many petals, close to the 
 stamens ; does it grow into cavities, a kind of cell growth on the free 
 surface ? 
 
 In tracing the process of development, or formation, in living things, 
 we have only to regard the essential characteristics of motion, just as in 
 tracing the working of a machine ; just as much, and no more, in one 
 case than in the other. Only avoid supposing anything contrary to the 
 nature of motion, and what we suppose is possible and most likely true. 
 
 (Pro. of R. S. Mar. 2, 1854.) Land shells grow while the animals 
 bury themselves. Is the use of this to supply a resistance, and so cause 
 the widening ? The helix rotundata burrows into decayed wood to in- 
 crease its shell ; has it more resistance, and more rapid increase in 
 width ? To increase, they bury themselves head downward ; for the 
 winter, head upwards. Surely this it an instance of ' instinct ' operating 
 to influence morphology : it throws light upon the lateral expansion 
 wh is so common in shells. I wonder whether it can be traced to some 
 resistance instinctively had recourse to. 
 
 A horse collar is put on and off spirally, wh Coleridge shd have been 
 philosopher enough to know. 
 
 Consider the subdivision of the anthers in the flower, compared with 
 the leaf, in connection with the subdivision of the ear as compared with 
 the eye. Are not both illustrations that development consists first in 
 subdivisions and then in the uniting into one of the subdivided 
 parts? 
 
 ' Physical morphology ' seems to be an entirely new science, and to 
 my mind one of the most beautiful : but it is one wh the present doc- 
 trine of ' specific tendencies' ignores and denies. "What a strange idea it 
 is to assign as a reason for a thing, or for a form, that it is ' the nature 
 of the thing. ' That only means in truth that there is a good reason for 
 it. Because it is natural, it is, that I ask ' why is it ' ? and am persua- 
 ded that a satisfactory answer may be given. The nature of a thing is 
 that wh it is in conformity with universal principles, and whatsoever is 
 ' natural ' I explore with full certainty of eliciting such principles : for 
 it the why may ever be found. If a thing were unnatural I might give 
 it up in despair and suppose it to bs so and there an end ; the unnatural 
 might possibly be arbitrary. 
 
 The claw of crawfish how decidedly spiral (also legs, less decidedly.) 
 
 If limbs (in vertebrata) are ' developed ' epiphyses, then if we can 
 find out the cause of epiphyses, we have found out the cause of limbs,
 
 566 
 
 and need only to enquire why these find so much less resistance to their 
 growth. 
 
 It is very simple to show : 
 
 (1) That all form is the result of motion. 
 (2) That motion takes direction of least resistance. 
 (3) Therefore all vital forms are result of motion in least resist- 
 ance. But it may be said, there are the specific resistances; and 
 this at first seems a difficulty. But we can go on 
 (4) Motion is the only resistance to motion. Conceded in the defini- 
 tion of force, as that wh alone resists motion or causes it : force 
 clearly is not matter ; equally clearly it is motion. 
 (5) Eesistance .-. being motion, must also be motion in least re- 
 sistance ; or rather, perhaps, result of such. 
 
 (6) Therefore it follows that form is result of motion in least re- 
 sistance, absolutely. 
 
 It is extremely simple ; mere definitions and axioms like the intro- 
 duction to Geometry. And tracing the formation of living forms by 
 motion in least resistance is a kind of applied Geometry. 
 
 Thus, ' water finds its level,' is is a perfect illustration of the en- 
 tire mystery of organization. And this view applies not only to living 
 forms, but to organization absolutely and wheresoever ; i. e. in the whole 
 and everywhere. The perfect adaptation, proportion, Tightness of the 
 universe is provided for in the very fact of motion ; and of the psychical 
 as well, if we say ' passion.' And this is the right view of diseases, 
 i. e. natural diseases ; they are part of the including organization : and 
 their immediate causes must be such as make that form of passion 
 the direction of least resistance. Is not this the true Etiology of Dis- 
 ease : why is that passion the direction of least resistance ? And the 
 principle of cure is to render the appropriate vital passion, the passion in 
 least resistance. No other is possible : this is the one end of all reme- 
 dies. But in all these questions we must take into account all the re- 
 sistances, internal and external ; all the forces, impulses, tendencies. 
 
 This is what I mean by being phenomenally evil : the evil arising 
 from our relation to an absolute good. All evil thus regarded as disease, 
 as part of passion in least resistance, or passion directed is absolute 
 good; indeed must be, being absolute holiness, which is one with good. 
 Metaphysically also, or in relation to definitions, this is right. For dis- 
 ease is absolute good, but is evil as it affects the individual ; i. e. pro- 
 duces effects on the individual ; i. e. ' is perceived.' This is the very 
 idea of perception : i. e. those effects are perceived, [as is manifest, only 
 effects on ourselves are perceived]. Thus it is, surely; absolute good 
 produces effects on us ; now these effects on us of course are what we 
 perceive that is the phenomenon ; and this is, or may be evil : it is in 
 fact all the phenomenon ; evil and good, beauty and ugliness. Thus evil 
 is a phenomenon, or effect on us, of wh the reality or cause is absolute 
 good. Thus evil is only phenomenally evil All being regarded as dis- 
 ease ; and all such individual disease is nutrition of higher, larger life. 
 How the principle of morphology is illustrated by inflating the tym- 
 pana by expiration with closed mouth and nostrils : air taking direction 
 of least resistance. The organs are successively formed and developed 
 on just the same principle.
 
 567 
 
 Is not the non-symmetry of leaves the same thing as the elliptic form 
 wh is everywhere ; one diameter greater than the other because one is 
 derived from the other ? 
 
 When we remember that a living creature is but a part, we see that 
 it must be determined by the other parts. In a living frame we see at 
 once how all the parts are determined by the others ; yet is each part 
 necessarily as ' specific ' as the whole : unless the parts are so, the whole 
 cannot possibly be so. 
 
 Surely the endo-skeleton [or the original animal] being in a rudimen- 
 tary state is a sort of replacement ; it is sacrificed for the production of 
 the other parts. And thus I get a step towards the calcification ; re- 
 garding it as a degeneration, a step in such process of replacement, and 
 explaining it by the morbid calcification wh we know as a form of de- 
 generation. Thus two things again are one. So the skeleton of the 
 shark is perfect in its cartilaginous state ; as the animal developes, this 
 skeleton gets lower, suffers a partial degeneration, just on the ordinary 
 principle of replacement ; the life of one given to another. The calci- 
 fication is the form this process has in this case. So in the growth of 
 of the infant to maturity, as the body developes the bones become lower. 
 
 The view of the rudimentary mammaa being for ' wonder,' &c., has 
 its merits as well as defects. It does go to the heart of the phenomenon, 
 tho' not to that of the fact, and presents to us what the passion wd be 
 in our consciousness. It is better than such views as wd refer it to some 
 undefined necessity of organic form, or homology, &c. And indeed the 
 reduction of all Nature to passion in least resistance wd be a going back 
 instead of forward, if I did not at the same time see that that was ho- 
 liness. And is not here an insight into the mental life : for this con- 
 ception of Nature as a holy act is in fact a theory, a fiction, a human 
 view. This is the nutrition, the divergent passion, produced by the 
 functional or approx passion that showed Nature to be passion in least 
 resistance. And as all divergent passions, or nutritions, it is a right 
 wrongness. But if this is the ' wrong,' how glorious still more the true ; 
 if this be the right theory, how blessed the interpretation. Never shd 
 we fear that religion can suffer ; who wd have thought that God's good- 
 ness and wisdom could have been excluded, with a gain to religion ? So 
 the plan, or great idea of the human mental life, lays itself open before 
 me. Is not ' matter ' such a necessary ' fiction ' from an interpretation ; 
 like ' Design ' ? 
 
 The higher animals are formed upon are external to that which 
 answers to the lower, and indeed in some sense is the lower ; viz. the 
 skeleton : the Crustacea, e. g., turned inside out ; a true transfer- 
 ence of the vital passion within the skeleton to without ; the internal 
 becoming the external : a process probably many times repeated, in 
 many replacements, in the highest animals. 
 
 There seems a perfect parallel to the formation of the endo-skeleton 
 in that universal process of growth and development by means of nuclei 
 wh is the very type of replacement. 
 
 "With regard to the specific form of organic bodies compare the definite 
 height to wh each different fluid rises in a vacuum ; each like a different 
 'germ.' 
 
 Is there not in this view of vital form the most emphatic affirmation 
 of specific form ; a complete union of opposites : for it affirms absolutely
 
 568 
 
 the form to be the ellipse. This is the form, necessary and specific, and 
 all perturbations also elliptic. It shows what appeared to be a detail, 
 or peculiarity, to be an universal and necessary principle ; a step towards 
 that ultimate achievement of Science, the showing of every detail to be 
 a necessary principle, an universal fact. It wd be interesting to trace 
 the universal ellipse in the forms of shells. 
 
 Consider how all vital forms depend upon directions of least resist- 
 ance ; specific ' nots ' determine vital form ; and connect this with che- 
 micity as being force acting in a direction of least resistance. It struck 
 me on looking at the skeleton of a bird with an enormous bill : the size 
 of the bill is the great ' formal ' characteristic of the animal ^ but this 
 is only from a special direction of less resistance being there ; a special 
 1 not-being ' applied to its vital force, or expansive tendency. Clearly 
 specific forms are thus from specific less-resistances or ' nichts.' Does 
 it not come to this : that each ' thing ' is from some direction of least 
 resistance? Things are from ' not ' : each special thing from some special 
 relative ' not.' Does not this link itself on to our perception ? Trace 
 it in mind ; here it will be best seen : the origin and source of all men- 
 tal processes, which answer to ' things,' is from some special ' not ' or 
 absence ? 
 
 And see ; primarily, all is from ' not-being ' of the spiritual : that is 
 essentially action ; and absence of corresponding action necessarily pro- 
 duces function. I do not clearly see this, but feel it to be so. It is 
 God's act, as it were from want of corresponding act on our part, causes 
 the psychical and physical universe ; and our consciousness, or percep- 
 tion of the same : i. e. this act in relation to us i. e. to our ' not-being ' 
 causes our perception. 
 
 Do I not see dimly this idea ; that the entire development of the 
 animal (the vertebrate race ?), is a gradual turning at right angles, a 
 sort of spiral a continuous spiral process, the whole of it ? Develop- 
 ment is represented by a spiral as a constant turning at right angles, 
 and so the animal series constitutes a spiral. Hence shd it not be that 
 the spiral is development ; two in one ? I think surely the turning at 
 right angles must be held to be the union of two in one. How, in each 
 higher grade, is there a turning at right angles from two polars in one ? 
 And the force turned at right angles, considered abstractly, is it not es- 
 sentially the putting together of two opposites ? I have thought of this 
 before ; e. g. with respect to the earth's motion, and to music, the form- 
 ation of the octave. So is there a bearing on theology too ; the union 
 of creator and creature, imaged by such turning at right angles ? 
 
 There are curious parallels between the forces in relation to their chief 
 characteristics. Thus : in the solar system the chief element is polar 
 attraction ; but in relation to the galaxies the chief element seems to be 
 divergent motion (under resistance) as indicated by the spiral form of 
 the galaxies. Thus a parallel to chemicity and life ? and so of many 
 others ; very likely there is some kind of ' harmonic series.' The task 
 of Science is to recognize under all this diversity of form and appear- 
 ance and specific quality, the essential identity : the one vibratile action 
 wh includes all, and even within its scope comes [tho' how far off] the 
 reason that our senses perceive the one action in its vast grades, under 
 aspects and with peculiarities so different. 
 [Forces, 318 See p. 90.
 
 509 
 
 May not some of the forces wh exist in the earth its magnetism, 
 electricity, &c., forces wh seem as it were native to it be really the 
 result of opposing ' attractions,' or tendencies to motion. Attractions 
 not producing movement of course produce tension, which tension is a 
 ' force '; opposing attractions, neutralizing one another, leave the position 
 unaltered, but alter the state : as the ' heat ' may perhaps be referred to 
 the resisted attraction of the sun. How like the attraction of corks in 
 water is to the magnetic attraction, especially in respect to its extending 
 only a comparatively short distance and being within that space most 
 energetic. Does not the magnetic attraction depend, like that of the 
 corks in water, on an effect produced upon the medium ? And the two 
 corks may be made also to repel. 
 
 Oct. 2, 1856. Is this a true relation between electricity and galva- 
 nism : the one arises from resisted mechanical movement, the other from 
 resisted chemical passion : they differ in size, surely ; electricity being 
 to movement what galvanism is to heat. And is here a bearing upon 
 the nervous force wh is so similar ? is that from resisted vital force ; or 
 rather resisted functional or decomposing passion ? as galvanism is in 
 relation to chemistry ? 
 
 Force is motion, and as motion it also is vibratile ; it is motion re- 
 sisted, i. e. two equal and opposite motions ; the force and the resistance 
 together are the vibration. 
 
 We have known so much less of the inorganic forces than of life that 
 we have not even perceived their mystery ; we thought organic life a 
 special mystery only because we knew enough of it to see something of 
 what it was like ; it is nearest to us and best known. All our invest- 
 igations into the organic forces only just give us so much knowledge of 
 them as we had of life long ago : viz. the vibration, the nutrition, the 
 function, the special forms, &c. ; all things which in life are obvious 
 and familiar to us. They are life indeed. In respect to the organic 
 there is some limit to our thought ; we know certain things cannot be : 
 but in respect to the inorganic, anything not contradictory may be : 
 any number of elements, e. g. 
 
 For crystallization the ' stimulus ' is cold, for production of organic 
 life it is heat. As if cold permitted the attraction of cohesion, heat 
 that of chemical affinity. So is organic life a 'function,' effected by 
 the ' organization ' of chemicity, from stimulus of heat ? Organic life 
 is exactly a function, quite parallel to all others ; a life purchased by a 
 life. This oppositeness of cohesion and chemical attraction, the one 
 permitted by cold, the other by heat, [and the same by electricity ?] 
 does this oppositeness show that they are opposite or polar them- 
 selves ? and so their results, or crystallization and animal life, 
 are opposites or polar ? Why then is there only sometimes crystaliza- 
 tion from cold, and life from heat : or why is crystallization so constant- 
 ly reproducible but life not without germs ? is the nucleus for a crystal 
 like a germ for life ? 
 
 It is with the freezing fluid as with the chemical passion wh produces 
 life : chem union gives out heat, but if resisted so as to produce, or be- 
 come, vital divergence, it does not produce the heat. Now it must be 
 the same with the expanding fluid before freezing : in proportion as the 
 divergence is produced less heat is given off ; the divergence is the equi- 
 valent of the heat even as the life is. The fluid becomes colder as it
 
 570 
 
 expands but does not give out heat (i. e. BO far). This might be tested, 
 whether the fluid does not get cold as it expands in greater proportion 
 than it gives off heat. There is truly a ' vital principle ' in the form- 
 ation of a crystal : it is not itself a result of the vital or divergent 
 passion, but it involves that as a previous condition. There is a ' spe- 
 cific divergence ' before there is the specific approximation wh produces 
 the crystals : these specific forms of crystals result from the previous 
 Specific divergence. Further : suppose a general cohesive attraction, 
 tending to mere aggregation ; now all such approx motion takes place 
 under resistance, and .-.is likely to be turned into divergent motion 
 [continuous] : when thus turned a new polarity exists, wh is ' specific,' 
 of course, for each resistance, and gives rise to the specific approxima- 
 tion in which crystallization consists. Here I begin to see something 
 about the form of ice, those bands beneath the surface at right angles to 
 it ; what but motion turned at right angles ? and the elliptic forms these 
 bands are so apt to assume again 3 at right angles. 
 
 In reference to the varieties of 'specific heat,' this seems clear: the 
 heat wh does not remain as heat, nor produce expansion, must have be- 
 come some other passion in the substance : what has it done ? Has it 
 neutralized any kind of ' tendency to contraction ' ? or are the electric, 
 or magnetic, or any other conditions altered in those bodies which thus 
 seem to ' absorb ' heat without expanding : i. e. those in which a given 
 amount of heat seems to produce a less than equivalent effect ? 
 
 It is easy to see how cold is a ' tendency to approximation ' : two 
 bodies attracting each other and held apart = cold ; two elastic bodies 
 pressed together = heat. Hence cold is as much and as truly a force as 
 heat : nay, surely cold, or the approx tendency, is the force, and not 
 heat, or the divergent. This is like putting ' Life ' first, and as an in- 
 dependent entity : heat bears the same relation to approx passion [i. e. 
 cold, or contraction] that life, the divergent passion, does to chemical 
 union. Heat is as life, the divergent half of a vibration, It must be 
 traced from the approx [cold, or however it may be called] as Life must 
 te traced from chemical passion. And see : many forces seem directly 
 to produce, or be turned into life ; yet it is never truly so ; life is a con- 
 tinuous vibration, ever from chemical passion proximately. So is it not 
 -with heat ; it seems to be produced directly by many forms of passion, 
 "but is it truly so ? is it not always, if we could trace it, ar continuous 
 vibration? i. e. produced by an approximating passion of a similar 
 kind, by a true ' cooling "? "When it is produced by motion, by chemical 
 union, and so on, is there not a true ' contraction ' permitted, wh is the 
 proximate source of the heat? 
 
 May not, indeed, the conception of function and nutrition [the con- 
 ception of life or of vibration] be substituted altogether for that of the 
 ' correlation of the forces ' ? and thus the inorganic ' life' be better seen ? 
 Tor observe : forces change only from resistance, i. e. from limit ; but 
 from the limit ever results the polar opposite : a force that truly becomes 
 another, ever becomes its polar opposite ; this is always an approxima- 
 tion becoming a divergence ; this is nutrition. When a divergent seems 
 to produce an approximating, it has always permitted it ; it has been a 
 stimulus to it as a function. And thus, too, whenever a divergent force 
 seems to become another divergent, it is certain that there has been an 
 intermediate process : viz. that it has permitted an approximative wh
 
 571 
 
 then has become its opposite divergent. And is it not this that deter- 
 mines what force any given force shall produce ? Is not this the part 
 of the substratum ? according to the ' function ' so will be the < nutri- 
 tion.' Each inorganic body has its functional tendency ; a force affect- 
 ing it 'permits' its function the peculiar approximation to wh it tends 
 and from this arises the new divergent force. Now, what I want to 
 find out is the exact part played by those forces wh act as ' stimuli ;' 
 what they do in neutralizing the resisting force [the vital resistance as 
 we may call it]. 
 
 Now, for the word force, shd we not substitute altogether the two 
 expressions, motion and tendency to motion : both being of two kinds, 
 approximative and divergent, constituting alike in each case a vibra- 
 tion ? All is involved, in fact, in motion being vibration. Now, heat 
 is a divergent tendency ; life, or nutrition, is a divergent passion. Yet 
 we also have divergent tendency in life, too, I think; a resisted tendency 
 to vital or nutritive passion, on wh much in the living body depends, 
 much of ' assimilation.' 
 
 Is there not a good deal to be done in tracing what becomes of sound? 
 Of course, it exists ever. Does it become magnetism and electricity, 
 even as light becomes chemicity ? Surely light becomes chemicity by 
 subdivision, and two being in one ; so does sound become other forces, 
 by being 2 in one ? and the next highest * octave ' to sound or sonorous 
 vibration, is it magnetism ? or what ? Light becoming chemicity, 
 and sound magnetism, might explain one another very well : in each 
 case a ' vibration ' becoming a polar tendency.' Or rather, is it not 
 here ever a divergent passion produced by an approximating, permitted 1 * 
 Perhaps we do not see forces originated now, any more than new forms 
 of life ; only one becoming another, by ' permitting ' function, wh may 
 well represent digestion and assimilation. For both magnetism and 
 chemicity must depend on approximating passions reaching limit ; they 
 are both of them approximating tendencies, wh necessarily depend on 
 some previous divergent passion : just as the nutrition of an ani- 
 mal is manifested to us in its instincts, or approximative tend- 
 encies. 
 
 Chemicity, of course, constantly exists, and is only permitted to op- 
 erate ; but when it is generated, it is as heat is ; viz., by permission of 
 an approximating motion wh, reaching its limit, becomes it. Now these 
 forces, every one of them, are but specific forms of life, and there are 2 
 chief classes the vibratile, sound and light chiefly ; and the polar, 
 magnetism and electricity ; and one [heat], wh seems between the two 
 [here, by-the-bye, is a five]. Chemicity is the ' animal ' with its 
 instincts, wh then becomes again the un-instinctive vegetable. 
 
 What if there shd be, in truth, only ' continuous ' vibrations ; and all 
 apparent alterations of form of a force, be really due to permitted pas- 
 sion or function ? i. e. that any force wh seems to become a different 
 divergent force, becomes such only by operating as a stimulus, and per- 
 mitting an approximative passion of wh such divergent passion is the 
 other half? So all things are ' living,' have their 'tendencies,' &c. ; 
 and the ' limit ' produces only [as it shd] the polar opposite. . There 
 has been the ' development ;' now no more development, nothing but 
 ' continuous -vibrations' and ' functions.' In the inorganic there is 
 ' assimilation,' just as it is in the nourishing of plants and animals: 
 
 N2
 
 572 
 
 the forces operative on them are not ' converted into ' their life, hut on- 
 ly permit such approximative [chemical] passion in them, as becomes 
 'continuously' their life. The ' limit' produces always, and necessarily, 
 continuous vibration preceded by a ' function ' or permitting. The di- 
 vergent force only changes its character [or form] by operating as a 
 stimulus, and neutralising a divergent force wh has controlled an 
 approximative tendency, which is thus permitted to come into 
 play? 
 
 Grove's view [correlation of forces] is it not a 'nutritive ' one ? It 
 is from suppression of idea of cause [i. e. of instinctive], and therefore 
 surely must end in union with idea of cause in higher, and as it were 
 necessary, form. So, in truth, my idea of 'no real matter ' is nutritive : 
 it is a suppression, giving me the polar opposite ; and when re-united 
 will give me the world again as right or necessary, instead of arbitrary ; 
 so that we shall see why we must perceive a physical universe, and not 
 only the fact that we do perceive it. 
 
 This is interesting to think with respect to mathematics, that the 
 conception suppressed [by limit] ever represents the approximative 
 [that wh results from attraction or existing tendency] ; and the opposite 
 conception, taking its place, represents the divergent passion, the nutri- 
 tive. In the mind, in respect to the former, is a sense of tendency, 
 necessity, gratified desire ; in respect to the latter, a sense of disten- 
 sion, force, opposition to tendency. Here are analogies to good and 
 evil in all their various forms, to pleasure and pain. But see : we make 
 our mathematical ' life ' by voluntarily incurring this mathematical evil 
 or pain ; and we arrive at equivalent happiness or life. K"ow, in mo- 
 rals we must learn to do the same. The voluntary incurring of pain 
 the sense of opposition to tendency from sense of right, will make our 
 moral life : a happiness how unspeakable ! From sense of right, I have 
 said ; but that is not the truth. We are dead, and have not this power : 
 a higher vital resistance it must be, new-given to us by God ; He 
 worketh in us. 
 
 Heat, of course, also when vibratile is elliptic, or vibration in three 
 directions ; and is not partial absorption, according to wh of these is 
 absorbed ? So that bodies wh partly absorb heat may transmit or re- 
 flect a colored heat, as in the case of light. Radiant heat being a com- 
 pound vibration, in the same sense as light, shows sufficiently, I think, 
 that the supposed peculiar compoundness of light is necessary to all 
 vibration. 
 
 Again, if heat be thus vibration, like light, how can it be expansion 
 or tendency to expand ? How can the radiant heat be vibration, and 
 the absorbed or ' static ' heat be such expansion ? Do we not err in 
 calling the two by one name ? Is it not as if we still called light, after 
 it had been absorbed, by the same name of light ? Light is only vibra- 
 tion; when it exists in a stationary condition, in things, "we no longer call 
 it light, but ' chemical affinity,' &c. The vibrations of light produce 
 that divergent passion wh gives chemical affinity; the vibrations of heat 
 produce that divergent passion wh we call the expansion, &c., and wh 
 seeems to be a kind of polarity, and gives tendency to contraction [when 
 permitted by allowing the escape of the heat]. Heat differs from 
 light in that it may given off again as [radiant] heat ; it produces the 
 same impression on our senses with a persistency that light has not.
 
 573 
 
 I think I see the conception of heat better now : radiant heat we 
 know to be vibration elliptic vibration even as we know light to be. 
 We had better .-. hold to that : heat is elliptic vibration. Now heat 
 produces very various effects upon substances ; in some it produces 
 chemical change, in some expansion, in some contraction, in some the 
 feeling of hotness and power to expand mercury, &c. These different 
 effects are not heat ; these must be traced to their causes and classified. 
 It is true that ' hotness ' is tendency to expansion, but radiant heat 
 heat properly so called is an elliptic vibration. Now, will not heat 
 be an invaluable clue to nature ; tracing all the various effects of heat 
 either to continuous vibrations, or to ' functions?' The practice of look- 
 ing away from the direct effects of the forces on our 'nerves' i.e. away 
 from our sensations is wholly an error : for we have finally nothing 
 else to look to. Looking in its external effects for the nature of a force 
 is to confound the force with the effects, for we learn the effects only 
 by our sensations, or their ' effects on our nerves.' To put to experi- 
 mental tests the force wh produces those effects on our nerves is another 
 thing ; this is done in respect to light ; and when done in respect to 
 heat shows heat to be elliptic vibration also. 
 
 All force necessarily produces divergence or nutrition; and both halves 
 of the vibration do so equally ; the one being divergence, the other re- 
 sulting in tendency to it. Thus as heat produces the two opposite 
 ' polarties,' as we may say tendency to expand, and tendency to con- 
 tract so does not light also produce two opposite polarities, i.e. chem- 
 icities, in different substances, as we see ? Now, it would be interesting 
 to see whether light could be caused to produce opposite chemicities in 
 the same substances according to its conditions [e. g. whether it were 
 under pressure or not] ; as heat does in air under pressure making 
 it hot [tendency to expand], and free, making it expand [tendency to 
 to contract]. Also do the different colors produce different ' chemici- 
 ties?' and why such variety of chemicities ? It is curious that our per- 
 ception of variety in the same force wh is so marked in sound, re-appears 
 in respect to light, tho' absent in respect to the intermediate forces ; 
 no doubt from the deficiency of our sense organs. 
 
 The definite structures of all substances, and their definite effects on 
 the ' forces,' proves the organization, the life. And how new a concep- 
 tion of the physical world is thus opened ; how the idea of matter or 
 substance, seems kindly to dissolve itself more and more into a 
 living act. 
 
 Every force is and must be, opposition to tendency : every substance 
 must embody such opposition in some form ; i. e. must be organic, a 
 living body, the result of nutrition. This is self-evident, and indeed, if 
 it were not, might be proved by the fact that it resists ; for only force 
 resists. These substances .-. are force, by very definition of matter as 
 resisting. Am I not getting the idea of life for that of matter ? This 
 resistance then is the ' force ' [necessarily divergent force, or nutrition] 
 wh is in each ' thing.' But then, if there be this, there must also be an 
 approximative or [' functional '] tendency ; the one implies the other. 
 Thus I have perfectly the view I want : the resistance of bodies is their 
 force, or 'nutrition;' different substances are merely different forms of 
 force. [Even in crystals there is such divergent passion ; proved in re- 
 spect to many by their lightness, and with regard to all by the idea of
 
 574 
 
 crystallization as resulting from approximative motion turned partially 
 at right angles.] But then, why not curved forms, as in the organic? 
 what is the difference ? is it only our point of view ? Can I trace the 
 ellipse in crystals ? must they not be results of elliptic motion, or of 
 hyperbolic ? 
 
 The aggregation produced by approximating motion must be crystal- 
 line, because the motion itself must be in three dimensions, and being 
 always in direction of least resistance is necessarily exactly proportion- 
 ed, just as in formation of living body. So I see, in this axiom is there 
 not involved the entire necessity of crystallization ? the ' elliptic ' mo- 
 tion produces the three dimensions ; the 'least resistance' the regularity 
 of figures ? Can I trace crystallization as result of elliptic motion pro- 
 ducing approximation ; and vital forms as result of elliptic motion pro- 
 ducing divergence ? In each case partly mixed with the other : in 
 crystallization partial divergence ; in life partial approximations ? 
 
 In every material substance, or thing, there must be both tendency to 
 approximation, and resistance to it or divergence. There must be both 
 or there could be neither, could be no thing at all. [As Coleridge re- 
 marks, the one would give point, the other space] and without either 
 there could be no resistance, no occupation of space, &c. Therefore, in 
 fact, life is involved in the very existence of thing: viz., a divergent 
 tendency balancing, or resisting, a tendency to approximation. What 
 then is the difference in the organic world ? And the existence of these 
 two, in this relation, proves the entire vital process : the vibration, the 
 approximating producing the divergent, and necessarily by a 'continuous 
 vibration.' So the persistency, and constancy of form, in the inorganic 
 world is the very same thing as in the organic. 
 
 Newton's idea of the conversion of light into matter, is worth think- 
 ing of still, regarding light as motion ; for matter is not that abstract 
 notion, but things ; it is only force and resistance ; i. e. vibration. Force 
 and resistance are vibration : therefore it is that the two must be to- 
 gether. So again with regard to force ' traversing ' a vacuum [or, as 
 Bacon says, originating there], it is palpable that where force is there 
 is matter. The force denies the vacuum. How strong was Newton's 
 sense of the unity of nature. 
 
 What a mistake to think of magnetism as differing from other forces in 
 requiring motion to produce force. In truth while increasing or diminish- 
 ing while in a state of operating, it produces force or motion just as any 
 other : that it does not produce motion while static is no exception ; no 
 static force does : no motion is produced by two bodies in state of 
 electric tension, nor between particles, chemically attracting, &c., which 
 are parallel cases. The peculiarity is that by motion we have the means 
 of producing other force from magnetism. Should there not be similar 
 effects produced in line of electric attraction, as of magnetic ? And 
 surely also between two bodies attracted to each other by gravi- 
 tation? 
 
 Resistance to divergent motion must be a most fruitful source of heat : 
 it is virtually compression. So may not this be partly the source of 
 animal heat resisted or stopped divergence ? 
 
 Does not the difficulty about heat from chemical union rest upon the 
 not looking at it as motion wh cannot cease ; approximating becoming 
 divergent, but resisted; and existing .'.as tendency to expand. In the
 
 575 
 
 idea of 'equivalent contraction and expansion,' a statical condition is 
 regarded, instead of a motion. Is not this the universal error ; putting 
 arbitrary facts instead of a necessary and simple passion ; i.e. vihration ? 
 Does not the rectifying, the work of Genius, consist in substituting vi- 
 bration for arbitrary facts ? i. e. in its phenomenal sphere : the true 
 work being the substitution of right action [of wh vibration is the phe- 
 nomenal form or effect], for the arbitrary facts or actions. 
 
 Magnetism elongates a bar, and straightens a wire slightly bent, as an 
 electric current shortens or bends. This shows the oppositeness of things 
 at right angles to each other, i. e. of polars : lengthening and shortening 
 are opposite enough, yet are magnetism and electricity at right angles. 
 Surely electricity and magnetism are to each other relatively as sound 
 and light ; at right angles as regards the form of the vibration ; one 
 (like sound), of rarefaction and condensation ; the other, (like light), 
 transverse. Is a magnet something like a stationary sonorous vibration ? 
 It is clear, if this be the relation, how they must mutually produce each 
 other at right angles; because if of the same size, &c., the difference wd 
 really be according to the direction in which they are regarded. How 
 many forms of vibration there must be of wh we take no cognizance : 
 e. g. the vibrations of rarefaction and condensation wh proceed laterally 
 from light, and the converse ones from sound, &c. ? And again, the 
 state of motion around an electric body, or magnet, which is evidenced 
 only by the corresponding bodies : e. g. a bar of iron at right angles to 
 a wire ; how naturally this takes up the vibrations of rarefaction and 
 condensation wh otherwise appear to be without effect. May not the 
 chemical ' rays ' be, perhaps, such rays connected with light ? Is it not 
 likely that chemical vibrations are of condensation and rarefaction, and 
 therefore stationary, like sound and magnetism ? and at right angles 
 to light, as magnetism is to electricity ? 
 
 I must trace this out. Does sound tend to produce electricity at 
 right angles to itself; i. e. when it is so small as to be inaudible: 
 and so on of the others ? And here again do we see reason for polars 
 being at right angles ; and for force, on reaching its limit, becoming 
 turned at right angles ? Every vibration must of necessity be in these 
 two directions, tho' to us known, perhaps, only in one. But thus seen 
 it does not appear that the turning at right angles involves subdivision, 
 or two in one. I must think of this rectangular relation of vibrations 
 longitudinal and transverse as constituting the polar relation. Can 
 this be the relation of chemical and vegetable ? 
 
 The air, in truth, must be constantly in a ' polar ' state [like that of 
 a fluid before crystalization ?] ; full of continual vibrations, unperceived 
 except by bodies that, as it were, have corresponding 'senses.' Those 
 bodies wh thus are affected by forces wh do not affect other bodies, are, 
 as it were, ' senses ' to them ; they have a ' function ' excited in them 
 thereby ; owing to a peculiar ' organization.' 
 
 Motion can only be perceived as in relation to something else : this is 
 worth more thought, how all passion is matter of relation, and only so. 
 Is it not involved in succession, or cause and effect, and thus essentially 
 phenomenal ? 
 
 Are not ' matter ' and ' force ' polar action and inaction ; arbitrary 
 action necessary inaction ? so that matter and force together are the 
 ' phenomenon ' ?
 
 576 
 
 Do we not first have to do with substance in chemicity (among the 
 forces) because here first is depth the two in one ? i. e. here first is 
 substance clearly presented to us in connection with the force itself ; we 
 cannot separate as it were the idea of substance, and regard it as a mere 
 indifferent substratum ; it seems to be in the idea itself of chemicity. 
 
 The only substratum in wh force can ' inhere ' is space ; the idea of 
 substance entirely disappears when deprived of all force. This is not 
 sufficiently considered. The only legitimate inference even phenome- 
 nally is of forces in space. How is it ? for certainly this does not suit 
 the case ; what the discrepancy and whence arising ? Of course it is, 
 in truth, a spiritual passion in connection with perception of space, wh 
 is itself a similar passion. It is very curious, this motion of matter 
 motion wh is relation to space, and matter wh is solely space ; motion 
 in space, space in wh force or motion ' inheres ' ; it is a wonderful maze, 
 to which the only clue is seeing that we are speaking not of physical 
 things but of spiritual passion. 
 
 Hypotheses are the substrata introduced by us for our arbitrary actions, 
 or necessary inactions, to exist in. They are what is needed to supply 
 the deficiency of each half vibration, until the two are united, when, 
 mutually supplying each others' deficiencies, the hypothesis is no longer 
 required, is excluded or given up ; i. e. self is sacrificed. Thus it is es- 
 pecially in the union of the two polars, [the work of Genius] that hy- 
 pothesis is excluded. Now ' substance ' is hypothesis. Why is it we 
 use the word ' understand,' wh is the same : it is surely an imperfect 
 form of knowledge, ' phenomenal.' Coleridge was right when he 
 called it the 'faculty judging according to sense.' It is 'hypotheti- 
 cal ' ; the nutritive step towards knowledge. Understanding is not 
 knowing : it is the having a hypothesis ; it needs to be excluded, or 
 rather united with, or swallowed up in, a higher knowledge an instinct, 
 wh it thus raises to a higher level. Is it not instinct, understanding 
 reason ; Reason being the union in one of instinct and understanding ? 
 So the three are here ; and the understanding is exactly what it should 
 be : it is the sense-faculty, that deals with ' substances,' or introduces 
 hypotheses : it gives us laws; 'necessary ' hypotheses or ' substances.' 
 Reason takes the necessity or law, uniting it with the instinct, and ex- 
 cludes the hypothesis. But then begins again the same process ; this 
 ' reason ' is but a higher ' instinct.' 
 
 Surely it is right to call the separate forces, as electricity, ' things.' 
 The forces are forms, i. e. things, and the one abstract force bears the 
 same relation that the abstract matter does. The separate forces cease 
 to be ; therefore they never were. Surely the fact is just the 
 same, whether we draw water from the earth by a bucket and pass it 
 into a receiver, or whether we draw electricity by a machine, and pass 
 it into one. The fact is as truly the same as the process appears idenr 
 tical ; in neither case have we operated on any real matter, alike only 
 on form. 
 
 Is there not something wonderful in the idea of matter receiving an 
 impulse in vacuo [and without any other matter existing] going on mo- 
 ving for ever by virtue of its inertia ; how could such conceptions have 
 been tolerated ? Consider, how motion can only be in relation : an iso- 
 lated body, receiving impulse, does not move; motion, time, &c., have no 
 application. It cannot alter its place, because there is no ' place ' at all. 
 Motion, 312.
 
 577 
 
 But tho' not ' moving,' supposing it to have been affected by such me- 
 chanical force, it is in such state that it ' moves,' or overcomes resistance, 
 as soon as other matter exists, or resistance is offered ? Now am I not 
 getting a better idea of motion : not as abstract change of place, but as 
 a matter of relation ; it is overcoming of resistance. Here is the idea 
 again that all force is, and must be, opposition to tendency ? Are we 
 not in error in taking motion to be change of place ? that is a form only, 
 an accident. Even our own language denies it ; e. g. in ' statical mo- 
 tion:' there is the motion as much in equilibrium, or force and resist- 
 ance, as in change of place. 
 
 Action and reaction are equal ; each implies the other ; all force is 
 vibration. Then it follows that every force supposed in the molecular 
 constitution of bodies, must be also vibratile, or imply the opposite : we 
 must suppose ever vibration, not force in one line only : e. g. attraction 
 and repulsion of particles. And yet again from the known principles 
 may we not be sure that there must be true vibration causally ; viz. 
 that the repulsion must be from the attraction ? may we not be sure of 
 this relation ? Thus .. there is ever Life. And should we not suppose 
 constant motion of the molecules of all matter ? Is not the solar system, 
 or a galaxy, the image of a solid ? I cannot but think so ; it only re- 
 quires that these motions shd be too small for our perception. We know 
 the motions, more or less, in living bodies, because only there we see 
 wholes. 
 
 I perceive how these changes of form and size this composition and 
 analysis of motion cause all the phenomena of Nature. In Science, 
 throughout, these are the things to be regarded ; we must be as it were 
 on the watch for them, especially for those changes of form which have 
 such curious results on our senses. 
 
 Action and reaction is vibration : and the equality of the two in every 
 case is only one form in wh the vibratile chacter of motion manifests it- 
 self. For the reaction, whether absolute or partial, is in every case only 
 a form in wh the opposite action wh accompanies every motion appears. 
 Thus if there be an actual motion there is always an equal motion in 
 the opposite direction ; but if only a tendency to motion be produced 
 by any force then there exists an equal and opposite tendency to motion. 
 Action and reaction therefore whether in form of passion or of actual 
 motion are vibration and are to be so regarded wherever seen. Polarity 
 in fact is simply action and reaction, equal and opposite : and this in- 
 cludes induction of opposite polarity. What obscures the matter is only 
 the different form of the two opposite actions wh often prevents our re- 
 cognizing the strict relation. 
 
 Surely the ordinary motions of bodies contain the key to Nature, and 
 should be used as the key. Consider their boundless variety : e. g. I 
 dropped a shilling in the street and it spun round and round; so we 
 throw a coin at an angle upon a table and have a protracted revolving 
 motion : what is this in Nature ? does it not show us polarization ; and 
 especially help us to circular and elliptic polarization ? I take it there 
 is no fact in Science, however recondite and wonderful, that is not 
 plainly repeated before our eyes in the ordinary movements of bodies. 
 In truth all secrets have been unravelled so, and can be in no other way ; 
 but to do it systematically and with a knowledge of its grounds and 
 reasons were surely better.
 
 578 
 
 Certainly all motion is vibration: if .-. all force be motion, there is 
 nothing in nature but vibration ; and if so, then, as all vibrations obey 
 the same laws, all nature is one. And Mind, surely, being part of na- 
 ture, is also vibration. 
 
 Wherever two equal and opposite actions coexist, there they do by 
 the very fact of such co-existence constitute a vibration : this position 
 really wants no proving in any case. Thus e. g. inasmuch as the planet's 
 orbit actually consists of two equal und opposite motions, one towards, 
 and one away from, the sun, it is a vibration, independently of all other 
 evidence. 
 
 What an instructive thing astronomy is with all these minute pertur- 
 bations going to make up one complicated but most ' adapted ' motion. 
 It is the image of Nature, and its use is to illustrate small and familiar 
 things. Even the perturbations of the solar system vibrate. 
 
 Why are all the orbits ellipses : why none, circles or parabolas, &c. ? 
 Consider also the greater density of the planets in proportion to their 
 nearness to the sun. Does it not agree with an increasing density since 
 the period of their first gravitation ? 
 
 Also may the actual heat of the planets not be in proportion to 
 their distance from the sun; the heat being the attraction resisted 
 tendency to expansion the actual heat may vary much with the phy- 
 sical conditions of the planets ; and those of less density, tho' at greater 
 distance, may be even warmer ? Consider also the production of other 
 forces, or tensions, by attractions wh do not produce motion resisted 
 movement ; e. g. the light of the sun by the attraction of the planets : 
 BO also the earth is not actually ' attracted towards ' a stone which is 
 thrown into the air, but there is produced in it some state of tension ? 
 
 Does not this conversion of forces in some measure invalidate the ma- 
 thematical inferences ; they include only the actual movements pro- 
 duced, and take no note of any portion of the attractive power which 
 produces other effects, wh probably is a very important element : as e.g. 
 the real attraction of the sun on the earth includes probably part of the 
 heat (if not also the light) ; it is equal to the motion it produces, + that 
 portion of heat wh arises from resistance to this motion. [The heatwh 
 arises from conversion of the light, &c., must not be included, 
 unless indeed the light itself be derived from the attraction]. 
 And so of all other attractions, perturbations, &c. ; must they not be 
 thought of as the sources of other actions in the heavenly bodies besides 
 movement ? May it be from these manifold conversions, in part, that 
 the stability of the system is due. 
 
 And further, the amount of such conversion must be of various pro- 
 portion to the actual force ; a great attraction, overcoming the resistance, 
 may produce almost entirely movement ; while a small attraction might 
 produce no movement, but being entirely resisted might produce only 
 another force or tension ; as e. g. are not comets said to cause great heat 
 by their proximity ? May not many climatic and kindred phna be stu- 
 died thus ? 
 
 If the comets be of the same polarity as the planets, ought they not 
 in some positions to be repelled ? No ; only when in opposition : the 
 same argument applies to them as to the planets among themselves : like 
 iron filings on a magnet, wh, tho' of one polarity, attract each other. 
 
 Has not the necessarily periodic nature of the perturbations of the 
 solar system a real relation to the necessarily vibratile character of
 
 579 
 
 motion ? is it not one manifestation of it ? The arrangement of the 
 system in such a way as to secure the periodic character is also necessary, 
 tho' we cannot see it. Also the increasing distance of the stars in one 
 region, with diminishing distance in the opposite, and stationary between, 
 shews vibration. 
 
 The irregular form of the planetary orbits, owing to the perturbations, 
 suggests to me the irregularity of the forms of Nature, especially living 
 forms. They are analogous. The irregularities are due to the same 
 cause as the form itself, and are they not also in one sense elliptic ; the 
 orbit one ellipse, modified by other ellipses ; as the forms of organic bo- 
 dies are one spiral, modified by other spirals ? These innumerable in- 
 teractions in the solar system are the type of Nature, with her universal 
 most complicated series of motions ; and especially of life. 
 
 How sad it is to trace the influence of that idea, everywhere, that 
 God does not do that wh takes place in conformity with traceable phy- 
 sical laws. Everyone wants to arrive so soon at a beginning when God 
 did do something. 
 
 It at once astounds me, and fills me with delight, that in the very 
 idea and definition of motion all this universal frame of things, with 
 every one of its beautiful adaptations, shd be involved ; and that we 
 shd be able not only to feel assured of this, but to trace it and see it 
 practically and in detail : that all the glorious contrivances in the hu- 
 man frame, e. g., shd have this origin and own this cause and law. I 
 cannot, altho' I know it for certain, conceive it true. Nature is motion 
 saying that all is said. 
 
 These seem to be the three forms of motion : 
 
 1. That wh is mere continuance of a previous motion, as the rise 
 of a pendulum after its fall. 
 
 2. That wh is imparted by an impulse, propagated directly from 
 one body to another. 
 
 3. That which results from polar attraction. 
 
 I think these three include all, Motion from tension permitted motion 
 being in every case the result of polar attraction, or of the first form : 
 i. e. the first and third forms include all cases of permitted motion ; the 
 first, the divergent or nutritive; the third the approximative or functional. 
 The spiral being two progressive vibrations coexisting, at right angles 
 to each other, suggests many things : ( 1 ) that is exactly polarization ; 
 and polarization has some spiral relations wh have not yet been traced 
 out. (2) A spiral is two turnings at right angles combined with a pro- 
 gresssive movement. It is interesting that a constant resistance should 
 produce this effect, and yet it is very, clear that it must be so, for the 
 constant turning produced by constant resistance is first the original 
 motion produced at right angles and then this motion turned again. Po- 
 larized progressive vibrations are essentially spirals. Now one sees 
 something about polarization, and how it arises from turning at right 
 angles and its relation to rectangular positions of media. [A bubble ri- 
 sing through water rises in a polarized manner. Is not life in some 
 sense a polarized chemistry ?] Polarized light is light vibrating in two 
 planes at right angles to each other ; so is a spiral, it is ' undulation,' in 
 two planes at right angles. Light becomes polarized, naturally, by re- 
 sistance turning the undulatory motion partly at right angles ; so
 
 580 
 
 making a spiral motion out of a simple undulation. But further, since 
 a bubble rises in water with a ' polarized ' motion, why may not light 
 also have a polarized motion by mere constant resistance to its motion? 
 
 Or again, if a spiral wh is produced by two vibrations at right angles 
 be the result of constant resistance, how arises the one vibration ? how 
 comes the turning in one direction without the other ; why is not all 
 vibration spiral ; or why does not every vibration (being always resisted 
 more or less) become thus ' polarized ' ? Observe : it is not the progres- 
 sive motion that is turned, but it is the direction of the vibratile motion 
 itself a kind of internal turning at right angles ; a ' development ' 
 And this gives a clue to the polarization of light : not the progressive 
 motion, but the vibratile or transverse motion, is resisted and turned. 
 [Compare with the 'two turnings' wh are in the head of man, p. 564]. 
 
 A circle may be considered as two (equal) stationary vibrations [as a 
 spiral is two progressive vibrations], at right angles. Two progressive 
 vibrations, in planes at right angles to each other, and co-existing, are 
 the same as motion constantly turned at right angles; viz., a spiral. 
 Of course all (transverse) vibrations may be 'polarized;' and this idea 
 thus becomes of the widest application : it is simply one branch of the 
 turning at right angles. Thus the planetary motions are vibrations 
 stationary vibrations polarized ; that is, instead of straight to and fro, 
 turned into elliptic form : and all polarization must be elliptic, just as 
 all 'orbits' are ; viz., because the one motion is derived from the other, 
 and .-. must be less than the other. The orbits of the planets repre- 
 sent a polarized vibration ; and the gravitating and tangential forces, 
 or motions, represent the vibrations in the two planes at right angles : 
 these are at right angles, and are certainly each a 'vibration;' viz., 
 equal motions to and fro. And see ; the polarization of the planets' 
 motion arises [?] from resistance to its first motion, or transverse vibra- 
 tion, as we may call it : the transverse motion resisted, and turned, 
 produces the polarized motion, or elliptic orbit. It remains to see more 
 clearly (for I long ago saw it indistinctly) how the first gravitating 
 motion corresponds with the idea of a vibration. How polar attraction 
 does : surely, as string drawn aside returns. And of course, the elliptic 
 and irregular curves described by vibrating strings, &c., are polarized 
 vibrations. And may not such polarization of sonorous vibrations be 
 in part the cause of 'Tone;' e.g. by analysis or interference? Thus astron- 
 omy again fulfills its function of elucidating things close at hand. And 
 as the planetary motions are so true an analogy of life, this is con- 
 firmation of the idea that life is a polarization : which I must trace 
 out. 
 
 But farther, in the planetary notions yet another turning of motion 
 may be traced ; that viz., wh causes the obliquity of the elliptic, and 
 wh must, probably at least, have its parallel in other motions. Is it so ? 
 is it due to a kind of oscillation of the plane of the orbit ? I am not 
 sure. If so, would not such a motion be equivalent to a vibration 
 backwards and forwards as well as up and down, and from side to side ; 
 i. e. in all three directions of the cube ? it is possible, probable, almost 
 certain : depth as well as length and breadth. Yes, the earth's mo- 
 tion round the sun consists of three co-existing vibrations at right 
 angles to each other. These are (of course) in the three directions of 
 the cube ; the three directions of wh every possible motion consists ;
 
 581 
 
 the very same as those wh constitute the spiral, just those wh exist in 
 the canals and cochlea of the ear. In fact, the earth's orbit is spiral, 
 i. e. a segment of a spiral continually repeated : it vibrates to and fro 
 through a segment of a spiral. Thus in the earth's orbit is the secret 
 of all nature. This vibratile motion in three directions is every where, 
 and constitutes every thing ; and how the ear repeats it. All nature is 
 written in the ear, in the compass of half an inch. 
 
 Farther, the origin of both the secondary vibratile motions wh go to 
 make up the earth's orbit is plain ; both arise from resistance to the 
 original gravitating motion. The spiral direction is that motion turned 
 constantly at right angles, turned and turned again. The obliquity of 
 the ecliptic arises from resistance to gravitation, no less than the tan- 
 gential force ; in fact, the earth fell towards the sun (as it must have 
 done in theory) in a spiral direction. Here is additional proof : the vi- 
 bration in depth is a turning of a vibration in breadth, as that is of 
 the vibration in length. Motion in the three directions, derived from 
 one motion, makes the spiral. Thus the very basis of nature is revealing 
 itself to me ; written as it is in gigantic characters in the orbits of the 
 stars, and in smaller and smaller elements repeated, but still the same, 
 in each grade of things, until in man are brought together millions it 
 maybe of such small ' orbits,' but all the same. Those three vibrations 
 at right angles, repeated and repeated on the smallest scale, and put 
 close together constitute physically the living man. 
 
 The ear embodying so, specially, and in relation to its form, not only 
 as a living structure but as an organ of sense, these three directions, 
 first separately in the canals, then co-existently in the cochlea, repre- 
 sents pre-eminently the universe ; and .. it is that music is the type 
 and very essence of nature. 
 
 The elliptic form therefore is not only universal in astronomy, so far 
 as is known, but by the same necessity is universal in nature ; wherever 
 motions are turned, i. e. in all vibrations ; the spiral involving the el- 
 liptic, if not in all, surely in one direction ; if not at once in length and 
 breadth, and length and depth, and breadth and depth, at least surely 
 in one or two of these directions. Are not vegetable forms elliptic 
 [in all three directions] ? are the motions of the bubble in water 
 so? 
 
 Carrying out the idea it appears that that turning of any motion (by 
 resistance) wh causes it to become [direct] vibration, as in the pendu- 
 lum, is truly ' polarization.' The term polarization has happened to be 
 first applied to this action taking place in a motion wh is already part 
 of a continuous vibration, but that is unimportant. Is it not clear that 
 the polarization of light consists in the making each single straight or 
 non-vibratile motion, wh goes to make up the vibratile motion, itself 
 vibratile ; so to speak, it makes each half- vibration an entire vibration, 
 thus causing two vibrations to be where there was only, one before, 
 making in fact, two vibrations out of one ? Thus the essence of 
 polarization is making a non-vibratile motion a vibration. Nor is this 
 difference real, it is only apparent, for every non-vibratile motion (as 
 we may call them) is in reality the half of a vibration ; the equal and 
 opposite motion is sure to succeed somewhere. Thus the fall of a 
 weight to the ground is the half of a vibration ; the equal and opposite 
 motion may be of quite another character, in the shape of heat, &c.,
 
 582 
 
 but it is cartainly existent. But now, when the motion is resisted, and 
 the weight made to rise again (as a pendulum) this half-vibration is 
 made vibratile. In fact there are two vibrations at right angles, down 
 and up and from side to side, just as in earth's orbit. Thus is not 
 polarization that resistance to a motion, wh, turning it at right angles, 
 causes it to become (continuously and without change of form) vibratile? 
 That is to say, it is what I have seen to constitute life, and being the 
 fact of nature, shows how nature is life. 
 
 Further with regard to the pendulum, surely no pendulum ever beats 
 quite truly and exactly in one plane. There must be also in the pen- 
 dulum, and in all stationary vibrations, a tendency to vibrate also in 
 respect of depth (as well as of length and breadth ; the same kind of 
 vibration as that wh produces the obliquity of the ecliptic. Thus each 
 stationary vibration also is spiral : and even the pendulum, tho' me- 
 chanically compelled to pursue a circular course in its greater path, 
 presents where it is free an ellipse. Does this view of polarization as 
 making two vibrations (at right angles to each other) out of one, bear 
 at all upon the development of force by subdivision ? I think not : 
 polarized light is still light, and not another kind of action. The de- 
 velopment of motion arises not from static resistance as polarization 
 does, but apparently only from dynamic resistance, or two opposite mo- 
 tions in one particle, causing subdivision. 
 
 This three-fold vibration of the earth, or the fact of the oscillation 
 wh produces obliquity of ecliptic being a motion at right angles, is an 
 additional evidence of the tangential force being so derived. For in the 
 received view no account is given of it. It is a ' specific quality.' The 
 motion of the earth is such as a bubble rising in water would perform, 
 if after having risen spirally it returned again spirally. Then it would 
 perform a true or perfect spiral motion, spiral in every direction. The 
 motion would be exactly the same as the earth's, if it completed just 
 one revolution(horizontally)in the same time that it rose and sank again. 
 But the analogy would be preserved if it completed many horizontal 
 revolutions while it rose and sank once. 
 
 Ought not the earth's orbit to be regarded quite differently from the 
 present view : the long axis of the ellipse representing the generating 
 motion the direction in wh the earth falls wh is equivalent to the 
 upward motion in the case of a rising bubble [that is .-. the downward 
 direction]; the true horizontal motion is the ellipse described by the 
 breadth and depth of the orbit as now represented, wh is a very acute 
 ellipse indeed. That is the true sense in wh the planet oscillates about 
 the sun ; if the spiral were progressive instead of perfect or oscillating, 
 this would be clearly seen. Thus the earth's orbit does exactly corres- 
 pond with the motion of a bubble rising and sinking again in water, in 
 spiral form, describing one horizontal complete turn of the spiral in the 
 time of one vibration up and down. Better still if the motion of the 
 bubble be reckoned from the time of its falling, i.e. if it be reckoned as 
 a heavy body falling spirally and rising again. The earth sinks 
 and rises to and from the sun, describing a very elliptic spiral in its 
 course. 
 
 Bacon [Nature of Things, 8; p. 441 ], says : 'The most conspicuous 
 effect of this interior motion is in the revolutions and gyrations of 
 missiles while flying. The missiles indeed proceed onward, but they
 
 583 
 
 make their progression in spiral lines, i. e. by straight lined and rota- 
 tory motion together, and indeed this curvilinear motion is so fleet, and 
 at the same time so easy and somehow so familar to things, as to excite 
 a doubt in my mind whether it does not depend on some higher prin- 
 ciple.' 
 
 This motion of the earth I cannot doubt is truly the motion also of 
 the vibration of a cord or musical string : the direct, or falling, or gen- 
 erating motion, is turned in two directions at right angles. [See fier- 
 sch ell's figures.] So that the actual sonorous vibrations produced in 
 the air, are truly polarized vibrations ? Is there hence any light upon 
 ' timbre,' or on the function of the canals? Consider also how when longi- 
 tudinal vibrations are excited in rods, the nodal lines run spirally around 
 the rods ; also the elliptic form of the nodal figure formed on a circle of 
 glass and the prevailing spiral form of the nodal figures on membranes 
 or paper. The movement up and down, as well as from side to side, of 
 vibrating strings is an important matter, giving certainly a polarized 
 vibration i. e. in two planes at right angles to each other 
 whether the movement in depth is also possible I do not know. They 
 describe thus ellipses. 
 
 If the pendulum moved on with every beat it would describe truly a 
 progressive spiral (i. e. supposing it to have the backward and forward 
 motion); but it has the true spirial motion none the less because its beat 
 is back again instead of onwards, nay it is more truly spiral, being so in 
 all directions. The same is true of the earth's motion : when it has 
 fallen from aphelion to perihelion it has described half of a spiral turn, 
 if now it went on in the same direction it wd obviously form a progres- 
 sive spiral, but because the motion is turned back to the starting point, 
 it is only the more truly, because more perfectly, spiral. 
 
 That all material action takes direction of least resistance does not 
 necessitate the admission or depend in any way on it that all such 
 action is motion. The idea is equally applicable to every conceivable 
 or inconceivable form of action. The axiom perhaps is best stated thus : 
 ' action takes the direction of least resistance.' The term resistance is 
 correlative not specially to motion, but to action; as the action, so is 
 the resistance ; it is of like kind and the axiom is equally an axiom 
 whatever mode of action be supposed. This also is not a mere verbal 
 matter ; e. g. it brings within the scope of this conception of least re- 
 sistance, directly and not by analogy, the phna of mind and thought. 
 That ' action takes the direction of least resistance,' not only expresses 
 all physical nature and includes its ' laws ;' it expresses also all mental 
 nature and its 'laws.' It is .as truly applicable, and I believe will be 
 found in practical application as fertile. This also I discovered ex- 
 perimentally or by observation, before I saw it theoretically. I have 
 long noted that thought takes the direction of least resistance. 
 Here is the secret of the parallelism between physical nature and 
 thought. 
 
 July 23, 1856. I tried the experiment of having the string of a kite 
 drawn rapidly thro' a ring. It did not pass beyond the ring as I an- 
 ticipated, and come back to it, but then it was drawn against a smart 
 wind. It gave, however, most decidedly the spiral motion i. e. the 
 movement in three directions it not only rose from the ground and 
 came towards me, but also turned decidedly to the side, that being the 
 very movement wh causes the obliquity of the ecliptic.
 
 584 
 
 I must find out why it is that two pieces of cork in water attract one 
 another. There must be a discoverable physical or mechanical reason 
 for this. How strange in the 19th century to refer it to a natural or 
 universal or inherent attraction. The abhorrence of a vacuum 
 was Science compared to it. 
 
 July 22. I have tried this : pieces of cork when they are near each 
 other in water do rapidly approach ; also a piece of cork will approach, 
 and may be drawn after, the finger placed in water near it. But this 
 is not the result of attraction ; the cork does not in the least approach 
 a cork or finger held close to it, if it be kept from touching the water. 
 As soon as it touches the water, the freely moving cork approaches, or 
 under some circumstances recedes. By placing the cork in the water 
 we can produce either attraction or repulsion. The fact seems to be 
 that the water is somewhat drawn up around the cork so that each cork 
 has a little hill of water round it, and when two approach so near that 
 these hills mix the water flows from between, and they are carried by 
 currents together ; the same with the sides of the basin. I cannot doubt 
 that the movements seen in very small granules in water are similar ; 
 the curious point is why they do not unite. I fancy this attraction or 
 repulsion of the corks in water, by the effect upon the water, might 
 throw light upon polar attraction and repulsion in general. It is inter- 
 esting also to note the way in wh such portions of cork are most prone 
 to unite : not irregularly, but into definite figures : viz., each third to 
 pass to the position between two, &c. 
 
 It appears to me that this motion of the earth in depth so to speak 
 the motion that causes the obliquity of ecliptic (wh I shall henceforth 
 call the depth of the orbit) affords a means of calculating the elements 
 of its original motion, i. e. the relations of the distance and the re- 
 sistance : the problem is to find such a motion, and such a resistance as 
 shd cause the motion in breadth and depth, the length and velocity 
 being also given. 
 
 July 24, 1856. This I saw in a kite : that in truly spiral motions 
 vibration in all three directions there is this class of differences, 
 viz., those arising from the relative times or numbers of the respective 
 vibrations, calling them, e. g., (a) length, (b) breadth, and (c) depth : 
 these may vary of course infinitely in extent: here one class of differ- 
 ence. Again, there may be the same number of each in the same time, 
 or more of any one than of the others, e.g. 1 a, 2 b, 2 c; or 1 a, 1 b, 5 c, 
 &c. Here is another class of differences. Or some may be incomplete, 
 or resisted, and the others complete, &c., all wh goof course to make up 
 the unbounded diversity of nature, and must be borne in mind by any 
 one who wd solve it. In short, since we agree that natural action is 
 motion, the rational plan is to study motion where we can understand it 
 and apply the results so gained where we cannot trace it. 
 
 Do not the leaves drop from the trees in spirals ? 
 
 This plenum in wh the planets first gravitated, what is it ? Is it so 
 much absorbed as to be of no bearing on their motions ? Is it not 
 rather rotating with them ? Surely it must be. Let a ball rotate in a 
 vessel of water, it soon brings the water to its own motion. Thus Des 
 Cartes' idea is not so bad; but the rotation of the plenum wd be ( !fect and 
 not cause, of planets' motion. Then, if this rotation were once estab- 
 lished it would no longer interfere with the planets' motion, wh would
 
 585 
 
 take place a3 in a vacuum. But could the gravitating impulse through 
 such a' plenum produce such a rotation without exhausting itself ? 
 Light proves a medium ; but if this medium be not rotating with the 
 planets, would there not be a mechanical difficulty with respect to the 
 passing of light from sun to planets ; is not a rotating medium the true 
 equivalent of a vacuum ? When two planets are in opposition should 
 not the attraction of the sun upon them be diminished (perhaps in an 
 excessively small degree) by the amount of their mutual repulsion ? 
 Just as when a magnet attracts two iron filings (a and b) on opposite 
 sides, the attraction of each must be less, tho' perhaps quite inappreci- 
 ably, the similar poles of a and b being turned to each other. 
 
 This motion in depth(wh causes the obliquity of the sun's path)seems 
 to me strong evidence of my view of the origin of the earth's motion 
 being all from a gravitating motion. It is not only just what would 
 follow, being in fact exactly the spiral motion of a body falling in 
 water ; but it is exceedingly difficult to account for any other hypoth- 
 esis. It is a motion away from the point of attraction, demanding an 
 impulse or force to account for it. It is not disposed of by merely say- 
 ing the plane of motion is oblique to the centre of the sun; it cannot be 
 so without an impulse to carry it away from the centre, wh is the point 
 of attraction. This subordinate vibration needs just as much accounting 
 for as the great vibration ; in one part it is a motion in obedience to 
 gravity and in another part a motion opposed to it ; or would an 
 oblique motion, originally, account for it ? I believe, tho' it may want 
 some precision in stating, that the obliquity of the sun's path (or vibra- 
 tion of earth in depth) involves all the account I give of its motion ; 
 for surely a motion deflected by gravity, would be deflected into 
 the plane of the sun's equator. There is a field here : to trace the re- 
 lation of the ellipticity of orbit to this obliquity, &c., so as to infer the 
 elements of motion and resistance. 
 
 May not the ' conversion of force,' or the passing, of motion of one 
 kind (i. e. of one size) into motion of another, be regarded as analogous 
 to modulation in music the passiug into a higher or a lower key ? and 
 see how that takes place most naturally by fifths ; tho' it may be other- 
 wise : and the notes that prepare for it the discords that require it : 
 and the enharmonic scale, on wh the same discord may be resolved dif- 
 ferent ways. What is the 'resolution' of a discord ? I think I see 
 something of that ; it is where two incompatible forms of motion come 
 together, and one or both need to assume another form ; it is in fact a 
 ' conversion of force,' as when light falling on an opaque object finds 
 there such result and tendency to motion such kind of motion in fact 
 that it can no longer exist as light but must take the form of heat, 
 must be resolved (as a discord) into heat wh (?) is harmonious. And 
 this is motion in least resistance ; and so is resolution of discords, ano- 
 ther motion an incompatible one requires that the motion be in a 
 different direction ; i. e. of another pitch. 
 
 Here is perhaps a clue to the ear being adapted to analyse direction 
 (the canals, &c.) rather than size. Does not the resolution of a discord, 
 regarded as in direction of least resistance, seem to indicate a converti- 
 bility of size or pitch and of direction? as all change of size or form of 
 motion in general is virtually change of direction ; viz. being motion 
 changed in order to take direction of least reristance. What is the
 
 586 
 
 major and minor in nature ? I wish I could see how true or 
 natural music obeys the law of least resistance: I know it does ; and 
 have some idea. 
 
 Here is a link between mind and body ; it is the ' ear ' the percep- 
 tion the mind, that requires music to be such as is natural : it is that 
 our perceptions or sensations may be in direction of least resistance ; 
 but this really corresponds also with physical passion in least resistance. 
 The necessities of the musical are the same as those of the logical 
 sense ; viz. that the mental passion in us shd take direction of least re- 
 sistance ; the same is the sense of beauty. How of the good ? Eight 
 music must be not only that which permits direction of least resist- 
 ance, but that in wh the right resistance is present Music is the truest 
 representative of Nature and is the highest of the Arts, because it does 
 not, like man's work, express one thing, but like God's work, expresses 
 all things. 
 
 "Weight, or polar attraction between a thing and the earth, has no more 
 to do with proving substance, or matter, than the mutual attraction 
 of the polar electricities. It indicates, not matter, but motion ; a motion 
 common to a large number of ' things,' and therefore a polarity partaken 
 of by many. 
 
 Is there not a capital instance of a theory and an interpretation in the 
 ' inclination of the earth's axis ' ? To say the earth's axis is inclined is 
 a phenomenal view ; not a fact but a theory : it is that wh appears. We 
 shd say the axis appears to be inclined : this apparent inclination is 
 merely that one end is nearer to the sun than the other : wh of course 
 equally arises from the earth being, as we might say, above or below 
 the sun. Now is not this a type of how all our statements of phna, or 
 appearances, are and must be theories ? Shall we not say also, ' There 
 appears to be a sun ? Is not to say, ' There is a sun ' as much a theory 
 as to say ' the earth's axis is inclined.' 
 
 The irregularities of the solar system ' oscillate on each side of a 
 plane wh is at rest. [Mrs. Somerville.] This plane is a nodal plane ; 
 these oscillations are such as those of sound, equal and opposite on dif- 
 ferent side of a line or plane wh does not move ; and the same concep- 
 tion applies to the entire universe. Here is another link of the universe 
 to music. [Note : may we not take these two also as symbols of suc- 
 cession and the eternal ? In sound the opposite motions co-exist ; they 
 are together, and the stationary line lies realized between them : in the 
 solar system the opposite motions succeed ; they are in ' time ;' and the 
 nodal line is 'imaginary.'] 
 
 The ellipse contains and is the spiral : make an ellipse continue on in- 
 stead of returning on itself and there is a spiral : and surely a circular 
 spiral ; palpably so ; i. e. circular in its direct girth. And this view 
 includes the circle also : as the ellipse is a circular spiral, the circle is 
 an elliptic spiral ; twist it laterally and it is seen to be so : unwind it, 
 make the two halves progressive, or in the form of a corkscrew, and 
 its direct girth is elliptic. Thus the orbits of the planets are circular ; 
 they must be so being elliptic : i. e. they form a circular spiral ; the 
 ellipticity will be in one direction, and the circularity in the other. An 
 ellipse is a circle drawn out, as it were, to embrace depth also : this is 
 what is done when a circle is arranged spiral wise, it becomes an ellipse:
 
 587 
 
 in arranging an ellipse spiral-wise the depth is, as it were, restored or 
 given out again, and it becomes again circular. [This is true at least 
 of ellipses cut from cylinders ; about cones perhaps I do not see quite 
 enough.] 
 
 The circle and the parabola are surface only ; length and breadth 
 without depth, and therefore never really exist nor can. No motion 
 exists in nature without resistance ; this universal depth is [is result of, 
 and represents] the universal resistance ; depth represents the 'control.' 
 A stone thrown up would move in a parabola if in a vacuum, but it 
 never does, because it is resisted ; and so of the circle likewise, of every 
 motion and every curve. The idea of the ellipse is that it is a circle 
 described by a point wh is, at the same time, vibrating at right angles to 
 the diameter. Its long axis is a diagonal ; it represents a 'thing,' wh 
 has necessarily three dimensions. 1 believe that ellipses form a musi- 
 cal series, in relation to their curves, just as an isochronic spiral 
 must. 
 
 I seek a dynamical mathematics ; consider the mathematical figures 
 not as merely existing, but as becoming ; not the result only, but the 
 process. It is parallel to physical morphology ; but is it not applicable 
 only to solid geometry ? 
 
 The ellipses formed by the orbits of the planets are resolvable into 2 
 elements: 1st, the 3 vibrations ; the vibration is depth increasing the 
 apparent long diameter, wh increase is eliminated by taking what I call 
 the true length : 2nd, the difference between this true length and the 
 transverse or minor axis, wh still remains, and represents, dynamically, 
 the greater up and down motion of the falling earth over the lateral 
 motion ; and formally it represents the varying thickness of the cone. 
 Is not this why the orbit is a section of a cone, and not of a cylinder ? and 
 this depends upon and reveals the law of the inverse square ? the 
 accelerated fall carrying it up to a greater distance than lat- 
 erally ? 
 
 And now I see : an ellipse does not represent only a circle with 
 depth added to it ; this would be an oblique section of a circular column: 
 it involves two elements one, this of vibration in depth, the other the 
 variation in shape arising from conical form, and representing in some 
 way a dynamical element: surely the law of the inverse square in re- 
 lation to the attracting force ? Practically I suppose in nature these 2 
 conditions of ' variation ' are ever at work ; ever the depth as well as 
 length and breadth, and ever the variation of force ? 
 
 Is there not something in this : that various forms of curves corres- 
 pond to the various forms of vibrations ? Thus the curves wh return 
 on themselves completely, as circle and ellipse, represents continuous 
 vibrations, the motions in the opposite directions being entirely of the 
 same kind ; curves that do not return on themselves, represent transi- 
 tive vibrations, or of wh the motion in one direction is of a different 
 kind to that in the opposite, and therefore appears not to exist. Thus 
 the ellipse is representative of [organic] life ; it is the perfect continu- 
 ous vibration : of the same sort in each of the three dimensions. But 
 there are many things to be considered in respect to this relation of 
 curves to vibrations ; thus every curve is a continuous vibration in one 
 direction at least; and thus does it not appear that 2 unequal motions 
 at right angles, constitute a continuous vibration and a transitive 
 
 o 2
 
 588 
 
 
 
 vibration, in directions at right angles to each other ? This is an equa- 
 tion, or chemical decomposition. For the two motions at right angles 
 are really two vibrations two transitive vibrations and two vibrations 
 they continue when compounded ; viz., one transitive, and one continu- 
 ous ; or if exactly equal the two transitive vibrations become two con- 
 tinuous vibrations at right angles, i. e. a circle : they are as it were re- 
 solved and re-compounded ; this is the very idea of chemistry : two 
 transitive vibrations at right angles, two continuous vibrations at right 
 angles, or one continuous and one transitive. &c. It is interesting to 
 note this change of a motion at right angles, as it were, into an opposite 
 motion ; how in a circle each motion, as it were, is continued on into 
 and opposite motion. It is turned at right angles, i. e. resisted ; 
 and constitutes thus ' continuous ' vibrations. Two motions at right 
 angles, co-existing, mutually resist each other, and make each other 
 continue into vibration. Is this why the forms of nature almost ever[?] 
 unending or infinite curves, because in nature the vibrations are ever 
 more or less transitive, never absolutely continuous ? 
 
 Every : [3-fold] one must be ellipse. For all is motion, and therefore 
 all vibration all, 3 vibrations at right angles; i.e. ellipse : and ellipses 
 more or less complicated, but in whole and in each part still ellipse. 
 The inorganic vegetable and animal worlds are ellipse. I have here 
 another universal generalization: the symbol of the trinity is the ellipse* 
 God Himself the three in one represented throughout nature. 
 
 Also do I not see why it is and the beauty of the fact that the el- 
 lipse is a circle described around two centres. It is simply because it 
 is two vibrations in one, as I have seen the universal 3-fold unity to be. 
 A vibratile motion turned once at right angles, i.e. two vibrations in one, 
 gives two circles in one ; wh is the ellipse with its two foci. It shows 
 the two limits. All motion being vibration, motion once limited gives 
 two vibrations at right angles or the circle ; motion twice limited gives 
 three vibrations at right angles, i. e. ellipse. The ellipse shows the 
 succession that is involved in unity ; another presentation of the fact 
 that the succession is eternity : vibration, turned twice, constituting the 
 one. 
 
 [The references in these pages to light for the most part refer to a 
 view I entertained that white light was simple, and that the colors of 
 the spectrum were due to interference, the rays passing through unequal 
 thicknesses of the prism being unequally retarded. This view naturally 
 connected itself afterwards with the idea of the ellipse, regarded as 3 
 vibrations co-existing ; the three-foldness of white light appearing to 
 me as one instance only though an eminent one of a necessary three- 
 foldness of every ' one.'] 
 
 The animal and vegetable worlds are the halves of one vibration and 
 polar ; hence the attraction as of matter and mind mind feeding on 
 matter as animal on vegetable ; the vegetable world representing 
 matter ; the animal, mind. But in this one vibration the two halves are 
 separated, as it were, by an intermediate subordinate vibration ; viz., the 
 digestion and assimilation of the vegetable by the animal. Now, is not 
 this enclosure of subordinate vibrations in a larger one very frequent, 
 and embracing very many ? How curiously this is like one form of 
 'scripture parallelism.' Carnivorous animals constitute another such 
 subordinate vibration. The original force represents the inorganic
 
 589 
 
 divergence followed by an approximation wh becomes the vegetable di- 
 vergence ; then an approx wh becomes the animal divergence, this passing 
 again into the inorganic. Is not this in truth an ellipse 1 the inorganic 
 the length ; vegetable the breadth ; animal the depth ? the length first 
 deflected into breadth, then this derived motion deflected into depth. 
 And length, breadth, and depth all co-exist, or better, the motion in all 
 three directions co-exists, in the elliptic path ; as inorganic, vegetable 
 and animal world do, mutually dependent. Thus nature is an elliptic 
 motion, in a certain sense. 
 
 I think I see a yet more delicate point of analogy : the motion in 
 length of earth's orbit is only one vibration, as it were, it passes to the 
 nearest point to the sun and then away to the farthest once to and fro 
 in each revolution : but the vibrations in breadth and depth are double, 
 they pass to the point nearest the sun, then to the other side, and then 
 back again, in each revolution, as in the vibrations of a string. May 
 there be anything in this as illustrating the relation so decided in its dif- 
 ference between the organic and inorganic ? 
 
 In respect to origin of motion, consider this ' first cause wh is certainly 
 not mechanical :' how simple it is that there is an effect produced on us 
 (a passion in us) wh causes us to perceive motion. Now, all the ques- 
 tions in relation to motion are transferred to the cause of that passion in 
 us. And so transferred they become simple ; the spiritual properties and 
 infinity, or eternity, that we could not separate ultimately from motion 
 and matter, belong naturally enough to the spiritual or eternal act that 
 effects us and causes us to perceive motion and matter. That wh matter 
 and motion at once must be and could not be, the cause the reality 
 plainly is. Here is its origin, here the constant cause ; this non-mechani- 
 cal beginning of motion, is a non-mechanical fact of motion : this great 
 gap from the non-mechanical to the mechanical entirely disappears ; that 
 wh was first is now : in fact, eternity is substituted for time and succes- 
 sion. The appearance of ' physical cause ' is accounted for, and at the 
 same time shown to be appearance only, the true cause of every motion 
 is the passion that is in us ; of the succession and causal connection of 
 motion, the succession and psychical connection (the oneness appearing as 
 succession) of the passion in us. All is to be traced to the cause or act 
 upon us. As all the difficulties and paradoxes connected with the sub- 
 jective sidereal motions cease at once, as soon as they are seen to be re- 
 sult of i. e. as soon as our perceiving them is seen to be result of a 
 passion produced in us, and they and all their qualities are referred to 
 the cause of that passion in us ; viz., the earth s motion. We do not 
 say the passion in us is the cause of the physical universe ; by no means 
 it is the cause of the ' phenomenon,' i. e. of our perceiving the physical 
 universe ; just as the earth's motion is not cause of a revolution of sun, 
 but is the cause of our perceiving it. And the question concerning both 
 is, what is the cause of our perceiving it. The high function of both is 
 to reveal to us the cause not of them but of our perceiving them as we 
 do the revelation of wh cause, the knowledge of it, is a fact vastly 
 more glorious and full of great and happy consequences to us than the 
 phn itself could be if it were real. Compare our universe with that 
 wh would be if the sun's revolution were real. So God's act is more 
 to us than a thousand material universes. But also, and in the mean
 
 590 
 
 time, this phn is productive of most important benefits to us, the materi- 
 al universe is sourse, and necessary source, of good, even as the motion 
 of the sun is : though there is neither motion of sun nor material universe, 
 they give us phenomenal good, wh becomes true good. 
 
 The 'undulatory ' theory of chemistry bears well upon the vital pro- 
 cesses : the various secretions, and the various tissues, also, are not 
 different substances, but different forms of action, or motion only ; and 
 must have definite relations, polar and complementary. May not a liv- 
 ing organism be regarded somewhat as a spectrum ; as a series of uniform 
 vibrations modified and brought into mutual relations ? 
 
 The variety of chemicities, and chemical tendencies and properties i.e. 
 of chemical substances or bodies is the variety of instincts : here is a 
 clue to both. And as the variety of chemicities is at the root of the 
 varieties of life, so the varieties of intellectual life result from the root 
 of the varieties of instinct. 
 
 I see how chemicity constitutes a life ; an approximating and diver- 
 gent process, equal and opposite. The affinity consists in a restrained 
 passion, result of a virtual nutrition ; the chemical union is the function, 
 the heat, &c., resulting, the divergent passion. Thus heat causes either 
 chemical union or decomposition ; just as in the living body it causes 
 either nutrition or function. And in relation to chemicity also surely 
 heat and light produce k life ;' i. e. they cause separation and keeping of 
 particles in relations opposed to chemical affinity. 
 
 Two opposite motions are force and resistance ; and force and resist- 
 ance constitute ' things '; wh therefore have properties, because motion re- 
 sisted is tendency. But more is wanted, for things not only have 
 properties or tendencies to motion, but capability of being acted 
 
 Is it not a begging of the question to assume that quantity absolutely 
 determines weight ? Why shd there not be a special attraction between 
 the earth and some bodies independent of quantity, and so on ? I doubt 
 if the old doctrine of special heavinesses and lightnesses was so very 
 absurd. 
 
 In order to find out what chemical affinity is shd I not investigate my 
 own unifying tendency, wh is surely the same thing. And as the varieties 
 of physical life depend in part on the variety of chemical tendencies, 
 so do not the varieties of mental life, on variety of mental unifying 
 tendency ? 
 
 It is a valuable idea for chemistry that all polar attraction is tendency 
 to form wholes : well seen also in crystallization ; crystals are little 
 ' ideals.' Each result of polar attraction represents the ' whole,' the 
 universe, as ' the ideal ' does. The chemical bodies that have polar 
 qualities are parts, and represent one tendency i. e. tendency to one por- 
 tion of a vibration, without the complementary. And polar bodies in 
 chemistry are composed, just as colors are, and arise from ' interference ; 
 or from ' absorption,' i. e. conversion of part of the whole, or vibratile, 
 motion. For I suppose this is the true ' whole ' in respect to passion, a 
 complete, regular, continuous, vibration. That this must be the case in 
 [Chemicity, 237.
 
 591 
 
 some way in chemistry is evident when we consider that nature is only 
 motion (and tendency thereto) and that motion is essentially vibra- 
 tile. 
 
 Chemicity is motion, and motion cannot be compound, but only com- 
 posed. Motion is essentially vibratile ; attraction is attraction of op- 
 posite halves of vibration : attraction being ever tendency to form a 
 whole, and a whole being a true and complete continuous vibration. 
 Polar bodies are those in wh one half of the vibration is in excess : 
 this excess must arise from resistance to the other (or complementary) 
 motion ; and this resistance is necessarily an opposite motion. Polar 
 bodies therefore are the composed motions ; they are the vibratile mo- 
 tions partly converted by resistance, having only (tendency to) motion of 
 one half of the vibration, of various amounts, directions, &c. All things 
 have ' tendencies ' certain polar attractions though some less decided 
 than others ; e. g. water and neutral bodies : all have some attractions. 
 Therefore none of these things are true wholes ; they are like our ideals, 
 not true ones ; they are more or less partial representations of the 
 whole. There is no true whole but the whole. No true ideal but 
 God's. 
 
 Force and resistance constitute substance ; i. e. two opposite motions, 
 constituting therefore two opposite tendencies to motion. 
 
 Chemistry is in the epicycle stage, it needs one simple fact to be sub- 
 stituted for all these phna ; but one based upon, determined by, according 
 with, necessitating them. But is not the theory-stage of chemistry, the 
 nutrition or wrong phenomenal view, yet insufficiently perfected to admit 
 of interpretation ? 
 
 From the view of light as ellipse [three vibrations in one] is there not a 
 help towards chemicity? In what may be called the white chemicity, surely 
 there are the three vibrations at right angles in one ; and the chemicities 
 are these rectangular motions separated [?] and doubtless as in light. It 
 is good to see that the polar relation is that of right angles : the polar 
 chemicities are at right angles : we may know that chemicity embraces 
 these three ' dimensions ' by the fact of the polarity. Is not light an 
 elliptic motion three vibrations in one : and chemicity an elliptic 
 tendency three polarities in one ? in truth, three pairs of po- 
 larities. 
 
 In chemicity there is added resistance : it is not motion, but resisted 
 motion, i. e. polarity. In truth, it is a life ; an organization from nutri- 
 tion, or passion resisted, and a function, from the passion permitted, op- 
 erating on the organization. So it runs into organic life, to wh it is in- 
 deed so clearly related that perhaps it ought to be included with it. The 
 idea of a life is the general conception ; that of the ellipse, or three po- 
 larities in one, the clue to details. Perhaps chemicity shd be taken into the 
 scope of life, considered together with organic life : three forms of life, 
 chemical, vegetable, animal. The animal embraces both the vegetable 
 or nutritive, the chemical or functional. Length, breadth, and depth 
 are here the elliptic life. 
 
 Life begins with chemistry ; I mean the peculiar life : here we have 
 the nutrition and the function. The storing up of power by resistance, 
 the function by decomposition ; for all function is new nutrition. The
 
 592 
 
 'function' of chemistry is the production of 'organic' (vegetable) life, as 
 the function of vegetable is production of animal, and it returns in ellipse ; 
 the function of the animal returns to the inorganic. This is no true 
 beginning of ' life,' but a better one. The chemical ' substances ' are 
 simply analogous to the vital forms ; they are specific. There is no 
 more originality or abstract elementary character about them. They are 
 simply organisms wh have certain functional powers, and, as it were, 
 instincts. 
 
 Now, if chemicity be thus included with life, the question as to the 
 ' origin' of organic life is done with ; its origin is seen in chemistry. 
 Are not the elements inconvertable, even as specific forms are, and yet 
 only different forms of the same thing ? 
 
 As vegetable life is connected with animal on one side and chemical 
 on the other, so is the chemical life connected with vegetable on one 
 side and inorganic functions, heat, electricity, &c., on the other : for 
 every depth is also a length, i. e. beginning of a new three ; and there- 
 fore also every length or beginning is also a depth, related to two polars 
 before, an union of two, bipolar as well as polar. And is not chemistry 
 bipolar, like animal ; both nutrition and function ; especially functional, 
 or force-producing. Surely heat represents the vegetable ; is to chem- 
 icity what vegetable is to animal. Now have I not got to the root of 
 the mystery of the wrongness of chemistry : its confounding form or 
 ' thing,' with ' matter ' or substance, and speaking of the thing as still 
 being after it had ceased to be : so putting itself into entire opposite- 
 ness to all our other science. Is not even the nomenclature of wh it is 
 so proud thus its greatest bane, the sign and means of its degradation ? 
 "What we have to consider is this constant re-production of the same 
 things ; but this is not mysterious ; it is most natural, when once we 
 have given over thinking that a thing is when it is not. In chemistry 
 we practically attribute to 'things,' or forms, the eternity and indes- 
 tructibility of matter or force. Gold, e. g., means gold; and Jwhen we 
 say chloride of gold we think of the properties of the two and are 
 amazed ; but in truth there is neither chlorine nor gold any more than 
 blue and yellow in green. 
 
 I think I get to see chemicity much better by regarding heat as 
 properly a vibration, analogous to light : light accordingly beinglto chen*- 
 ical polarity as heat (the vibration) is to the divergent tendency, or 
 ' hotness.' And surely light (or other vibration) never directly excites 
 convergent polarity, even as the vibration of heat never directly excites 
 such : all force must produce divergent, it is in the definition. But, of 
 course, a force may indirectly produce the approx passion or tendency, 
 by neutralizing, or permitting. How the tendency arises is not so dif- 
 ficult : consider induction of opposite polarities. Is all the physical first 
 from divergent, i.e. from force ? 
 
 The ' substance ' is nothing to the chemicity any more than to heat. 
 And we see chemicity travels along a wire in galvanism as a palpable 
 vibration. "We shd perhaps rather say chemicity is effect of such vibra- 
 tions ; as hotness (or tendency to expansion) is of heat vibrations, i. e. 
 of force of motion, wh is necessarily vibratile. Much clearer is this ; 
 regarding chemicity, like hotness, as effect of vibrations. 
 
 Now, as hotness seems directly, formally, the same as the vibrations 
 of radiant heat, but may be produced by almost any ' force,' so is not
 
 593 
 
 chemicitj formally the same with some vibrations ; of galvanism ? or 
 even more likely of light ? Is not chemicity to light as hotness is to 
 ' radiant heat '? but, of course, capable of being exerted by almost any 
 others. 
 
 Substance has nothing to do with chemicity any more than with heat. 
 I do not account for ' substance ' by this means at all (or ' matter'), but 
 I remove the difficulty about chemical (or different) ' substances ;' the 
 conception of substance is universal, inseparable from passion, but has 
 just the same relation to chemicity as to all other ' passion.' Chemicity 
 is vibration just as the other forces, producing, of course, different ef- 
 fects according to the condition of the substance it affects. So of weight 
 again ? Is gravitation like hotness or chemicity, and like them therefore 
 from vibration ? All polarity, of course, is from vibration, by defini- 
 tion of it. Has not every ' thing ' its ' chemicity,' as it has its heat, or 
 its color, or weight ? 
 
 Chemists think that the ' thing ' is, after the form has ceased ; just as 
 if they shd collect the dust and paper after they have burnt a book and 
 call it still the book. Thus they utterly perplex themselves. What 
 they have, when they thus change the form, is truly all the ' matter 
 and force,' but quite another thing. That they can reproduce the things, 
 alter them in such definite ways, is very interesting, and, now we see 
 the clue, surely may be understood. But it shd be clearly seen also that 
 the changes of form effected in chemistry are effected not by substances 
 (union or disunion, &c.) but like all other changes of form simply by 
 force. The entire doctrine of composition and decomposition of sub- 
 stances must be set aside, and in its place adopted the conception, so 
 simple and familiar, of change of form by force. In employing a chem- 
 ical body we must consider no longer the ' matter ' but as in respect to 
 every other form of science or work only the force ; as e. g. when we 
 employ a weight mechanically, such as a mass of iron, we do not consi- 
 der the iron, or substance, but the weight only ; or if we employ heat, 
 we do not consider the substance, or body, but only the heat. So when 
 we use a chemical body to affect another, we shd not consider the sub- 
 stance at all, but only the force wh is applied : e. g. the effect of an al- 
 kali and an acid is not the union of two substances, but an altering of 
 form, or of the the 'things,' by force, as we say: but the peculiar form 
 of such alteration is very interesting. 
 
 Thus also I see the ancient use of the word ' form,' and the Tightness 
 of it. The form is the thing ; as Bacon says, if we could induce the 
 ' form ' of gold, we shd have (or make) gold. In truth we do ' make 
 gold ' just in the same sense as we make anything else ; i. e. we can 
 make it of other things suitable to make it ; from certain things, by 
 certain processes or applications of force, we get the thing or form, gold' : 
 and that ie all we can ever say when we make anything. Con-^ 
 sider the question of transmutation ; and why more than one ' thing ' 
 can be made, or ' formed,' from all chemical things except the elements ; 
 that is the question. 
 
 The chemist overlooks the marvel and denies the point of his science, 
 viz. that he can reproduce the ' thing ' after it has ceased, by his con- 
 founding the ' thing ' with matter and force, and saying the thing still 
 is when the form has ceased. After a chemical change the thing has 
 ceased, only the matter and force still are, just as in other changes of
 
 594 
 
 form ; there can be no proper difference made. It is not even true to 
 call them 'compounds,' in the sense of their being the equivalent mat- 
 ter and force ; for it is not strictly the case : all the force is very pro- 
 hahly not present, or perhaps more may be, e. g. in chemical union heat 
 is given off. I say it is not correct to say that the resulting ' thing ' 
 contains all the matter and force of the two things, the heat is not there : 
 or if heat or electricity be applied, the resulting ' thing ' does not repre- 
 sent the equivalent force. In one sense Chemistry is already reformed 
 by using the word 'things' consistently instead of ' substances.' 
 
 The idea of burning being from the one thing having that wh the other 
 has not, is very interesting ; in its application to chem union, e. g. wh is 
 so often but a kind of burning. The chemical union is because the one 
 has that wh the other has not. Surely the mental union helps here : 
 the union of polars is putting to gether two halves, excluding the ' not- 
 being ' from each. Thus arbitrary action and necessary passion give the 
 true positive, necessary action. Now is there not something parallel to 
 this in chemistry ? and is it true to say that necessary action consists of 
 arbitrary action and necessary passion ? Clearly not ; the arbitrariness 
 and the passiveness are not in it. There must be some good reason for 
 the thing being supposed to be, in chemistry, after it has ceased ; this 
 must have been necessary, even as the introduction of matter and force, 
 and by seeing this we shall see something more about ' things.' 
 
 Think of this : a piece of potassium thrown into water is cast into a 
 lake of fire. So of phosphorus in oxygen, &c. Is not a great key to 
 chemical union to be found in this idea of burning that it is of the 
 ' Nicht ' : the effect of love upon the not-love ; of being or action upon 
 not-being or not-acting ? Is there some such relation in chemicity, as 
 between creator and creature ? It is surely love, self-sacrifice, giving 
 itself to become other. I begin to see surely the relation of chemical 
 opposites must be as it were that of being and not-being. The action, 
 the burning, occasioned by the not being, i. e. not-resistance, and so the 
 action produces apparent effects. 
 
 The operation of an opposite chemical body upon any given body is 
 such as that of removing action ; so it causes an operation wh otherwise 
 wd not have been, and is not strictly speaking an adding, but a taking 
 away. This is only saying again what I have seen long ago, and is in- 
 deed involved in the functional doctrine. Chemical action is permitted; 
 i. e. when occurring on the approximation of two bodies it must be so. 
 In truth, all effect of stimulus is thus that of not-being causing, absence. 
 This is in it. [In what sense answering to Sin ?] 
 
 Thus I get in fact to this, that all approximative or permitted passion 
 is truly burning the effect of being on not-being. Love is burning, 
 i. e. creating ; is destroying not-being. This is the definition of it. 
 Is the attraction of the sun and planets a burning ? Whenever two 
 chemical bodies with an affinity are brought together and union ensues, 
 this it is : Force, action, being, are brought into connection with a 
 1 nicht,' and burning results. It is the image of Hell. 
 
 Now I must consider wh of two chemical bodies (acid and alkali, e.g.) 
 represents the ' nicht.' [Is it not the female, even as the ' creature ' is 
 female to God ?] Probably here neither is absolutely the not-being, but 
 the image of it only? each relatively to the other is ' not,' and ' Being ' ; 
 we call them (how wisely) positive and negative. An illustration in
 
 595 
 
 electricity ; the positive, or Being, or force, finds in the negative simply 
 a not ; as it were room, liberty to exert its nature wh is to act. Nega- 
 tive electricity exactly represents the ' not ' ; the electric attraction is 
 the ' Being ' giving itself to the not-being ; it is fire, burning. [See 
 the electric spark, or light.] 
 
 Being is essentially action ; the not-being gives scope or room for the 
 acting : that is all. God loves the creature : when the creature also is 
 made to love, or to be, then it is united, made one with God, even as 
 we are in Christ. 
 
 This is chemical union : Conceive a body in a state of tendency, say 
 to expand, but resisted ; now to get action here we do not need to add 
 anything, only to take away that wh resists its action ; we need only to 
 present to it a not-acting, or not-being, and instantly the expansion 
 takes place. To take away action, and present not-action, are the same 
 thing. The inaction needs only to be relative. This is precisely what 
 occurs when two oppositely polar chemical bodies are brought together : 
 at least in principle, and it shows how exactly not-being appears to us 
 as a thing : e. g. that wh has a tendency to ascend is as much a ' thing' 
 to us as that wh falls, yet the tendency to ascend is merely from relative 
 absence of weight : and see, a heavy and a relatively light body must 
 attract ? Do not the planets afford to the action of the sun's rays a 
 scope, a 'nicht' and .-. they are attracted? the sun's rays operate in 
 that direction alone ; not equally diffused thro' space but proceeding, 
 like a current of electricity e. g., to the points at wh there is room for 
 them ? All this in fact comes within the law of motion in least resist- 
 ance : it is but one form of it. Chemicity is only a form of least resist- 
 ance : and all attraction is of the being for the not-being. Love is at- 
 traction in the widest sense : therefore see again how love is Tightness, 
 holiness. 
 
 So the attraction of the sun and planets is truly like electric attrac- 
 tion when this is seen, and we see in electric attraction and repulsion 
 such motion in least resistance ; just as the fall and ascent of heavy and 
 light bodies respectively ; only going, as it were, where there is room 
 for them. 
 
 This in truth is one reason why there can be no vacuum, viz. because 
 not-being is itself, and indeed emphatically to us, 'thing.' This is just 
 what we want to see : that thing is not ' being,' but exactly not-being. 
 No-thing is moral Being ; that is the only ' nothing.' The wisdom of 
 the mystics, perhaps beyond their own knowledge, is evinced in calling 
 God 'nothing.' 
 
 If ' thing ' be Being, what is God who is not ' Thing ' ? He is absolute 
 Being because no- 'thing.' It is the not-being constitutes the thing; it 
 is not spiritual or moral, wh is the only Being ; [inertia, as we say.] 
 
 See how it is by ' not-being ' that the steam engine is made to act, 
 and all operations of machines : by taking away the resistance. How 
 by causing ' not-being ' by permitting we can alone avail ourselves of 
 the powers of Nature. To us physically in all respects but morally 
 ' not-being ' is the thing, indeed there is nought else to be the ' thing ' ; 
 for all Being is spiritual or moral. "What then remains to constitute 
 ' thing ' but ' not-being ' ? ' Thing ' is Being not seen as spiritual : the 
 fact the actual Being of all, is spiritual, but seen by us as not spirit- 
 ual, it IB ' thing ' (physical Or mental). This is in truth only saying
 
 596 
 
 that things are ' forms ' of spiritual fact. It is 'not-being' constitutes 
 the physical (and mental ?) ; i. e. it is that wh is related to Sin. As 
 Paul says, the law of the flesh the carnal, the physical, or natural. 
 The spiritual is holy in itself, and necessarily so : "that is Being. 
 Physical and mental are not Being because having no moral Being. 
 From Sin conies the physical ; or (?) from our relation as creatures, if 
 the creature relation is that of not-being. 
 
 It is of course necessary to bear in mind that this relation of being 
 and not-being exists in very many forms ; in fact in respect to all forms 
 of ' thing ' ; and must be regarded in its appropriate relations. [Is it 
 the sexual or polar relation ; can it be traced so ?] Of course in regard 
 to actual (or moral) Being all ' things ' are not-being, but each form of 
 being has its own being and not being chemical, mechanical, &c. 
 The words must not be allowed to perplex, as if they referred to phe- 
 nomenal being, &c. Doubtless the words are wrong, and the proper 
 ones will come to me by-and-bye ; right words do not need guarding and 
 explaining so much. 
 
 I see somewhat of this relation of polarity as being and not-being : 
 Consider it in the pendulum : the upward motion, the female, is the 
 not-being, the suppression, of the male or downward ; wh is the action, 
 the power, gives itself, or produces. But the motion at right angles wh 
 is thus produced, and wh still is, or re-presents, the downward, primary 
 motion, how am I to recognize this in my universal polar relation of 
 being and not-being ? As the upward movement is the exact counterpart 
 of the downward, but reversed ; so is not the ' not-being,' or ' thing,' 
 an exact image [reversed] of Being, or the spiritual ; its effect and 
 image ? Think also of this : the sum of the horizontal movement in 
 the pendulum, and of the remainder of the upward, at any given mo- 
 ment, are always equal or equivalent to the downward ? or there is 
 clearly some constant relation. 
 
 This polar relation, wh I thus trace in chemicity, of being and not- 
 being, is of course limited, and as it were specific. It exists only be- 
 tween things that are otherwise of one species, so to say. It is not be- 
 tween a thing and nothing, but between two things which having many 
 properties in common, are, in respect to one of them, respectively being 
 and not-being. It is the absence of a certain form of force alone which 
 constitutes any given female polarity. Motion in least resistance is it- 
 self simply the fact of permitted passion ; the force going where there 
 is room for it, Being uniting itself to not-being. This is the meaning 
 of it. It is in truth only the fact of love : Being giving itself; giving 
 itself to not-being. It is the burning, the fire, of love. It is wonder- 
 ful : and also that it shd have appeared in this form to me, this negative 
 form, of not-resistance, wh at first appeared a disadvantage. Now it is 
 seen to be simply love : love, by definition, giving itself. Mature herself 
 shows us all is the one fact of Love. And we see thus how love may 
 destroy ; does destroy. This law of Nature, how fearfully it works 
 oftentimes. It is a fearful thing, physically, to fall into the hands of 
 Love. It crushes and destroys that which has not itself corresponding 
 love. This law wh is so beautiful, so gentle, wh works all the exactest 
 adaptations, the delicate loveliness of life ; how utterly, how remorse- 
 lessly, it crushes and destroys. Yea, and must do so ; or it wd cease to 
 be Love.
 
 597 
 
 Is not every ' thing ' a life, or living thing, in this sense of being a 
 force, or tendency, ready to act upon a stimulus : must it not be so ? for 
 every thing is the result of force, or of nutrition, and has power to act. 
 Thus all action in Nature is from approx tendency ; i. e. is from stimu- 
 lus, or bringing' into relation with the thing a corresponding not-being. 
 This surely is the relation of our senses to the external world ; they 
 afford a direction of least resistance. This is the meaning of the idea 
 of stimulus or of the application of the not-being; and it involves the 
 idea of every 'thing' being 'living,' in the sense of being force re- 
 strained. Is not here the clue to chemicity : the matter or substance 
 disappears, and we perceive that we are dealing with force under its 
 known and necessary laws. And does there not thus loom upon us 
 also a deeper view of the relations of the two forms of motion 
 or action, [or the vibration] ? Why is the female or ' upward ' a 
 not-being ? No ; it is not so exactly : the not-being is not the female 
 strictly, or the upward motion ; but the not-being occasions the force to 
 become the upward. The relations here are intricate, and I must ponder 
 them. There is only a relative not-being ; and the ' nutrition ' wh pro- 
 duces the new thing is not the ' not-being ' but the becoming ; i. e. it is 
 the ' becoming ' of the former force, wh is permitted occasioned by 
 the not-being. The consuming, the destroying, of the not-being, is the 
 becoming, the creating. Sin is not nutrition : I fell into that error be- 
 fore. I have to learn the relation of the not-being to the Being ; how 
 it comes ; and therein what part Sin plays in the universe, in what way 
 connected with creation. 
 
 As it is now, Chemistry is under a twofold error. (1) Confusing all 
 ideas ; rendering the conception of matter inconsistent by supposing dif- 
 ferent kinds of matter, or substances. (2) In not seeing that she has 
 to do with things [that arise from force .-. and cease as all 'things' do]. 
 She dreams about different 'matters,' and disregards the different 
 1 things.' 
 
 See how in a machine the stimulus is a producing ' not-force ' ; take 
 a compressed vapor e. g. : a not-resisting is produced, and the action 
 follows. So again in my former illustration of cold and hot air : the 
 cold air presents to the hot a not- force or not-resisting, and the union 
 ensues the burning : i. e. the act of love, wh is ever burning. Love 
 acting where there is not corresponding, i.e. equal opposite, love, is ever 
 burning. 
 
 A general idea thus suggests itself to me : the opposite equal force 
 the absence of wh is the stimulus, the ' not,' and produces burning, or 
 action, or function [wh are all one] is that wh constitutes the vibra- 
 tion. And so I see another relation of the ' not-being ' : it is the ab- 
 sence of that equal and opposite action wh is involved in the conception 
 of action as vibration. Does this help to the thought of Sin ? Does it 
 show how Sin is not right ? Only that which is in time and space thus 
 has relation to not-being. Succession depends on not-being ; where 
 there is no not-being there is one absolute Being. Sin, as it were, is 
 the not being wh causes the constant change. Love with corresponding 
 love, like action and reaction, being unchanging ? But now consider again: 
 The production of this ' not,' in Nature, is always by the operation of 
 some other force : the ' stimulus ' is a force wh neutralizes the resistance: 
 the negative elements also are result of force. But can I apply this 
 [Chemicity, 425.
 
 598 
 
 also to the moral or actual ; how moral not-being is from other action 
 wh neutralizes or causes not to be ? Surely rather, I am at the point 
 wh constitutes it moral : that it is uncaused inaction ? It is moral 
 inaction wh causes God's love to be a lake of fire. 
 
 Is not this true also of disease : as each thing, each life, (?) is from 
 some special less-resistance defect or absence of 'action,' i.e. of there- 
 action wh constitutes the resistance as each thing or life is in truth 
 some permitted action, so is not each disease a life in the same sense ? 
 each arises from some special ' not ' ; from some particular absence of 
 the resisting force ; i. e. of the vital force ? Also is not the ' vital force' 
 the reaction ; the controlling force represents the creature's love to the 
 creator ; that wh comes from the limit to the action, or the love. The 
 creature's love his being from the self-limit of the creator, is like the 
 vital resistance ; and from absence of that comes disease ? The perfect 
 correspondence is the health ; sin is disease ; absence or defect of the 
 vital, the created love. 
 
 Consider now in what sense we see the phenomenal motions without 
 us, when we are borne along : the process concerned in our ' inferring ' 
 or perceiving them. A good field is here for thought ; why it is and 
 must be, and what it is. I think the simple case of our riding shd be 
 considered first. 
 
 I see that in affirming the ' real ' to be the image of the ' actual '* I 
 embrace the absolute goodness and beauty of the phenomenon ; viz. as 
 God's act, and as I find it to be all passion controlled, or passion in 
 least resistance : and at the same time its evil. It is evil as the image 
 of Sin, or spiritual not-acting ; but this evil is included in the absolute 
 good. 
 
 There is a necessary correspondence between the spiritual and the phy- 
 sical, as being its phenomenon ; not an arbitrary one. "We could not 
 accept the word, ' that great Dove, the Devil ' : the words [affirming 
 the identity of the spiritual and physical] must be true or they cannot 
 exist. Why is Christ the Lamb ; the Holy Spirit the Dove ? Why are 
 we to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves ; uniting the symbols 
 of the Evil and tl e Holy Spirit ? 
 
 This, perhaps, is the best conception of the Eternal : that wh exists 
 by giving, or by giving itself. In that is no succession, no time. ' The 
 Eternal ' is Love : He who exists in self-sacrifice, the Creator, the Ee- 
 deemer. 
 
 We exist in those we love, because we give ourselves to and for them ; 
 Christ exists in His redeemed, truly; not only in the same way, but in 
 such a way as that existence of ours in others is partly a symbol of. 
 Spirit is that wh is in self-sacrifice or in giving, i. e. it is Love. Thus 
 it is eternal, because its being is in its becoming. So in truth even 
 phenomenally everything is eternal except the 'form,' wh alone ceases 
 in becoming another : the fact, the force, ever is in becoming. 
 
 Consider how, when we see that the physical world is only ' passion 
 in least resistance,' we feel at once that it must be something more : it 
 is absurd ; the universe cannot be only a definition like that : it is a 
 fact, has an actuality wh we demand to be given back to us. Its ' reality' 
 
 * At this point it appears this use was assigned to these two wordi. 
 [Spirit, 156. See p. 538.
 
 599 
 
 resolves itself into a form of thought, but we insist upon a higher re- 
 ality ; becoming no-thing it must become fact. Can I make this felt as 
 I feel it, that resolving Nature into an axiom demonstrates its having a 
 spiritual essence ; that it is an image of the actual ? 
 
 Is not the work of the artist, in the widest sense, the image or phn 
 of his passion, or idea, as the physical is of the spiritual ? His physical 
 work, the motion of his hands, &e, is its efficient cause in respect to its 
 phenomenal relations ; bat his conception, or passion, is not the efficient 
 cause of it : that does not ' become ' the picture, &c. that exists still : 
 the picture is the 'image ' of it. The picture, &c., in this sense is a 
 work of art, and not as merely so much matter without any meaning ; 
 it exists only in, and by virtue of, the continued existence of this idea or 
 conception. If the idea ceased to be, the picture (in that aspect) would 
 cease to be. The idea is revealed by it, not as having been, but as being. 
 Tho' the originator be dead, or have forgotten it, still it exists ; and 
 because it exists the picture is (as a picture). This is true in the main, 
 but several points want putting right. 
 
 I have seen how time necessarily exists to us as a phenomenon ; viz. 
 as image of the actual, because that is self-sacrifice ; succession is one 
 thing giving itself to become another. But here is a clearer view : we 
 say of the re-al that one thing ceases to be in becoming another, and 
 draw a contrast between the phenomenal and the spiritual wh is, or ex- 
 ists, only in such self-giving : but the distinction is not so great as ap- 
 pears. In the physical it is only the ' form ' that ceases to be, in the 
 self-sacrifice, or efficient causation. The fact, the force, the true re-ality 
 still continues, exists, is, in becoming : in truth only in becoming is. 
 That is as true of physical action as of spiritual. The ' actual,' whether 
 spiritual or physical, only is in giving, exists in becoming ; it gives it- 
 self and therein it still is, therein alone it is. If it do not so it is not. 
 Clearly it is so in Nature, not only in operative force but in merely re- 
 sisting force ; it is always transmitted : when a weight is suspended the 
 force is not strictly at rest or not giving itself; it is transmitted, ' given,' 
 from one thing to another incessantly throughout the universe ; and no- 
 thing can be absolutely, permanently in equilibrium : long as it may 
 take for the force to be transmitted far enough, the time infallibly cornea 
 when it becomes operative force, and the equilibrium fails : besides the 
 probability that what we call ret-'t, or equilibrium, is truly only a state 
 of constant motion. So there is here no real contrast between the phe- 
 nomenal and the spiritual force, wh is the type of action, and exists in 
 giving itself. Force .. is also eternal, there is no succession to it ; suc- 
 cession is change of form ; form ceases to be as force becomes or gives 
 itself. This is cause and effect. But this does not seem phenomenal 
 only, the conception of change of form ; this applies equally to the spi- 
 ritual, is the fact of the spiritual: as in God's creation ; He exists in 
 His creatures, it is change of form. He is the efficient cause of created 
 spirit ? as Christ gives Himself to us by existing in us. This is the 
 fact of creation and redemption, of all spiritual giving of self. Thus I 
 see how time must be. The spiritual, or actual, is Love in many forms : 
 as the physical, or phenomenal, is Force in many forms : both the love 
 and the force being eternal, existing in giving itself. Now what is the 
 conception of form, whence does it arise to us phenomenally, and how 
 from the spiritual ? The one eternal ' force ' in many forma is God's
 
 600 
 
 creation ; the spiritual universe is imaged in the physical, and especially 
 in the nutrition wh produces the forms. The created spirits become by 
 their right action : that produces their ' form ' ? 
 
 Now I can avail myself again of my view of Nature as passion in 
 least resistance : in this it also images the spiritual, or creation. For 
 this is merely that every ' form ' is determined by every other, all form 
 results from it, and in truth is one ; one living form or organization. I 
 do not see it clearly, but this is the best way I can : all created spirits, 
 the spiritual creation, is thus one living whole, one organization, obeying 
 in appropriate mode the same law of least resistance. They are so by 
 necessity or by Tightness. The very idea of ' control,' moral control, 
 involves and implies ' action in least resistance.' So the spiritual uni- 
 verse must be in ' form ' one with the physical ; the physical is one 
 great life or organization, so is the spiritual : it is in truth God's Life ; 
 the Living God. God's self-control, His self-limit, constitutes His life, 
 wh is the created (spiritual) universe, and corresponds precisely with 
 the phenomenal. All therefore is in exactest and most perfect mutual 
 adaptation and proportion ; a living organization, one and yet many, 
 many in one : each part being what it is by means of, and for the sake 
 of, all the other parts. All that beauty wh I have seen in this concep- 
 tion as applied to the physical, comes back now in relation to the spirit- 
 ual. As the physical universe results from it ' necessarily,' so the spi- 
 ritual universe results from it necessarily also ; i. e. rightly, or by means 
 of love. Love controlling itself, self-control, self-giving, is the one fact 
 of the spiritual world, the 'actual' ; as it is of the 're-al.' And, in 
 details, as the physical universe is thus many individual ' things,' each 
 with its properties, its powers, its peculiar resistance, its life, nutrition 
 and function, &c. ; so the spiritual universe must be, as we know and 
 feel it is, parallel to the physical : many individual spirits, each with 
 its powers,its own peculiar power of resistance, wh, exerted, constitutes 
 its life : each with its right , or natural [necessary] life, but not carried 
 out in all [even as we see imaged in the phenomenon]. The forms of 
 the physical are such as they are because the spiritual are such as they 
 correspond to or image. Love controlled becomes necessarily such a 
 spiritual universe as is seen in the physical universe, wh is passion con- 
 trolled. I have seen before how our ' instinctive ' views of Nature cor- 
 respond to that of the spiritual universe ; many individual agents, &c. 
 Now I want to know how and why we get this knowledge through such 
 a course as Science has gone through ; why especially the idea of a real 
 matter ? 
 
 Now since we seem able to derive Time from the succession of forms, 
 can we also arrive at Space ? does not passion in time involve motion, 
 and .-. space ? Does time involve motion ? 
 
 And again : the ' images ' of phenomenal facts as the sun's motion, 
 motion of hedges on the road's side, reflection of candle, &c. constitute 
 an excellent ' image ' of the relation of the physical as an image of the 
 spiritual. We have this relation itself imaged to us. Can we, indeed, 
 know or understand anything save by such ' imaging ' ? Can "we directly 
 1 perceive ' anything but an image ? I think not : that wh see or per- 
 ceive, in any sense, must be such. ' "We see images,' as the Platonists 
 said, and quite truly ; but they did not know images of what. Truly 
 we ' see ' the external things, this I certainly affirm : we see trees,
 
 601 
 
 animals, things, [I drop my argument about the change in us, not that 
 it is not valid but it has done its work] ; there are the real ' things ' 
 around us, and we see them, and our seeing them is evidence enough 
 that they are there. But then I think we ought to call the sun's motion 
 re-al ; it is ' thing '-al ; it is external to ourselves, it is different from 
 an ' imagined ' motion, or a thought of it, &c. it is an ' image.' "We 
 must get that word ' real ' to its right meaning. 
 
 Now, can I not, by this, advance farther towards the fact of percep- 
 tion itself, or of sensation ? We perceive images ; our bodies and minds 
 are part of this ' image ' of creation, and by passion in them [functions 
 resulting from the nutrition] we are made to ' perceive ' the part of the 
 image that is related to us ; external to them and within the reach of 
 their observation. Should we not first begin with our own life, our 
 bodies and minds, and see how they are an image perhaps of ourselves? 
 Or does our sensational being, in its details, correspond with the 
 phn? 
 
 In truth 'force' is an expression for the spiritual act, it is the very fact 
 It has all the properties of spirit, its activity, its eternity, its existence 
 in self-sacrifice ; but therefore must have also what we deny to it, per- 
 sonality, consciousness, and cannot be material, i. e. real or 'thing-al,' 
 because that is to deny the very properties or attributes of spirituality, 
 existence, &c., wh we have ascribed to it. 
 
 See how the inductive science grows out of the a priori the 
 ' rational ' even as Eve was taken out of Adam ; now she has to 
 be ' brought to ' him ; the two are to be made one. See here a 
 proof(?) that this must be the true account of the formation of the 
 woman ; it must have been in the real, or in the form, because it is in 
 the fact ? 
 
 The physical is image of the spiritual, i. e. regarded as things, not as 
 force, or matter and motion [for I think that the words matter and mo- 
 tion must be two words for the one word force : force = matter and mo- 
 tion ?], in this respect, e. g. : that, so clearly, acting is being; nothing 
 is unless it acts, and except in acting ; take away the acting, and the 
 thing is not. So spirit only is in acting ; there is no other being but 
 acting. Here is the beauty of using the word 'act' for things, wh is 
 quite right, only the word must be used consistently ; all acting is one, 
 i. e. moral acting. That wh we know, or have in us, or are, must be 
 the standard ; all else is hypothesis. There never was a greater viola- 
 tion of common sense than the attempt to reduce the moral to the phy- 
 sical, to matter and motion ; that wh is known to that wh is unknown ; 
 the felt or perceived to the imagined ; nothing ever so utterly ' meta- 
 physical.' 
 
 We must do right, to make our moral life ; here is the fact ; it is [no 
 matter how it is defined, let it be any way in theory ; do the right : 
 that is what remains when metaphysics is laid aside. Let thought be 
 function of the brain, let moral right be operation of physical lavs, or 
 form of motion ; it will all do. But do the right ; Live : that is the lesson 
 of the physical world ; and this necessity returns upon us just the same 
 after all our speculations : live ; if it be physical, live ; if it be spirit- 
 ual, live. What matters it ? 
 
 We cannot make or create evil by adding any thing, it is only by 
 withdrawing, by absence of some thing wh is necessary for perfect good.
 
 602 
 
 So evil is image of sin ; but is comprehended in a perfect whole. What 
 we see is creation creation from nothing, making being from not-being; 
 i. e. redemption. Creation out of nothing is redemption. And see the 
 truth of the idea that matter is, necessarily, partly evil. Creation from 
 nothing involves that evil, that defect, that partly not-being. This is the 
 image of redeeming from sin. The creature is not made from not-being 
 [or nothing], but from God : God ' becomes ' the creature. It is only 
 the fallen creature, the sinning, not-being creature, that is made from 
 not-being, or redeemed. It is ' matter,' or 'things,' that are ' created 
 from nothing :' but this creation from nothing is image of redemption, 
 not of the fact of the creation of spirits, wh is not creating from no- 
 thing but from God. So the physical and sin are essentially connected. 
 The old instincts wh find matter essentially evil, and identify 'the flesh/ 
 or 'things,' with the sinful, is right. This must grow upon me more, 
 but it is the thing. It is God's redeeming act we see in nature ; self-sac- 
 rifice to make the not-being be. ' Redemption is creation seen in 
 time.' 
 
 Thus evil belongs essentially to matter ; i. e. matter [or things], is 
 the image of spiritual redemption ; of spirit that is partly sinful, or 
 not-being ; it is imperfect, defective ; it developes. And so I see : it is 
 only to a fallen spirit there is a material world ; only to the sinful is 
 there any not-being? Or no, this will not do ; for Adam, sinless, was 
 placed in this world. But reflect : this world was different to him be- 
 fore he fell ; these scripture difficulties become glorious truths. This is 
 the curse on nature from Adam's fall, in some way. In truth, being 
 ever necessarily the same fact, it first became the physical world, as 
 we see it, when Adam fell then death ? [What is the evidence of palae- 
 ontology respecting previous death ? One does not know : these 'things' 
 are forms. I have the fact here, but not the right form.] So when we 
 leave this world, if perfectly holy, ' things ' will not be to us ; then only 
 the actual, the eternal ; no image then ot sin ; i. e. no death, or ceasing 
 to be, because no sin. There could have been no death before sin was, 
 because no actual death from wh the image could arise : death is by sin. 
 Things are the image of the actual ; death, the image of sin, could not 
 precede it. So no 'things,' that pass or die in heaven ; no time. Is 
 time theu the result of sin ? And yet was not Adam surrounded by 
 'things' in paradise, with a real body, &c.? This I have to get right ; 
 but I know I am on the track, finding the Bible words necessary, i. e. 
 right. 
 
 Here is Paul's meaning in the law of his spirit and of his flesh : the 
 spirit only is in holiness ; the flesh is the death, the image of the sin 
 or not-being : ' The body of this death.' How profund an expression ! 
 It is not the death without him, but within him. To Paul the real is 
 image of the spiritual ; and he speaks of it as such, meaning the fact 
 when he names the form. 
 
 Passion, in the sense of tendency, is always function. Now, are not 
 our ' passions,' our tendencies or desires, wh we we have to control, 
 ever such spiritual functions : i. e. considered actually, or in relation to 
 that of wh they are images ? Do I not bring back now, with a wholly 
 superior truth and beauty, the word action to the physical ? Passion 
 has its beauty, its poetry also ; but now action a higher, I have both 
 in one ; it is action in being passion.
 
 603 
 
 How striking an image of the ' action ' of the spirit seems to be 
 presented to us in the reason or judgment ; wh ' submits itself -when it 
 judges it ought to submit itself:' an apparent self-act, in duty: and 
 being only in such action ; for if the reason do not thus judge, or act, 
 rightly, ' submit itself when it ought,' we feel it does not exist : the 
 reason or judgment is so far deficient or wanting ; in being wrong, it is 
 not. And how wonderful a vision presents itself: the reason or judg- 
 ment is determined according to the law of least resistance [as I have 
 seen, logic is thought in direction of least resistance]. This is the 
 ' ought ' to wh reason submits itself. Now, here surely is an image 
 also. I have even seen before how the spiritual universe, being from 
 love self-controlled, must be in this sense also a life : must exist, as it 
 were, in development according to that law ; must be imaged in it. So 
 the sense of moral right is such as the sense of logical right, or physi- 
 cal right : moral, logical, physical necessity, they are all one : necessity 
 is Tightness : felt as such in the moral and mental, and clearly per- 
 ceived as such in the physical, wh is their image. 
 
 Then, the conscience, the moral right, is this same necessity, arising 
 from moral < passion :' love in direction of least resistance : the same 
 that is perceived as logical necessity [or other forms artistic, &c.]in the 
 mental ; and as physical necessity in things : all illustrating the law of 
 least resistance ; that to wh there is least contrary : that is right. So 
 how clearly the physical is image of the spiritual ; how clearly neces- 
 sity is rightness. It is wonderful that even the origin and essential 
 nature of the conscience shd be written thus in nature. 
 
 Now,, the * I ' necessarily flows from the necessity for this moral ac- 
 tion [in least resistance] ? The individual Being is from love self- 
 limited, necessarily : eren as individual things are. Each with its own 
 resistance, wh is from previous action. As things [individual] only are 
 from limit to the passion, so individual Beings only are from God's 
 self-limit. This is clearly imaged. And all Beings have thus nutrition 
 and function, are thus vibration, even as all 'things' are and must be. It 
 is from the limit in each case : the limit wh is, actually, God's self- 
 limit, imaged in nature. And thus these abstractions of matter and 
 motion have their use and necessity. I arrive at this by means of them. 
 
 Is it not a beautiful point I thus see : viz., that each individual, each 
 I, is not independent, but is a jesult of spiritual act or Being in least re- 
 sistance, as it were, even as each thing is ; that the spiritual universe is 
 an ' organization,' even as the physical. [Must it not therefore corres- 
 pond to ' man,' as Swedenborg says ?] Thus the origin of the ' actual ' 
 individual is as that of the ' real' individual, or thing ; but not in time. 
 It is a development, a vital development [or organization], truly ; but 
 one of the actual wh does not pass ; not of forms or things that begin 
 and cease to be. Each spiritual individual or Being is such as he is 
 and where, and when, and how he is in exact adaptation to all others ; 
 such as he must or ought to be. From hence the sense of ought or 
 conscience. And sin is absence of this Being or action. And this ab- 
 sence of corresponding love or action, how clearly it is imaged in the 
 physical. 
 
 I begin now to see more about the influence of evil spirits : in a sys- 
 tem of connected action, inaction [of any part, element, or Being] ne- 
 cessarily produces mischief. But the mischief is absolute, actual evil 
 
 i- 2
 
 604 
 
 [i. e. sin] only to the sinner ; as passive evil it is life, nutrition. Suf- 
 fering is not ' actual ' evil, it is sensitive nutrition : -we see that our 
 right action, or self-control, involves suffering. Is it only because we 
 are fallen that it does so ; does the right action, the moral nutrition, of 
 holy spirits cost them no self-denial ? I can hardly think it. If not 
 passion or desire restrained, whence and how the life ? and in what 
 sense is it ' self-sacrifice ?' But how clearly the suffering involved in 
 right action, the spiritual nutrition, shows that suffering as such, and 
 apart from sin, is nutrition, and not actually or truly evil. The spirit- 
 ual universe, being a connected whole an 'organization' spiritual in- 
 action, or sin, produces spiritual or moral evil. Our moral Being is 
 connected with the moral Being of all other spirits, and their sin tends 
 to sin in us ; like the moral influence of men on each other, wh is the 
 fact of that spiritual organization, and wh the physical organization 
 images. 
 
 This is in fact the disease, the disease of humanity ; it is acted on 
 from without ; something has influenced it, so that every part, every 
 man, does not his part ; sins. That is the disease. But may it he that 
 Satan has some special relation to, or is connected with, this ' aggregate 
 humanity ?' I shd not wonder if this shd he the solution : there is a 
 disease, an inaction, a partial death in humanity as a whole, affecting 
 every member. Can it be that Satan is, as it were, this disease ? So 
 at once ourselves, and not ourselves ; our lusts, and yet the Devil ? 
 Satan be part of, one with, humanity ? This makes human and satanic 
 wickedness one, which clearly seems the idea of the Bible in many 
 passages. I do believe it. And see what a relief it is, how dark a 
 cloud it removes. 
 
 Now that all this may be in the spiritual how clear an evidence we 
 have in the physical : spiritual or moral life and disease, is all that I 
 affirm ; and who, seeing that bodies are diseased, or not as they 'ought' 
 to be, shall call it absurd to say that moral Beings are diseased, are not 
 according to the Tightness of their case, the design of their Being ; i.e. 
 not as they ought to be ? Who, seeing bodies healed, and failing life 
 restored by human means, shall call the doctrine of the healing of spirits 
 the restoring of the failing life by the Divine Physician a chimera ? 
 Especially when we see it is a fact. And lastly, who when he sees in 
 nature this disease, this ruin, yet holds God's work perfect, and only 
 marred by sin will hesitate to see God's moral creation perfect and 
 absolutely good, although thus marred ? Who will deny in the moral, 
 the very facts presented to his eyes in the physical ? He who will not 
 do this, will not, cannot, deny spiritual life, disease, death, and redemp- 
 tion. And yet again : we see that in the physical all the disease and 
 evil there is, is yet from motion in least resistance, or passion controlled, 
 and makes up part of the vaster life. So in the spiritual : sin in truth 
 is disease, is death, is hateful ruin ; even as all this is in the physical ; 
 yet can we not know it all to be part of the vast life that God"'s self- 
 controlling love eternally creates ? Fearful, hateful, dreadful, the very 
 blackness of darkness and despair though it be, itself the bottomless 
 pit burning and blasting with sulphureous flames ; yet is it all love 
 self-controlled. It is swallowed up in God ; part of the infinite, the 
 ineffable life, wh is good ; is love, absolute, yea, all in all. If God shall 
 be all in all, then is He now.
 
 605 
 
 I think this view embodies the good part of Maurice's view about 
 the evil spirit, and escapes some difficulty. Here is the fundamental 
 goodness of man overborne, but morally overborne by temptation from 
 without. This is disease ; always disease is such ; it is a power from 
 without that overcomes and prevents the action of the life : the vital 
 force ; or, morally, the right action. No living thing dies prematurely, 
 save as its life is thus overpowered ; so no man sins save so, but the 
 overpowering is moral : it is yielding to the Devil, wh is being drawn 
 away by our own lusts. 
 
 There is no not-being but sin. God is infinite ; our creation is not 
 creation from not-being, but from Himself creation from not-being is 
 redemption ; thus I see the meaning of sin being not-being, or not-act- 
 ing. In that consists its actuality ; in that it is unique and alone. 
 Sin, or not-being, is not relapsing into an original not-being ; it is mak- 
 ing the not-being, wh never was before, nor can be, save in sin. So the 
 physical world is image of redemption, not of creation as distinguished 
 from it. We conceive of evil of chaos, or of not less evil vacancy, or 
 absence before it; that it was not created out of the fulness of God's in- 
 finite life, but from not-being, from defect. Is not this the meaning of 
 Genesis? And see in Genesis; creation is represented as being from chaos 
 the spirit of God brooding over the face of it. Surely it is the image of 
 redemption in the soul : and first is light. 
 
 So here we find a clue to the evil that is in matter ; here also ground 
 for belief in absence of all such evil in heaven. Even the ' creature ' 
 also shall be redeemed ; the forms shall be perfect when the fact is so. 
 Matter truly has its 'original nothing;' even as the spiritual man has 
 his original not-being, or sin. And this is the cause of its evil, its de- 
 fect ; even as man's is his absence of love. And yet again I see : this 
 defect in matter seems almost to be identical with its existence in time 
 or succession, its gradual progress from less developed to more so, and 
 the consequent evil by defect of the inferior forms. So is not moral evil 
 in some connection with time ; i. e. does not time result from our being 
 sinful ; from the defect or not-being of us ? We perceive things, or the 
 forms of the actual, instead of the actual, or spiritual, itself, because we 
 are sinful : i. e. we are in time. So this world is ruined by the fall ; 
 i. e. it images an imperfect state ; a redemption, or creation not from 
 God, not all love, but from not-being, or sin. So the physical is due to 
 sin : this world is such as it is I shd say the universe is physical or 
 consists of things [in time and space] to man, because of his sinful- 
 ness. Had it not been for this we had been in a truly spiritual world ; 
 had seen the spiritual directly, and not in forms. Death, i. e. succes- 
 sion or time, is by sin nor is the evidence of geology against this : for 
 the facts are not altered, only our way of perceiving them ; only the 
 images or forms wh depend on us. It must be as it is : to us, as not- 
 being, or sinful, death must be every where. There is no time or actual 
 death now save in us, i. e. our spirits. Our being ' created from 
 not-being' necessitates our being in a world 'created from nothing;' 
 i. e. in a material world, an evil world : but only this. 
 
 I speak of God's creation as love self-limited ; but this is a pleonasm: 
 the self-sacrifice is involved in the love ; love exists only in self-sacri- 
 fice. So God's creation by self-sacrifice is all contained in His name of 
 love. Love, as being love in being doth limit or sacrifice Himself.
 
 606 
 
 So -we are not, when and because we do not limit or sacrifice 
 ourselves. 
 
 Can we see how sin forms an essential and necessary part of the crea- 
 tion of moral Being ? As not-being, is it in any sense the nutrition, 
 the suppression, of the Divine, of Being ? A step in the ' becoming ' 
 of the creature ? so that we may see it to be right ; a part of 
 the absolute love. It must be so ; but can we see it ? 
 
 Atheism is that God is nothing ; pantheism, that God is all things. 
 The mean between these the union of the two is that God is 
 at once all things, and nothing : surely it is that He is the 
 creator. 
 
 We do right to speak of the actions of things; right to make all action 
 the same, and say our moral action is one with the physical. But then 
 this must all be such as we know ; i. e. all moral [spiritual]. It is 
 absurd to reduce that wh we know to that wh we do not know. Phy- 
 sical force, motion, &c., are utter mysteries, nay, chimeras : moral 
 action we know and understand. We see there a ' must,' a ' ne- 
 cessity.' 
 
 For help in considering how we perceive things by not-being, consider 
 light, with special absences, or not-beings, of light in it. These would 
 be dark spots; they wd seem emphatically things ; and if we were, as it 
 were, part of this light, one with it in action [taking light as a kind of 
 static action or equilibrium], then the application of these dark spaces 
 to us these not-beings would occasion action in us function as it 
 were; wd permit a change; indeed they wd be the only things that cd do 
 so. The light would produce no change in us, we being ourselves light ; 
 but the darkness would, as removing the resistance. This will do : for 
 all action, or force, must be considered as thus limited or resisted ; 
 force exists in such action, but is static or quiescent, under equal resist- 
 ance ; is active only when resistance is not. In a word, motion in least 
 resistance is simply action in relation with not-action; being in relation 
 with not-being. The force and resistance may well be considered as 
 image of the corresponding love of creator for creature, of creature for 
 creator. This is the action and re-action ; the perfect equilibrium : 
 this the absolute Being. The action, the function i. e. the ' burning ' 
 the succession of events, comes from the absence of the resistance, 
 the want of the corresponding love in the creature. This makes the 
 burning, the hell. It is in truth only this physical world that keeps 
 the unloving out of hell ; i. e. they are truly in hell, may we not say. 
 So we are redeemed from hell, we are made by that wh exists as phy- 
 sical and mental to love God ; and there is no more hell to us. Thus I 
 see how succession, or time, is from not-being, or sin : it is only by the 
 relation of not-being to Being that that succession of actions, or func- 
 tions, is produced. As moral Beings love or action surrounded by 
 love and action, we have no change, no succession ; but brought into 
 relation to not-love, or not-action, there is change in us ; we perceive a 
 'thing :' and, of course, a not-being matter or inertia. This is the 
 reality of matter : real ' inertia,' or not-acting : that is exactly it ; 
 where not-acting affects us we perceive matter or thing; viz., not-moral, 
 or personal, Being Thing matter is itself negation. 
 
 And in truth our expectation of heaven entirely corresponds to this 
 view: we hope to have no earthly, physical things, no 'inertia.' Our
 
 607 
 
 existence there is to be entirely moral or spiritual: action only with, no 
 relation to inaction : i. e. perfectly corresponding love between God and 
 us ; union to God. Our relation to inaction, to not-love, is our evil, 
 our suffering, here. It is true that men's perceptions of the physical do 
 not, strictly speaking, vary with their moral state. Yet also the more 
 holiness a man has the more he is a moral Being the less are 'things' 
 to him actualities, absolute existences. They become mere forms of the 
 spiritual ; not being for their own sake but as means by which he recog- 
 nizes the Divine, the moral act. This indeed is the difference between 
 the religious and the irreligious man. To the latter the physical world 
 [and mental, wh is indeed involved in it] constitutes the actuality, the 
 Being : to the former it is not itself an actuality, but exists only as a 
 means whereby the spiritual, i. e. the moral, is expressed ; and in all 
 that concerns himself, physically, he considers the actual fact to be the 
 moral, the things only as the form. But in truth we, in our* religion, 
 lose a great part of this privilege by not seeing that, not only in provi- 
 dence but in creation also, the fact is the moral, the truly spiritual or 
 holy act ; by substituting design, power, and skill talent, in a word 
 in the creation for moral rightness. This idea of the world is essentially 
 irreligious ; to see the spiritual or holy in the physical is the special 
 work and character of religion ; to see power and wisdom alone is to 
 sink back into the thing-al. It makes the physical, not form, but fact ; 
 power and wisdom are thing-al themselves : and the things then have 
 no more a spiritual significance. Religion has been frightened out of 
 her own nature here ; she must go back to her instincts, and say God 
 does all these things that happen around us, and because He is holy. 
 And in truth this doctrine of design and skill denies things ; like Science 
 it involves the real matter. I must clearly get at this : the thing is a 
 form of the moral ; not a mere result of skill : this is to deny it to 
 deny the 'picture.' 
 
 When we consider that all ' function ' all action whatsoever is from 
 the 'not,' from removal of force or action [viz. that wh then is the re- 
 sistance] ; is permitted, i. e. from ' stimulus ' it is no wonder that our 
 function, our perception, should also be from ' not,' i. e. from absence of 
 action. This becomes clear : it is as it were involved in the idea of 
 Being ; of all true Being, as action. ' Action ' in truth involves surely 
 creator and creature ? and some light is thrown on Sin ? To be ' cre- 
 ation ' there must be the not-being, surely, in a sense : the permitted 
 action, the direction as it were of less resistance, and yet perhaps not 
 so ; it is of redemption that the physical world is the image : creation 
 not from God, but from not-being, or from Sin. It is probable that I 
 cannot get farther than this fact of Sin ; that is the actual, respecting 
 wh thought of cause ceases. Yet I seem to see a relation to God's ways 
 farther than I did : how succession begins with Sin or not-being. The 
 absolute union to God, the eternal state of rest or repose, imaged by 
 equilibrium ; the succession of Nature being from constant cessation of 
 equilibrium owing to the absence of force. This is the overthrow of 
 equilibrium always, the neutralizing of one force. Such is Sin, as pro- 
 ducing the physical, or ' time ' : the absolute equilibrium being the 
 ' eternal ' union of man and God : heaven ? 
 
 Here have I not a confirmation of my idea respecting all the inorganic 
 forces ; that the entire series of changes is from permitted action, from 
 [Spirit, 169.
 
 608 
 
 neutralization of one of the balanced forces ? I think this must be. It 
 brings all action into function from the not '; from direction of less 
 resistance ? 
 
 About real matter it is inertia or inaction : therefore o/ course not 
 ' inhering ' in anything, requiring no substratum. But in it inhere va- 
 rious properties or qualities. This is the point : inaction the ' not ' 
 causes in us various functions, or modes of action, which we perceive as 
 these ' properties.' Surely it is various special directions and modes of 
 least resistance. Consider : the ' not ' is in us ; it is we who are the 
 not-being. "We are affected by action without us, furnishing, by our 
 own ' not,' directions of less resistance ; i. e. being ' burnt ' in function. 
 See now how perfect an image is presented by our bodily relation to the 
 world : it acts on us by the ' directions of least resistance ' of our senses. 
 The spiritual action, by our ' not,' causes things and succession to 
 be to us ; and, by our various ' nots,' different forms of things the sen- 
 ses ? Find now the senses by relation to the spiritual. 
 
 Feuerbach says, (p. 243) ' Only that wh produces effects (acts) fa.' 
 This is what I say : but now ( 1 ) since matter is that wh produces no 
 effects, it is not. (2) The moral being of a man who does not act, mo- 
 rally, fa not. Sin is moral not-being : the moral or spirit in a man who 
 yields to passion, does not act, and .-.is not. See how closely are allied 
 the moral not-being and matter ; for all action is moral action, it is mo- 
 ral as being action, and the not-acting of matter clearly refers to spon- 
 taneous or moral action ; it is meant so, and must be, because matter is 
 that wh does act upon us constantly ; it is the active thing in all but 
 the moral sense. Matter is not self-action [moral] but it is the agent 
 in all ' natural ' actions ; it is that wh attracts, &c. , all active qualities 
 are ' properties ' of it. In a word, matter is spiritual not-being 
 ' inertia.' 
 
 That view of Nature as dependent for all its changes its ' bringing 
 forth,' in truth its being Mature on direction of less resistance, how 
 clearly it make the whole rest on a ' not.' Action and not-action are 
 Nature. What a clearness, a wholeness : how perfect in simplicity, and 
 traced so beautifully up to moral action and inaction. Consider the 
 word so constantly recurring, 'right,' e.g. right line, right angle, &c., 
 and yet all nature is oblique, diagonal, spiral ; i. e. twisted, wrung : is 
 it from being and not-being ? and yet this is from continual turning at 
 right angles : the spiral is the constantly ' wrung,' from constant direc- 
 tion of less resistance : it is from not-being the spiral form arises. 
 
 Dec. 23, 1856. What are the two forms of the limit in Mathematics ; 
 the increase and the diminution : infinite prolongation, infinite subdivi- 
 sion ? Why these two opposites ? and why the infinitude ? There is a 
 deep meaning in the introduction of that idea, if I could see. It is, 
 certainly, the affirmation of the human soul that space and time are not 
 really, and that if we wd know the truth we must remove them. 
 
 I see now surely why the two eyes make us see depth : it is simply 
 the ellipse, the curve [i. e. the circle, tho' irregular] described around 
 two centres. The two eyes constitute the two foci. As the circle de- 
 scribed around two centres is the curve in three dimensions, so we see 
 the three dimensions when we put together the circles described around 
 the two eyes. Our sense teaches us sooner than our reason. I should 
 [Mathematics, 1.
 
 609 
 
 like to trace the process further back, and look into the change effected 
 in the hrain by such coincident impressions on the two eyes. And fur- 
 ther : in making stereoscopic views, do we not give such difference to 
 the pictures represented as corresponds with a motion in depth ? May 
 I not say that in my view of the ellipse, I, as it were, look at it with 
 both eyes ? Surely when we look with both eyes at a ball held between 
 them, we see two circles cutting each other ; now these are, as it were, 
 turned up, when put together or into one diameter as if they were 
 pushed together. It is simply an instance of turning at right angles ; 
 the same thing as when we push together a rag on a table just what I 
 first noticed with regard to the laminae dorsales. Does not this take me 
 deeper into the true nature of this turning at right angles ; reveal more 
 of its subjectiveness. The sense does just what the fingers wd do, what 
 Nature does ? It is in fact two in one, development, polar union, in- 
 terpretation. The two views of the two eyes are 'polar' in some 
 sense ? 
 
 Is here also an insight into the physiology of vision ? These two 
 images in corresponding parts of the two retinae must be put, as it were, 
 into one space [shall we say in the brain] and so caused to turn at right 
 angles ? 
 
 Again, is not this interesting, dynamically : supposing us to see the 
 diagonal, the eye resolves it into the parallelogram of forces, as it were. 
 The eye, as it were, perceives the proportion : gives [i. e. we give ?] the 
 dynamical law ? This reminds me of the three ellipses the earth de- 
 scribes around the sun ; length and breadth, breadth and depth, and 
 length and depth. 
 
 And with reference to the description of an ellipse as a ' circle around 
 two centres,' does not the depth determine one of the circles, i. e. its ra- 
 dius, one or both ? I must not be misled by this word circle ; it only 
 means an uniform curve about two foci. [It is not good, I think ; nu- 
 tritive, not instinctive.] It is only a circle when superficial better to 
 call the circle an ellipse [with a qualification] ; the depth is the great 
 element, and equally with the length determines the position of the foci, 
 or rather altogether determines that position, they being mutually rela- 
 ted : the depth is the turning point of the whole. Now, surely, given 
 the proportion of length and depth [length and breadth being supposed 
 equal] the positions of the foci could be determined. 
 
 The seeing depth is, as it were, the putting two ' opposite motions ' 
 together. Now if the external world, or that which causes our percep- 
 tions, be truly [as it seems it must be] passion in other spirits, have we 
 not in these phna of vision an indication of the what and how ; the 
 ' laws of nature' being thus in our functions, and so resulting from or be- 
 ing, functions i.e. actions of other spirits ? This 'right angle' being a 
 spiritual perception, not an external material ' thing ' ? 
 
 How strong from this view becomes the evidence of the subjectiveness 
 of the phn : the ellipse is universal, because our eyes will not see any- 
 thing else; a 2-eyed race must see an universal ellipse, just as we do. We 
 cannot but see a circle about two centres, wh an ellipse has been called. 
 Is this the reason of the three dimensions of the physical ? Is therefore 
 the depth in nature ? therefore ever depth from two in one ? But the
 
 610 
 
 two eyes do not seem to give us respectively the length and breadth ; 
 both give us both. I do not rightly see here. Must it not be from a 
 similar subjective reason that \ve feel (by touch) the three dimensions ? 
 Surely a sort of stereoscope for touch might be made, enabling us to 
 feel depth also where it was not. There are already some illusions of 
 the touch ; e. g. in relation to different perceptions from the same object 
 by different positions of the fingers, wh must rest upon a similar princi- 
 ple to that of the eyes [?] "We only feel depth by two impressions at 
 once, of touch ; as it were two in the same space. 
 
 Now this turning at right angles by the eye seems to bring the eye 
 into immediate relation with the structure of the ear, in wh that rect- 
 angular structure is so apparent : it is as if what is done by the opera- 
 tion of the two eyes were done by the one ear. In truth do not two 
 eyes equal one ear : have we not rather two ears and one divided eye ? 
 each ear in some respects answering to the two eyes ? Do we perceive 
 depth in any sense by the ear ? Is not our perception of the three co- 
 lors as white and simple, in some way like our perception of the three 
 dimensions [by two eyes] as solid ? the two stereoscopic pictures being 
 as it were complementary colors put together into the space of one, and 
 seen as simple. It is as if the angle were seen. Is there a link here 
 between seeing solids, and seeing white light ; both dependent on the 
 ellipse, i. e. an interpretation of the ellipse into the solid ? So perhaps 
 it may not be that the separate colors are strictly at right angles to each 
 other ; but that they are in such sense ' polar ' that when put together 
 the three dimensions are seen. And see, as we all agree that color and 
 whiteness are subjective, so by parity of reasoning is form, depth, &c. 
 
 A straight line is truly an ellipse of wh the foci are in the circum- 
 ference, as the circle is an ellipse of wh they are both together in the 
 centre ; in fact, the straight line and circle represent the two opposite 
 ' limits ' in respect to the position of the foci. They are polar, surely, 
 [at right angles to each other]. Then is not the ordinary ellipse the 
 union of this line and circle in one, in some sense ? or does not the pa- 
 rabola represent length, circle breadth, and ellipse union in one of circle 
 and parabola ? 
 
 A straight line shd be truly considered as the motion of a point along 
 the line, and back again ; as a vibration, in truth : indeed as an ellipse. 
 For an ellipse with the foci in the circumference is exactly a straight 
 line : or shd I not rather say that a limited straight line is an ellipse, 
 an infinite one a parabola ? for the parabola is infinite. Is it not an in- 
 finite circle, and an [infinite] parabola, that truly correspond, or are 
 polar ? Then the ellipse involves a limit ; and is this why the ellipse 
 is the form in the phenomenal ? Similarly the ellipse and hyperbola 
 are polar : the one finite, the other infinite ? what is the union of the 
 two? 
 
 Surely any two motions at right angles produce a curve wh is a por- 
 tion either of a circle or a parabola ; three motions at right angles always 
 produce a curve wh is a portion either of an ellipse or a hyperbola. 
 
 The straight line regarded as an ellipse, seems to be depth only, even 
 as every length is a depth : i. e. rather the line is at once length and 
 depth. The line as depth is the union in one of length and breadth wh 
 have preceded it : for the circle is length and breadth together. The 
 two opposite or polar dimensions, co-exist in the line wh results from
 
 611 
 
 the drawing apart of the two foci of a circle ; the length and breadth 
 are made one in depth, i. e. in a new length. This, having breadth 
 added to it, becomes the diameter of another circle, to become another 
 inclusive length, or depth. The circle' thus ever becoming larger : two 
 in one. 
 
 [Consider the drop of water on a very hot plate of metal, spreading 
 
 in directions at right angles alternately.] 
 
 Thus there are in fact only two, the circle and the line : first the line, 
 becoming circle, or co-existing with its opposite in two polar forms ; 
 then united into one, in line again, to become again bipolar as circle. 
 So the perpetual advance : how many things in Nature are like it ; 
 Consider even the crawling of a 'geometric' caterpillar; first drawing up, 
 and then extending forwards. 
 
 The ' line ' is a work of Genius ; it is a right line : Talent makes the 
 circle, adds the opposite, and by limit or resistance. It is my original 
 case of ' turning at right angles ' : more is added, but because there is 
 not room, as it were, it rises up at right angles, instead of expanding. 
 Thus this bending is ' wrung,' ' wrongness,' : this is the distension : the 
 straightening is the permitted, the recoil, the two in one, [the function]. 
 How beautifully seen in the growth of the germ, in the formation of 
 the laminae dorsales. The mental progress may be regarded in the same 
 way. 
 
 Observe : the circle has the two in it, the line only one, tho* virtually 
 all. Is not this the symbol of Genius, with its deficiencies, its one 
 power, or in one direction ? That which was in two is all still present, 
 but now all in one. Talent is varied, Genius only one : Is not the es- 
 sential character of Genius its deficiencies? It is all length, no breadth. 
 But it is a length that includes all the breadth that was before, and is 
 the basis and source of the breadth that succeeds. I cannot bring this 
 out as I would, but I feel it : Talent is many-sided, able to throw itself 
 into all forms as it were : like a circle, equal in all directions. Genius 
 is but one-sided, does and thinks only one thing, cannot accommodate 
 itself, but gives its one law to all things, draws all into itself; converts 
 all the breadth it embraces into its own length, its own ' typical form.' 
 
 Regarding the line as vibration i. e. as produced by to and fro motion 
 the circumference of the circle is about once and a-half the diameter, 
 the circle is vibration just as the line is ; each part of the line is double, 
 of the circle single : wh is clear regarding the line and the circle as the 
 two limits of the ellipse. So there is not really more in the circle than 
 in the line, only distension, separation, ' divergence ' ; and yet truly 
 more is added, because of the increased length of the [double] line again 
 from the recoil. 
 
 laughs at me : ' getting from ellipse to line, next I shall get to 
 
 the point and then vanish altogether ' ; he says. But there is more than 
 a joke in this : the circle is the two foci together ; the line the two foci 
 at circumference ; now when these two are one, there is the point. The 
 point is the circle and the line in one : the two opposite limits made 
 one, the foci at once together and at the extremes. This is clear ; nor 
 is it, I am persuaded, mere nonsense. I know it is mystical, but it is 
 true none the less. It shows how, when we really get at the phn, and 
 find what it truly is, it is not ; it resolves itself, as regards its reality, 
 into a point, into a non-entity : for the point is not-being. And here is
 
 612 
 
 a great wisdom : practically the non-entity of the phn is recognized in 
 our thoughts, involved in our language. What else is the doctrine that 
 a line is the motion of a point, the motion of no-substance ; i. e. mathe- 
 matics recognizes the action alone, not the substance: it is a wonderful 
 fact. Once introduce the idea of substance, and mathematics is des- 
 troyed; if that which by motion produces the line has anv dimensions- 
 occupies any space not one of its propositions is true. .Mathematics is 
 spiritualist, it denies substance. This brings one to Oken, whose feel- 
 ing surely was profoundly true ; and if he failed in expression, was it 
 not because the due ' nutrition ' was wanting ? 
 
 In language, is not the ellipsis the ' diagonal ' ? 
 
 A limited straight line is an ellipse ; an unlimited one is a hyper- 
 bola. But such a hyperbola would not be double, unless cut thro' the 
 apex of the cone, in wh case it would coincide with the parabola ; but 
 the hyperbola is the general, of wh the parabola [when a straight line] 
 is but a particular case. And this is shown, too, by the fact that a line 
 passing thro' the apex shd be considered as affecting both cones, like the 
 hyperbola. The true hyperbola is unlimited at each end. It is curious, the 
 two hyperbolas become one straight line, with a theoretical division at 
 the centre. So soon as the two sides of the hyperbola touch, they be- 
 come a straight line necessarily ; an unlimited straight line, and with 
 the two foci together. In this respect they correspond to the circle ; 
 bring the two foci of a hyperbola together, and we have a straight line; 
 of ellipse together, and we have a circle. Bring together the two foci 
 of the hyperbola, and we have an unlimited straight line ; carry apart, 
 to limit, the two foci of the ellipse, and we have a limited straight line. 
 Now consider the formation of the hyperbola by carrying apart the two 
 foci wh are in one, in an unlimited straight line [for in an unlimited 
 line any point is the centre, of course]. Thus the hyperbola; even as 
 the ellipse is by drawing apart the two foci of a circle. 
 
 Is not ' substance ' the result of the action of that wh has no sub- 
 stance viz., of the motion of a point. 
 
 The infinitesimal calculus is, in truth, simply ' coming to the point ;' 
 it is omitting the substance ; it has no ' dimensions.' Is not this the 
 way in wh it shd be regarded ? action alone ; getting rid of the space 
 or not-being. As the ' moral ' is the ignoring of time [or results] so 
 this is ignoring space (or substance). And see the beauty of regarding 
 these processes as necessary, and not arbitrary ; as right, and not clever; 
 they are what, by the necessity of the mental life, by the very fact of 
 thought, must be. Was not this infinitesimal view necessarily intro- 
 duced into mathematics, just as we necessarily conceive infinitude of 
 time and space ? for the same reason, and with the similar 
 result. 
 
 The fact which exists is one, and eternally the same : God sacrificing 
 Himself for the creature's life. But the form in which we see this de- 
 pends upon ourselves. Each created Being may see it differently : but 
 all must see the one fact of self-sacrifice. Therefore in succession [or 
 time] we must see cause and effect, or ' one merging itself to become 
 another.' We see it as a physical universe : but that is of no conse- 
 quence, the fact is just the same. The interest is to ascertain why it is 
 under that particular form that we see the fact. 
 
 What a delusion this passion is, this desire for having or acquiring, 
 [Creation, 1.
 
 613 
 
 as if happiness were in that. This desire is given to us in order that 
 from it we may make our life, by controlling it ; that we may have the 
 happiness of giving. It is the source of our moral life, the force which 
 becomes the vital force. It is just as the phn (or impression) is in the 
 mental life a delusion, but because so, the source of our mental life. 
 It is given us to be assimilated by sense of right and made to constitute 
 our life. 
 
 God's act is as our act ; the thing, the success is in the deed, not in 
 the result. God could not have aimed at an effect, at the future. Even 
 man does not, cannot, when he truly acts. The essence of spiritual ac- 
 tion (i. e. of action at all) is that it is for right, for itself and without 
 regard to effects. Man only then acts when he acts right and without 
 regard to consequences. That wh is done for its results is passion and 
 not action ; i. e. in so far as it is so done. Our passion is God's act. 
 There is no future to spirit. Even here and now holiness, spiritual 
 action, consists in exclusion from our regard of time, of succession, of 
 what may 'follow.' It is eternal : the result is in the act. Yes, our 
 right act, even as God's, creates by being not by becoming : he who 
 does right waits for no fruit, he has gained the victory. [We come 
 here upon the question of how far results constitute and determine 
 Tightness. Often we are obliged to take them as our ground of decid- 
 ing wh of two courses is right.] The essence of sin is seeking results 
 when we shd do right ; substituting passion for action, phenomenal for 
 actual or spiritual. So we attribute to God in our thought of creation 
 that wh wd be sin. 
 
 Doubtless the idea of Tightness (moral right) is not applicable to God 
 in precisely the same sense as we feel it ; for our sense of right arises 
 from this opposition of love and passion. But the fact in us and in God 
 doubtless is the same. The great necessity is for us to put the idea of 
 right for that of ingenuity, of arbitrariness. To God the right and the 
 love are one. In doing right He doth ' according to His pleasure ;' in 
 Him no struggle between inclination and duty: His holiness is absolute. 
 But for'us to substitute thereforejthe phenomenal idea of 'design' or ar- 
 bitrary choice for that of moral holiness is the most monstrous of per- 
 versions. 
 
 If creation [had been, as is supposed, by design and contrivance of 
 each particular thing, it would have been as Euskin describes the ' un- 
 imaginative ' painting ; and just as far from its present perfection. In- 
 deed it surely is our perception of what we think failures and defects 
 and evils in nature that makes us take this view of it as arbitrary, or 
 as a work of talent. Once let us see or realize its absolute per- 
 fection, and we shall immediately conceive it rather as a work of 
 Genius. 
 
 Every work of Genius is a true creation ; all self-sacrifice, and only 
 that, by necessity creates. Creation adds nothing, it is one becoming 
 another. So nutrition is also creation, only taken the other way. The 
 two are one seen in different points of view, as ever polars are. I get 
 the idea of polarity the same 'fact' (process element, thing, &c.), 
 seen from different points of view, viz., at right angles to each other. 
 Even as breadth is same as length, only seen at right angles, in altered 
 relation. So I see again how God's eternal and one act is to us vibra- 
 tion. In both nutrition and function talent and Genius it is the one
 
 614 
 
 fact of creation that we see ; but in the one we see the process, in the 
 other the result, in one the giving, in the other the receiving. The 
 difference is merely in the position of our eye. 
 
 I have now the answer to that question I asked long ago : ' What is 
 that act of God wh we perceive as nature, wh produces the phenomenal 
 as its effect on us ? And why, or in what sense, is it holy ?' It is 
 creation : God sacrificing Himself for the creature's Being : God's 
 self-control producing life. Surely making is essentially phenomenal : 
 the doing is the actual. 
 
 How can that wh is infinite be added to ? "We get at once into the 
 phenomenal, the limited, as soon as we admit that idea of being added 
 to wh forms our ordinary conception of creation. Only that God can be 
 infinite whose creation is a moral act : an act of self-control or limita- 
 tion. Not He whose ' power ' adds to Himself that which was not 
 before. 
 
 Is there not truth in the idea that power involves an object, a resist- 
 ance action, a thing acted upon. Power therefore, or such external 
 action, is inappropriate to creation. The only creation possible is from 
 action on, power exerted over, control of, self. Here is the wonder 
 again of Genius; of its being the suppression, the control, of ourselves ; 
 therefore it is creation [but phenomenal] ; and our moral self-control is 
 ever as God's, and creates our life. 
 
 Now, how is the external operation of talent like the nutrition, in re- 
 spect to Genius as the function ? Physically it is the effect of attraction 
 resisted by attraction, love resisted by love, that constitutes life. Is 
 not God's love the fact (I cannot say the cause) of His so controlling 
 or limiting Himself as to create ? Creation is love controlled by love; 
 God's self-limit : yet not love of the creature. Here we have not a 
 present clue perhaps. When the creature exists there is love between 
 creator and creature, necessary love, typified by attraction between 
 polar opposites. But that first love wh, limiting itself, produced crea- 
 tion must have been different. It is God's intensest Being. Creation 
 expresses God's passion. Self-regulated passion is creation. 
 
 Also consider about the term nothing no-thing. How shd we use it? 
 Would it not be better to speak of the phn, or image, as 'thing ?' God 
 the spiritual is no-thing, as the mystics taught. Then the word 
 real (wh rests upon 'thing '), is that a right word for the spiritual? 
 Or would it not be best to allow the real, i. e. the thing -al, existence of 
 the external world ? Maintaining for the spiritual not a thing-al (or 
 real) existence, but a moral or absolute. Is this a unification ? 
 
 Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. It is very fine this spec- 
 ulating about how solar systems, &c., might have been formed ; but 
 what a weak basis it rests upon, especially the conception of the materi- 
 al things as actual. We do not want to know what we might conceive, 
 &c.; the thing is simply just this : the universe in its largest, as in its 
 least phna, presents to us the one fact of life, the type of spiritual life, 
 of passion resisted. It is not that there are real suns and planets to 
 be accounted for, but that every where and on every scale there must 
 be for us one thing our own life re-enacted before our eyes. And if it 
 could be shown in a million ways how suns and planets and galaxies 
 might have been, we shd have gained not one step towards real know-
 
 615 
 
 ledge (save nutritively or wrongly) ; for that only do we, can we, know 
 wh is within us, with wh we have one passion sympathy. A nd how 
 does the man get his tendency of the nebulous matter towards his 
 central point ? All this is mere theory, cart before horse. 
 
 It wd be wonderful if men's moral actions shd be found to be under 
 law, as he says (p. 26) ; and certainly no way opposed to religion. They 
 one with nature (wh we know they are), agreeing how well with the 
 thought that nature is the moral acts of spirits. What a theoretical or 
 phenomenal view, a putting of effect first, is this entire conception of 
 natural law. Yet is it not a bad word : the idea of moral right or holi- 
 ness lurks in it, and redeems it. In every good theory that is true to 
 the phn I expect the germ of the interpretation lies hidden. I must 
 trace this and see. 
 
 Page 80. Crocodiles having breathing apertures ' to allow them to 
 drag their prey under water without ceasing to respire.' How this doc- 
 trine of final causes perverts the moral sense, teaching us to admire 
 and in relation to God too contrivances for purposes wh we think really 
 are fearful and revolting. The problem wh these things really present 
 to us and wh we have entirely ignored is, why are they right ? What 
 holy action do they reveal to us ? 
 
 The parallel development of physical life and mental is to be con- 
 sidered. In the earliest ages these were anticipation* of results very- 
 far off; but altogether of a different kind or grade. So in animal king- 
 dom : the earliest forms showed, in their grade, the indications here and 
 there of highest. Why ? All one, in different octaves? Page 130. 
 As for the uniformitarian, doubtless that wh preceded was different ; it 
 was the other half of the vibration. As for the ' operation of ordinary 
 natural law ' the question is, what is that ? That is just what we want 
 to know. We have a theory here, effect put for cause. 
 
 Page 136. ' Adapted to an end, and that end only the well-being of 
 a creature endowed with sensation and volition.' Alas, how sad a fall- 
 ing short of our true dignity and God's. God is bound in chains of 'fa- 
 talism ' by this doctrine. But what a change if this fatal necessity be 
 holiness. If the eyes be opened, what can be plainer ? The quarrel 
 is reconciled at once. The solution of the controversy, as of every 
 honest one, is unification. The special creation, and the creation by 
 law, are simply the polar forms of mental life. Imagination and logic. 
 But the imaginative view how sadly below the actual truth as the im- 
 agination till united with logic ever is. The unification mutually exalts 
 and glorifies. 
 
 It is not the author's fault that his book appears irreligious. I do 
 not believe he is is of irreligious mind. It is the religious people who 
 have taught him that ' law ' in some way excludes God. He is the lo- 
 gical, and cannot help it nay, is necessary. At p. 139 he speaks just 
 as the logical people do who do not recognize that the Imaginative is 
 also right and necessary. They cannot see the life, and that they are 
 meant to marry. He uses the word ' arbitrary ' well, but he does not 
 see, nor do his opponents, that the opposite to 'arbitrary' is 'right. 1 If 
 they saw that, all wd be done. What truth there is in words : the en- 
 tire solution of the question is wrapped up in that word ' arbitrary ' ; 
 and indeed also in the word ' law.' Truly the question between creation 
 arbitrarily and creation by law is between holy and unholy action, it is
 
 616 
 
 in the words. In truth ' arbitrary ' and ' by law ' are parallel to nutri- 
 tion and function ; essentially wrong and right ; phenomenally or really; 
 nutrition or theory is arbitrary, function or interpretation is ' by law.' 
 
 I have said, theory, or work of talent, is arbitrary ; it may be any 
 way. The analogy is closer than I saw : for theory goes ' any way to 
 attain its object.' Just the idea we attach to God in creating. The 
 object is making the phn appear real, i. e. be such as would be possible 
 really ; and it goes any how to make it so, introduces any fictions, any 
 chimeras. So we think God has introduced any chimeras to attain His 
 ends, to make the phn real. This is most striking ; we attribute to 
 God what we ourselves do. This flashes upon me with wonder. We 
 introduce chimeras to make the phn real ; then we think that is what 
 God has done, and call it His ' creation,' or ' creative act.' It is won- 
 derful. Our conception of God as creating by these laws is the attri- 
 buting to Him what we feel in ourselves, the passion in us. But the 
 truth is that His act is the cause of that effect. Passion in ourselves 
 we attribute to God : so the old astronomers thought God created the 
 epicycles, which they alone ' created.' 
 
 It is ' simpler,' easier, always to assume something as being, or exist- 
 ing as the primary or ultimate. It is necessary indeed, but the tendency 
 to stick there, as if that were to remain for ever, is the non-scientific 
 state of mind, the thing wh science has to remove. It is the business 
 of Science to get rid of these assumed ' facts ' : this is the instinct by 
 suppression of wh the nutrition is effected. "What misleads people is 
 the idea that they are to attain an absolute final truth, that this must 
 be in some way the immediate object. Therefore they are so puzzled, 
 so slow, so doubtful. They shd see that the objects of their search are 
 ever only length, breadth, and depth ; the true in respect to that pas- 
 sion, wh is sure to be false in reference to a larger. They have to find 
 the depth from length and breadth. The true is only true in relation 
 to certain given facts. The simplest view is always and absolutely to 
 be received ; no matter whether new or old, it is sure to be true so far 
 as those facts are concerned, sure to be the road to larger truth. Never 
 be afraid ; only do not hold to a thing as being necessarily true in the 
 future because it is true now. If it be a depth now it will be sure to 
 be a length hereafter. But of this we may be sure, that nothing is de- 
 stroyed : no truth ever absolutely ceases or is lost. We may hold our 
 truth as lightly as we please ; let us go the plain road before us, and if 
 it be true it will be sure to re-appear. "We give up our truth, our late 
 depth that pleased us so and seemed so beautifully to embrace the whole; 
 we suppress it altogether, it is no longer a truth for us. But it exists 
 still as the breadth, the nutrition, and will re-appear in the function, 
 will be again in the depth ; and so on for ever. 
 
 Let us trust ourselves, trust our senses, our mental senses as well 
 as our bodily ones. Now we place much reliance on our external 
 senses and none on our internal [as before much on internal and little 
 external]. We should learn to rely on both : for what is the good of 
 talking about the external world, when it is absolutely ourselves that 
 we study and trust. Are not the senses as much we, as the intuitions? 
 Have the senses any authority wh they did not derive from us ? By 
 the senses we acquire a subjective knowledge, viz. of an effect upon our- 
 [Miscellanea, 18. See p. 238.
 
 617 
 
 selves. By the internal senses or perceptions we learn, from this effect 
 on ourselves thus known thro' the senses, the cause wh is external to 
 ourselves. The internal senses, the rational powers, are in immediate 
 relation with that wh is external to us, wh the senses are not. By the 
 senses we learn the effects on ourselves and their relations ; that is 
 their value. Our knowledge is entirely bound in effects on ourselves ; 
 this is the reason of the necessity for the use of the senses ; without 
 them no basis for any knowledge ; we cannot know causes if we do not 
 know effects. Our internal faculties, reasoning, intuition, &c., bring us 
 into relation with that wh is not subjective, with the causes of these 
 effects on ourselves wh we perceive by the senses ; but these internal 
 faculties can have valuable results only when they are employed upon 
 materials gained by the senses. "Without these they are, of course, 
 misleading ; trying to learn cause without knowing effects, is of course 
 hopeless; for the effects are the causes in the 'present,' existing where 
 alone we can know them. 
 
 In one sense the old philosophers were not too much subjective but 
 too little. They reasoned of things external to them, without knowing 
 what was internal ; tried to get at true external causes of effects on 
 them, not having first learnt what those effects were. Our philosophy 
 is becoming as extremely subjective as theirs was external. They 
 busied themselves wholly about the causes affecting them without 
 caring to know what were the effects on themselves ; we busy ourselves 
 wholly about the effects on ourselves and their relations to each other, 
 without caring to know their cause external to us. This is the true 
 relation of the two philosophies. Our material universe, as we consider 
 it, is altogether an effect on ourselves (for our reference to God having 
 once created it or to His now and then doing or creating some things in 
 it, is idle in the extreme) . The old philosophy was full of guesses about 
 what might be the cause or causes of the effects on ourselves ; not 
 knowing what those effects were, nor caring to know, save in the most 
 superficial and inaccurate way. Put the two things together and we 
 have a depth something satisfactory and worthy of manhood. 
 
 I must try to see the polar relation here more clearly ; and its paral- 
 lelism to all the other forms : first the psychical, or referring 
 directly to God's act ; then the physical, or to the effect on ourselves ; 
 lastly both, learning cause or God's act from effect or universe. 
 "When we say God's act is cause of the universe, we must admit, if we 
 would avoid monstrous conclusions, that the universe is the present fact 
 of God's act. For effect is the present existence of the cause; the 
 cause is in the effect, and has no other existence. The effect is the 
 cause in the present ; the cause was in the past, but it is no longer ; it 
 exists now in the effect, or does not exist at all. In fact this cause and 
 effect are an instance of the limit, and the very same thing as past and 
 present. Cause and effect are simply the past becoming the present ; 
 the cause reaching limit is not, but is effect. Effect is only one way of 
 perceiving cause, inasmuch as we can perceive only the present, so the 
 universe is our way of perceiving God's act [wh we can perceive only 
 in space as parallel to present]. 
 
 Consider the question of increase of passion with time. It seems as 
 if it must be ; and yet supposing infinite space to be full of passion 
 for infinite time, does not the passion remain constant ? I see
 
 618 
 
 the two ways of conceiving need to be made one, the fact being 
 eternity. 
 
 The dynamical relation, wh is cause and wh effect, or what is cause, 
 is attained in a different way from mere obtaining or measuring of the 
 phna ; and requires different proof. Its chief and appropriate evidence 
 is self-evidentness, the instinct, the seeing. But this needs to 
 be confirmed; and there are two ways: one is to show 
 the impossibility of all other hypothesis ; the other and 
 better is to let it show that it is a life by growing, that it is true by 
 what it can do. Whatsoever has power, exists, or is. Whatsoever 
 effects a function is an interpretation, is a change in obedience to ten- 
 dencies of elements. This second is the plan I prefer : to prove the 
 truth of my view, by showing the same thing in other forms (analogies 
 wh it reveals) ; and by showing how much it enables you to understand 
 wh was not understood before ; to prove its existence by its effects. 
 But of course it must be shown to agree with the phna also ; that is 
 preliminary. Then the proof is that it comes out of the phna, is not 
 forced upon them. This is known to the discoverer, but must be made 
 plain to others. Observation, and formulas or measuring of facts, are 
 not to the point, tho' they are useful as tests and aids, and aa helping to 
 show the agreement of the phna. 
 
 There can be no opposite opinions or thoughts that cannot, must not, 
 be united and made one. In mind as in physical nature there are no 
 opposites but polar opposites. All thoughts that can be opposite may 
 be united and made one. Of course there are different forms and grades 
 (as in nature, differences wh prevent strict oppositeness); but where 
 oppositeness can be there can be, shd be, oneness. For in truth, all op- 
 posite or polar thought is truly the same thought. Both are to be as- 
 serted in fullest sense : so only by reaching limit are they to be made 
 one. Our dislike of extremes does the work of the ' limit.' It is right 
 that views shd be driven to these intolerable limits or extremes or there 
 would be no progress. The two polars differ as male and female ; a 
 phenomenal difference only, one of time or succession ; as in nature fe~ 
 male becomes male, as sun was developing. An inversion here ; it is the 
 male becomes female. Yet the female becomes, produces, the depth wh 
 every male (or length) is. 
 
 Respecting the metaphysical parts of Science (ideas of substance, &c., 
 especially about a real matter), these abstractions are not the most in- 
 teresting or important ; and there is a natural reluctance to dwell much 
 on them. ^Nevertheless they have their interest, and present no great 
 difficulties, if they be treated with common sense, and we do not allow 
 ourselves to assume what we do not know, or to erect hypotheses. 
 Simplicity and avoidance of assumptions will help us to put them right 
 and clear, so far as is needful for our present knowledge, and to place 
 definitely before our minds the points at wh our conceptions become de- 
 fective and therefore appear paradoxical. Then we shd leave them, 
 and turn again to the phna, or passions in ourselves, in order that we 
 may have a safe basis for further inference as to that wh is without. 
 By-the-bye, nothing inconceivable can exist in the phn, because that 
 depends on us. What cannot be in our conception cannot be in our per- 
 ception, the phn being that wh appears. 
 
 We must not be afraid of these abstractions ; these apparently in- 
 solvable mysteries are chimera;? only. In shrinking from them we
 
 619 
 
 tremble at creatures of our own bringing forth. The great precept in 
 Science, as the old alchemists taught their pupils, is 'Beware of 
 fear.' 
 
 If I wrote ' practical rules in the art of thinking,' I would make 
 them three; viz., 1st, do not stop; 2nd, go on; 3rd, 'go on without 
 stopping.' 
 
 I think Bacon's caution, about our disposition to Bee a greater unity 
 in nature than really exists, is not wise taken so barely as it generally 
 is. For nature is absolutely one, so much a unity that it is impossible 
 for man to conceive it more so. The truth of the statement is that man 
 is apt to conceive a unity of form instead of fact. There is an error 
 para lelor polar to this, viz., that of so looking at the differences of 
 the forms as to deny the oneness of the fact : e. g. in asserting that the 
 origination of a specific form must be essentially different (as well as 
 formally) from its continuance or re-production. Truly, it is so in one 
 sense; viz., one represents Genius, the other talent; polar 
 opposites. 
 
 Can there be something in the law of like cures like? is it an 
 instance of the limit ? a passion becoming its opposite, a vibration ? 
 Thus the decomposing action in wh the disease consists, intensified by 
 the drug, becomes the opposite and therefore vital or curative. There is 
 something perhaps in this : I have seen that added rapidity is one cause 
 of the turning of a motion. 
 
 Logic is a lever by wh we elevate ourselves. But for that purpose 
 we must use it firmly. It is like a pole by wh pressing on the solid 
 earth we push ourselves up an ascent. But we, feeling the resistance, 
 are so apt to cease to push ; we come to a 'paradox,' and say, 'Ah, this 
 is beyond the reach of reason, we must not adhere to logic here, it is 
 above that.' Fools ! let us push and push and hold hard to our pole ; 
 and tho' in truth we shall not move the solid earth, we shall move our- 
 selves, wh to us is of much more consequence. Logic may prove nothing ; 
 certainly it alters nothing ; but it may rectify our premisses. How 
 God gives us this spiritual science, these moral living truths in nature, 
 how He ever gives us more than we desire or can think : or wh of His 
 mercies shd we have ? "We know of them only by finding that we have 
 them. The earnest work given to Science, the faithful self-denying 
 loving labor, live to end in better than mere material knowledge. Love, 
 aspiration, hope, and toil of the soul, yea spiritual life and love, have 
 been given up, freely expended is the result to be merely material 
 knowledge, sensuous advantages? Oh no: for spirit spirit shall be given. 
 Love for love. Life for life. The weary brow, the throbbing pulse, 
 the aspiring heart, the longing sighs addressed to God for knowledge 
 of Himself, are not squandered thus. Men have sought to know God, 
 that is the good of Science, and lo ! God shows Himself to them. 
 
 As in physiology I trace every nutrition to some preceding approx 
 passion, and join it on so to the universal chain of vibrations, so I 
 want to be able to trace all mental nutrition, all the power and tendency 
 there is in people born in them or acquired to produce mental nutri- 
 tion, to its preceding approx passion, and put it in its place. I still 
 have in relation to mind the apparent beginning wh has been got rid of 
 in relation to physiology. 
 
 [Mental Physiology, 66. See p. 392. R 2
 
 620 
 
 It is interesting to note the different effect cf same argument on two 
 classes of people. One will believe the view as soon as they may ; 
 the other only when they must. The vital relation here is very clear. 
 In the one case the change in opinion is a functional one, permitted, 
 being previous tendency. The effect of the argument is only to remove 
 resistance, i. e. set aside some idea previously in their minds wh had 
 (logically) prevented them thinking so. In the other case it is a change 
 produced by force, i. e. a nutrition against tendency ; and how great a 
 difference, both in the process and result. These tendencies, &c., are 
 the man's mental life, are result of all the mental passion affecting him. 
 Follow out the clue thus presented to me of the mental life or organic 
 mind. Our mental tendencies are instincts, results of nutrition and 
 organization, like all. In these surely is to be found the clue to phy- 
 sical instincts, and to chemicity. The mental life also is tripolar and 
 elliptic. 
 
 Truth is ever natural to the mind ; and nutrition in the mind is the 
 wrongness of our thought. From this resisted tendency to true, comes 
 the functional power. Trace this farther ; as if that wh was rightly 
 known was no longer organic ; the rightly known being, as it were, the 
 result of function, the excretion wh has transferred its life. The wrong 
 thought is ever produced by some right thought reaching its limit ; the 
 practical limit being some other thought. It is two mental passions wh 
 thus constitute nutrition. All of us think wrongly more or less, or we 
 shd cease to be organic. Each of us has a paradox too at the end of 
 his knowledge. The difference of the forms of mental life is in the 
 amount of thought contained in the nutrition, the number and amount of 
 things wh have been thought right and have given up their life to con- 
 stitute that particular life. 
 
 Does not all the wrongness or nutrition consist in one sense in diver- 
 gence, i. e. separation of the polar opposites ; and the putting right in 
 the union of the two (in depth). The length and breadth, as it were, 
 in their separation constitute life, tending to union in depth. 
 
 Again, with reference to the different forms of the mental life : these 
 depend partly on the original constitution, on the germ so to speak, on 
 original specific differences, as well as on external passion wh may have 
 influenced them. Now, ought I not to unify my view of passion in least 
 resistance with that of specific tendency ? Is not the latter the phenom- 
 enal, the instinctive ; and mine the ratiocinative rather than true ? Is 
 not mine the opposite, suppressing the instinctive by the necessity of 
 human thought ? I do think it, and that I have yet to arrive at the 
 unification. This will make indeed a beautiful science. I have to see 
 the ellipse here ; the compoundness in unity. Will the idea of length, 
 breadth, and depth help me here ? An essential 3-foldness be the clue ? 
 It is well worth thinking of. In everything that we consider as one 
 the three -foldness must be found. 
 
 Consider indeed whether my general view be not altogether rather 
 nutritive or ratiocinative, truly the result of an interpretation or permitted 
 passion. Yes and truly animal, result of digestion, giving animal nu- 
 trition, preparatory to the animal function. For surely each individual 
 mind passes thro' the three stages of chemical, vegetable, animal (in- 
 stinctive, ratiocinative, and depth what word would do) ? the animal 
 being two-fold : first nutrition from digestion of ratiocinative, then
 
 621 
 
 function. This is a hopeful view. The function in a great measure yet 
 to come. I have unified in many points, but still there is much of that 
 to be done (especially in respect to the physical morphology), and per- 
 haps in regard to the whole on a yet higher scale : a new unification 
 that shall embrace all and bring me into perfect conformity with the 
 world's instinct. I must think of specific forms as result of the three- 
 foldness of motion in least resistance. Surely we shall have three 
 * specific ' forms constantly repeated ; and the variations upon a trace- 
 able plan, &c. Look at this, all thro' nature : whence the five ? The 
 five is two polar pairs and one bipolar 
 
 Unity, variety, unity, variety, Unity in variety, 
 
 Hebrew, Greek, Eoman, French, English? 
 
 The second pair of polars, not uniting the first, but offshoots as it were; 
 and yet the last thro' them ; two forms of each before the depth ? I 
 have noted (quite independently of the five) how, in the mental life, 
 the length and breadth have two forms. Is it not the assimilating 
 process ? Two chemicities for vegetation, then two vegetations for 
 animal ? 
 
 The specific forms thus arise necessarily, like the ellipse, wh is the spe- 
 cific form of the universe? Yet the specific form is never perfect, and sub- 
 ject to all manner of variations. Just as there is no perfect ellipse in the 
 universe, every one being more or less interfered with and modified by 
 surrounding circumstances. The deviations from absolute specific form 
 are the perturbations of the planets ; and other greater perturbations 
 are easily conceivable wh might altogether destroy and alter their rela- 
 tions, still however leaving the motions elliptic. And those perturba- 
 tions themselves constitute a life, resistance to tendency to ellipse, sup- 
 pression of it, and production of organization. So in disease ; diseases 
 constitute a life ; they are, like planetary perturbations, suppression or 
 resistance to tendency or passion (as I have seen). By-the-bye, does it 
 not seem as if it were not so much the first nutrition the breadth (or 
 vegetable) wh produced the organization by wh function is effected as 
 the second, or the nutrition of the animal ; not but that all nutrition 
 does produce organization in one sense ; but not that organization by 
 means of wh the function is effected. This is what the animal [Genius] 
 contributes. The theoretical, nutritive view does not effect the func- 
 tion ; its function is the nourishment of animal. So the function is not 
 effected at first by the animal, but after he has assimilated ; the first func- 
 tion being digestion. I see now how Genius is not always development of 
 the grade of life (or is it) ? It first assimilates or raises the theoretical 
 vegetable view to its own grade, then, in' unifying it with the instinctive, 
 view, effects the function. It was my unifying the vegetable view of no 
 real matter with the instinctive view of real world (external) that pro- 
 duced the function, or revelation of God's holy act. 
 
 Continually we are arriving at the limit to our thought, so that we 
 cannot get on any farther in that direction. But we can always think 
 in the opposite direction and make a nutrition : when we have speculated 
 ourselves quite out we shd not stop, but turn round and go back ; and 
 from it arises a study of the phn, or of the passion in us. When done 
 up in respect to causes, we can begin again the study of effects, and 
 ever with increasing advantage. The two mental polars are study of
 
 622 
 
 causes and study of effects Physical Science or study of effects, specu- 
 ation or interpretation of causes ; for cause and effect are polar to 
 each other. And the end is, as ever with polars, to bring them into 
 union. 
 
 What is this taking mental food ? taking in from the physical into 
 the mental ? as the animal eats the vegetable. The psychical or spirit- 
 ual becomes the physical, as chemical the vegetable from limit ; then 
 the physical becomes the mental as vegetable the animal ; and the func- 
 tion, or re-appearance of psychical in higher form, is the generalization 
 or interpretation. But p what sense are these facts orphna subjective? 
 in what sense is it looking within ? The animal looks -without it for 
 food. The function is truly from within. Eating is taking in ; function 
 is giving out. Analogy in this to the spiritual. Is not our moral action 
 our function ? Creator, creature, and union, as chemical, vegetable, 
 animal ? The return to God is the animal function, the holiness. In 
 this third there is the organization. What I have to seek for is the or- 
 ganization by wh this spiritual function is effected how the creature, or 
 vegetable, rises into, becomes, the animal (and same in respect to 
 chemicity itself) ; or is it not so in the fact of the union with God ? 
 Can Christianity present it to me at all in its peculiar facts ? Or is it not 
 that by our control of passion we, as it were, assimilate the vegetable, 
 take the vegetable into the organization, so constituting the third, the 
 animal the character of which, the function, is union with God. 
 
 Consider sexual reproduction, union of two producing new ' organiza- 
 tion.' Here surely is the truth of that special rule or law for Genius, 
 wh is instinctively felt. It is not a relaxation of the moral demand. 
 Absolute right is the rule for all alike. It is a difference of nature, 
 so that absolute right, for it, differs from that for another, in its 
 phenomena. 
 
 Man's mind is female : it does the nutrition and reproduction, it ab- 
 sorbs into itself. Woman's mind is as man's body; it gives itself, is 
 instinctive. As the female body is united with the male, and only so 
 re-produces, is not man's female mind 'quickened' by woman's and only 
 so rendered truly re-productive ? And development, in mind, is only 
 from an union of the woman's mind with man's ? In the ordinary pro- 
 gress of mind do we not see, in fact, that only as man is ' quickened' by 
 woman does the mental life multiply and extend ? For the acquisition 
 of knowledge is truly a growth, it is a taking in, not a giving out. This 
 knowledge of the external world is in the strictest sense subjective 
 knowledge. It is in us, all this phn. The woman's mind that cleaves 
 to the moral, acts by instincts, gives itself away in love, is the external- 
 ly acting mind. Man's mind grows and re-produces itself; woman's 
 mind performs external functions. And as woman's body is quickened 
 by man's thro' mutual love, so is man's mind by woman's thro' mutual 
 love. And in the true development, or Genius in its most perfect sense, 
 the man's and woman's mind are united into one. The new grade of 
 mind is the old male and female in one. K"o man of Genius could be 
 without both a father and mother mentally, and in an especial sense. 
 But surely there are no new forms, no multiplication even of talent, 
 without influence of woman's mind upon man's ? See the part women 
 play in society, and in the advance of knowledge ; woman is the 'stim- 
 ulus ' to mental procreation, as man is to physical.
 
 623 
 
 Men of Genius think with the heart rather than with the head ; the 
 head is of use indeed, but by no means the source of their power. The 
 sympathj is the essential, the logic only corrigent. Men of talent 
 think with, are dependent on, the head. The heart is the giver, the 
 brain the taker ; the heart functional, the brain nutritive : heart male, 
 and brain female. Again how curious : the woman has male mind, the 
 heart ; man female mind, the head or brain. The heart is the force-pro- 
 ducer. 
 
 The conceptions we introduce (talent) are ever for the purpose of 
 rounding the matter off, making it easy and clear, relieving us from the 
 sense of paradox and mystery. So they are arbitrary facts specific cre- 
 ations, inherent gravitation, &c. The self-sacrifice (of Genius) is the 
 casting aside these assumptions, giving up what we have made for our- 
 selves, coming into the presence of the infinite mystery, accepting the 
 paradox. So the mathematical limit was simply giving up those arbi- 
 trary things and properties and submitting to Nature, looking at the 
 thing as it was ; and not making it any way at all. It has a resemblance 
 to the Copernican astronomy. There had been made a number of fixed, 
 specific, arbitrary things : Copernicus showed how all resulted from a 
 simple passion in ourselves. He sacrificed these human conceptions, 
 these arbitrary facts. So did not Newton show how a simple passion in our- 
 selves embraced all those arbitrary mathematical facts or inventions? Is 
 not the work of Genius ever more or less in this direction ; showing 
 how a simple passion embraces and includes many arbitrary facts ; ren- 
 dering the phenomenal subjective. In the view of life as 'passion con- 
 trolled,' is not a similar thing done ? a simple passion substituted for 
 many arbitrary facts or things we have invented to make matters right 
 to our sense, to ward off the mystery, the paradox, and bring Nature 
 within our grasp ? 
 
 An arbitrary fact, a thing that is so, as we say ' because God chose 
 to make it so,' is always an invention of our own ; for the arbitrary is 
 not-being, it is the equivalent of inertia or inaction. And it is inter- 
 esting to note how in these expressions, ' because God chose to make it 
 so,' ' the will of God,' &e., we do but transfer the arbitrariness of the 
 fact to God. We try to get rid of it, but do so only in words. 'Observe 
 all these primary facts, properties of matter, inherent tendencies, &c. ; 
 if we look not at the words but at the fact or real conception, are in 
 truth spiritual, i. e. actions. When we reflect, how plain it is that Ge- 
 nius, as being creation, must be self-sacrifice. How can creation be, ex- 
 cept from giving ? what have we whereby to create save ourselves that 
 wh is given us by God. 
 
 See how this 'talent,' this discrimination, is asserting ourselves. In 
 truth it is asserting that wh is to us is also to God. As e.g. when it is 
 said that new species must be specific, creation as distinguished from 
 reproduction. Because different to us, or in form, we assert it to be 
 different in respect to God ! and this impertinence is involved in all as- 
 sertion of difference of fact or essence ; more or less distinctly, but ever 
 there. 
 
 The fact we have to do with (always) is not the phenomenon but our 
 perception of it. Ever the fact is, 'I perceive.' Therefore the one 
 question is always, ' What causes me to perceive the phenomenon ? ' a 
 question of course to be answered by study of the phenomenon : finding 
 out "what our perception is. Thus do I not sec how the psychical uni-
 
 624 
 
 verse is the food of the mind, i. e. facts or perceptions ? The fact is 
 ever the fact of perception, and the cause we want is the cause of per- 
 ception. The mind is made up of facts or perceptions, as the body is of 
 food? 
 
 Is not that polar antipathy wh precedes the union of male and female 
 (in the mental world) chiefly (as in physical) on the side of the male ? 
 It is chiefly the instinctive view dislikes and despises the nutritive ; 
 even as boys despise and dislike women. And see how this antipathy 
 and quarrelling is the very means of bringing about the union : it makes 
 felt how necessary they are to each other. Thus the controversy and 
 its use. Is it not almost like the induction wh produces polar attraction ? 
 First the male sends its ' force,' as if to make the other the same as it ; 
 but resisted it produces opposite polarity ; and then union or attraction 
 or love. So these controversies one may happily smile at : they are the 
 very same as the antipathies and quarrels of boys and girls, wh waken 
 them up to a perception of their wants ; they are the process of polar 
 induction ; mutual reaction going on ; whereby attraction ensues, and 
 union and development. Even as I conceive the planets are attracted 
 by the sun, because they resist the force and so are made oppositely 
 polar ; being however already female, or else they would not 
 resist, but this ' controversy ' causes that stronger polarity or mutual 
 adaptation by wh the union is affected. The quarrelling of boys and girls, 
 the wooing of woman by man, are they not two forms of the same thing ? 
 It may be girls would not dislike boys if boys did not first dislike them. 
 The function is ever from the male first, both the dislike and the love. 
 
 When we make an interpretation, put together two opposites, we al- 
 ways find we have an axiom ; we have nothing new to say ; always it 
 is what we have said before but did not know it : and now we say it 
 with higher meaning. "We have only to leave out hypotheses and chi- 
 meras, and the thing is done. 
 
 The more I think of it, the more plainly I see that the interpreter, 
 the man of Genius, does and cannot draw direct from the phenomenon. 
 He interprets theories, and performs function by nutrition. The man 
 who draws from the phenomenon, the observer, has perception, i. e. 
 passion ; this he expresses as he best can ; viz. forms theories by his 
 sense of right. He begins with passion or force, and thus effects nutri- 
 tion. But his passion or perception is also from function. Is it not in- 
 timately connected with his bodily function, his senses ? even as Genius 
 has mental senses ? Genius produces the new instinctive views ; they 
 are self-evident. Instinctive is an excellent word ; every instinctive 
 view, or length, being also depth, i. e. interpretation or work of Genius: 
 union of two opposites in one. The man of talent has passion ; not the 
 man of Genius ; he has only organization (and instinct) in wh passion 
 is permitted after assimilation of others' works. Genius does one thing 
 in whatever variety of form ; the man of talent produces variety. The 
 man of talent must of course have the ' passion ' and the irresistible 
 tendency, and ' specific form ' too, and all that ; it is not in these things 
 the distinction of Genius lies : it is only to be found in the functional 
 or nutritive work. 
 
 It is beautiful to think of the necessarily unending progress of mind. 
 Have we a work of Genius, a new instinctive view or interpretation ? 
 suppress it, find out all that our sense of logical or other Tightness can
 
 625 
 
 lay hold of to prove that it cannot be ; so get the polar opposite, get the 
 female from the male. Have we on the other hand a nutritive view, a 
 theory of observed phna, the work of talent ? This is the female ; 
 marry it to its opposite, bring back, as one with it, the instinctive view 
 to wh it is the opposite ; this is again the male. Again suppress ; and 
 BO on for ever. The only thing we shd not do is not to do, to rest con- 
 tent and think we have got to the end ; for whatever else we do we 
 must be working for good. Bacon's advice wd be well heeded here also ; 
 in our mental philosophy to embrace in one view, receive and love, all 
 that is : not to choose for ourselves and argue a priori, but to deal with 
 thoughts as we do with phna : accept them and try to learn what they 
 are : not of our own choice to ' anticipate.' In thought, as in morals, 
 there is but one sin ; and that is not not doing, not receiving, not 
 loving. 
 
 There are facts, viz. our perceptions : the fact is that we perceive ; 
 and this only. There are phenomena, or that which we perceive ; and 
 Nature (or God's act) wh causes us to perceive. 
 
 All advance to higher form of knowledge is by leaving out ; i.e. leaving 
 out inventions or hypotheses leaving out the hypothesis of real matter 
 e. g. "We may add to the amount of our knowledge by taking in, col- 
 lecting facts, &c. by talent; i.e. we may grow : but only by self sacri- 
 fice can we create, only by giving up ; that is the idea of creating, for 
 God as much as for us. 
 
 Are not the phna of dreaming opposed to the view that sensation is 
 confined to moral Beings, and while they are moral Beings, as it were ? 
 And yet, may we not remember what we have not felt ? Cannot we 
 imagine spiritual being to be given to an animal and its then remembering 
 what had been its unconscious experience before ? "We do not pity distress 
 endured in dreams very much. We do not remember what happens 
 under chloroform, because perhaps it in part prevents the bodily changes 
 wh accompany sensation. Yet it will not do ; children surely feel before 
 they are moral agents. Our eye is not right yet. For surely we are 
 putting still effect before cause : the spirit is not in time, does not cease 
 to be, and to be moral. The feeling is the spirit's passion, as indeed 
 the body itself is ? 
 
 How decidedly phenomenal or nutritive Goethe was. L entirely re- 
 verses the matter; what he calls objective being truly subjective. 
 Goethe .in all he did described his own experience, expressed emphati- 
 cally himself (introducing chimeras, &c.). Hence the difference from 
 from Shakespeare, who drew from every source but himself and empha- 
 tically excluded the personal. Goethe took into himself, Shakespeare 
 gave out ; they represent the getting and the self-sacrifice. How phe- 
 nomenal and wrong that sentence which pleased the phenomenal Goethe 
 so much : ' Qui vitia odit, homines odit ' ; the truth being the reverse, 
 that man can only be loved by hating sin ; for sin is the absence, the 
 want, of the man ; its essential character is that the man has refused to 
 be or to act. The sentence shd be, ' Qui homines amat vitia odit.' 
 
 I must think about the life of the mind, and the mental (permitted) 
 function, especially with reference to perception. Here surely is the 
 secret of our perception of things of the external world. Thought is 
 caused to be nutritive, or in opposition to tendency, by resistance or
 
 626 
 
 reaching limit ; then function results. In details, in the individual 
 mind, I have to see this. It becomes upward or nutritive in Talent ; 
 in Genius it effects functions simply by permission, by removal of hy- 
 potheses, by niclit or not-being. So that function and nutrition are 
 both (as must be) one in this : they are thought (force) in least resist- 
 ance : the one fact of love. 
 
 Do I thus begin to see the Tightness of Sin ? If no not-being, how 
 could there be Love, or self-sacrifice for others' being ? if no direction 
 of less resistance, how any motion, any life ? Love involves not-loving, 
 or Sin. Still I do not get rid of its being Sin, nor of its evil, nor of 
 its punishment, nor of its forgiveness and redemption. Only hold fast 
 to moral Being and all is right morally. We see the possibility of Sin 
 is involved in moral Being ; is it really worse to see its necessity BO in- 
 volved ? 
 
 It is a glorious fact that we cannot think wrongly that wrongness is 
 but negation, and all thought that is, as all action, is good or right. 
 Therefore it is that I find my ideas never lead me astray, but my far- 
 thest glimpses return to me again in truer form. The error is the stop- 
 ping ; every thought is true and good if used as a means for further pro- 
 gress ; it is either male or female, certainly, and necessary to progress ; 
 but no thought is good if we stop at it. It is the stopping, the inaction, 
 that is the ' wrong ' in the mental, as it is Sin in the spiritual. Per- 
 haps nothing puts us more wrong in our thinking than the idea that 
 we are to arrive at a conception that shall be finally and entirely true ; 
 a coinplete view in wh we can find no flaw : instead of our attaining 
 only to a perpetual progress, a succession of opposites and paradoxes, 
 knowing more and more, but never finally. This mischief results from 
 it, that we ' make up,' and finish off our views, round our philosophy 
 into a complete and consistent whole ; i. e. invent when we shd go on 
 enquiring : fancying we have got to the limit of our faculties, and that 
 what is on one side is absolute mystery ; on the other absolute truth. 
 
 The primary, the instinctive, view never deceives us ; it is always the 
 ultimate truth : it has to be made one with the theoretical, wh latter 
 exists indeed only for it, i. e. to raise it to higher form, to complete it. 
 Emphatically is this the case in theology : the punishment of sin must 
 be made one with the death, the pardon one with the life bestowed. 
 But am I correct in saying the primary view is ever right ? Do I go 
 back far enough ? Does not the idea of Cause produce a theoretical 
 view, as of an external world ? and is it not designed to bring back the 
 'instinctive ' view of its subjectiveness, in the higher form of God's cre- 
 ative spiritual act ? 
 
 Dec. 20, 1856. This seems to be the exact point to wh I am come : 
 As our consciousness, so our perception is, at first, of action i. e. ' un- 
 caused ' : but by some means, owing to something in our condition, we 
 have before us ideas to wh this conception is not applicable : ideas of 
 things, space, time, &c. : and therefore for ' action ' [by limit, surely] is 
 substituted the idea of cause and effect, of force producing passion by 
 a chain of physical or other necessity : now why and how is this sub- 
 stitution ? I see that, in fact, it is a ' polar ' production of the latter 
 from the former and by limit ; but not yet why. The chain of cause 
 and effect is to the uncaused [absolute] action, as creature to creator ? 
 [Metaphysics, 314. See p. 477.
 
 627 
 
 Is not this the point : that the chain of cause of cause and effect is from 
 a moral fact : the ' efficiency,' from the power ; the necessity from the 
 Tightness ? 
 
 Does not the view of variety as arising from the unity, help me ? for 
 thus arises the idea of time, wh does not go with the moral : in time the 
 moral cannot be ; admitting the idea of time the chain of causes follows. 
 So that it wd seem almost as if in the necessary production of variety 
 from unity by limit, might be found the clue to the phenomenon ; i. e. 
 to our receiving the ideas of the phenomenal from the moral or eternal. 
 For the ideas involved in cause those of power and necessity are 
 clearly traceable to the moral, wh thus asserts itself as the primary, or 
 origin of all as it must be, being the only absolute. Also we see beau- 
 tifully the re-union of the phenomenal with the moral in the perfected 
 Science ; also why the tendency to unity is ever in the mind ; why the 
 unifying is the function.' 
 
 How strange is that idea that we can know only phenomena, when in 
 fact phenomena cannot be known at all, being nothing to know ; that 
 wh is surely only can be known. Phenomena are perceived, theorized 
 about, but only realities can be known only the spiritual. It is true 
 we only know the effect on ourselves ; but the effect on ourselves is 
 spiritual, and must be ; we being spirits and action spiritual. In truth, 
 when we reflect, it is seen that ' phenomena ' are not truly effects upon 
 us, but hypotheses : things invented by us, fictions ; not at all objects of 
 knowledge, but only means of knowing. It is important to note that 
 the effect on us is necessarily spiritual, i. e. moral ; the phenomenon is 
 a projection from ourselves, and exists only to be made one with the ef- 
 fect on us, and show it in a truer form. It, with its cause, give us two 
 in one the truth. This is the nature and object of the phenomenon : 
 and does it throw a light on the creator and creature ? 
 
 It cannot be a wrong step to get rid of hypotheses, if only we can do 
 BO : Science ever consists in excluding hypotheses, because this is self- 
 sacrifice. 
 
 "With regard to the idea of space, or matter, I have an insight now : 
 it must be with this as with other things : we have an instinctive view 
 of space, &c., wh is as it were arbitrary ; now arises an opposite view, 
 wh when unified, will show us space and matter as necessary. From 
 this view so logically correct that there can be no real matter, will 
 arise a view combining both, and showing how our perception of matter 
 is necessary ; and so instead of an arbitrary physical world, we shall 
 have a necessary one ; i. e. a right one. It is interesting to note that 
 the theoretical view is formed by our feeling of necessity, of Tightness ; 
 i. e. of moral Tightness. And is not the work of the theoretical view 
 ever to introduce this idea of necessity or Tightness ? This is the work 
 of our minds, the introduction of elements from ourselves. From our 
 spiritual, moral being we cannot endure the arbitrariness ; we set to 
 work to find some way in wh it is right. It is the arbitrariness against 
 wh our being revolts ; where we cannot see moral Tightness in respect 
 to those facts or phna to wh that idea is not consonant- we must intro- 
 duce the conception of physical Tightness or necessity, or cause and ef- 
 fect [wh is virtually eternity, by the bye]. But when we can resolve 
 this into moral Tightness holy necessity then only is the ultimate sa- 
 tisfaction; then only do we truly 'comprehend' it; then only is it
 
 628 
 
 truly one with us. For this chain of cause and effect is quite unsatis- 
 fying, and unright; it wants the same thing done for -it: an arbitrary 
 act is at the beginning still, and our work is still undone. Only when, 
 for this arbitrary act and chain of causes together, we substitute a holy 
 act, and that the whole, are the demands of our nature satisfied. 
 
 This tendency proves that the moral is the fact ; the tendency is, and 
 must be, a tendency of the suppressed to re-appear. There is no end 
 until all is again made spiritual. So God must be all in all again. 
 Thus I know the phenomenal arises from limit to spiritual. 
 
 In the development from polar union it is not the whole of each that 
 exists in the one, but only the good of each. Is not this because it is 
 only the good that truly is ; the evil in each being from defect or want ? 
 So each supplies the other's deficiencies, and in the result there exists 
 only that wh truly was of each. 
 
 The fact that the physical world can be slipped away proves that it 
 cannot be a true and proper basis. It is a ' hypothesis,' and ought to 
 be slipped away as soon as ever it can. The true resting place will be 
 one that cannot be slipped away without utter violence to our nature : 
 i. e. it will be a moral one. The apparent evil of the delusive nature 
 of the physical world is truly a good, as all natural evil is when we can 
 see it. 
 
 Error avenges itself ever, and with an infallible recoil : e.g. our prin- 
 ciple that our business in Science is with ' phenomena and laws ' alone, 
 is the direct parent of things that Science most repudiates ; homoeopa- 
 thy, table-turning, &c. For those people who argue, ' it is no business 
 of mine whether there is any virtue in an infinitesimal dose, I have only 
 to observe phenomena and trace their laws/ do use that philosophi- 
 cal principle quite legitimately. It is an established resolution not to 
 trust to common sense ; not to use our power of seeing ; to serve Nature 
 and not to interpret her. 
 
 The arbitrariness we perceive in the phenomenal, is it not the opposite 
 polar from limit to Tightness ; even as the variety is from limit to unity? 
 So we continually replace this arbitrary action, wh we perceive as the 
 phn, by necessity or law ; just as we continually replace the variety by 
 unity, from the primary suppression of rightness as of unity. Thus 
 also I see how clearly the phenomenal wholly results from us ; it is the 
 effect on us of one eternal act by virtue of our limit. And again, how 
 these two tendencies of unity and of rightness to re-appear, 
 seem to be opposite to each other, polar as it were : for by the unifying 
 we interpret ; by the rectifying we make ' theories.' That function wh 
 arises from the suppressed right, causes the suppression of the instinct- 
 ive view i. e. of the arbitrary ; and thus produces the nutritive, or 
 variety. Then the unity [thus suppressed re-asserting itself] causes 
 the ' function,' or interpretation. But I seem to want here a third : 
 the right suppressed [by limit] causing us to see arbitrariness the unity 
 suppressed causing us to see variety, hence the two functions, which 
 produce first the theory, then the interpretation : and it is beautiful 
 that the theory is produced emphatically by the sense of right : is not 
 this the especially human ; that which we introduce from ourselves ? 
 Still another is wanting surely te unite these two ; are they not length 
 and breadth? what is the depth? [Note: Jan. 10, 1870. Lately I 
 have seen the sense of Justice as the ' Social Suppressor.']
 
 629 
 
 This is the work of Science : we begin with action, ever ; the only 
 thing we can perceive is action : we invent cause and effect, physical 
 laws and necessity, and so on ; these are supplied by ourselves : our 
 perception is action inevitably so by the very nature of ug. For above 
 and before, and including, all our chain of things and causes, is and 
 must be the Act still, wh is the fact perceived. Then, as the ultimate 
 result, instead of arbitrary we have necessary ; instead of many, one. 
 These are the instinctive, the nutritive, the true. And to do this work 
 are given us our sense of moral action or cause, i. e. of right ; and our 
 return to unity. I must remember that the ' arbitrary' is the polar op- 
 posite to right, from limit ; even as variety is to unity. Here is the 
 source of both, and of our ' functional ' or spontaneous, or necessary, 
 re-substitution of the unity, and the necessary or right, for the arbitrary 
 and the variety. 
 
 Thus time and space apply only to the forms, the forms of one fact : 
 the variety, on wh both depend, is only a variety of forms. And the 
 question of the ' origin of the phenomenal ' resolves itself partly into 
 this : why does the one fact appear to us under a variety of forms ; or 
 produce upon us various effects ? Is it not clearly from our limit ? At 
 present the details of the phenomenon that it is in time and space 
 are arbitrary to me. I have to see that these also are right : that God's 
 holy action necessitates such an effect on us. 
 
 The ' limit ' is in all cases an element arising from our conception : it 
 is wholly from us, as much in the physical world in concrete science 
 as in abstract. The reason that all motion becomes, or involves, the 
 opposite, is the very same as that all mathematical conceptions do. It 
 is the law of us. And surely it is ever because the spiritual action is 
 self-control ; is this very limit, wh the phenomenon presents to us in 
 its derived forms. All the phenomenal is self-control because the spi- 
 ritual is. Self-sacrifice is that ' eternal becoming ' which we see as the 
 phenomenon. Thus surely I see how the idea of substance is not ap- 
 propriate to the spirit. Spiritual Being is eternal self-sacrifice ; eternal 
 becoming, i. e. eternal action. 'Becoming' is action. If spirit is ' be- 
 coming,' then spirit is action and not substance. Is not this the ' Be- 
 coming ' of Hegel ? His progress from nothing to Being and vice versa, 
 the eternal self-sacrifice ? substituting the moral for what the Germans 
 have tried to make of the phenomenal. Is not here their error, and 
 here their Tightness too ? Spirit is eternal becoming ; eternal giving up 
 self to be one with other. Thus Nature is what it shd be, as being a 
 spiritual act i. e. a spiritual Being the act and the being one. Is not 
 this an advance ? seeing in Nature eternal self-sacrifice, we do actually 
 perceive a spiritual Being. Thus God is again seen to be one with the 
 creature, with the universe : it is spirit ; it is Love. Now whence the 
 forms of the phenomenon ? for it is these forms that are perpetually be- 
 coming. Does not the ' becoming ' constitute the forms, the substances ? 
 
 Our design our 'talent' is part of the 'Genius,' or Tightness of 
 Nature. How is it design and effort of ours ? whence the consciousness 
 of effort ? That will ' of ours is a symbol of the bad, the selfish ; the 
 yielding up of self, is symbol of the good : the holy being ever not self- 
 assertion but self-sacrifice. There is nothing truly parallel to talent 
 in God's work; for that is what is not; it is arbitrary or deficient; 
 it is not in God's act at all, only in relation to us is it Talent.
 
 630 
 
 Spirit is eternal becoming ; therefore, seen in time, it must b6 per- 
 petual becoming, necessarily passing away. Time surely is from this 
 becoming of the spiritual. This eternal becoming, seen in succession, 
 must be just such a series of transient things, each one yielding to, mer- 
 ging itself in, the next. 
 
 Necessity, wherever we see it, is moral Tightness : the passive physi- 
 cal and other necessities that we perceive, or imagine, are phenomenal. 
 Physical necessity reposes, even phenomenally, on self-sacrifice ; it is 
 the one thing becoming another that necessitates that thing. And when 
 we see, or think we see, physical necessity, let us reflect a moment : it 
 is God that does all these things ; what necessity but His own holiness 
 can there be to Him ? Physical necessity is God's Holiness. Or if we 
 deny this necessity, wh is one of the deepest instincts of our being, what 
 have we done thereby beyond the overthrow of Science, and uprooting 
 of common sense ? what but substituting an arbitrary for a holy God ? 
 
 Spirit is essentially action ; matter [i. e. the phenomenal] essentially 
 passive ; its essence is inertia. Here is another clue to the relation : 
 spirit eternally * makes itself become,' matter perpetually ' is made to 
 become.' Spiritual being is inseparable from, is one with, action, as the 
 essence of phenomenal ' substance ' is inertia or ' passion.' The spiritual 
 is action ; the phenomenal is passion. What is to be done is to trace 
 how the latter arises from the former. Is it not simple : God's act is 
 passion in us, affecting us as if it were from without ; but is action 
 within us : the very same thing, but differing in relation to us action 
 or passion according as it is within us or without. And this also is 
 noticeable, that our ' instinctive ' primary view of the phenomenal is as 
 action : the idea of passiveness is introduced by us with labor and effort ; 
 and introduced only to be excluded again, to give us action of higher 
 sort. The ' passion ' first appears to us as arbitrary action, the ' action ' 
 ever as right action. This is the first difference of the two : the pas- 
 sion arbitrary, the action right. And so in truth it is ; the arbitrary is 
 inaction, it is yielding where we ought to act. [And all the analogies 
 of arbitrary and right to Talent and Genius, nutrition and function 
 seem to come in well here.] The phenomenon, or appearance, is of ar- 
 bitrary action : we introduce the idea of passion, or necessity, or cause, 
 and from this rise to see it as right action. Beautiful is the conception 
 of Science universal law : how much more is in it than is designed. 
 
 Arbitrary action and passive necessity are two views of one thing ; 
 put together, united into one, they constitute right action : the good 
 or true [or possible] of both put together ; the action ' of the one, the 
 ' law' of the other. For the arbitrariness and the passiveness are alike 
 1 wrong;' i. e. false, not-being; defects, wh are supplied by the other: 
 the right excludes the arbitrary, the action excludes the passion. We 
 take from each what corresponds with that wh is in ourselves the right 
 and the act ; i.e. that wh we can 'know,' or be one with; and exclude so 
 the other, which is not in ourselves, nor can be ; which is essentially 
 not-being. For certainly when we say the essence of matter is 
 inertia, we say that its essence is not-being. That which does not act, 
 is not. 
 
 Now, even in details, I think I can carry this out : by advance 
 by polar union that wh is not is excluded ; i. e. advance consists in 
 becoming more ; being is put in place of not-being. All development,
 
 631 
 
 or higher, is simply more. There can be no better, or higher, than 
 Being ; no worse than not-being. Being and not-being are in truth the 
 facts of good and evil, holiness and sin : they are the same as acting 
 and not-acting. Thus the exclusion of the idea of ' substance,' or iner- 
 tia, is but exclusion of that wh [by definition of it] is not. There can 
 be [I see] no spiritual substance, or ww-moral substratum ; that -would be 
 spiritual inertia. The idea of ' substance ' comes in with that of passive- 
 ness, and I must trace it. 
 
 Arbitrary action cannot be ; arbitrary cannot be spiritual, it can exist 
 only in time ; it is essentially phenomenal : even as sin is only phen- 
 omenal ; it is sin because the spiritual is not there, where it shd be. 
 A little more will give me the rightness or necessity of the phn ; why 
 do we ' perceive ' arbitrary action ; why substitute the idea of passion 
 or substance ? This connection of substance with the idea of passive- 
 ness, is a help towards ' matter :' for the idea of substance is that of 
 matter ; the physical world hangs well on that. 
 
 'Arbitrary action' is the starting point of the phenomenal: but we may 
 get beyond this ; for the first is the mere fact of action, the idea of 
 arbitrariness must be attached to it afterwards ; it arises from our not 
 perceiving the rightness ; yes, from mere defect or deficiency. Conscious 
 that it is not our action, we do not perceive the rightness [as we do of 
 our own], or the spirituality; therefore the arbitrariness is not a con- 
 ception, or thing ; it is not positive in any way ; it is mere absence of 
 the conception of rightness ; altogether it is not-being. This is it ; our 
 perception is of action, with no idea attached to it : then our concep- 
 tion of passiveness, or passion, is altogether ratiocinative, or theoretical. 
 Here it is ; exact : it arises from the suppression of the idea of action. 
 "We refuse that idea of action [alone and without rightness] ; we sup- 
 press it, and that gives us the polar opposite the idea of passion, of 
 more necessity [cause and effect, &c.] There is exactly a case of the 
 ' limit ' here the mathematical process. We suppress the ' arbitrary 
 action ' by our ' sense of right ' [as ever, this is the suppressing force ; 
 wh I have seen]. Action is the only possible primary conception [we 
 know that it is so in children] ; it is the only thing we can ' con-nasco ' 
 or know ; the only thing that can be in us ; who are action. Now, the 
 suppression of action gives the necessity, the law or rightness ; it ex- 
 cludes the arbitrariness and introduces passion, or inertia, instead. 
 Here are length and breadth : now, these united into depth [by the ne- 
 cessary tendency to re-appear of the suppressed action] give us ' right 
 [i. e. holy] action.' With the idea of passion comes in at once [as I 
 see] that of substance, wh is surely that of matter. Thus I have the 
 physical, and all it involves. 
 
 This view is no theory; it is the plainest fact in the history of 
 thought, that Science arose from, and still consists in, the suppression 
 of the idea of ' action ' arbitrary action. In this is the proof that it 
 will end, or result, in a re-production of the idea of action [in a higher 
 form] ; nothing can be annihilated. 
 
 Now, every theoretical view [or nutritive], as it is effected by the 
 sense of right [appropriate to the subject] so is it not the suppression 
 of an ' arbitrary action ;' a fact unaccounted for pseudo-spiritual. (Is 
 not the ' pseudo-spiritual ' a good name for the ' arbitrary ?'] And does 
 not the resulting view ever consist in the introduction of- the idea of
 
 632 
 
 passiveness a kind of necessity, or law not a moral necessity ; a becom- 
 ing phenomenal ? And then ever the union is the re-appearance of the 
 former 'fact,' under law or necessity ; i.e. right, and not arbitrary. Man's 
 ' instinct ' is ever right ; it is raised, but never contradicted, save tem- 
 porarily in nutrition, and that only to re-produce and raise it. It is 
 right because it is spiritual. 
 
 Thus I see the ' nutritive ' is the phenomenal ; the phenomenal the 
 nutritive, divergent or force-absorbing, ever. Is not this our relation to 
 God ; first instinctive, then by sense of right, then the union of both 
 in one ? 
 
 I think 'matter ' is clearly involved in that idea of substance which 
 arises from passion ; and that it does not come from space so well. 
 Bather is not space from matter ? For substance does involve that idea 
 of material substratum, we cannot separate the two ; dimension will 
 go with our idea of substance. But now I have several things to bring 
 together here : my former thoughts about time, space, and cause as 
 unity in variety, &c. 
 
 I think I can now trace that idea of matter or substance. The sup- 
 pression of the idea of action [by limit] produces that of passion : this 
 involves the idea of a substratum, as we feel at once on reflection. And 
 it belongs entirely to the phenomenal being connected only with the 
 idea of passiveness, wh also is wholly phenomenal. So material things 
 are substantial ; it is because they are ' substantial ' that they are not 
 real. I do not deny the substantiality of the external world, but [as I 
 thought it would be] I emphatically affirm it and show it to be neces- 
 sary, I see why there must be a physical, i. e. a substantial or material 
 world : for our perception of the world as substantial is also an instinc- 
 tive view, and ought to be re-affirmed, in higher or necessary form, by 
 virtue of its denial as I now find it to be. So there is no spiritual 
 substance ; substance is only where passiveness is. Thus we must be 
 in a substantial world ; thus phenomenal things are the substantial 
 things. So I perceive now why and how we perceive God's act as 
 things. And it is right to speak of 'matter,' and of the forces as ' af- 
 fections of matter ;' only it should be done intelligently. But whence 
 comes our so strong conviction that the ' substances' are the real, when 
 it is so clear that they are the unreal, or ' imagined?' There are facts 
 wh will help us to this, surely ; especially our perception of the sun's 
 motion, &c., as real ? [The word ' real' I now use for the phenomenal 
 and for the truly existing the word ' actual.'] 
 
 Our conception of an ' agent ' is not of substance, surely ; especially 
 when we consider that in action cause and effect are excluded, and .*. 
 time. Certainly we want no substance where there is no duration ; the 
 connection of substance with time or succession [i. e. with cause and 
 effect], with passiveness or inertia, seems very clear, and therefore its 
 non-applicability to spirit, wh, involving action, is necessarily eternal. 
 The world is unreal, or only phenomenal, because substantial ; i. e. 
 passive. That wh is substantial must be inert ; therefore there is no 
 substance in spirit. It is interesting to note in connection with these 
 thoughts how we derive the idea of substance only from touch; i.e. from 
 our own action limited. 
 
 The arbitrariness of the action which is our primary perception, is 
 simply want of knowledge on our part. So the inertia, wh we imply
 
 633 
 
 by terms expressing passion, means merely the same ; it means absence, 
 want, ignorance. These are both simply modes of speech wh serve to 
 express the fact of our not-knowing : it is merely the absence of action, 
 as 'arbitrary' is merely absence of Tightness. The exclusion of arbitrari- 
 ness and of the passion as it appears to us, is simply the supplying what was 
 wanting ; putting something where before there was not. For it is only 
 action and right that are, or can in any way be : in-action, un-rightness, 
 are but negations. In all such ways of speaking or thinking we put 
 being for not-being. In the physical world there is plenty like it ; as 
 when we take a shadow for a thing. The absence of being does phe- 
 nomenally produce all the effect of existence ; but we must be none the 
 less careful not to confound the two. Our idea of real evil or arbi- 
 trariness, or real inertia or passion, is exactly like our taking a shadow 
 for a thing. 
 
 These not-beings seem like being to us; so sin seems a reality; a deed, 
 or spiritual action. Woe to us, if it were ; for then it would be eternal. 
 But since it is not-being, it is also eternal not-being ; eternal in-action 
 eternal death. There is no need to destroy it : there is nothing to 
 destroy. What is it to destroy a shadow, but to let light be ? To 
 destroy not-being is to create ; but God's creation is eternal, and there- 
 fore absolute and perfect : nothing waits to be done. But to us it is 
 phenomenal and in time ; developes itself in succession ; to us therefore 
 there may be destruction of all evil i. e. when we come to see creation 
 perfectly. For as God is infinite Spirit, .-.is His action infinite, i.e. 
 creation. There is no true loss, or not-being, no absolute in-action ; no 
 deduction from infinitude. Individual spirits may refuse to be or act, 
 but being, action, holiness, are not thereby diminished. These are in- 
 finite, eternal. We may see sin, as it were, destroyed ; but the eternal 
 infinite holiness knows no change ; no diminution now, nor increase or 
 reparation hereafter. There is none the less action because we do not 
 act ; there is none the less life because a seed does not grow ; these 
 things affect distribution only, as we say. Woe, I say again, if sin 
 were real, spiritual action, for then were there eternal sin. 
 
 I must trace this idea of the two polars being two halves a positive 
 and a negative each supplying what is wanting in the other, farther ; 
 alike in the mental and physical world : the absence appearing like a 
 positive element. And the two polar elements are in the male [or in- 
 stinctive] the action or fact, in the female [or theoretical] the lightness 
 or necessity. The one is produced by our consciousness of action ; the 
 other by our sense of right ; both together giving us a necessary fact, 
 or a right action. These are again the liberty and the law. And the 
 law or necessity arises from the liberty ; nay, is the liberty itself in 
 another form. There is no liberty except in obeying law, no action but 
 in self-sacrifice. Indeed this latter is self-evident ; action being neces- 
 sarily spending, giving up ourselves ; putting ourselves into another 
 thing : that wh we do is ourselves, re-presents us. 
 
 An ' arbitrary * fact is, phenomenally, merely a fact unaccounted for : 
 a necessary result is merely not-fact. 'Arbitrary ' is merely not neces- 
 sary. So the arbitrary action becomes the necessary inaction [or inertia] : 
 the thing becomes not-thing or nothing ; but producing so the necessity 
 or Tightness . The thing unaccounted for becomes the no-thing necessary.
 
 634 
 
 In fact, the ' thing ' is the necessity ; the ' thing ' has become the right- 
 ness. The action becomes the necessity, and therefore ceases ; as they 
 say in ' correlation ' language. The act ia one with the necessity ; is 
 the necessity or Tightness in another form. Is there not a proof here of 
 action being, necessarily, holy, or right; the two terms are interchange- 
 able. But the action, tending to re-appear, re-appears with the necessity, 
 as holy action. 
 
 Thus I see : substance arises from the not-being, the inertia. It is 
 wonderful again : the suppression of the being, or action, giving the ne- 
 cessity or passion, is the source of the idea of substance, or matter. If 
 we get rid of action we must have matter or inertia, i. e. inaction ; for 
 matter is merely a word for inertia or inaction. Thus again it is a type 
 of Sin, wh is inaction. So again from the suppression of action comes 
 the passive, or physical, or substantial [material] world. It is a nutri- 
 tion produced by the suppression of action ? 
 
 Eefusing to regard creation as a work of skill, resolving to trace law, 
 is the very same instinct as that to wh Science owes its existence the 
 refusal to admit arbitrary action, facts unaccounted for. And so we ob- 
 tain right action holiness as the fact and origin of the universe ; and 
 we feel that having arrived at moral right we have attained to the ulti- 
 mate fact of being. "We never ask, why must action be right ? we feel 
 that only so can it be at all. 
 
 It is only by subjecting the phna [wh are subjective'] to laws of our- 
 selves that we acquire knowledge, rightly so called. For our law our 
 being is life, we only know life ; we only know things or phna when 
 we see them to be life : till then they are not knowledge, but only pas- 
 sion. Further surely I can go : The phenomenal [wh now I see means 
 always the physical] is polar opposite divergent to and therefore from 
 the psychical ; it arises from ' suppression ' of the psychical. What is 
 this psychical, the suppression of which produces the phenomenal, and 
 from union of wh with the phenomenal arises the mental ? This giving 
 laws to the phenomenon is the union of the psychical and the physi- 
 cal. Is not the psychical then unity, action, right ? So our giving 
 laws to the phenomenon, is the applying the sense of Tightness. And 
 here is one form of the limit by which the psychical, or ' conception ' of 
 action is converted into the opposite polar, or the phenomenal chain of 
 cause and eJffect ; and unity suppressed, giving variety, &c. This union 
 of the psychical with the phenomenal, or giving laws to the phenome- 
 nal, constitutes the mental life. By successive reappearances of the 
 psychical, in union with the phenomenal, we obtain ever larger and 
 larger facts, i. e. arbitrary actions ; ever nearer and nearer to unity. 
 
 What I see is in short this : how the ' psychical ' is the plain and 
 simple spiritual impression, so to speak the fact ; and how, from limit 
 or suppression of this, naturally and indeed necessarily arises the pheno- 
 menal : how the suppressed psychical re-appears, united with the phe- 
 nomenal, producing the mental life [of Science, &c.], in whare embodied 
 the two first the nutritive, 2nd the functional ; it being in truth the 
 animal. And as, in the animal, nutrition is first, so the immediate de- 
 pendence of the mental is on the physical, or phenomenal ; and rightly : 
 so it has organic food food with the force in in it. The physical world 
 therefore represents the vegetable, and bears a similar relation to the 
 mental that the vegetable does to the animal : the mental being physi- 
 cal and psychical in one, as the animal is vegetable and chemical in one
 
 635 
 
 In the psychical becoming the phenomenal, or physical, is there not a 
 parallel to the chemical becoming the vegetable ? Will not the secret 
 of physical nature be revealed here 1 For the mental is nearer to us 
 than the physical, even as the organic is than the inorganic. We 
 thought the organic was a greater mystery than the inorganic, but I have 
 found the contrary, and can only interpret the inorganic by the organic. 
 So again we have thought the mental a greater mystery than the physi- 
 cal, but shall we not rather be best able to interpret the physical 
 by the psychical ? In each case, however, beginning from the farthest off. 
 
 The physical is un-real because it is ' substantial ,' not although it is. 
 Matter is the physical ' hypothesis ;' the physical is necessarily substan- 
 tial, because hypothetical : the nutrition is essentially thus substantial or 
 hypothetical ; the elements introduced by us are ' hypotheses.' A mental 
 substance is a hypothesis ; a physical hypothesis is substance. In each 
 case the substance is inferred, introduced by us, not directly perceived ; 
 it comes ever with the nutrition, that wh substitutes passion for action, 
 that wh introduces the necessary inertia, instead of the arbitrary action. 
 Every nutritive view involves hypothesis ; which is the substratum de- 
 manded by the passion, the in-action; and it answers to the 'substance' of 
 the physical.Substance then, or hypothesis, answers to the arbitrariness in 
 the opposite view; indeed it is again the arbitrariness; it is assumed for the 
 sake of the end, or result. 
 
 In physical development also are the three the two polars and the 
 union, answering to the instinctive, the theoretical, and the interpretative. 
 But here again the first and third are the same, each depth being a new 
 length ; so that the ' polarity ' again appears immediately, and it seems, 
 to the first view, as if there were only a constant ' action and re-action,' 
 only two instead of three. This is alike in the physical and the mental, 
 so that we could not see the physical development, or union of two in 
 one, even as we have not been able to see interpretation, or union of two 
 ia one, in the mental world : thus depth is hidden by becoming always 
 immediately polar again, or giving rise to the opposite, so that what is 
 ever seen is succession of pairs : and these arbitrary, not necessarily de- 
 pendent, but involving as we say ' specific creations ;' the ' specific 
 creation' being the 'hypothesis.' We think it the fact, the substance, be- 
 cause it is not. We ever think the arbitrary, i. e. absence, or not-being, 
 the real. 
 
 The special creations answer to the substance or ' matter,' arising 
 from the arbitrariness, or from our not seeing the necessity, in the one 
 case ; from the in-action in the other. Here is the link between the two 
 between the mental hypothesis, and the physical substratum; it is that 
 wh occupies the place where absence is ; i. e. it is non-entity ; but there- 
 fore, I suppose, felt by us to be so real, because we put it where there is 
 not ; feeling that something must be ? We cling especially to its reality 
 for that very reason, because we feel the want. We feel it on account 
 of the arbitrariness, or non-necessity, on the one hand ; because of the 
 inertia , or non-action, on the other. We must supply the places of these 
 not-beings, and so invent, or from ourselves introduce, a ' hypothesis ' for 
 the necessity, ' substance ' for the action. Thus we see how the putting 
 together of the two halves, producing the whole, excludes the hypothesis, 
 or the substance. 
 
 s 2
 
 So are not hypothesis and substance polar opposite; two forms of the 
 same thing ; even as action and necessity (or rightness) are ? Thus hy- 
 pothesis is to arbitrariness [or absence of rightness] what substance is to 
 inertia, or absence of action. They are both chimeras, wh we put to 
 fill up to our sense, or fancy, the voids occasioned by these absences. 
 But they do not really fill them up ; they only mark their existence : 
 they are delusions, we think them real for a time, but our progress is to 
 see that they are un-real; to see the void, and then to see the reality. Is 
 not this an universal rule, wherever we conceive substance there we shd 
 see action ; wherever we conceive hypothesis, there we shd see rightness 
 or necessity : the two ' conceptions ' marking the spots, as it were, at wh 
 are the voids wh we call by the names ' inertia ' (absence of action) and 
 ' arbitrariness ' (absence of rightness) ? These conceptions are arbitrarily 
 put by us, to make the thing do ; therefore they are un-real, because 
 arbitrary. They are not facts seen and felt ' perceived ' they are 
 chimeras ' invented.' Consider now how these constitute the nutrition, 
 that opposition to passion wh gives functional power ; and how they are 
 produced even as nutrition is, by resistance or limit : i. e. from sense of 
 logical right, or necessity. And how is our moral or spiritual life, or 
 nutrition, from self-control by sense of moral right, how is this parallel 
 to such introduction of hypothesis 1 [The two-fold relation male in 
 one point of view and female in the other obscures this parallel.] For 
 this introduction of hypothesis is not bad, nor wrong ; it is the nutrition, 
 as right, as necessary, as the function itself. The introduction of hy- 
 potheses is as necessary, as natural, as their exclusion. So the work of 
 talent is ever un-real ; these things introduced from ourselves are not ; 
 they are shadows, absences looking to us like being. 
 
 It comes again to this ; that there is no real action but creation, or 
 sacrificing ourselves. Genius creates because it gives up itself, or these 
 ' hypotheses that belong to ourselves are introduced for ourselves, i. e. 
 for a purpose or object it gives up these objects and gives itself to that 
 wh is ; simply, and because it is, from love ; thus creating, because thus 
 putting being where not-being, or hypothesis, was before ; action where 
 was inaction. It is ever so : what we do for an object, for selfishness, is 
 ever not-doing, and only not-being can result from it. "We seek good 
 for ourselves, selfish advantage, and grasp yes ever and infallibly a 
 shadow : we not-act ; and not-action, or shadow, is the result. Only 
 that wh is done from love, or because it is right, is truly action, and re- 
 sults in being, or creating ; i.e. in good or happiness. Sin thus represents 
 the introducing hypotheses, or chimeras ; the resting in shadows, 
 or delusions, as if real. It is arbitrariness, or in-action, or tm- 
 rightness. 
 
 As our right action, or moral resistance, is also a ' function,' or from 
 love [representative of an approximative or permitted passion] ; so I be- 
 lieve it will be found in the physical [and mental] world also, that all 
 resistance in truth depends on a functional [a permitted] passion. This 
 is indeed, in part, involved in saying it is from cohesion, wh is a form of 
 approximative passion ; but shd there not be a more dynamic view ; not 
 only tendency to approximation, or passive attraction, but real approxi- 
 mative passion, or function, concerned in it ? So that in all cases what 
 nappens when a force is resisted, and is converted into another, is that it
 
 637 
 
 permits a function, wh is the means of such conversion. So is the vital 
 resistance as in a seed a permitted approximative passion, wh opposes, 
 and turns into its polar, the chemical? Yet surely this is not so, in many 
 plain cases ? 
 
 In our present view of nature, &c., we constantly omit to recognize 
 the third, or union of the two : our view is, in the literal sense of the 
 term, superficial ; we do not see the depth. Is not this just like what 
 we do in respect to to the ellipse ; we look at it superficially ; this is the 
 very type of it ; and what we do is to add the depth to the length, and 
 so see two polars wh are unequal, and no union ? So is it not universally; 
 do we not exaggerate the 'male' in overlooking the depth, and see unequal 
 polars ? We tilt it ; put the diagonal in horizontal plane, and make it 
 measure the length. We have it surely in the idea that man is superior 
 to woman. 
 
 Does not the mind demand hypothesis and substance, as the eye de- 
 mands complementary colors ? We see that wh is not ,because thee is 
 presented to us not a whole, but only a part. But here is a farther in- 
 sight ; the added colors make up white light ; the complementary colors 
 are not the 'polar,' but make up the three. Now, how do we make up the 
 ' three' by the introduction of the hypothesis and substance ? Shall I 
 now see the colors : thus, as it were 
 
 Action + Hypothesis = Right + Substance, 
 So Red -V- green = blue + orange? 
 
 This, ef course, is merely an arbitrary illustration. 
 
 The true whole is made up by the union of three, not by the merging 
 of two into one ; the ' hypothesis ' and the ' substance ' must re-appear 
 also ; but now not as unreal, but as real. The element common to both 
 that wh is partly in both the ' arbitrary ' and the ' passion ' must ap- 
 pear distinctly now as the third [the yellow]? 
 
 We have so firm a persuasion in respect to anything of which we can 
 see how it is done or effected, that God does not do it, or at least does 
 not do it so directly as He does some other things that we have never 
 seen done; so that it would not be correct to describe the two in the 
 same way. Now, there must be some reason [some right reason] for 
 this persuasion, and I think something may be seen respecting it : e. g. 
 1st, that wh we think God does not (directly) do, is especially the phn, 
 that wh occurs in time. 
 
 [Is it right to call matter that wh is in space the phn ? it is 
 not perceived, but inferred ; or in truth, is it not as much perceived 
 as the force? both matter and force are equally inferences from 
 ' sensation.' Surely sensation the fact of perception is the phen- 
 omenon ?] 
 
 2nd, we suppose 'direct' doing of that wh is at the beginning only the 
 producing force or action where there was none before. It is manifest- 
 ly this idea of time is the source of our thus excluding God. [He acts 
 eternally, is answer enough.] And is not this truly at the bottom of it, 
 that that which thus is in time is an effect upon ourselves. God 
 does not do it directly, but thro' us ; we are the medium thro' wh this 
 act of God is done. And this also : God's act is a spiritual act, i. e. a 
 moral act : it cannot be those physical event.-, thing* like those we do
 
 638 
 
 with our bodies, or even our minds ; our instinct is right and wise that 
 makes us feel that all this is only in a secondary sense God's act. But 
 God does these not thro' a chain of second causes, but thro' us. Just as 
 it is thro' man that He makes the sun revolve around the earth. For 
 I hold it right to say the sun does move around the earth. It is true ; 
 this is the phn : it as much moves round as there is a sun at all : when 
 we have said the word ' sun' we have put it out of our power consistent- 
 ly to deny its motion. There is equal foundation for both viz., that 
 we see it. It is right to speak phenomenally, and men will do so. 
 God created creates, does the sun and the sun's motion alike in one 
 secondary way ; through percipient beings. So it is true the phenom- 
 enal is God's secondary action ; there is something between God and it, 
 namely, ourselves. 
 
 Whenever we perceive movement, in point of fact we only perceive 
 the fact that a thing has moved ; that it was in one place and is in ano- 
 ther. Now apply this to all the forces, to all motion, of wh of course 
 it must be true in some way. Time seems the essential element in it. 
 
 We are always wrong when we start from a divergent instead of an 
 approximating passion, and make that the first (as in our idea of a vital 
 force), for this reason, that we have then an arbitrary instead of a ne- 
 cessary 'passion.' Putting the approx passion before it we then see it 
 as necessary [but the approx passion then is the arbitrary in its turn]. 
 Thus I see life as necessary instead of arbitrary ; but now to unite the 
 necessity and the action in one ? 
 
 The < necessary ' is that which is produced by a force, a power -which 
 causes it to be : and in the spiritual it is the same ; the right is right 
 because in this sense necessary ; viz. it is produced by Love : here is a 
 power wh necessitates its being. The right is the act of love. So again 
 Sin cannot be ; it is inaction ; action cannot be without love. This is the 
 basis and use of our instinct of causation ; why there is no satisfaction 
 till we refer every action to an approximating tendency, i. e. to 
 Love. So the phenomenal exactly represents the spiritual ; it is only 
 the spiritual seen under another form, or rather partially seen : one fact 
 seen under two polar half forms ; either as action without the necessity ; 
 or as necessity without the action. [Is not this the vibration ? our limit 
 causing that wh is one whole to be to us two incomplete halves ? our 
 feeling of 'necessary ' is really of love. 
 
 The way to put ourselves right is to affirm uniformly and consistent- 
 ly the existence of the phn ; to say, alike, the external world is, 
 and the motion of the sun is : i. e. it is that wh we see ; speaking of the 
 phn, it * is.' Now comes the question, what is it ? But this question 
 cannot arise until first it is. The motion of the earth rests on the mo- 
 tion of the sun, wh of course therefore is ; the questions as to cause, and 
 as to real and apparent being, must be kept in their proper place. We 
 cannot ' see ' that wh is not. It is true the motion of the sun is an 
 effect on us of something else, but how can it be this until first it is ? 
 By altering our language as our knowledge increases we make ourselves 
 inconsistent without knowing it, and lay difficulties in our own path : 
 that a thing is proves nothing about what it is : that the external world 
 is has no bearing on the question what it is ; tells nothing for or 
 against spiritualism : of course it is ; it is on the fact of its being that 
 we raise the question, what is it ? The phn is, equally, when we do
 
 639 
 
 know what it is, and when we do not. Those who object to say of a 
 phn that it is, manifestly want to express more by the word ' it ' than it 
 shd convey. They want to make it convey a hypothesis, and affirm the 
 thing mentioned to be a fact, and not a phn a cause, and not an effect. 
 But this is an abuse : is shd affirm merely the existence of the thing, 
 without any implication what it is. By using it correctly we see the 
 immense gain ; various questions escape a premature judgment. But 
 then we shd say of the motion of a tree past wh we travel it is, too. All 
 motion is matter of relation ; in truth, it is a spiritual passion, it is 
 wholly in us, and no idea can be more futile than of distinguishing mo- 
 tions into internal and external. The thing is itself subjective. Thus 
 first the phn is denied, as it were, affirmed un-real ; now brought back, 
 and affirmed to be in higher form. It is, because it is a phn. 
 
 The motion of the earth may be phn or appearance, also and yet cause 
 the phenomenal motion of the sun ; just as the motion of the sun (tho' 
 only an appearance) causes day and night, &c. We are obviously in a 
 chain of phna, or appearances ; one depending on the other ; but for 
 that reason surely being presumably all of one kind. The chain must 
 be alike surely : cause and effect are one thing in two forms ; if the 
 effect be an appearance how can the cause be anything else? When we 
 get up to that wh produces the phn as a whole, then it is another 
 question. 
 
 Is not the motion of the earth also a ' phenomenon '? surely it is. It 
 is a ' mental phn ' a subjective mental passion, instead of subjective 
 physical. Then whence and why this subjective mental passion ? Is 
 it not the union of the physical passion, or the appearance, with the 
 psychical the right reason, the sense of unity, of cause, &c. ? But 
 again, it is clear our psychical is subjective the sense of cause, of 
 Tightness, &c., and it is agreed the appearance is subjective ; but if so, 
 how can that wh results from them be other than subjective ; can two 
 subjectives make an objective ? And see how widely this applies ; our 
 physical passion is universally admitted to be subjective ; our reasoning 
 powers certainly are : how can the result be anything but subjective ? 
 And this equally clearly includes all the phn, and all possible. Thus 
 there is another argument for the subjectivity of the universe ; but not 
 therefore that we can know only phna ; but that our only real know- 
 ledge is of the spiritual, i. e. the moral. We know a thing when we 
 see it thus one with ourselves ; and our inference from ourselves to that 
 without then first has validity, when it is thus based on real knowledge. 
 That wh is without us we know only by that wh is within ; but that is 
 by the moral or spiritual. We are not left in ignorance but we are 
 limited to one form of knowledge ; and this necessarily : we can, of 
 course, only know that wh is one with ourselves, i. e. wh is spiritual ; 
 but that we really know the eternal, the spiritual seems obvious to me ; 
 the intuition of cause, whereby we interpret the phenomenal, seems to 
 involve it. 
 
 Is our inference of ' cause ' the operation of the limit ? our consider- 
 ing the motions of sun and stars as effect of the motion of the earth, a 
 limiting, a suppressing, and causing it to become polar opposite ? 
 
 Do we not 'infer' the existence of our own bodies, viz., from our 
 sensiitions ? And do we first perceive our own bodies, and thence the 
 external world ; or do we not first perceive the external world and
 
 640 
 
 come to know our own bodies only as parts of it ? We only perceive 
 by inferring ; these two are one ; we perceive by intuition of cansation: 
 this makes our mental perceptions one with our physical ; it puts the 
 phn of the external world and of the mental world on the same basis : 
 the perception of a thing as existing without us, is by inferring [un- 
 consciously] a cause for our sensations simple for many just as the 
 inference of an unperceived fact is simple for many. And surely it 
 must be by the same law, force, or necessity ; it must be similarly a 
 ' function ?' For inferring cause, as perception, is ever a function ; the 
 introduction of hypotheses is nutrition ; and these are not external 
 perceptions but are from ourselves. At the same time ; how is this ex- 
 ternal perception, by inferring, a perception of the subjective ? Our 
 perception of the external is a giving of ourselves self sacrifice ; and 
 founded on previous nutrition? So is not the external world only like 
 a second body to us, inferred from the passion in our body, even as our 
 body is inferred from passion in us ? We always perceive phna effect 
 first. 
 
 Do I not see that this inference, or instinct of cause, must always be 
 the substitution of one for many ? See it in astronomy the one revo- 
 lution of the earth for many motions of stars. This is the cogency ; 
 that one will do for many, and therefore must be. This is ever the 
 function ; the re-appearance of the suppressed unity. So is it not that 
 we perceive the external world ; substituting the external thing one 
 for the many subjective passions [or v. v. one subjective for many 
 phenomenal] ? 
 
 Do we not substitute one for many unconsciously in our inference, or 
 perception, of external things ; consciously in our inference, or percep- 
 tion, of mental things : is not this the difference ? So that we do not 
 know that we perceive physical things by such a process, and we do 
 know that we perceive mental so ? Now, here is the passiveness of 
 Genius ; it is the unifying, the necessary or permitted re-appearance of 
 the suppressed unity ; the effect of talent is the suppressing it. So in 
 perceiving this relation of cause, it is the necessary re-assertion of unity; 
 it takes place involuntarily, we cannot help it, we simply perceive it. 
 Or it may not be always, in form, perception of cause, but perception of 
 fact ; that one simple conception does instead of several or complicated; 
 in vh case we perceive that conception, or fact ; it is the phn and we 
 cannot help it. Exactly parallel to this, it appears to me, is our per- 
 ception of external objects : we perceive them, and cannot help doing 
 so, because they are one, or simple, in place of varied or complicated. 
 It is the ' function ;' the passion that takes place in spite of us by 
 previous existing tendency ; and, as seen, from suppression of the same 
 passion before ; but producing effect, according to the 'organization,' 
 &c. In every case the process is one, the re-assertion of unity ; but 
 what is thus perceived or revealed to us, depends on the 'elements' con- 
 cerned. And the time when it occurs is simple ; viz., when the ' dis- 
 tension,' the complication, is too great. When the structure falls by its 
 own weight [or from stimulus]. The re-appearance of the ' one,' or 
 unity, is the intuition of cause: but not wholly, for the idea of efficiency 
 in the cause seems superadded of power. In form, however, it is one 
 instead of many; and the idea of succession is not in it; i. e. not ne- 
 cessarily : rather perhaps it is that of being the fact ; and the ' effect '
 
 641 
 
 not b'eing, or being only an appearance. Is not this the truest form of 
 the intuition ; the other that of a succession of things that equally 
 are, one causing the other is less proper ? It seems only in the latter 
 form of cause that the idea of efficiency comes in. And certainly, in it, 
 the idea of succession is involved ; for, if not, then one force is two 
 facts at once, because in this idea of cause, the cause ceases to be as the 
 effect is produced, and must, else is it at once both itself and something 
 else. In the other form of cause, of course, succession is not, nor effi- 
 ciency ; because the effect is held to be only a phn in truth, our mode 
 of perceiving the cause itself. And it is in this sense God's act is 'cause' 
 of the universe. The universe, or effect, is only phn, or our way of 
 perceiving God's act, or the cause. There is no succession. Now, how 
 comes the phenomenal succession, or efficient cause ? Is not this it ? 
 The phenomenal sun revolves around us, viz., the bright disc wh we 
 see ; but the earth revolves around the mental, or theoretic sun, 
 the vast orb inferred by astronomers. 
 
 By seeing the phn to be a phn [i. e. subjective, or an inference from 
 a passion in ourselves] we lose nothing, and can lose nothing ; we only 
 gain an infinity. It is impossible to make a thing less by adding to it ; 
 the phn remains all that it ever was or could be ; only that introduced 
 by ourselves is abandoned, only self is sacrificed ; and for what a gain. 
 In truth, only the spiritual is truly Science ; now first we have true 
 knowledge when we see the spiritual fact from wh the phn flows, or 
 wh causes us to see it. We gain a present cause, or Divine act, instead 
 of a past one. And that also is what we do in seeing the sun's motion 
 to be phenomenal ; we gain a present cause for it instead of a past one, 
 a present cause wh then we study, and wh is of how much greater in- 
 terest and value to us than the phn wh reveals it. 
 
 See the admirable advantage of this two-fold being, as phn and fact 
 at once. It makes one thing two to us ; it is giving us a double gift ; 
 we are connected with it in two ways as it were, on two sides. "We 
 have itself and its effect, both at once. 
 
 In truth, the difference between regarding the phn as a reality or as 
 a phn, is exactly that between the two modes of cause past and pres- 
 ent. A phn is that wh has a present cause, so that in it we have at 
 once itself and its cause ; but considered as a reality its cause is past, 
 has become it. [The motion of sun has its constant present cause in 
 the revolution of the earth, but if the sun really moved round us its 
 cause would have been past, it would have been originated or produced 
 'at first,' as we say.] So if the physical world be a phn, it has a 
 present, or rather, an external cause ; we have both it and the fact 
 from wh it results ; but if it be a reality its cause was ever so long ago, 
 and ceased to be in producing or becoming it. We can either have the 
 physical universe as another view, as it were, of God's act, wh act also 
 is, and is to be known thereby ; or we can have it as a [mechanical 
 kind of] result of God's act, wh act was before it, but is not now ; hav- 
 ing ceased when the universe began. Is it possible that there shd be 
 any choice between these two ? Does not every faculty of our nature 
 cry out for the former ; why shd we throw away and refuse that wh is 
 given to us, wh is forced upon us God's eternal act : refuse to have 
 God's act as well as the phn ? on what pretence ; with what justifica^ 
 tion ? Especially when the act of creation, thus seen, rises from an
 
 642 
 
 exercise of arbitrary power to holiness, from the physical rises into the 
 moral. 
 
 I see again : the ' efficient cause ' is representative of self-sacrifice ; 
 so God is the efficient cause as it were, of the creation, i. e. of the 
 created spirits. Thus is one becoming another, giving itself to be that 
 other, and ceasing to exist except as that other. When we say, God's act 
 causes the creature, we say in truth God becomes the creature by self- 
 imposed limit makes Himself the creature for the act is not dis- 
 tinguishable from the Being. God's act is not the efficient cause of the 
 physical world, but in the other sense of cause, as being the fact wh, 
 by and in its being, and without ceasing itself to be, produces the be- 
 ing of the phn. [Something as a candle if cause of its reflection in a 
 glass, not by ceasing but by being.] In truth, a phn is just this, a 
 fact seen as something else. What is the right word for this form of 
 cause ; how mark this distinction in causes? In truth [as we ever say 
 things before we know them], all is said in saying that creation is not 
 past, but present. God's act still being, proves the universe to be a 
 phn, or a mode in wh that act is perceived. 
 
 In the illustration of the candle and reflected image, observe, the im- 
 age as much is as the candle ; i, e. it is what it is an image ; if it 
 were not there were no candle. So may we not say that the phn the 
 universe is the image, the reflection, of God's act. The universe is 
 the phn of God's act, just as ingenuity is the ' phenomenon ' of Genius; 
 that by wh it appears. And we know what that act is, because of our 
 own experience of the spiritual. 
 
 Is not here an unification of pantheism : all that is, is in the strict 
 sense God : it is that wh God, by His own act [or self-sacrifice, for we 
 only see power, or efficient cause, in self-sacrifice, even physically this 
 is the case], it is that wh, God by His self-sacrifice, becomes. But the 
 creature is not therefore God : indeed it is thus, and for this very 
 reason, that the creature is emphatically not God. Of all doctrines 
 none so emphatically as pantheism, when it is truly seen, affirms the 
 non-identity of the creator and the creature. For this becoming -another 
 involves, and consists in, the ceasing to be itself. Pantheism is the true 
 mode of affirming the creature's distinct and individual personality ; 
 the only mode, indeed, in which it can be affirmed intelligently, or be 
 understood, because so only does the physical or image show us the 
 fact. 
 
 Seeing the physical as an 'image,' we see the necessary disappoint- 
 ingness of earthly seeking. And we see too the root of the word ' im- 
 agination ;' and also, surely, of ' theory,' or ' seeing.' And will not 
 ' interpretation ' also show itself ? is it not the presenting, or deducing, 
 the fact from the image ? And do I see farther how the reality is ac- 
 tion, the image alone involving substance ? We see also the origin of 
 words ; and why all things are types ; and the necessity of studying 
 the physical as the basis of all knowledge. 
 
 But how and in what sense is it an image ? Have we not elements 
 in the idea of an image wh are wanting in it ; must it not be shown to 
 be an image because of that wh appears incompatible with its being so ? 
 The image has a sort of oppositeness to the fact ; is it a polar opposite- 
 ness? 
 
 It is curious how we first see things as true of our own conceptions,
 
 643 
 
 and then afterwards, but independently, see them in nature. Yet our 
 seeing them there is really dependent on our haying first seen in our 
 conceptions, I think. Is it not really seeing the subjectiveness of the 
 phenomenal ? 
 
 In fact as soon as ever we see anything to be an axiom necessary in 
 the sense of self-evident we see at once that it is a form of thought 
 at once its subjectiveness. Necessarily we render the phenomenal sub- 
 jective as soon as we ' comprehend ' it. Is not here, in truth, a demon- 
 stration, if we see aright, of the subjectiveness of the phn ? 
 
 Our true advance in knowledge consists in nothing whatever but 
 giving up our own, seeing that what we have thought to be is not. This 
 shows us the higher fact : the function is a new and higher nutrition, 
 but it consists in giving up ; we only get by giving up ; all our other 
 getting is but illusion, tho' it is nutritive illusion. This is what we 
 have to learn ; that if we are to rise in knowledge it cannot be by get- 
 ting, but must be by giving or sacrificing. 
 
 It may be difficult to say what is true ; but we may get some help 
 by knowing as we may absolutely that one sort of thing is wrong 
 and false ; and that is, whatever seems all complete and consistent, 
 whatever is finished and rounded off so that we can start quite from the 
 beginning and go right on to the end, coming to no paradoxes. Truth 
 will certainly have this character [till we are omniscient], that it will 
 be complete only to a certain point, will break off in darkness and ob- 
 scurity, and bring us to things wh seem contradictory. 
 
 As nutrition exists merely for function, is accomplished only to be 
 undone again, so is Science : it exists only for the spiritual interpreta- 
 tion, is made only to be un-made. The entire scheme of phenomenal 
 laws and facts has to be overthrown again ; we come back to the simple 
 axiomatic form of thought ; thus attaining thro' this [nutritive] erec- 
 tion a higher meaning, a higher knowledge, but only by its overthrow 
 not with it, but from or after it. Science is ' efficient ' cause of 
 spiritualism, passes away that it may be, merges itself in it : an in- 
 stance of self-sacrifice. Even as it sprang from subjective passion first, 
 it' resolves itself into it again ; but in so doing renews the first in higher 
 form. 
 
 Science has two questions : what and why. Men now are content 
 with the first alone ; to know facts quantatively then they have done. 
 I feel that then I only begin ; my necessity is the why. Before Bacon 
 men were asking 'why;' he set them to ask 'what.' This was the 
 change from the functional to the nutritive. ' Why,' and ' what,' in 
 Science, correspond to these. But the ' why ' is the true question of 
 Science ; its function. First it asks why ; and last it must do so also. 
 For science is knowledge of the ' why ' of nature ; of its cause and 
 reason. Man asks ' what ' only because he has failed to answer, and 
 that he may answer, the ' why.' 
 
 How Plato affirmed the world to be an image of the 'ideal' or ' intel- 
 ligible' world. This doctrine I re-affirm, but that the ' real ' is moral. 
 Did not Plato fail, by not seeing that this 'image'- world is the re-al ; 
 real because but an image ? 
 
 We do get our axioms from nature, by observation of external facts ; 
 i. e. we derive from them the conceptions, the ideas, expressed by the 
 terms: e. g. in the axiom, 'the whole is greater than its part,' we do
 
 644 
 
 not learn by experience that every whole is so greater, but we learn 
 what whole and part are. So -with 'motion takes direction of least re- 
 sistance ;' we derive by observation the conceptions of motion and re- 
 sistance, but having the conceptions we form the axioms ; every one 
 intuitively knows that whole is greater than part, but no one wd have 
 the idea either of whole or part save by observation. And so with all 
 the more recondite truths of Science, wh were laboriously obtained but 
 now are seen to be self-evident, what was gained from nature was only 
 the clear conception of the ideas. But this observation is truly obser- 
 vation and interpretation of our own passion as produced by such ex- 
 ternal objects. It is the structure of our body and mind that shows us 
 the ' phenomena.' Is it not just as we get food from nature: but the 
 assimilation of that food, and the function it effects, are determined by 
 our own life, not by the nature of the food? Perceiving axioms 
 is like all other 'perception,' an interpretation, a putting one for 
 many. 
 
 And the same as this is all our knowing ; it is the one fact of all our 
 learning. We know only axioms ; they only are 'one with us.' Till a 
 thing is self-evident it is not known. From external nature we get the 
 ' what ;' the why or how the must be always from ourselves. This is 
 our interpretation : our function from our organization. 
 
 There seems to me to be much in the parallel of ' things ' to pictures. 
 To reduce a picture to matter and force and form alone is to deny it. 
 It is a picture by virtue of its being an image of something beyond 
 itself. So a ' thing ' is what it is, neither as matter nor force, nor phy- 
 sical form ; but by its relation to the spiritual fact of wh it is the image. 
 Are those images which we trace in a glass reflecting the street, and 
 going the opposite way, similar to those wh I consider the physical 
 world to be ? 
 
 That we see things because of our sin is it not necessary ? because 
 our perception is a ' function,' according to ourselves ; it is what we in- 
 fer, wh is determined by our own nature. How is it that conviction of 
 real objects is connected with sensation, or indeed is indistinguishable 
 from the sensation? Is it that the sensation is a stimulus only ; permits 
 the function of perception ? It is a not ; things produce perception in us 
 thus by virtue of their not-being. Can this be worked out the action of 
 the external world on us as the proof of its not-being ? It is a 
 direction of less resistance determining a function. 
 
 Thus I find the essence of 'things ' to be not-being. And think : it is 
 spiritual not-being, i.e. absence of the spiritual, wh constitutes things. 
 We are essentially spiritual ; so the absence of the spiritual causes us 
 to perceive things matter, inertia, not-being. 
 
 The use of the word thing-al instead of real, throws an excellent 
 light on re-ality. It is seen at once that to affirm ' thing-ality ' is 
 simply the denial of personality or ' Being.' We have not a real 
 a thing-al existence ; i. e. the ' I ' has not. We are real only so far 
 as we are not-persons [i. e. sinful]. So God is not real, has not a thing- 
 al existence. And it is our thing-al existence our bodies that con- 
 stitutes of course our entire relation to the physical It shows us at 
 once that the external world is not-being ; i. e. not spiritual, personal 
 being ; it is essentially a negation : absence of spiritual being acts as a 
 ' not.' The absence of being is ' thing ' to us, causes in us a perception, 
 a function.
 
 645 
 
 It is clear, as the mind does not exist in space, so the spirit, the moral 
 being, does not exist in time. Therefore the spiritual has no relation 
 to not-being ; it is actual, absolute, or proper Being. The moral is 
 Being, the only Being : ' mind ' and ' things ' are from partial not- 
 being. So necessary, so 'right,' is Being that not-being is emphatically 
 reality to us the universe. It is a veil ; well called so. 
 
 Again, see the relation of mind, and things, or matter. It wd appear 
 that mind has simply less relation to not-being than matter : mind has 
 relation only to time ; matter to time and space. Thus, as both the 
 mental and physical are from the spiritual, wh has no relation to not- 
 being in no manner arises from not-being so, surely, things [or 
 matter] arise from mind, which has less relation to not-being. So the 
 physical flows from the mental, as the mental from the actual or 
 spiritual. The mental is by partial not-being ; the physical by still 
 more not-being. Am I arriving here at the fundamental conceptions of 
 space and time ? 
 
 Here it is as Feuerbach says : the asserting the reality of God i. e. 
 His thingality is a contradiction. It is to assert Him not to be. 
 Feuerbach is simply deluded by the idea of the actuality of things. 
 He confounds actuality or Being, and thingality or not-being. How 
 plain here the proof that the moral [or personal] is the only Being ; all 
 that truly exists is moral or spiritual. 
 
 A constant source of error is confonnding existence with life; especial- 
 ly spiritual life and [spiritual] existence. Life is an affair of action ; 
 yet is spiritual being also action. Is it not for the sake of this dis- 
 tinction that we see some things as living; others as not-being. A stone 
 exists, though not lives. Here in truth is the limit of my thought 
 spiritual existence, as man, without spiritual life or holiness. Is it not 
 God rather than we till we are holy? God, not we, in our conscience? 
 Or is not our creature existence emphatically spiritual not-being ? i. e. 
 conscious not-being, perception of 'things ?' 
 
 It is a pretty expression of Ferrier's, that non-entity not-being 
 as much involves mind as being. The conceptions themselves involve a 
 reference to conscious Being, either way; one just as much as the other. 
 He is quite right here. If no mind no consciousness certainly no 
 not-matter, &c. [or space]. In truth the not-matter almost more in- 
 volves mind than matter ; for in order to be not-matter requires two 
 processes ; that it shd first have been, and then become not. It is the 
 more complex idea of the two. A spiritual fact, receiving as it were a 
 form from us from our not-being, less resistance is a thing. I there- 
 fore am farthest from denying reality, i. e. ' thingality,' to the external 
 world. It is absurd ; who can deny it to be thingal ; we derive the 
 word from it. ' Thingal ' is what it is. Also I do not deny the fact 
 wh constitutes it, as absolutely independent of myself. 
 
 Do I not unite and affirm, both together each in the opposite the 
 dependence and the independence of the universe on man, or on percep- 
 tion ? It is absolutely both ; dependent as things, independent as fact, 
 or actuality ; dependent for its form, but independent as to its being. 
 In fact, and most palpably, the universe is dependent upon us for what 
 it appears, and must be so. Continually it changes as to what it 
 appears. 
 
 When men affirm so strenuously that the external world is real, they
 
 646 
 
 do not mean that it is material ; of course it is ' material,' that is the 
 definition of it equally every way : it is as much material if it be a de- 
 lusion as if it be the reallest possible. Real does not moan material in 
 any sense, because we affirm also that matter is real or try to do so, 
 being bewildered by abstractions. What we mean is that it is ' thing-al'; 
 that there is ' something ' in it some fact, some meaning ; that it is not 
 a mere fancy wh has no significance beyond itself. That is the point : 
 that it ia real in the sense of not being zn-significant, meaning nothing, 
 a mere impression that we happen to have. The word ' real ' is exactly 
 right ; it asserts that it is a form, a form of an actuality higher than it- 
 self. That is what men's instinct means in affirming a real world. 
 Philosophy cheats them miserably when it reduces this affirmation of 
 ' reality ' into the ' hypothesis ' of a real matter. What do men care 
 about a real matter ? they want ' things ' : things wh are something ' 
 to their hearts, wh fill them with emotion, which speak to them of the 
 highest truths, reveal to them the moral laws, and make them feel them- 
 selves in the presence of a Being whose very nature is Love. This is 
 the real world wh man affirms and never will give up ; a world that is 
 a world worthy of him, meet home for a spiritual Being, because every- 
 where the assertor and interpreter of moral fact. It is necessary to 
 bring out the meaning of the word real, as thing-al ; both to give it its 
 just meaning, and to deprive it of an unjust one. It is a very good word 
 both in what it asserts and what it denies ; it asserts significance ; it 
 denies ' actuality ' personality ; and this its negative meaning, is as it 
 were its basic meaning, most fundamental and essential. The absence of 
 actual or personal constitutes the ' thing '; but still in the thing remains 
 the image, the reference, that by which it is. Still is all Being actual, 
 spiritual : the thing is, not by not being spiritual, but by being a ' form' 
 or image of it. 
 
 That the abstract matter [' phantasmal matter ' as Bacon calls it] can- 
 not be real or thing-al is clear. Thing-al matter (in that sense) is a 
 contradiction. 'Matter' cannot be 'thing-al,' it was invented expressly 
 not to be thing-al : invented by Science in order not to cease, as things 
 do ; to be a mere substratum inert, for force to inhere in ; wh things 
 are not, the force is essential to the things. Matter cannot be thing-al 
 or real, it wd not answer its purpose if it were. It is a theory in this 
 sense, also, that it was ' supposed ' to attain a result, to answer a pur- 
 pose ; the purpose viz. of Science, which cannot deal with ' things,' but 
 must have for its basis that wh does not cease. Besides matter cannot 
 be real in its proper sense because it has no moral meaning, cannot be 
 image of the actual, being ' Inertia.' ' Things ' are not inert, they act. 
 
 A vast amount of sophistry has lurked in the double meaning of the 
 word real ; without wh how could the question as to a ' real matter ' 
 have arisen ? To expose that it is enough just to define the word ' real.' 
 Is not ' thing ' from Thun, to do ? and how curious are ' Thun ' and 
 ' Ding ' = ' Do ' and ' Thing ' : also is not the article ' the ' from the 
 same root ? 
 
 Surely on this view Spinoza's saying that God is the ' substance ' of 
 all things, and Hegel's that God is the ' idea ' of all things, may be em- 
 braced with love : He is not the ' hypothesis,' the inert substratum; 
 Spinoza did not mean that God was ' abstract matter ' ; clearly he did 
 not believe in a ' real matter ' ; this chimera of ours disables us from 
 [Metaphysics, 342.
 
 647 
 
 understanding him. Nor does Hegel mean that God is the mere ' ab- 
 stract conception ' of things. These are living thoughts ; they own that 
 God is the actual absolute Being, by virtue of their reference to -which, 
 and as images of wh, alone things truly are ; are re-al, and not mere il- 
 lusions or fancies. Clearly he who says that God is the 4 substance ' of 
 all things cannot believe in an abstract inert matter as their substance. 
 This is a beautiful doctrine of Spinoza's, and Hegel's hardly less; but 
 did they clearly know what it was they said ? are not these words of 
 Genius in this sense also ? God i. e. the Divine action is that by wh 
 things are ; that which alone absolutely is in them. Things are things 
 only by the Divine in them, just as a picture is a picture only by the 
 4 idea ' in it : the Divine, the spiritual, is that which causes them to be 
 things, to be reed. 
 
 The accomplishment of human good is delayed and resisted in order 
 that it may form part of an organization, and, when it comes, may pro- 
 duce a function do something beyond itself. Nature wd have been 
 ashamed to make even an insect to do nothing more than it could design 
 and conceive shall she not use man also for higher purposes than his 
 own ? The social evils of the age are a nutrition, and exist for a func- 
 tion. Not only these evils to be put right, but a function inconceivable 
 by us is to flow from them. We think the good of man in its highest 
 sense is the great good, the end, but it is not ; we cannot foresee the 
 function. 
 
 The accumulation of facts about social life is a nutrition essential to 
 a true theory, but now when this is just beginning, is not the theory of 
 life discovered, that the nutrition of Sociology may be on a higher 
 level ? Before we knew what life was, we could have made no sound 
 progress in an induction respecting Sociology. The nutrition of that 
 form of mental life must be on a grade in wh the true idea of life and 
 true relation of evil to good, talent to genius, &c.; are known. Just as 
 it was impossible to have a Science even to observe the facts of side- 
 real astronomy until the true theory of the solar system had been as- 
 certained. Knowing that the social state is a life, and with the true 
 theory of life in our hands, we can enter upon sociologic science with 
 the certainty of a successful issue. 
 
 The solar system is among the stars as a man in society : and the so- 
 cial life of the heavens cannot be even attempted until the life of the 
 solar system is understood ; so neither can the social life of man be un- 
 til the life (physiological and mental) of the individual man is under- 
 stood. And may it not be that Sociology will present somewhat the 
 same relation to ' physiology ' (mental physiology) in its largest sense, 
 as sidereal astronomy does to solar? viz. that we may discover therein 
 not only facts accordant with those wh have been traced in the smaller 
 science (as the mutual revolutions of the double stars) but also some 
 quite different and apparently irreconcileable, as the spiral forms of the 
 galaxies ? facts not indeed really irreconcileable (as in this case) but 
 necessitating a larger view of physiology to reconcile them, than, from 
 the study of physiology alone, we shd have attained. 
 
 The impossibility of constructing a satisfactory Sociology has arisen 
 hitherto from the want of a knowledge that it is a life, that evils are 
 nutrition, that like other life it consists of nutrition and function, and 
 [Sociology, 1.
 
 648 
 
 developes. Isolated facts and connections have been traced, but no gen- 
 eral adequate conception. It will reveal itself in due proportions as a 
 life. Two errors arise from not knowing this : (1) The disposition to 
 acquiesce in evils as necessary. (2) The disposition to regard them as 
 merely evil. Again, the tendency of philanthropic effort is merely to 
 remove and prevent evils, not seeing that they constitute the nutrition 
 for the function. Society of course lives, and its life developes without 
 our understanding ; but the Science can be only on such understanding : 
 and the Science ever becomes necessary in process of time. The scientific 
 life becomes linked with and essential to all other forms of life in course 
 of development; and the true Science is produced when required, for 
 passion in least resistance truly is action in direction of most want. 
 Everything comes in its time. 
 
 Evils can be prevented only by turning the force wh produced them 
 to good. Make the force produce a good ; not put down anything, but 
 embrace. All evils are nutrition : even probably, in relation to society, 
 moral evils. But moral evil is not natural evil : it is not to be included 
 as nutrition ; it is want of the natural control, and is death. This has 
 set wrong also much Sociology, the attempt to include Sin as natural. 
 It is ever an exception and unnatural. 
 
 It is a radical error to attempt to represent the phenomena as not 
 evil, [to talk about the necessity of grades in society, and so on]. 
 Their evil as phna must be seen, or their good cannot be seen : it is only 
 as real that they are good. Their goodness consists in their being evil, 
 that is nutrition ; and as phna they must be asserted to be evil in the 
 most unqualified terms. Who does not see the evil cannot see the good ; 
 i. e. supposing the term evil to be the right term to use, but this ques- 
 tion of terms is not important. It is an unification : the evil is good, 
 not although it is evil, but because it is evil. 
 
 The competitive commercial system is a theory [phenomenal); the co- 
 operative an 'interpretation' (true). But then the co-operative is the 
 function wh can result only from the nutrition of the competitive. This 
 wrong is the necessary condition of that right. The putting right of 
 the wrongnesses of the competitive will reveal the co-operative ; the 
 latter will interpret, show the truth of, the former. It cannot be seen 
 before, obtained by effort or design. The facts must show it ; it must 
 develope. Previous attempts to achieve co-operation have failed, like 
 a priori science. They have been like Berkeley's theory, perhaps even 
 like Comte ; attempts to attain function without nutrition, inorganic in- 
 stead of organic. Such as Berkeley's perhaps have been the religious 
 co-operative efforts ; such as Comte's the socialistic the worst af all, 
 unsoundest, least of life, ignoring and rejecting life, the spiritual ele- 
 ment. Surely social life has many stages yet to run. It is not yet in 
 the stage of our present art, the ideal ; but in that primary phenomenal 
 stage wh precedes even that. !Next is to come an ideal-above-nature 
 Sociology ? 
 
 A satiric nobleman said ' England exhausts every form of error before 
 she arrives at the truth.' That is, ' England lives, goes thro' the nutri- 
 tion, attains the organization, and thus effects the function. Those im- 
 mediate plans of arriving at the right result that other nations try, are 
 like inorganic food; like Berkeley's science. This is England's strength, 
 she goes thro' the natural course arifl lives, accepts and undergoes the
 
 649 
 
 evil, is willing to postpone the good : in a word, her Sociology is phe- 
 nomenal, that of many other nations is still ' ideal ' or a priori. Eng- 
 land is full of hope, the living portion of humanity. Her phenomenal 
 'naturalist' Sociology shall have its interpretation soon, shall produce its 
 function : a function not less glorious than that of Science ; a Sociology 
 that shall truly interpret or ' re-present ' Nature ; wh then other nations 
 shall embrace, and even perhaps go beyond. 
 
 To attain real good we must commit ourselves to God in faith, accept 
 the evil, take His ideal, or the actual, as the real good instead of our 
 own. The foreign despotisms seek an ideal-above-nature sociology and 
 politics, wh will not do. God will not have it, and even man comes to 
 abhor it ; it has its use, but a temporary and subordinate one. It is 
 death. Liberty is God's ideal (i. e. the actual) Life : but not licence, 
 that is ' arbitrary.' Despotism, making everything right by authority, 
 is arbitrary also. Here is a revolution in politics and sociology : it is a 
 life, and has to reveal what cannot be foreseen. This is the spiritual 
 element again ; this is our moral duty ; this is holiness ; not to shrink 
 from our life, to accept and perform the task of effecting our nutrition. 
 This is ever painful, toilful, in science, art, philosophy, practical life, as 
 well as in morals ; but it must be : we must give up our ideal and take 
 God's ; not pursue our pleasure, but take God's. 
 
 This giving up our own ideal for God's, wh science has done and art, 
 and philosophy and social science have yet to do, is in fact controlling 
 passion. It is life : nutrition instead of death. Not that these scientific, 
 political things are truly moral, at least to us, but they are the types of 
 it ; identical in reality, tho' not to us. Are these ' developments ' of 
 our universal human life, tho' only passions to us, really moral deeds on 
 the part of the spirits whose passion I suppose them to be develop- 
 ments of Nature to us, really spiritual acts? The reality is revealing 
 itself here, the true holiness of the very facts of Nature. Nature re- 
 presents the spiritual reality as our bodily and mental life re-presents 
 Nature (or the phn.) 
 
 It is England's living task, her function, to solve this problem of the 
 position of the laboring class, the relation of employers and employed, 
 the distribution of the products of industry. It is not hard ; it only 
 needs to be seen. "We shall wonder at its simplicity when it is revealed. 
 For this function she has now the nutrition, now a theory preparatory 
 to an interpretation, and it is hopeful ; it has been truly passion in 
 least resistance, a real organization produced, a real functional power, of 
 wh many hopeful signs. And this is the glory: the more evil the nutrition 
 the more terrible the wrongness, the more excellent the function. The 
 function shall justify the nutrition. This is our joy, our faith in God, 
 and in His act, wh is life. 
 
 The competitive system is theory, an arrangement of the elements of 
 society by force, according to our ideas. We think [as ever of theories 
 before the interpretation] that it must be so, that it is so in nature. 
 True the phn is so. But this competitive system has to reveal a true, 
 based on holiness, or passion really in least resistance, and duly control- 
 led. This revelation will come, when the former has grown intolerable; 
 by letting the elements arrange themselves in the simplest common 
 sense and natural manner. We must not use force to make it. 
 
 This is how we should regard human life in all its follies and errors
 
 650 
 
 as they seem to us : in them is the secret of nature, wh is the very 
 highest and nohlest of all things, in them especially, for the highest 
 truth and beauty of nature is revealed not by that wh seems to us 
 true and beautiful, but by that which to our perception is false and 
 
 ugly. 
 
 The practical life of man also is a true life, progressing by nutrition 
 and function, or first doing wrong then right. The mental and practical 
 always co-exist, and proceed together. "Wrong perceptions produce 
 ' practice,' wh being perceived to be wrong is put right. The perceptive 
 and practical life are mutually dependent, and the failing practice is a 
 very important element in studying the wrongness of the theory. We 
 always first do a thing wrongly, and require practice. That is we first 
 ' operate ' theoretically, then practically interpret. This all because 
 our perceptions are wrong, and by virtue of the spirit's intuition of 
 cause [consciousness of power]. Instinct becomes clearer now. 
 
 Our competitive system is a nutrition in this respect also : as being 
 itself result of previous function, of a putting right of previous wrong, 
 or nutritive practice ; and this by many stages. And see how every 
 function is the same as all before it, though higher. Previously every 
 one was doing the best for himself by brute force, now by skill ; before 
 with no regard for others, now with somewhat more. 
 
 All ' life ' re-appears in the social life. The competitive commercial 
 system is phenomenal, founded upon, embodying, the ' facts ' the ap- 
 parent and manifest facts of human nature, especially the selfish in- 
 stinct. The facts thus observed are assimilated to our practice [com- 
 mercial and other], forming a theory. And this practical theory is 
 just like the theoretical in the mental life ; e. g. in these two respects : 
 1st, it is constituted by the introduction of inventions or procedures 
 altogether unfounded in nature ; 2nd, it is felt to be wrong. This 
 practical theory [like intellectual, artistic, &c., theories] causes us to 
 feel the wrongness, and so produces the interpretation; takes its place 
 in our organization, so that when it becomes right it reveals or intro- 
 duces a new or higher form of life : i.e. of practical or social system. 
 Itself constitutes an ' organization,' exists in the becoming of one ; so 
 that the interpretation uses organs wh have been created only by the 
 opposite process. The competitive system has these two points of a 
 theory : that it repels at first, and is seen to be more wrong by exact 
 investigation ; but [like other theories] men become familiar with it so 
 that they not only think it is right, but maintain it with all their 
 power. 
 
 Now for the interpretation of this theoretical sociology wh is felt to be 
 BO wrong : no man can foresee it, of course ; it is revealed or produced 
 by the putting right of the theory. But such things as these we may 
 judge from the past : e. g. as the former was each man doing the best 
 for himself by force, the present by skill, may not the future be each 
 man doing the best for himself by moral action f and as the former sys- 
 tem was no regard for others' rights, the present some, may not the 
 future be an absolute and complete regard ? I think the tendencies of 
 society seem to be in such direction. The feeling wh exists of the evils 
 and wrongness of the present system are the very means by wh the in- 
 terpretation is to be effected, the very best and happiest sign of the 
 times ; and of England's life pre-eminently. This nutritive system is
 
 651 
 
 an organization ; we see what it has produced, what facilities and ad- 
 vantages and preparations for an improved system. And all this is 
 passive in humanity, as passive as science. It is not moral. Individuals 
 are moral or immoral, but society lives without respect to them. The 
 improvement of society does not depend on moral elevation of men ; 
 i. e. the improvement or development on the largest scale. Its life is 
 the life of nature, independent of the spiritual life of individuals, and 
 yet not without intimate connection with it [as we see in respect also to 
 the general mental life, and physical life of individuals]. 
 
 How the religious periodicals, put up to competition, deprave trade, 
 &c. It is better so. The whole system of trade needs to be altered, 
 and must reach its limit to do so. Our feeling of wrongness is the 
 means by wh the limit must come ; we are yet in the first stage, in- 
 stinctive [length] ; yet is to come the ratiocinative [breadth] ; wh again 
 will be wrong ; and at last the union of the two [depth] will be right. 
 But the badness must first be felt, and to excess. Our troubles are im- 
 portant to us : we are right to be grieved. But let us open our eyes too, 
 let us see what God is doing. It is a bad world, true ; yet it is good 
 enough for God. We do not see it yet ; let us go on and we shall see 
 in time. Yea, let us rejoice that God uses us and our troubles and re- 
 sentment and intolerance of the evil, to bring about the good. Also He 
 does the best for us, for each one ; our trials are the only best for us. 
 "What a wonder it is : the best for the world, the best for each one 
 also. And yet not a wonder, for only by being best for each one could 
 it be best for the whole. We think individual welfare is sacrificed for 
 the welfare of the whole : it is a mean mistaken thought. The good 
 of the whole comprises and consists in the good of each part. We 
 think God does like us, who are obliged to manage, and contrive, and 
 choose, and sacrifice some objects for others : God attains the perfect 
 good of the universe by, and with, and not without my perfect 
 good. 
 
 We admire this nutrition and development by limit and excess and 
 resistance in nature ; we sympathize not with her toil and longsuffering 
 and patient endurance. But when it comes to ourselves and we have 
 to live also, bear the wrongness, resist the passion, then we complain 
 sadly, and even doubt if God can be good ; or we think He has much 
 to do in the future to make it up. This doctrine of the future has 
 utterly perverted our faith ; at least it has made a great nutrition, and 
 we will have a glorious function from it bye and bye. It is the poor 
 sacrificed working people we shd feel for, they are the martyrs sacrificed 
 for earth's good. It is too much glory to share with them the work of 
 developing the earth's life. For that is what this suffering and wrong 
 is doing. When would a woman have her labor if it depended on her 
 will ? I extend the idea of martyrdom, of suffering for the progress of 
 the right and good, to all innocent suffering. When I say the noble 
 army of martyrs, I think [and the scripture thinks too] of more than 
 martyrs at the stake and holy confessors. I think of the pale downcast 
 operative, the degraded outcast, the tortured slave. All these are mar- 
 tyrs, sacrificed for the world. 
 
 Is there not a 3-foldness in the theologies of the world ; polytheism, 
 unity, three in one? And here also first from one, from one polytheism. 
 IK not this 8-foldnoss the key to polytheism ; essentially three, and 
 Sociolo 8. T 2
 
 652 
 
 compounds of three ; repeating the ellipticity of nature : man's mind, 
 even in its depravation, presenting the necessary forms of passion ? 
 
 Emerson says, ' The two sexes are co-present in the English mind.' 
 They are the depth, the Genius, the animal of the race. 
 
 The idea that that only wh is bad needs to he reformed, superseded, 
 or done away with, is perhaps the greatest hindrance to our progress in 
 every respect. We must learn to see that everything, the good and ne- 
 cessary just as much as any other, requires to be reformed and super- 
 seded by the opposite, when it has had its day ; that in truth, every- 
 thing that is is good and needs to be replaced by the opposite, because 
 it is good, and has therefore prepared for the opposite ; that progress is 
 spiral and all things are unipolar and demand their opposite [first op- 
 posite sexual, then marriage union, then opposite again]. To recognize 
 this thoroughly and wisely would put a complete end it appears to me, 
 to all the intellectual errors that oppose progress. Nor shd we say ' as 
 we have advanced blindly hitherto without knowing what or why, so 
 we can go on.' We have arrived at a higher stage, at wh an intelligent 
 progress is to take the place of a blind instinctive one. Do we not see 
 this in animal life, in man, as compared with other parts of nature ? 
 
 How shall the means of remedying social evils be found ? By seeing 
 the life of society. Does not society progress thus: the instinct is for self; 
 this is suppressed more or less ; thus nutrition. Then it is seen that 
 this self-sacrifice is the very best means of attaining the good desired by 
 self. This is an unification, a development. Society rises thus, devel- 
 opes; i. e. becomes more ; there is more love in it, i. e. more of it. Love 
 is the Being of society. Here is the key ; our competitive principle is 
 the instinct carried out now so far. Let us suppress it, and make a nu- 
 trition ? This is what we can do : the work of talent. The function 
 is the embodying in the instinct itself making part of the very- 
 basis of the competition the things done first for love and against it. 
 
 Yes, love is the remedy, the only remedy, for the world's evils [not 
 contrivance in any form]. Love is God's remedy. To save the world 
 He gives Himself, and so must we. Nor in truth does God's remedy, 
 fail ; it seems indeed to do so ; but this is seeming only. God saves 
 the world by love, as we shall see when time no longer makes us blind, 
 or rather when, being no longer blind, we no longer see time. God 
 saves the world eternally ; it is for us to save it temporally ; but there 
 is only one way, the way God has shown us love. How long it seems 
 to be before it comes. Yet it is not truly wanting. It is absolute, 
 eternal, infinite ; only we cannot see it because we have it not. 
 
 Emigration is a movement determined by a not [a less resistance] ; 
 shows well the principle in the large developments of humanity. 
 
 I begin to see in how many new aspects the divinity of the Bible ap- 
 pears : how it becomes more worthy of reverence with advance of know- 
 ledge ; in how many respects its clear meaning is in advance of us ; so 
 far in advance that we have not been able to see it. Thus : in repre- 
 senting the material as unreal, the spiritual as the only real ; and the 
 ever meaning by ' spiritual,' moral or holy : also in recognizing the 
 three, body, soul (or mind) and spirit : may we not add the Trinity, 
 the universal three-foldness ? 
 
 The Bible, being in advance of the human mind, is misunderstood ; 
 [Bible 1.
 
 653 
 
 the phna it presents 'assimilated,' arranged wrongly in conformity with 
 our mental life, thus producing a nutrition and organization ; and ne- 
 cessarily so. Hence our advance in biblical knowledge. Men have not 
 yet learnt to see that real advance cannot be by mere accretion, or ad- 
 dition, as in the inorganic, but must be by nutrition and function or de- 
 velopment ; thro' wrong arrangement or error. Thus they cling to opini- 
 ons as true, and are unwilling to change for truer; not seeing that every 
 function isfnutrition, and nutrition must precede function. 
 
 There are two parallel errors we have conceived. We put off God's 
 creation to the past, we put off God's redemption to the future. Crea- 
 tion was, salvation will be. Thus we really think and feel ; and it is 
 but of little consequence that we rouse up now and then and affirm in 
 words that in some sense both are present as well. This we have to do : 
 to s-je that God's creative and redeeming act alike are eternal, i. e. em- 
 phatically present; being spiritual, and to wh .-. time has no relation. 
 We mistake the scriptural idea of salvation and apply it to an accident 
 instead of the reality. We have had indeed a pJtenomenal theology. In 
 the Bible, the spiritual life or holiness is the fact, the wrath of God, 
 the happiness, the suffering, are the phna ; but we have used the latter 
 to ' interpret ' the former ; we have made the life the reality conform 
 and be subordinate to the phn the happiness. This we must learn to 
 reverse. The fact the spiritual life, the holiness or right affections 
 is that by wh all must be interpreted and with wh made to agree. 
 
 What are the meanings of such passages as speak of ' the wrath to 
 come,' ' the terrors of the Lord,' ' cast into hell, where the worm dieth 
 not ' ? Are not many such passages full of at present quite unappreciated 
 meaning ? at any rate their fullest meaning is to be made plain. Cer- 
 tainly there must be, and is, more than this mere spiritual death as the 
 result of sin: God is angry with it and punishes it. It is wrong as well 
 as a folly. I want to see how these two are one : an unifying is neces- 
 sary here Death and God's just anger. 
 
 How wonderful is the life of the world from Christ's death ; ever dy- 
 namic ideas seem to rule. So ' the casting away of Israel is life to the 
 world.' 
 
 It has been objected that the idea of eternal life [as Holiness] could 
 not have been the one conveyed at the time to Christ's hearers. I reply 
 two things : first, that granting this, it is ever so : men ever misunder- 
 stand the truth and learn it through misunderstanding ; that the Bible 
 shd be a different thing to us from what it was to our forefathers only 
 shows it to be Divine. Nature is so also. Second, I deny that men 
 could have so misunderstood these declarations as we suppose ; we 
 transfer our own ideas to those past times, when we suppose that life 
 was naturally and necessarily identified with existence. But also and 
 chiefly it is clear that referring the eternal life of the righteous and the 
 death of the sinner to a future existence, or anything future indeed, is 
 a violence done to the words of the Bible. It was never needful in any 
 age for people to do or know anything more than simply to observe what 
 was said to show them that the eternal life and the death refer to some- 
 thing present, not future : therefore clearly not to ' existence.' The 
 sinner is now ' dead,' yet he has this abstract existence ; the believer 
 on Christ has this eternal life, wh is therefore nothing only appropriate 
 to the future. I do not say the Bible does not reveal anything more
 
 654 
 
 about the future state of both, but that those passages wh speak of life 
 and death do not reveal anything future ; that they refer to a fact wh 
 is present. Further, I am not concerned to know so much about it. 
 The life of holiness, the death which is in sin, are at present enough ; 
 when men have comprehended that, wh is what the Bible puts promi- 
 nently forward, will it not be time enough to enquire, curiously, farther. 
 Nor does the matter rest painfully on my mind. I am so at rest in the 
 justice of God, and so satisfied that, whatever He may do with the 
 wicked at last, I shall see it to be exactly the best and wisest and 
 kindest thing, in a word the right thing, that I am content not to know 
 it now. 
 
 Yet again : they who lay stress upon the word ' eternal,' making of 
 it everlasting duration, are condemned by the very word. Eternity has 
 no reference to time. The spirit has no relation to time, even as the 
 mind has none to space : we cannot conceive of ourselves as existing not 
 in time any more than we can as not in space, yet are both time and 
 space illusions, having no existence, save as we are body and mind. 
 Eternity has not only no end but no beginning. And lastly: I believe 
 that God has not designed to tell us the future condition of the unre- 
 deemed : for two reasons ; first that doubtless we could not understand 
 it. See how when Scripture speaks of the future condition of the re- 
 deemed, it deals not with realities but with figures. Now this is well 
 so far : we understand that these are figures. But if in like figurative 
 manner, wh probably is the only possible manner, the condition of the 
 unredeemed had been spoken of, how shd we have dared to interpret it 
 in the same way ? our very reverence for God's word would have caused 
 us utter confusion. And this also I conceive ; that it is not God's ob- 
 ject to frighten men to repentance by a strong setting forth of the future 
 effects of sin : such holiness is but questionable. All this He touches 
 lightly, and seeks to move by showing the present death of sin, not its 
 future misery. As ' the Gift of God ' is eternal life, or holiness, so the 
 ' Terror of the Lord ' is eternal death, or Sin. 
 
 There is something wonderful about this spiritual life. It is as if 
 God's act were transmitted as it were as passion from spirit to spirit, 
 as motion from particle 1 1 particle of matter. And we. if we will, may 
 make this passion our own life ; if we we will control it. If not, our 
 chance is lost. With life, phenomenal life, goes our possibility of spirit- 
 ual life. Thus is there no hope after death, as the instinct of mankind 
 testifies in so many ways. Is this really so ? 
 
 The Bible is the Interpreter of Nature, and has been all these ages ; 
 ' revealing ' the essential basic fact, that Life is holiness, that holiness is 
 Life. This is one point : but then it reveals also, what Nature only 
 dubiously foreshadows, the fact of a remedy for Death. 
 
 It is sin to subject the actual to the phenomenal ; i. e. it is death. 
 Love leads us to subordinate our ' phenomenal ' not only to the ' actual ' 
 of others, but also to the phenomenal of others ; but never should we 
 subordinate our actual to others ; especially to their phenomenal. That 
 is at --once felt to be ' wrong. ' All manner of sacrifices for another we 
 admire ; but to lie, even most purely for the sake of another, we repro- 
 bate. This is the great secret of Nature, of life ; the moral is the act- 
 ual ; i. e. the spiritual, and it alone. 
 
 Man has two ways of expressing himself by action and by speech.
 
 655 
 
 So also has, and should have, God ; His action, Nature ; His speech, 
 the Bible. And these must mean one thing. There is this difference be- 
 tween action and speech ; that the latter is for the special instruction 
 of certain persons ; the former is for objects of its own. The actions 
 more fully express the meaning, but are not with equal facility to be 
 grasped and understood. The producing understanding is not their 
 object ; therefore words are needed. So Nature truly and perhaps more 
 fully than the Bible, expresses God ; but the object of Nature is not to 
 express God to us ; His act has its own object. 
 
 In our thoughts of Heaven how apt we are to subordinate the holi- 
 ness to the happiness. So in our thoughts of Nature, we entirely sub- 
 ordinate God's act to the phenomenon. The phenomenon is ' the thing,' 
 God's act is the cause ; it was in order that the phenomenon might be ! 
 what a sad inversion. The Act, the holiness, is ' the thing ' ; happi- 
 ness and the universe flow from them merely as little rills overflow 
 from a river. 
 
 The question of eternal punishment loses much of its difficulty when 
 we consider that time is phenomenal only, and does not apply to spirit ; 
 an infinite time cannot be ; an end is involved in the idea of time, as 
 well as a beginning ; a vibration in fact And this helps me ; to consider 
 the ' infinite chain ' as a vibration, as necessarily such : ever a beginning 
 and an end, and yet involving a preceding. 
 
 What a meaning there is in the words ' He doth according to His 
 pleasure,' when we see what His pleasure is. How we have degraded 
 our thoughts of God : that that wh is our lowest degradation to do as 
 we like we shd have made His highest glory. It is no wonder that 
 thoughts of God shd move us so little, and our religious affections be 
 so feeble. How can we deeply love a Being of whom our highest con- 
 ception is that He does as He likes ? We cannot but feel secretly in. 
 our hearts that even we are nobler than He. There is nothing to love 
 in such a Being, nor does the thought of His infinite benevolence 
 help. 
 
 When we say that all our good works are God's works in us ; when 
 we say even that God makes us willing, gives us faith, do we not truly 
 say that which Science also shows, that our [right] action is God's own 
 act? 
 
 We have now to go back to a stricter interpretation of the Bible, and 
 abandon the glosses employed in obedience to a mistaken Science : e. g. 
 ' Let the earth bring forth,' &c., which has been totally denied in 
 obedience to certain scientific views : also ' created . . . before it 
 was in the ground :' also the use of the terms ' life ' and 'death,' and 
 many others. 
 
 The non-eternity of future punishment not having been received by 
 the world, proves that it has been wrongly presented. It is not the 
 truth, it is like idealism, and the world will not have it. Is not the 
 other, the instinctive view, like the organic food ? We must make both 
 one before we arrive at the truth, or the world will receive it. How 
 is this unification of annihilation and eternal punishment to be arrived 
 at ? Think of the meaning of the word ' eternal ' in relation to punish- 
 ment ' spiritual ' punishment. 
 
 How when the Bible affirms that God does all that is good in man, 
 we first lay down arbitrarily what God does, and then all other good
 
 656 
 
 we affirm to be bad ; just as with regard to God's creative act, we first 
 deny that God creates us, and then if any one affirms God's creation of 
 us in the same sense as of Adam, we say that he denies the creation of 
 Adam. Two polar opposites are here : one error in two opposite 
 forms. 
 
 I have found [may I not say always] that the nearer I have arrived 
 to the Bible, the nearer I have been to the truth. But also I note 
 that it is not so much by studying the Bible directly as indirectly thro' 
 nature, that I thus come into unison with it. The Bible needs interpret- 
 ing by nature, even as nature by it. Having our minds filled with the 
 spirit of the Bible, and looking so at nature, we see a truth and signifi- 
 cance in the Bible we shd never otherwise have discerned. "We can in 
 fact see and understand nothing by itself ; we must go beyond and away 
 from every thing in order to grasp it properly ; we want a key to it ; 
 and with the Bible as with all other things. Looking at it alone, we 
 connot see it, we take phenomenal views, and read passages over and 
 over again wh most distinctly declare facts, without seeing them, or 
 seeing them as just the opposite. As the Bible is the interpreter of 
 nature, so is nature the interpreter of the Bible. 
 
 I believe few peoples' minds have ever been more filled with the 
 Bible than mine has been since I began to see the deep truth of nature. 
 It brought me, unconsciously, to the Bible and has held me to it ever 
 since. Seeing the truth of nature, opened my eyes to truths plainly 
 stated, yet hidden, in the Bible, and wh I believe I might have read 
 the Bible endlessly without seeing had not my eyes been opened by 
 nature. - This mutual interpretation of the Bible and nature by each 
 other, how like it is to the alternate nutrition we so often see in nature; 
 it is the alternate, mutually adapted, exactly proportionate, passion wh 
 constitutes organization ; it is passion in least resistance. 
 
 We must do the Bible much injustice in our conception of Satan as a 
 mere person like ourselves ; there is more in the 'biblical doctrine: we 
 are 'servants of sin,' and led captive by the devil ; we are tempted by 
 the devil, and led by our own lusts. Two opposite views are given wh 
 surely require to be made one ; we have taken up a onesided, phenom- 
 enal, view. Again, with respect to future punishment, it is needful, 
 surely, to unify the instinctive, or phenomenal view of unending punish- 
 ment with the ratiocinative view of ' destruction.' How can it be? 
 The annihilationists have stopped. We may always be sure of any 
 opinion that seems final, leaving nothing more to be said, that it is 
 wrong. And generally is not this the female or theoretical ? the male 
 ever runs on into paradox ; to the female succeeds the unifying ; and 
 here ever is the pause, the apparent stopping the hitch as it were in 
 the making of the two one : tho' also there is a sort of stopping before 
 the theoretical arises. This stopping, or feeling that we cannot get any 
 farther, is simply the limit ; it is that wh the very word means and 
 signifies ; but I think it is especially felt at the paradox, or when the 
 two opposite polars exist and want unifying. 
 
 Is it not in the Bible as in nature ; the moral is plain and simple, 
 open to every one, with no need for knowledge or profound thought ; a 
 willing heart suffices ; but all else is in a sense obscure, difficult, seems 
 that wh it is not, and demands long study to learn it ; continual ad- 
 vance, and even by error, to interpret it. The ' phenomenon ' in the
 
 657 
 
 Bible demands the same process of interpretation as in nature ; as it 
 shd, and must in the nature of things, or it could teach us nothing ; 
 there could be no life in it. "We are deceived in respect to the Bible as 
 we are by our senses, and take phenomenal views, and were meant to 
 do so. And do I not see that we know at once, and truly, that wh is 
 moral, but only by delusions that wh is phenomenal, because the moral 
 is life in us, the phenomenal has to be interpreted interpreted into the 
 moral, the life, or actual. 
 
 I see surely how the 'eternal ' is one with the moral : it is un-caused, 
 necessarily so ; and the uncaused is exactly the moral. So at once the 
 eternity and the holiness [wh are one] of God's act are manifested in 
 its being a chain of absolute cause and effect. It is so because it is 
 right or necessary. The un-caused produces the succession of cause. 
 Is the word eternal used in the Bible to express particularly that state 
 wh is the union of creature with the creator, and only as distinguished 
 from the state of the creature in itself? 
 
 How the force and meaning of God's threatenings against sin are lost 
 by those who hold them to mean annihilation. We have to be saved 
 fTom+eternal death. 
 
 There must be a necessary, or right, connection between prayer and 
 the answer to it, not an arbitrary one ; it cannot be only the means 
 that God has 'appointed,' it must be the right and necessary means. 
 
 Certainly the strangest things are done for the sake of religion ; e. g. 
 when the Bible tells us that life and death are God's gift and punish- 
 ment, we hold it irreligious to find out what life is as if till then we 
 could know what God promises. He must have given us the physical life 
 in order that, by knowing and understanding it, we might understand 
 His promise. 
 
 God is less the father of His creatures than the husband ? husband 
 and creator in one ? How full of meaning is the marriage relation ; 
 and its universal existence is from that relation of creator and creature. 
 Yet the creature is the child too, united with Christ. Is not this the 
 depth the offspring ? So are we truly the children of God, and only so, 
 when united with Him ? The child is the two in one : do not 
 creator and creature in one constitute the child of God ? 
 
 The end, the function, of the ' nutritive ' theology surely will be to 
 make us see the instinctive, not as arbitrary, but as necessary or right. 
 It will be to carry the idea of holiness higher up ; to show the entire 
 fact as holy in its origin and in every part, as well as conducted in 
 holiness. Is not this ' dynamical ' theology the introduction, as it were, 
 of cause and effect a kind of physical or passive necessity in place of 
 arbitrariness ? Exactly the same course as Science, and to the same 
 end ;kviz., revelation of holiness ? 
 
 Of all ideas of future punishment hitherto put distinctly forward, it 
 seems to me that Swedenborg's that of continued wickedness tho' I do 
 not think it is the truth, comes nearest to the truth. It is at least to 
 the point ; it is spiritual or actual. All other ideas, clearly announced 
 hitherto, have consisted in substitution of the phenomenal for the spirit- 
 ual. The idea of continued sin is unsatisfactory, in many ways, es- 
 pecially as the idea of continuance of a negation ; but I suppose what- 
 ever is held to be ' continuing' at all, must be phenomenal by that very 
 fact._"I am here at my present ' limit.'
 
 658 
 
 Do not these views remove the difficulty from prayer ? The simple 
 fact being [as I conceive it may be expressed] that our prayer makes it 
 right for the answer to be. This is the very same thing that we are 
 familiar with in the physical world ; a ' cause ' simply makes it right 
 for the effect to be ; so when we sow we make it right for there to be a 
 harvest. For natiire is God's right act ; the connection of cause and 
 effect physical necessity is moral rightness. The difficulty surely 
 lies in the chimera of real physical causes [wh is part of a 'real matter']; 
 when we see that nature is simply God's direct act, and that our per- 
 ception of it as cause and effect is the phn to us of right action, we shall 
 see that our power of producing effects by physical causes is simply that 
 making it right for the effect to be. Thus prayer takes its place, at 
 once, among other causes. It is true that it is designed to influence 
 God's direct act what God does ; but any difficulty here arises from 
 our not seeing, and refusing to believe, that all things, all events, all 
 nature, are God's direct act, or what God does. So far from prayer being 
 a mystery it presents to. us the relation of cause and effect in its purest 
 and simplest form. It is the very type of what we call ' causes ;' viz., 
 it makes it right for God to ' do ' the answer. And thus too we may 
 Bee that the answer to prayer is necessary and infallible ; as much so as 
 the link between physical cause and effect, which we never dream of 
 doubting, and for a reason much better than we think for ; viz., that 
 the physical world is God's act [or rather the effect on us thereof], and 
 has all the necessity of holiness. If we ask how prayer or any other 
 cause can make it right for God to do the answer, or effect ; this may 
 need consideration. I think there is no real difficulty ; and at any rate 
 prayer and physical cause are on one level. It is to be remembered, 
 that time or succession is but phenomenal ; that all action being spirit- 
 ual, all is truly eternal ; the prayer the cause not preceding the 
 answer or effect except to us. 
 
 It is curious to observe how the conception of a real physical world 
 puts all things wrong ; and how the uncertainty of the evidence on wh 
 our belief of it rests is used as a sort of shield or apology for all other 
 uncertainties [see the two Newmans : The soul, on Prayer, and the Ser- 
 mons on The Economies].. It is no wonder people who find the instance 
 of our believing a real world by instinct and against reason so con- 
 venient, shd be unwilling to give up the reality of it. But there is no 
 fear ; for in truth it is the belief of this reality that mostly makes the 
 mysteries it is used to explain ; the mysteries themselves disappear 
 when the real matter is no longer assumed, and it is surely better to 
 be without both than to retain one to help us over the other. We do 
 not want the ' instinct' in obedience to wh we believe a real matter, as 
 our authority for believing other contradictions, when by disbelieving 
 real matter these very contradictions cease. 
 
 Do I not unify the two opposite views of redemption as forgiveness 
 of sin, and as giving life ? Thus, say forgiveness is the not punishing ; 
 now the punishment of sin is the spiritual death ; but the not inflicting 
 spiritual death is the giving life : the two are one ; it is forgiving be- 
 cause it is giving life, and giving life because it is forgiving. There is 
 no way of taking away the punishment of sin [eternal death] but by 
 giving eternal life. Or again ; if forgiveness be in the feeling, and it 
 must so be mutual, the offender being the harder to bring to 'reconcilia-
 
 tion,' again this reconciliation consists in the giving eternal life ; viz., 
 love to God, wh is the life. So the two are one. In fact is not the 
 key to spiritual things to exclude succession, to have no time ? Justifi- 
 cation and sanctification cannot truly follow one another, they are two 
 views of one thing. [Is a polar relation to be sought in them, the two 
 forms of the one fact the right and the love then what is the union 
 into one ?] So phenomenally they are rightly put as cause and effect. 
 Is not here the unification ; the instinctive view again, but higher ? 
 That sin is not-acting sheds such a lustre every where. In the par- 
 able of the Lord not forgiving the servant who would not forgive his 
 fellow, have we not the oneness of the two well presented 
 to us ? Our forgiving and being forgiven are truly one and inseparable, 
 in our forgiving i. e. having life consists our deliverance from the 
 punishment of sin ; from spiritual or eternal death. We cannot be for- 
 given, or delivered from death, and yet not have life. Cause and effect 
 are one ; we forgive because we are forgiven, we are forgiven because 
 we forgive. But while we are in the phenomenal world we must think 
 and act phenomenally. To us, cause and effect are, and succession : we 
 are first justified, then sanctified ; we are first forgiven, then we love 
 and forgive. This view is not to be lost but rendered stronger by being 
 united with its opposite. 
 
 In what sense are we to think of 'past' sins ? We can never be made 
 not to have sinned ; but here also see the glory of excluding time. The 
 spiritual is absolute, our holiness must be eternal, even the holiness God 
 gives us. We cannot truly have been otherwise than such as God makes us 
 in His Son. The glory of His mercy is here; our sins shall be blotted out, 
 they shall not ever have been. We cannot perhaps conceive of this, 
 yet in all its wonder it must be true. There cannot be a 'has been' to 
 the spirit ? Even faith shall vanish away in heaven, love, being, abso- 
 lute being alone remain. [Is not this idea perfected in seeing the phen- 
 omenalness of our consciousness ? the sin is not.] 
 
 In these spiritual things we ever and necessarily take first a phenom- 
 enal view : as of doing right or wrong, instead of acting or 
 not acting ; of being first justified and then sanctified ; of living for 
 ever in time instead of absolute or holy existence ; of cause and effect 
 as relating to spiritual things ; and so on. Now the thing to do is to 
 unite all that is in these uni-polar views with all that is in the op- 
 positely polar view, and so to have both in one. Throughout the Bible 
 how wonderfully that two-foldness is continually expressed: that our act 
 is ours, and must be ours, we must do it, and yet it is God's, and must 
 be given us by God ; we must forgive from our hearts or are not for- 
 given, yet does God truly forgive us in order that we may forgive. 
 'Work, for it is God that worketh in you,' is the epitome of 
 it all. 
 
 The error into wh men mostly fall here, I think, is in regarding these 
 spiritual things as if they were really separable and not one or absolute ; 
 not seeing that our having spiritual life is our being forgiven, but en- 
 deavouring to make out a connection between them wh is not of identity. 
 Even in the physical world this is erroneous : there is no rational way 
 of regarding cause and effect except as two forms of the same thing : 
 i. e. in truth even the physical world proves there is no real time, nor 
 real causal relation. And in the same way, but worse, do we err when
 
 660 
 
 we introduce these conceptions into the spiritual world. In truth it is 
 because they are not in the spiritual that they are not truly in the 
 phenomenal. We have introduced them there, and our work is, not to 
 carry them from thence to the spiritual, but to exclude them altogether. 
 We try to make a real cause and effect, a real time in the spiritual, 
 while Science goes to deny cause and effect, or time, even in the phen- 
 omenal. It is as God's creation and redemption are both one, both 
 eternal. How clearly redemption is said to be eternal ; God's gift of 
 His Son is not in time, but eternity. Is it not thus ; that our creation 
 and redemption are one, and that it will not be true of us that we shall 
 have been other than we are eternally ? Is it God's creation that we see 
 in sin and redemption ? Is not here presented to us what we call crea- 
 tion ont of nothing, being from not being ? The more I think of this 
 view of redemption the more elements of truth seem to be in it. God's 
 act is creation ; but in this creation of moral Beings of course is in- 
 volved their moral action, their loving or not loving by their own moral 
 deed. Now redemption is creating those again who have become dead 
 who have not loved. This truly is in some sense creation out of no- 
 thing, because the spirit that is sinful has not been. The only possible 
 ' not-being ' being the cause of sin. And God in redeeming produces 
 Being from not being. [See before.] 
 
 Not-being can only be when the 'creature' is ; the creature 
 may not-be, if he be sinful ; but God is is infinite. So in God's 
 creation of the creature, arises the possibility of not-being, i. e. of sin. 
 And here are two beautiful thoughts ; first, as our existence is thus 
 moral, and depends on our being holy, so also is God's. The necessity 
 of God's existence is a moral necessity ; it is only because He is holy, 
 is love, that He is. And as redemption, or the re-creating of sinful 
 spirits, is a moral creation, by giving them love, by self-sacrifice, so 
 must creation itself have been. God must create as He redeems ; pro- 
 ducing moral being, love in His creatures. Creation must be a moral 
 act on the part of the created, even as redemption is. Bnt now I am 
 embarrassed again with the idea of spiritual being, apart from the mo- 
 ral ; must not the sinful spirit be in order to be re-created ? Must not 
 the spirit be in order to love? This idea of 'substratum' has such a 
 hold upon us. And what is that consciousness wh is ours quite apart 
 from a moral being ? Does it flow from the moral ? 
 
 With regard to evil spirits is not the unification in the fact of all 
 existence being of spirit, i. e. spiritual : ' possessed by devils ' surely ; 
 is not all disease such ? The fact is spiritual. The woman ' whom 
 Satan had bound these years :' yet was this an ordinary disease, and 
 clearly considered so by the narrator. The fact of wh all these evils 
 are the phn, surely is spiritual ; therefore this is the simply true or 
 actual way of representing them. 
 
 Is not Satan that wh is in all evil, and therefore personal or spiritual, 
 because all that is is so ? Do we see here the personality, the Being, of 
 the spirit that refuses to act, to love, to obey conscience ? The 
 devil is the producer of the false, of that wh is not ; of absence 
 of being. As God is love, Satan is not-love. If spirit is action, then 
 action must be spirit ; and evil action not acting when there shd be 
 action must be evil spirit ? Surely the existence of ' evil spirit ' is im- 
 plied in the existence of actual, i. e. spiritual, evil. Anti our sins are 
 the works of the devil, his work in us, as our holiness is the work of
 
 661 
 
 God. God rules when we do right, Satan when we do wrong. He ia 
 the spirit that ' works in us ' to do evil. And sin also is action ; the 
 active character of sin, the instinctive view, must be asserted 
 again. 
 
 All evil in nature is 'spiritual not acting,' or sin ; works of the devil; 
 the creation groans under it. But there is no evil save in the not-acting, 
 the 'not living ;' there is evil only to the evil doer : the effects, the 
 phenomenal evil, only nutrition ; even as are the effects of man's sin. 
 So all is God's creative and redeeming act; creation involves re- 
 demption. 
 
 The Bible gives us the universal fact, that wh is imaged in the phen- 
 omenal ; and we take a phenomenal view, and look on that wh is uni- 
 versal as anomalous. The biblical writers speak naturally, just as men 
 would who saw that the phenomenal was image of spiritual ; as we 
 shd, speaking of astronomy with full knowledge that the sun's motion 
 was the image of the motion of the earth : habitually 
 speaking of the actual, but every now and then speaking of the phn as 
 if it were the fact; naturally, and rightly because naturally, just as 
 men would to whom the fact was familiar and well understood. 
 
 In another way we may see that we are truly one with God [the truth 
 of pantheism] ; in that we become one with Christ, one with God in 
 Him. But only that wh is one can be made one ; no such actual unity 
 is possible save from the essential unity that is in our creation, our re- 
 lation as creatures. Pantheism is put wrong by its materialism only, 
 by the conception of actual matter. It is thus grossly illogical in its 
 basis: it is a good thing to show' this, for it prides itself upon its logic. 
 If it will be logical it becomes at once spiritualism, and is no longer 
 harmful. And surely no one truly wants to deny the moral, to deny 
 personality, to make himself out a thing. See how deep this sense of 
 personality is in us ; it is at the root of our seuse of property. A man 
 resents invariably the non- recognition of his right of property, not for 
 the value of the thing, but because it ignores his personality. This 
 surely is one point of view in wh we may regard our sin against God ; 
 we ignore His personality ; we do by His as if He were not ? i. e. by 
 ourselves as if He were not our creator ? 
 
 Sin inaction being suppression of the love, is not not-being merely ; 
 not absence but the opposite : so it is a positive sin because it is inaction. 
 Annihilation, or ceasing to be, is not untrue in relation to the spiritual ; 
 not a false statement, but an inapplicable idea. Ceasing to be belongs 
 only to the phenomenal, to that wh exists in succession ; to the spiritual 
 it cannot apply : and even in the phenomenal there is no annihilation, 
 only change of form. 
 
 Is not redemption the image of creation ; creation seen in time, and 
 the Incarnation thus an image ? Christ's bodily death the image of 
 His spiritual self-sacrifice ; not that His body and His death were not 
 real, but because they were ' real ' just as ours ; the ' real ' being neces- 
 sarily image. And He gives His body and His blood as our food to be- 
 come ours ; His ceases to be that ours may be : image of His life, His 
 spiritual Being, given for us ; of His existing in us. Christ is the life 
 of the world, lives in His Church ; even as G-od lives in His creatures : 
 yet God is none the less. Therein is His life, even as our life is in 
 giving ourselves to God, and living in Him. In that self-giving is the 
 spiritual life, the personality, emphatically maintained.
 
 662 
 
 In the doctrine of the curse on the earth from the Fall, how truly 
 do -we see the physical derived from the spiritual [which Boehme also 
 seems clearly to state] ; for the physical is not God's act but the image 
 of it. Now God's act is the creation - the Being of spirits, and in 
 them is sin, wh is also .-. represented in Nature. 
 
 So also I see much more clearly the meaning and reason of miracles. 
 They simply show the dependence of the physical upon the moral, of 
 the image upon fact. Here is nothing to stagger one's faith ; when 
 once we see the physical as the image of God's moral act, we see mira- 
 cles quite plainly. There is in a miracle a change of nothing but of re- 
 lation to us. We act on the image by means of other images, God by 
 acting thro' the ' actual ' of wh it is the image. Is it not thus : we 
 might make the sun appear to stand still by optical contrivances, but it 
 might be done in quite another way by making the earth stand still : 
 yet wd the result as concerns the sun's motion the phenomenon be 
 absolutely the same, viz. the cessation of an apparent motion. But in 
 the one case there would be but a change of appearances, in the other 
 there wd be a great and important fact effected ; a difference not at all 
 apparent in the visible result. Surely here is a help towards the dis- 
 tinction between effects produced by natural means relations of the 
 phenomena to each other and miracle ? Miracles serve to show that 
 the necessary is but the moral, act : this is what the difficulty with re- 
 spect to them shd teach us. Thus without losing their value as proofs 
 of Divine mission, they acquire also a new significance. And surely 
 the ' instinctive ' opinion that the physical universe had thus a 'miracu- 
 lous' origin that there must have been a time when it began to be 
 and that this beginning has an important difference from its continuing 
 in existence, must have some good foundation. It has been a degraded 
 idea, doubtless, but it is an instinct, and must come back, surely. 
 There must have been a ' time ' before the universe was, when it began, 
 and that creation wd be ' miraculous ' ; it imaged some act of God, wh 
 ' phenomenally ' is different from that which is now, tho' not truly : all 
 being one, and no succession. 
 
 May we not truly say, Christianity is not a theology but a fact ? how 
 can we deny the Fall, and the redemption thro' Christ ? We see men 
 are fallen, are wicked, and are redeemed by Christ ; words are vain, and 
 nothing to the point ; say it how we like, here it is. Wicked men, dead 
 men, do receive life from Christ ; are redeemed, are made holy ; it mat- 
 ters not to talk. And there is 'none other Name' no other religion does 
 it, attempts it, tends towards it. Here alone is the Divine self-sacrifice 
 from which life can spring. 
 
 Let me think if the Bible language does truly agree with the 
 thoughts I have had respecting the material world being the image of 
 ' redemption,' or creation from spiritual not-being, or Sin. How were 
 Adam and Eve, unfallen, placed in Eden, in the Garden ; was it an 
 actual garden, or spiritual, but perceived as physical ? What were the 
 trees of life, of knowledge ? Certainly these were not physical trees ; 
 it is impossible : trees such as these are rather images. Eden was not 
 physical. But then what was the Serpent? This also was an actual 
 serpent, not physical. In that history the ' actual,' not the image, is 
 designated by the words. And think : we hear nothing of the Devil 
 till after man is fallen [does it not favor the idea of the identification
 
 663 
 
 of the Devil with humanity '?] But then what was this actual, spirit- 
 ual, or moral ' serpent ' that ' tempted ' Adam ? It must have been, 
 surely, an evil spirit; the temptation the result of some 'inaction.' 
 But was it necessarily without them ? First tempting Eve, who had not 
 received the command, and sinned in ignorance ; and Eve tempted 
 Adam. This seems as if it wd reward thought. And then the death 
 by sin, and the curse upon the ground how clearly that might denote 
 the spiritual becoming, to man's eye and sense, physical or material ! It 
 is certainly most accordant with the words of Scripture ; for we may 
 positively know that death existed in the phi/sical from the first. If 
 the world was physical before Adam's sin, then was death before it, and 
 we are driven to miraculous trees, &c. But if the world became physi- 
 cal i.e. such an image, perceived as it is now by us by means of Adam's 
 sin, then all is clear ; for observe, nothing was really changed, only our 
 perception. What is eternal, and spiritual, we perceive in time and 
 space ; and therefore perceive death, and perceive it necessarily, where- 
 soever we perceive at all. It is the condition of the physical death 
 i. e. physical existence, this entire state, entered by sin. There is no 
 absolute death because we perceive it ; it is to us. The previous exist- 
 ence of the physical clearly resolves itself, on this view. "We perceive 
 physical existence, and its laws, wheresoever we perceive at all ; but all 
 that is, is spiritual. The physical is our mode of perceiving [because 
 of our state] that wh is not so. Death, or the physical our perception 
 of nature as physical came by sin ; i. e. our perception of her as related 
 to not-being, to time and space. So we are born sinful, diseased. 
 
 Thus Swedenborg's doctrine is seen applicable as it truly is ; as is the 
 being so is the perception, wh is so true physically. The physical i.e. 
 death came with man's sin : he was altered, and .. his perception, ne- 
 cessarily. We perceive the physical, because, in our perceptions as in 
 our spiritual being, there is an element of not-being : sin is its own 
 punishment. 
 
 [But then men's perceptions do not alter with their moral character.] 
 
 Death before man existed is not a difficulty. The fact is not altered 
 by man's sin ; only man's perception, only the form. As trees and ani- 
 mals, doubtless, the inhabitants of the world died before man was ; but 
 they are only trees and animals [or ' things'] by virtue of man's percep- 
 tion of the physical from his sin. Had man continued holy, or spiritual, 
 there had been no death because no ' things.' Man by sin became flesh- 
 ly thingal became related to not-being, and an image related to not- 
 being necessarily surrounded him, i. e. the physical, or matter. 
 
 The evidence here of the connection of the physical with the spirit- 
 ual not-being, or with Sin (or rather with redemption, or creating from 
 nothing) seems very strong. Is it not certain, indeed, if the perceived 
 be truly the image of the spiritual ? Else whence this connection with 
 not-being, this necessary evil and imperfection, this death which is the 
 ' image of sin ' ; especially the unavoidable reference to a preceding 'no- 
 thing,' wh is so opposed to all but sin ? not-being being only sin, only 
 possibly so. Besides what else would be appropriate for us, vic- 
 tims of sin and called on to repent and live again, but a world that shd 
 image thus our state ? 
 
 How beautiful is this necessity of every Being perceiving according 
 to his nature or state ? for thus each Being has a world, given him as it
 
 664 
 
 were] wh is suited to him ; full of lessons for him, and of motives ; the 
 world that each wants is that wh he has. Here, as in organization, is 
 an instance of exact adaptation, [from the law of least resistance as it 
 were?} 
 
 The inseparable connection of the physical [of material things] with 
 not-heing, both as existing in space and time and as having been created 
 out of nothing, seems absolute proof to me, now, of the connection of 
 it with sin. For sin is the only not-being. There is no not-being before 
 the creature's sin, for God is Infinite Being : Sin therefore is not mere 
 passive not-being, it is opposition to God. God is absolute Being ; Sin 
 the opposite, the contrary, is not-Being [not-being in the sinning spirit ; 
 but not less is God's Being infinite ; there is no absolute loss]. 
 
 It is true that God pronounced all His works good ; but this was be- 
 fore the Fall. The ground was cursed for man's sake ; surely it was 
 not then also good. Yet must this change have been in man, in the 
 perception : the ' things ' were, because he perceived them ; no violence 
 is done to the language. Things are what we perceive ' forms ' namely. 
 And before the Fall, there existed to Adam existed and were perceived 
 actualities, well and rightly, most rightly, called by the same names 
 as the ' things.' How sad, how wonderful, must have been the change 
 he saw take place around him yet nothing altered but himself. ' Their 
 eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked.' Here is an 
 indication of the same. Sad knowledge, revealing matter and therein 
 death ! 
 
 ' Knowledge of good and evil,' and from a tree ! what an insight here 
 into the actual the meaning of the 'form.' The tree of life, also, wh 
 is in the heavenly city too, for the healing of the nations ! And Christ 
 is the Vine, giving life (and healing) to us, His branches. 
 
 Yet was this physical world the sign, or image, not of their sin, but 
 of their redemption : not of nothing, but of creation from nothing ; new 
 creation, salvation from sin or from oppositeness to God. Nor does this 
 view interfere at all with the absolute and perfect goodness of Nature ; 
 the lessons it teaches us of self-control and holiness. So it is, in itself, 
 and as we ought to see it. Death and evil are the phenomena to us ; 
 existing for our warning and for our teaching by suffering, our disci- 
 pline ; but these all subserve the perfect life of the whole, and to this 
 also we must look, if we are to derive the truest, highest teaching from 
 our Father's work. The world is the image, not of Sin, but of redemp- 
 tion; not of the ruin and the death, but of the new imparted life and the 
 rescue. Is not redemption perfectly, unutterably good ? should not its 
 image be perfectly lovely in our eyes ? It is God's love, His self-sacri- 
 fice, that is imaged there ; more touching, sweeter to us than could be 
 the untarnished glories of His creative act. Sweeter, dearer to us, the 
 sinners, the dying creatures drinking new life from the Saviour's blood, 
 these mild and gentle beams of His brightness, these shaded hues and 
 harmonies dashed with discord, than the full beaming of His counte- 
 nance, the thrilling burst of the celestial harps. We could 
 not bear it. God is kinder to us. Around His sick child, the Father 
 [comforting us as one whom his mother comforteth] gently draws the 
 curtain wh excludes the light that wd be torture, the sounds, albeit of 
 loving voices only, that wd rack the distempered ear. Oh blessed veil 
 of flesh and sense, hiding from us that only wh we could not endure to
 
 665 
 
 see, bright with a'tender radiance, and reflecting to us mild images 
 that our hearts can bear yet hardly bear of visions we dare not else 
 to look upon. Blessed veil of flesh, that gives to us a God made mani- 
 fest in Christ ; with human love, with throbbing heart and tearful eyes 
 like ours. Blessed veil, behind which tears may flow unrebuked, and 
 handsjbe clasped in prayer, or wrung in agony, with none to bid them 
 cease. Blessed veil, wh hides from angels' eyes from all eyes but His 
 whom we would supplicate to look the dark secret of our hearts, the 
 hard reluctant struggle from which we shall emerge, at last, victorious 
 through Him who loved us; and take our place, humble but not 
 abashed, amid the hosts of heaven. Oh, Curse of Love, that is but 
 blessing, wrath that is mercy, punishment that is the tenderest care : 
 the gentle hand of God laid upon our eyes, while He says to us, ' My 
 
 son, give ine thy heart.' And Hell is also such a merciful infliction, 
 only love the best for us, the necessary effect of love. 
 
 [Is not this Plato's doctrine ; that we are in a dark cave, where we 
 see only reflected images of the true things that are, and that this is on 
 account of our sins.] 
 
 Because there is not-being, or sin, within us, there must be not-being 
 i. e. the physical or death, around us. 
 
 Every one worthy of the name of a man, has ever felt that this phy- 
 sical world does not rightly represent the true, the actual, to him ; that 
 it is a faint and marred embodiment of that which is unutterably more 
 glorious and excellent. And this it is, that it has relation to not- 
 being, to sin. It is true ; the world is marred, spoilt by the Devil, and 
 we, in whom is life, long and must long, for a new heavens and earth 
 wherein dwelleth righteousness. But it is not marred as matter ; not 
 first made a perfect material world and then injured by sin. It is 
 spiritual, becoming physical to us by virtue of sin [or not-being], in 
 us. As physical it is perfect ; the image of perfect, absolute beauty 
 and good ; no evil is in it that might not be ; all, all is right. 
 The evil is in its being physical, which evil lies not in it, but in 
 us. 
 
 All true men have spoken of the physical of time and space as 
 hiding the actual from us. A feeling deep in the human heart, and be- 
 ing but the expression of the deeper feeling of the wrongness of sin. 
 I only say the same, endeavouring to show how and what it is; showing 
 how it all arises from the relation of the physical to not-being, wh is the 
 image of sin; and exists only because sin exists. Death is that wh has 
 relation to not-being ; i. e. to space and time ; it is the physical by 
 definition. Tojsay death came by sin, is to say the physical came by 
 sin. Sin, as not-being, is that wh is opposed or contrary to God. The 
 sinner therefore, as such, in immediate relation to God must be in hell. 
 That wh is evil, painful, to us here the idea and meaning of evil is 
 that whjis opposed to our nature, our form of being. To the sinner 
 therefore who is not-being, God Being must be the absolutest evil. 
 Heaven and hell are one and the same ; must be indeed. It is to us ac- 
 cording as we are. God, infinite absolute love or Being, is heaven to 
 the redeemed, the loving, or the ' being ;' hell to the sinner, the not- 
 loving. If the physical were not around us, as sinners, we were now 
 in hell. The physical is to us that we may be redeemed, that sinning 
 we may repent ; that being in time we may learn to live ; not-being,
 
 666 
 
 may become. This is the source, the idea, of time, of life ; of nutrition 
 and function. It is redemption. Eternal [spiritual] life is gained in 
 time. 
 
 I begin to see what and why our passions are, our tendency to evil : 
 how they are one with our sinfulness, or corruption. Only spirits that 
 are in time that are sinful, and therefore exist in the physical have 
 these passions to control with so much reluctance, these temptations ; 
 the ' nutrition ' to make by self-control, that the function, the love of 
 right, may be. This life is redemption; the fact of redemption is the 
 spiritual life ; the image of it the physical. The world must be, thus, 
 physical life in time and space because the spiritual is such ; being 
 related to not-being, created out of not-being: this is our life. Thus, I 
 see, it is true that our being sinful is essentially connected with our 
 being in a physical world ; having bodies, and objects of sense. But 
 we are not sinful because we have bodies, and are thus tempted, &c.; 
 but we are in the flesh in a physical [deathful] world because we are 
 sinful. The existence of the physical is the effect of sin. "We seem to 
 sin, doubtless, from the effect of the physical ; and so, speaking phen- 
 omenally, we do : we are drawn away by our own lusts, and enticed. 
 [Is not this the inversion of the fact which the image always 
 presents ?] 
 
 It is the not-being of the physical that fits it for us the death that 
 is in it ; only so is it conformable to a sinful Being, or capable of sub- 
 serving his redemption ; it is not opposition to us, but the merciful 
 taking away of the opposition, a gradual and gentle leading of us, im- 
 parting to us life or Being ; that we may be able to bear the absolute 
 and infinite Being. 
 
 This view takes away all the difficulty, from the transactions in the 
 Garden of Eden ; seeing that the actualities designated by the names of 
 physical things are spiritual. It is not of physical things that the 
 history speaks, but of spiritual ; the spiritual facts of wh the 'things' 
 are images. The physical things or images are called by spiritual 
 names. The ' tree ' is not a physical thing, it is a spiritual actuality 
 [that wh is does not cease to be as the physical tree does] : the physical 
 tree is called a tree because it is the image of the spiritual fact wh is 
 truly called so. ' I am the true vine,' says Christ : the ' tree of life ' is 
 in heaven. These names are given only by accommodation, as it were, 
 to those fleeting forms or images wh are physical 'things.' The tree 
 does not cease to be when the flames have consumed it, or the waters 
 rotted it ; not the true tree, only the form. 
 
 The source of the wrongness of our conceptions is in our sin. Our 
 own not-being makes us conceive as if not-being were the natural thing, 
 and that Being was the mystery, and needed to be accounted for. This 
 is the great error: to us the wonder is, e. g. how things the universe 
 comes to be. Infinite space, all empty., and duration with no action, 
 would not puzzle us. Here is the absolute wrongness. Not-being is 
 the mystery, the difficulty ; the thing to be accounted for. If it were 
 not for our not-being, our suppression of Being in ourselves, our op- 
 posedness to it, wh is our sin, we shd see at once that infinite Being 
 must be ; is necessary in a very different sense from that in wh we now 
 say it. There can be no not-being but sin, and that phenomenal not- 
 being wh is its image. Our difficulties in respect to Science and all
 
 667 
 
 abstract thought, arise from hence, I think ; our taking not-being as 
 the standard, or natural, instead of Being. It is sin depraves our intel- 
 lects as well as our hearts. 
 
 We speak of 'relapsing' into not-being ; as if it were the normal con- 
 dition, instead of infinite Being. Ours is the abnormal condition, the 
 distortion, the wrong [or wrwng]. Is not redemption the re-assertion 
 of the suppressed Being ? Is not sin a suppression of Being ? Is not 
 this its sinfulness ? But so it is nutrition ; so the Being, the love, 
 must come back and in higher form. There is the greatest evidence 
 that this is the right view to take of redemption, that it is not a restor- 
 ing merely, but a raising, a making higher. See even how sin is in- 
 cluded, as it must be, in the infinite love, in the infinite right. It is a 
 suppression, but so it makes a nutrition ; and in the return in higher 
 form is the function. So our redemption is more than Adam lost; he lost 
 innocency, we gain righteousness. Is not creation and redemption, to- 
 gether, the true creation of the spiritual Being ? We have an union 
 with God in Christ wh is of infinite excellency, but wh could not be 
 save in redemption. So the fall, or loss of innocency, is not so fearful ; 
 it is our refusing redemption that is the sin. 'The wrath of man' praises 
 God. 
 
 It is wonderful that these things shd be stated in the Bible so truly ; 
 so clearly, and yet so dimly. They are there, but we cannot see them 
 till the time comes ; and we make the words bend to our ideas mean- 
 while. And again it is not needful that Moses and Paul, and the other 
 scriptural writers, shd have fully known the meaning of what they 
 said ; shd have meant what we see in their words. The prophets of 
 old wrote of Christ, not knowing what their language meant. So pro- 
 bably of the fall, and the relation of 'death;' the language has a deeper 
 meaning than the writers knew ; for them to have known all wd have 
 been to antedate ; would have been not right. 
 
 Am I not guided here also ? It is sin that is wrwng (or wrong), the 
 result of violence or force [we do violence to our nature, our Being, in 
 sin] ; but all force is vital force, opposes tendency ; i.e. constitutes nu- 
 trition. Sin must be such ; must be nutrition, and exist for function, 
 i.e. for redemption. All force is, as I have said, opposition to tendency; 
 but this 'tendency' is the image of love ; sin suppresses love, Being, or 
 action. Just what I see in the pendulum, this is the type of all the 
 suppressing of the passion [or the love] produces the nutrition. Sin 
 therefore is the instrument in the production of a nutrition ; essential 
 to a function. Am I thus doing away with the sinfulness of sin ? I 
 think not ; we must reconcile the sinfulness, the evil, of sin [wh is a 
 felt fact, and depends not on speculative views] with the glory of God 
 thereby, and His perfect all-embracing holiness and love. I think I see 
 the indication in nature of how this is. 
 
 Surely the true things are spiritual; Christ is 'the Lamb' not Christ 
 like a physical lamb, but the physical lamb the/orm like Christ. 
 Is not here the clue to the physical representations (as we read them) 
 of the heavenly world ? We think we are reading 'metaphors ;' the 
 Bible is speaking of actualities, of wh the physical things are images. 
 And now can we see by this more of hell ? The unprofitable servant 
 was cast into ' outer darkness :' is it not 'space' not-being ? Why the 
 fire, the worms especially the fire ? This seems the great similitude ;
 
 668 
 
 the fact very probably discoverable here. Fire truly is the great fact 
 of love the flame of love. It is one with light also; it is, as we know 
 it, simply the result of intensest attraction, wh is love [i.e. its image], 
 Now I see the wisdom of that interpretation, that burning is from 'not- 
 being.' It is very true ; love is fire to that wh has no love. This is 
 why hell is called fire; it is the effect of God's love upon the not-loving; 
 it tortures and consumes. 
 
 But farther ; observe Paul's expression ; ' heap coals of fire upon his 
 head,' i.e. by love. Here also is another clue to hell. God's love to 
 sinners is a lake of fire to them. It is so much it cannot be merely 
 heaped on them ; they are swallowed up in it. God is love ; all that 
 is wrath in Him is love : He alters not because man sins. The God 
 who is love is a consuming fire ; is now, and because He is love. 
 
 It is true man cannot be put into real (thing-al) fire, and burnt for 
 ever and ever real or thing-al is ' formal,' or that whcih ceases. The 
 men who try to be so literal are the most metaphorical ; those who 
 maintain a real fire of hell, are obliged to say of God that he is only 
 metaphorically a fire. I affirm both in the truest sense : God is fire, and 
 hell is fire : they are actual fire ; that of wh the thing-al fire is an 
 image ; it is the ' real ' fire that is a 'metaphor.' ' Things' are the 
 metaphors or images, not the words of scripture. [Think of the fre- 
 quency of fire worship]. More fire is more love, more mercy, a tend- 
 erer help to feebleness and supply of want. Eternal fire is eternal 
 love. 
 
 And see here a converse view : love to those who do not love is fire 
 or burning ; it is the mutual effect of love and hate. But conversely, 
 those who hate burn those who love. Love is fire to hatred ; hatred 
 seeks to apply fire to love. Is there not a beautiful meaning here in 
 the continual use of fire in martyrdom ? Fire is emphatically the in- 
 strument of martyrdom ; the ' real ' or formal fire applied by the not- 
 loving to the loving is image of the true fire that love is to the not- 
 loving. Now see : fire is love ; can we judge from this respecting other 
 things ? "We say, a burning heart I burn with love. But Christ was 
 not the victim of fire ; it is blood yes, blood for remission of sin. 
 There is a Tightness here also : without shedding of blood there is no 
 remission. There is no shedding of blood by fire. Is not the idea es- 
 sentially different between the sacrifical death and the martyrdom ? 
 Consider the two in the old scriptures. 
 
 Shall we not find that all ' pains ' physical pain, e.g. are love (at- 
 traction) without corresponding love ? Where in-action is there all ac- 
 tion turns to mischief; where not-love all love is destruction, is con- 
 suming fire. Surely the mischief resulting from 'action,' where the 
 'right action' of any part is wanting, is the image of the punishment 
 of sin by love ; the destruction, the burning of the sinner ? 
 
 God's love God, without love in us is hell ; but here we do not 
 feel it because the physical hides it. God says of us, ' These poor 
 children would be in hell, and utterly consumed, if I did not hide my- 
 self from them ;' and therefore, in His compassion, He interposes the 
 material world, whereby we see as in a glass the glory wh unveiled 
 would consume us. The perception of the physical by us is God's act, 
 God's curse, because it is, and in being, the necessary consequence 
 of sin.
 
 069 
 
 "When I say that ' with sin came the physical,' I assert only that wh 
 is in principle self-evident, or that with the change in man came a 
 change in his mode of perception such a change, from his relation 
 therein to not-being, as that he perceived [of course, that wh exists, 
 the actual or spiritual] as ' things,' or as having relation to not-being. 
 It seems clear from the narrative that then a change in his mode of 
 perception, or at least in his actual perception, is intended ; then first 
 he perceived a ' body 'is not this that he was naked ?' The spiritual 
 fact of wh nakedness is the image, excited no shame ; but perceived in 
 its physical image, in a relation therefore to not-being (or by a sinful 
 being) it fills them with shame. Then first physical sensations and con- 
 ceptions, in wh the feeling of shame is founded, and from wh it is in- 
 separable, arose. Surely we do not mean to say that perfectly holy men 
 and women would have no modesty ? The holier the more true modesty. 
 If Adam and Eve, when holy, had perceived physical things, surely they 
 had not wanted modesty ? or do we deny them humanity, denying its 
 most essential feelings ? Clearly after the fall they perceived that they 
 had physical bodies ; they existed then in space and time. Yet it 
 is curious that this is called opening of the eyes, wh is rather drawing 
 a veil between us and the actual. Consider here the analogy of the 
 veil drawn by the daylight over the stars : it is opening the eyes to see 
 the physical, obscures all beyond ? 
 
 Think again, how all men fall in Adam : truly, the spirit is not in time. 
 Are all existent, co-existent, with Adam ? Is there not a common 
 fall, and the apparent successsion arising from that 'fall ?' Was it hu- 
 manity that fell ; not 'a man,' but that Being of whom we are the 'ele- 
 ments,' and of the true existence of whom I do not doubt ? Or does the 
 fall take place in each human person for himself, in each child ; What 
 does the child ' perceive ' before he can ' infer' the physical or 'things?' 
 Does not the 'fall,' the temptation, take place in his experience, and 
 therewith the opening of the eyes to the not-being ? In each one the 
 same as in the whole ? It is worth thinking of, whether the fall be not 
 constantly under our eyes ; i. e. re-presented in each of us. Consider 
 the first developments of evil in the child. ' As in Adam all die ;' 
 there is, in large, the death of each ; the death, the sin. 
 
 The child, eating of the forbidden tree, gets the knowledge of good 
 and evil of the two together ? Is the woman in him deceived, the man 
 consenting, the serpent tempting ? Yes ; in the moral nature is rooted, 
 and begins, the percipient. Then it begins to be in a world of 'things,' 
 and to have the emotions wh things excite ; perceives that it is things 
 that are about him ; his eyes are opened. The first dawnings of per- 
 cipience are with the moral sense ; the first conception of ' cause ' with 
 his own act. Surely the state of innocency is re-presented in infancy : 
 the perceiving things the opening of the eyes with the knowledge of 
 good and evil, wh is from consciousness of wrong doing. Tempted 
 and yielding, the child feels that he has done wrong ; he has the know- 
 ledge of good and evil, of his own moral Being, and therewith a per- 
 ception of 'things,' wh is grounded entirely on his consciousness of his 
 own moral Being, or power ; viz., on the idea of cause. It is an infer- 
 ence. It is obvious that an infant does not at first perceive 'things ;' 
 this perception must come at some time : I say that it comes with, and 
 from, the first consciousness of wrong doing, or knowledge of good and
 
 670 
 
 evil. As I have seen, perception, consciousness, arise from the moral 
 Being. Is it not likely, even certain, that before this consciousness of 
 moral Being in the child, there is no sensation properly so called, no 
 pain ? But if not, how does this moral consciousness arise, if not by 
 means of sensation ? 
 
 I do not mean that this is all that is meant by the fall, not to deny 
 the literal facts of Adam's existence ; but was not (is not) the true fall 
 a fall of the universal humanity ; imaged alike by the fact of Adam's 
 fall, and by the experience of every child ? 
 
 Does not my view of 'development' tend to give me first an adult for 
 every new specific form, or union of two lower ? 
 
 Is not the worm that dieth not the same with the serpent? and why 
 is it ? Consider how incompatible with the fire ; it is animal life in 
 that wh is destructive to it, yet continuing to live. Yet the fire is the 
 love of God. Is it not fire without, and worm within ? the worm self- 
 generated ? it comes from corruption. Surely its mention sets aside the 
 physical or real fire, for a physical worm must die in fire. 
 
 As I have seen, God's curse on man, and on the earth for man's sake, 
 was His anger, the expression, the inflction, of His holy wrath : yet 
 was it 'wrath that is mercy ;' it is an act of love, it is giving us a phy- 
 sical world to save us from hell : the image of redemption. The 
 punishment of sin and redemption from it are one ; for love is self-sa- 
 crifice. Punishment or wrath, and redemption or self-sacrifice, are one; 
 the one fact of love. Are not these views, making all God's ways so 
 glorious and full of love, such as those we have been hoping to have in 
 heaven ? Are there any reasons why we shd refuse them now ? They 
 are given us in nature ; revealed in God's works as interpreting His 
 word ; not human inventions, but God's acts. It is nature teaches 
 us. 
 
 It is strange, except that we learn by error, that ever a real (phy- 
 sical) fire shd have been supposed in hell. Christ's words, ' the fire is 
 not quenched/ seem expressly designed to deny it. For it is the es- 
 sence of the real, the thing-al, to cease. Christ says ' hell, where there 
 is fire' but not physical (not thing-al, or that wh ceases); a worm, cor- 
 ruption, but not physical. Is not this the exact meaning of the passage, 
 to guard us against supposing it merely physical ? we are told by de- 
 nying its special characteristic that it is not physical. And I believe 
 this would be understood so by the hearers ; it is a refinement of phil- 
 osophers that matter and motion do not cease. Again, a burning heart 
 is the intensest symbol of love, burning but not consumed ; a ceaseless 
 fire that burns without consuming, is the very type of love. The sun, 
 too, is burning, and the functions of the body are a true burning; Science 
 calls them so. Function, wh is love, is ever burning. 
 
 This world differs from heaven aud hell in one way ; viz., that God's 
 full presence is not made manifest, but obscurely seen by physical im- 
 ages. The full manifestation constitutes at once heaven to the good, 
 hell to the wicked. 
 
 The doctrine of the ' annihilation ' of the wicked, is simply an in- 
 stance of the perversion of our idea of not-being ; as if that were the 
 4 natural ' instead of the ' violent,' and only resulting from sin. Annihi- 
 lation eternal not-being is truly that very eternal sin from which it is 
 sought as a refuge. There is no not-being but sin, but not-loving. That
 
 (571 
 
 cannot be the solution of the question, whatever is ; the death, the not- 
 being, is the sinning. It is this that has to be destroyed. To overcome 
 evil with good, that is God's work. And here is the meaning of casting 
 sinners and of casting death and hell into the lake of fire. It is God 
 overcoming evil with good : destroying them, destroying not-being, or 
 sin ; destroying not-loving. How shd God do that save by making love? 
 Thou, oh God, destroyest sin by making holy. Truly Thou overcomest 
 evil with good. Dost overcome, and wilt ; yea, dost eternally. For 
 there can be no not-being but sinning : but opposition to God ; for God 
 is infinite Being. How blind our eyes have been, how slow our hearts. 
 Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory ; of the glory of love. It is 
 sin, and not sinners, that shall be destroyed. The spirit lives is created 
 in the destruction of its not-being, of its sin. 
 
 There can be no not-being in God's universe but sin ; not-being is the 
 evil, the fearful mischief ; it cannot be the remedy. Not annihilation but 
 creation ; death must be swallowed up of life ; must be cast into the 
 lake of fire ; wh consumes all that is not. The not-being only is that 
 wh can be consumed, or destroyed. It is as we speak of destroying a 
 shadowu 
 
 I see, of course, that this lake of fire is truly misery to the sinner, 
 unutterable misery. Yet is not all pain remedial, the evil wh flows from 
 sin is the cure of it. By infinite pain is this remedy applied ? Or is it 
 even remedial in the sense we mean ? It is perhaps not so ; the des- 
 truction of the sin, the restoration of the love or holiness, may perhaps 
 be the utter loss and destruction of what we call the personality, of the 
 conscious Being. This is another question : there may be here the 
 truth of the annihilation doctrine. The sensational conscious nature 
 may cease, perhaps, though not the spiritual or moral ; if there be none 
 of that, the sensational may cease. Is not that, apart from the moral, 
 merely phenomenal and transient ? And is not this the true solution of 
 the question of sensational existence altogether ? It is, truly, because 
 of the moral nature in us, but this is rather God's act than ours ; and 
 unless made ours in holiness the sensational also is not ours, and our 
 existence as conscious ceases. Yet is no being annihilated. I have to 
 reconcile these : the fearfulness of the punishment, the destruction of 
 the sinner, with the absolute love, and overcoming of evil by good, of 
 God. 
 
 We see how, in nature, the operation of the natural forces the good 
 destroys entirely that wh is corrupt, though nothing ceases or is lost. 
 Surely this must be the symbol : the death and ceasing of individual 
 things as forming part of the life of the whole, the type of the absolute 
 cessation of conscious individuals, the destruction of sinners, as part of 
 the absolute love of God. That wh is corrupt ceases ; as part of the 
 necessity, the goodness, the right of nature. 
 
 Dimly I see : the sinner, the man who does not love, has not moral 
 or actual being, and all else ceases in the eternal fire. Our conscious 
 Being is not due to our moral Being or holiness ; this is given us by 
 God apart from that, though necessarily connected with the power of 
 moral existence. Sin is not-being : the sinner is destroyed as part of 
 the operation of the infinite love of God ; even as a seed that does not 
 live. The conscience is I, and yet not I : it is without us as well as 
 within : it is a power, a duty, not a Bi-ing or an acting. In sinning we
 
 672 
 
 suppress our Being : and therefore in so far as we are sinners we are 
 not. There is no ' Being ' to be annihilated. Consciousness ceasing is 
 no loss to the universe ; only the loss of love, of moral Being, would be 
 so, and this cannot be. Love cannot burn up love. 
 
 Is not this it : that conscious Being [or power of holiness] without 
 holiness, or love, cannot be in the actual presence of God's love ; can 
 only be in a physical world, where God, i. e. God's action, is seen only 
 in images, and with a veil between. It is torture and destruction to 
 see God as He is. So the physical is the image of redemption ; we are 
 in the physical world that we may be redeemed, and if not, if not 
 loving, then in the perfect work of love our consciousness, our sensa- 
 tional Being, must cease and be destroyed. 
 
 Our conscious Being, while wicked or as wicked, is the very not-being 
 that must be destroyed, that Being perfect, absolute love may be. 
 The overcoming evil with good is the destroying all such conscious evil 
 existence. This is the only not-being : the opposite to God, the conscious 
 good Being, is conscious evil Being. [May we not hence know better 
 what God must be ?] Clearly it is so ; Sin is the only not-being ; but 
 sin involves consciousness and the power of loving : therefore it is suck 
 consciousness that has to be destroyed. And do we not now see better 
 what Being is, by not-being ? by consciousness of the wicked we infer 
 or learn the good ? Here we see again how unnatural how a result of 
 violence as it were not-being is : even not-being can only be where 
 * consciousness ' is ; it must be moral not-being ; ' Being ' applies only 
 to the moral. Think of the fearful torments of that destruction which 
 must be to the wicked, consumed by the very love of God, well called 
 indeed the lake of fire. Unable to exist beneath that goodness, crushed 
 into nothingness by. the sight of an overwhelming Love. 
 
 There is nothing, actually, to wh 'Being' and 'not-being' can be ap- 
 plied, but the moral ; not-being therefore must be conscious not-being, 
 must be wickedness ; as Being must be ' conscious,' or love. But con- 
 sider : that wh is love cannot be consumed by love. Whatsoever 
 there is of true actual goodness of true self-sacrifice among men, 
 must survive ; nay, the scriptures assure us, will survive. 
 
 The destruction of evil is, and is only, making good : but it does not 
 seem to follow that the consciousness of the man will be retained, the 
 man restored to happiness. The truth may embrace both annihilation 
 and the restoration of Being, or love ; the two being one. The restora- 
 tion of perfect holiness does not seem necessarily to involve that of the 
 happy individual. Is not the ' individual ' represented by the ' thing,' 
 or form, wh ceases without any loss ? Again ; is not the exclusion of 
 succession a help ? Spirit, Love, is eternal ; the spirit cannot be and 
 cease to be ; there is no change in it. The change, or time, is apparent 
 only ; we seem to exist in time that we may be redeemed. Our being 
 in time is only our being created from not-being ? or rather not so ; but 
 as probation to us ; it is an appearance, a test ? like a dream ? This 
 will help me : I have seen that we truly exist in eternity, and only act 
 by ignoring time, or results. All this succession, these results, are illu- 
 sions ; and God's 'judgment' is but showing what we are. God destroys 
 the sinner by letting it appear that he is not. Moral or actual not-being 
 is the sinner. 
 
 The Bible is so perfect, because it is adapted to all forms and stages
 
 673 
 
 of intelligence ; the simplest learn from it the facts of religion, truly 
 and amply : that holiness is life, that love is Being, that sin is misery 
 and destruction : but as men learn more so do they find therein the most 
 perfect expression of the highest truths. Nature and the Bible mutually 
 interpret each other. How probable it is that the inspired writers ever 
 wrote that wh meant more than their own immediate meaning ; not only 
 in relation to the future, in prophesy, but also in doctrine : God speaking 
 in their words beyond their thought. 
 
 And as redemption by Christ is a fact, so it seems to me that the 
 Gospel is not dependent upon a belief in ' inspiration ' in any miraculous 
 sense. I believe it, but I think if I did not I should not find my faith 
 in Christ less actual, or my trust in Him less fervent. For let it be 
 granted that the men only wrote what they simply thought as men, I 
 say we have ample evidence that God spoke thro' them, making the i j 
 words mean more than the writers meant. And think of our instinctive 
 use of the word ' inspired,' applying it to all works of Genius ; the cha- 
 racter denoted by the term is that the words mean more than the man 
 means. There is no better definition, perhaps, of the work of Genius ; 
 and it is so in such works because God speaks in them ; it is the func- 
 tion, the utterance of humanity, not of the man ; it is part of Nature, 
 part of God's act ; i. e. it is inspired by God. Ajid the inspiration of 
 the Scriptures wd be maintained, I believe, on grounds amply sufficient 
 for the strictest Christianity if that were all that was afiirmed. . They 
 are true in fact : Christ is proved the Eedeemer, the Son of God ; the 
 men who narrated His life uttered higher truths than they knew. 
 
 Redemption by Christ is being made holy and loving by Him ; and 
 this does not depend on a theoretic reception of the Bible. Nor should 
 it ; for the Bible has been, is it not even still, very often presented in 
 such a way that it could not be received. Those who have rejected it 
 from love of the truth wh its presenters denied, and yet have been led 
 to love self-sacrifice by Christ, however indirectly, have been redeemed 
 by Him. And this must surely be all the redeemed; for who but 
 Christ has shown to the world this great fact that self-sacrifice is life ? 
 He first introduced it, surely, in a redeeming form, in relation to all our 
 being and to God. Other men have performed partial self-sacrifice for 
 special objects, but only Christ has taught us that it alone is life. Yet 
 all has been, and is, accepted by God. 
 
 It is beautiful to think thus of our relation to the physical, as the very 
 fact and means of our redemption, of our creation trom not-being. A 
 wicked Being could not, cannot, exist in eternity : it is a contradiction 
 in terms : wickedness is eternal-not-being. We exist in the illusion of 
 time that we may be saved ; that we may live ; that we may become : 
 the power of being is offered to us : this spiritual fact it is that consti- 
 tutes time [and with it space or matter ?] I cannot fully say what I 
 wish to express ; but it is this general idea that time exists to us be- 
 cause [and as image of the fact that] we, as dead or not-being, have 
 presented to us the opportunity of living. There is no true or actual 
 time or succession to us ; but it is the mode in wh we are affected by 
 God's moral re-creation of us from moral not-being : moral re-creation, 
 i. e. creation with our own voluntary action, our own holiness, which is 
 the only moral Being. We see that it is thus. We gain experience, 
 learn the evil of sin, have opportunity for repentance, all wh cannot be
 
 674 
 
 in eternity. Is there no salvation in eternity because 'time' is the very 
 image of the fact of salvation ? a Being that is being saved necessarily 
 exists in time, and therefore in a physical world ? The succession the 
 one thing coming after another i. e. the 'things' [thing, or real, meaning 
 that wh is in succession] are the image or effect of God's grace upon 
 our sinful hearts urging us to live. That is what causes time to be to us. 
 
 To ' destroy not-being,' tho' it may seem at first to be an artificial 
 way of speaking, is truly most correct and natural. It is just as we 
 speak of destroying a shadow. Not -being, indeed, is in some sort the 
 great ' thing ' to us. In truth, it is not-being alone that can be, or ever 
 is, destroyed : science teaches us this. 
 
 When I say that the Bible means simply that God is Love that Love 
 is God ; not a substance with many attributes, but Love [and observe 
 how love is truly all] ; when I say this I am aware that I expose myself 
 to the consequence then all love is God ; all love in us is God in us, 
 and so in all creatures. But this I entirely accept ; this is creation. 
 We are, by God's being in us ; thus we are created ; thus redeemed : 
 both are God's self-sacrifice to be the creature. Christ is in us in all our 
 love. Love, holiness in the creature, is God in the creature, that which 
 constitutes him a Being. So in men that have no love, there is no spi- 
 ritual actual Being ; they must be destroyed in that love of God wh to 
 not-being is a lake of fire. They have physical, intellectual, emotional, 
 sensitive being ; but the actuality of all these is a spiritual being, a mo- 
 ral love, of wh they are the image. These are not the man : the man 
 is the love ; if this be not he is not : he can only appear to be in Time. 
 Thus is not all Feuerbach's ' positive ' included the identity of God 
 and man ? 
 
 Is it not likely that we do not give the rightful meaning to those pas- 
 sages, e. g. ' Only Thou art holy,' ' He chargeth His angels with folly' ? 
 We must not give to holiness more than one meaning ; it means moral 
 holiness : and ' folly ' means in the Bible never anything but sin. Is 
 not sinfulness involved in creature-ness defect ? Is it not in some way 
 the expression of that limit to the Divine Being wh constitutes creation ; 
 and so involved in creation ? So that, as I have said, Eedemption is 
 involved in the creation of a moral Being : the making morally to love, 
 redeeming from not-loving. The fact of Creation is Eedemption. And 
 how do we know the limits of redemption ? How many intimations 
 there are of the relation of the work of Christ to other Beings [even to 
 all Beings ?] besides man. Is not the Incarnation but the image of 
 God's great universal, eternal, creative Act that act of self-sacrifice 
 which constitutes all Being ? The act of creation, is it not God's self- 
 sacrifice ; bringing Himself into relation with not-being, with time and 
 space, i. e. with flesh ? How many passages there are in the Bible wh 
 are utterly excluded from all practical bearing on our thought and 
 feeling. 
 
 But surely the other view is better ; that creation is creation from 
 God's own Being ; redemption, creation from not-being. A true Fall 
 was essential, doubtless, for certain results ; right in respect to God ; 
 but not essential to true or moral creation. Our conscience opposes this 
 doctrine that we could not have been holy without first committing sin ; 
 yet the fact of our being raised up, not only from sin, but through its 
 effects, we seem to know also. But does not much seem to depend upon 
 the amount and kind of sin ?
 
 675 
 
 The substitution, to so sad an extent, of happiness for life or holiness 
 in the language of Christianity, is proof of the degradation of Christian 
 feeling. The words express the heart. I think it shows clearly from 
 what quarter alone a renovation can be looked for. "We must restore 
 life to Christianity, by exorcising the devil of self that has crept in 
 everywhere the death. Yes ; to remove death and to give life are one. 
 Is not the Devil selfishness ? 
 
 Does it come to this, that the creature is one with the Creator by His 
 self-limit ; that the Incarnation, God with us, cannot differ from the 
 mere fact of our own creation ? Do I make man so much a manifest- 
 ation of God in the flesh, that Christ can be in no other sense such ? 
 Creation so much God's self-sacrifice, that ^Redemption cannot differ 
 from it? This is to be thought of; but I think the answer will be 
 found confirmatory of the scriptural account. I do affirm redemption 
 to be one with creation ; creation seen in time. Is not the Incarnation 
 a great re-presentation of the creation ? And therefore is inspiration, 
 in a miraculous sense, the less necessary for the scriptural writers ? 
 When they affirm of Christ that He was God with us, they affirm that 
 wh is humanly true, for wh human ' inspiration ' suffices ; and it is found 
 now to have a higher meaning for wh the ' natural ' inspiration also is 
 sufficient ? When it is asserted that Christ was God in man, is any- 
 thing asserted more than, the facts being seen, man might know ? And 
 how truly this makes Christ a man, as well as God ; truly human, one 
 of us. He is so, not although He is, but because He is, God in the flesh. 
 When we see that man is so, in so far as he is, we see that Christ must 
 be so God because man, man because God. Yes surely not losing the 
 value and excellence of the Bible. 
 
 Again, respecting inspiration, is it not probable that it is such inspi- 
 ration, and no other, as exists in Genius ; viz. an affirmation of human- 
 ity and in that sense of God ? May it not be the necessary result of a 
 larger law of human thought ; i. e. as functions, or operations, of the 
 great humanity, wh is just of one sort with the ordinary inspiration ? 
 Is there not an unification here ; of the inspiration being God's direct 
 act and an ordinary process of the mind ? because the ordinary processes 
 of the mind are God's direct act. 
 
 Many cling to the idea of a struggle carried on by God with an evil 
 Being who is to be overthrown ; and this I could accept fully in any 
 sense that should still allow evil to be not-being. But what is it to say 
 that God carries on a conflict with not-being and overcomes it, but to 
 say that He creates ; or creates and redeems, wh tho' two to us, must 
 
 be one to Him. does not seem able to see that by finding the 
 
 Devil in humanity alone, nothing results but the relief of the universe 
 from evil : that man is no worse, and that there is only not an evil 
 apart from him, wh we had supposed to be that it is all gain and no 
 loss. How can it be that man's not-being is the Devil, the evil spirit ; 
 personal, as all that is spiritual must be personal not-being, the 
 tempter ? 
 
 That which makes us go wrong is constantly making up a system, 
 making a scheme for ourselves perfect and complete ; this is sure to be 
 false. The interpreter is just the man who does not do this ; who sus- 
 pends his judgment, and whenever he does not see an absolute must be, 
 says, ' I do not know.' It is nothing to him that this or the other
 
 676 
 
 ' supposition ' wd make a very nice, beautiful, and every way desirable 
 system; must be, or right, is his law; his act is the act of love, of ne- 
 cessity, alone. He has no talent to construct ; he does but overthrow : 
 i. e. overthrow chimeras, set aside inventions ; reveal, unveil, that wh 
 was concealed by hypothesis. He is the simplifier, the putter of one 
 for many, wh is the great must of the human mind. And on the other 
 hand, as when he does not see an absolute ' must be,' no consequences 
 can tempt him to say ' I see ' ; so also when he does see this ' must be,' 
 no consequences can deter him from saying it. It is so, and he says it, 
 come what may ; it is no matter to him that a system thereby is shat- 
 tered and none seems ready to take its place ; still less does he attempt 
 to supply one. He has faith, and is in no hurry, knowing that every 
 termination will be found but the beginning of an illimitable expanse. 
 
 Sin, as not-being, how well illustrated by darkness, wh is simply ab- 
 sence of light, and yet how strongly felt as a real thing. How those 
 that love the light hate darkness where light ought to be ; how it op- 
 presses and stifles, appears emphatically the evil thing. And it is rightly 
 called so ; for I begin to think that it is not-being wh especially is and 
 shd be regarded as the ' thing,' or ' things,' as ' real.' Is not the very 
 idea of ' thing,' that of not-being ? Things are because of not-being ; 
 the real or physical came by sin. [There is more in this.] So the de- 
 stroying of not-being is the right thought ; destroying of things, of in- 
 ertia, of not-being. "Wonderful here ! that matter should be defined by 
 inertia, by not-being ; I see now ; the physical, the material, emphati- 
 cally is not-being. And it is right and natural that the not-being shd 
 be that wh especially appears to us as the ' thing ' until we learn better 
 shadow, darkness. This earth all the physical is the shadow. 
 How good, now, that the physical should be from relation to not-being, 
 from Sin. And see : it is not-being that can be destroyed, and only 
 not-being. To that alone the conception of destruction is applicable ; 
 that which is cannot cease to be. Darkness may be ' destroyed ' by the 
 introduction of light, but light once being can never be destroyed. So 
 must I not think that spirit once holy cannot cease to be so ? It is not- 
 being not ' ceasing to be' that is Sin, is Fall ; i. e. speaking in refer- 
 ence to eternity, not of course to time, where spiritual things are seen 
 as if in succession. 
 
 It is most striking that matter is inertia, and therefore emphatically 
 constitutes the 'thing'; the not is the 'thing,' not the force; the 
 ' thing ' is the inertia, the absence of action. Yet there must also be 
 the force as well, for every ' thing ' is at once inaction and action. 
 
 And again : to destroy not-being, what is it but to create ? So I see 
 all as that one simple Divine act, as wh the whole must be seen, if it 
 be seen aright. For it cannot be that God shd create a Being and after- 
 wards destroy him : that wd be for succession to be to God. 
 
 It is only not-being that can be destroyed, or cease : that wh is Be- 
 ing wh acts, cannot cease to be, or be destroyed : because it is in 
 ceasing. It is in ceasing, or giving itself, that it is : it is not in its 
 nature to cease, that is contrary to the definition of it. But not-being 
 not only may be destroyed, it must be ; it is its nature : ' Whose end is 
 to be burned.' And think of this in connection with the function of 
 the body the burning wh constitutes function : the end of all 'things' 
 is to be burned ; this is without exception, because all 'things' are
 
 677 
 
 thus results of nutrition, aud have resisted tendency ; all end in burn- 
 ing. Is not here a grand reference in Peter to the turning up of the 
 world : must it not be so ? all that is 'thing-al' to be burnt ? It is only 
 one with the universal course of nature. The burning of the world 
 only corresponds to the ' function ;' it comes when it has reached its 
 development ; it also is a living thing. 
 
 Now this nutrition and function, this succession, is from the not-be- 
 ing only. So does not our spiritual nutrition as necessarily precede the 
 function, the doing right reluctantly before we can do it from love ? It 
 is because we are not that we have to control ourselves, to make our 
 moral life ; that we are tempted by our lusts. We are not, the love is 
 not in us ; our conscience is, as it were, God's voice to us, it says to us 
 'be ;' but this struggle is only because of not-being; it is the meaning 
 of original sin, the fact of the fall. And this surely is but another 
 form of the doctrine that the physical is from sin; for these temptations, 
 this tendency to evil, are from our physical and mental nature, our pas- 
 sions. If all our Being were moral, or spiritual (as we believe of 
 heaven), then no inducement to sin ; no temptation, no struggle, no 
 'nutrition.' How clearly this shows itself: we make again (and in 
 Christ are able to do it) our moral Being from not-being, i.e. from phy- 
 sical and mental passions. So our nature is corrupt, depraved, fallen ; 
 not as from some theoretically perfect physical, but as being physical. 
 1 In me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing.' 'The body of this 
 death.' ' The carnal mind,' &c. Have I not the meaning ? The phy- 
 sical (and mental) world, with its desires opposed to the spiritual or 
 actual, is from our not-being. By self-control we constitute our moral 
 life. 
 
 By our not-being, our depravity, it is that we have temptations to 
 evil, wh necessarily belong to our mental and physical nature. Both 
 alike are from our not-being ; because in truth are not these passions in 
 us (passions produced by the action of the spiritual on us in whom is 
 the 'not'), are not they themselves the physical and mental worlds ? 
 Here I get again the subjectiveness of nature : our own bodies and 
 minds are thus; they are from the action, on our not-being, of the spirit- 
 ual around us. But what and why is the external physical world, that 
 of wh our bodies and minds are part ? 
 
 Are not the 'days' of creation images of actual, spiritual, days ? and 
 when Being was perfect, the creation complete in good, then was rest. 
 In absolute rest is no time ; it is only in un-rest, in succession. Time 
 necessarily arises with the not-being succession of action from the 
 want of equal corresponding actions ; from defect. But when action 
 and re-action are perfect, there is a perfect rest ; then no longer possibly 
 time, no longer succession. Action and re-action are the image of the 
 perfect love between the Creator and creature. And all succession of 
 actions are from the want of this perfect re-action. 
 
 How clear is the proof that Science cannot be a substitute for reli- 
 gion, in the fact that the very men who have done the chief things in 
 Science, the most mighty rulers of nature, have been the very men who 
 have gone beyond Science and given themselves to biblical interpreta- 
 tion, or religious speculation. Newton is an eminent example, but how 
 many others are truly the same. Do not all interpreters in Science sub- 
 ordinate it to religion ? Are they not essentially mystics, spiritualists ? 
 They are interpreters because they are so.
 
 678 
 
 Cannot I thus conceive, or illustrate, the absence of time Consider 
 ourselves looking at a solid object and seeing its two sides ; to us, so 
 seeing, the existence of the whole is present ; it is all at once, all one. 
 But now suppose some little conscious animal carried round this object, 
 and seeing the various portions of its two sides one after another ; to 
 him they exist in succession, and though they do not exist in succession 
 of time to us in any sense, yet we shd know quite well that they exist 
 in succession to him. "We could sympathize with his feeling of succes- 
 sion ; we could cause anything to happen at a certain period of that 
 succession, and so on. Yet to us, all would be absolutely one ; we shd 
 see that the various ' facts ' wh this being perceived in succession all 
 co-existed, indeed that they could only so exist ; that the existence of 
 one involved and depended on, not the future, but the present existence 
 of the others. Only in his perception would the succession exist. I 
 know this is a very partial illustration in many ways ; that it involves 
 succession of the motion, and so on ; but it helps me somewhat. Surely 
 our 'succession' may easily be such a delusion ; the facts wh cause our 
 perception in succession being, necessarily, all co-existent, and not suc- 
 cessive ; i.e. eternal. 
 
 Again, where it is said 'baptism doth now save us, not the putting 
 away the filth of the flesh,' &c., is it not clear that the actual is meant 
 that of wh the thing is the image ? Baptism, the true baptism, does 
 save us ; here is a scripture key to the image : ' the answer of a good 
 conscience towards God.' "We are saved in that new life ; born of water 
 truly born of water ; spiritually, actually, born of ' actual ' water. 
 Is not this the key to the Bible ; the reference of the writers so con- 
 stantly to the actual ? Have we not misunderstood in great part from 
 our merely phenomenal Science ; we must allow for a misdirection of 
 our thoughts by our living in such a nutritive scientific epoch ; and 
 must not put our modes of thought as answering to that wh is truly 
 natural : we live at an extreme, little as we may be willing to admit it. 
 The true nature of man is always to recognize the actual under the 
 thing-al. Here surely is the solution of the baptismal regeneration 
 difficulty. Simply the thing-al has beeen put for the actual. So the 
 sacraments bring religion into one with nature : the spiritual causing 
 images of itself to be. 
 
 Are not we in such an extreme of phenomenalness that the limit has 
 come ; the time for the reversal : is not ours the most unnatural way of 
 viewing Nature that ever was known denying ' things ' ? But things 
 were always 'things ' to men, except to the philosophers of the 18th 
 and 19th centuries, who have most artificially brought themselves to 
 look upon them as mere matter and motion ; and infallibly they will be 
 so again. Then the difficulty arising from the actuality of the Bible 
 language will disappear. Peter most clearly defines what he means by 
 baptism : ' Baptism not the image or physical but ' . . . It is a 
 parallel passage to the words of Christ, ' Hell, where there is a fire, but 
 not the image or physical fire ; a worm, but not a physical worm.' 
 These passages are interesting : in both it is not said 'not the physical,' 
 in such words, but some quality of the physical is denied, wh is better 
 both scientifically and doubtless for the hearers, who perhaps had not 
 the conception of such distinctions. All the words which we can use to 
 express the spiritual are necessarily also (primarily as it is said) of
 
 679 
 
 physical meaning! If words of physical meaning may not express the 
 spiritual, we cannot speak of it at all. Is it not clear from this necessary 
 use of words that the physical and spiritual must be one ? 
 
 In respect to Eden : if we consider that the language refers to the 
 actual or spiritual, do we not find, clearly, the punishment of death in- 
 flicted, in every sense ; even as not-being moral not-being came with 
 his sin ? This being, in truth, emphatically the punishment, as being 
 the very fact the necessary result of sin. And so from this death, 
 this 'actual' or spiritual death, came necessarily all the other 'curse ;' 
 with sin, by the spiritual death it produced or constituted, came neces- 
 sarily the physical world, and therein the physical death that is the im- 
 age of the spiritual. I see : in the day that Adam sinned he died : 
 and from that death came the image of death, as pertaining to the phy- 
 sical world ; necessarily it came. All is clear, if we consider the words 
 as referring to the actual ; that there was no physical before the fall. 
 The literal, most literal, sense of the words then may be taken without 
 the aid of any hypotheses, or suppositions, or metaphorical or in any 
 way forced constructions. There is no ground then for supposing the 
 sentence averted or deferred, &c. Adam is spiritually dead in sinning ; 
 form this state of not-being the physical arises. The curse, the altera- 
 tion of his state, is but the carrying out of the necessary consequences 
 of his spiritual death ; and yet also with reference to redemption, for 
 the physical world is the image of redemption, of creation from not-be- 
 ing. There could have been no physical before Adam sinned ; there 
 was not the not-being from wh alone it arises. The language of the 
 creation refers to that spiritual of which the physical is image. 
 Death is only, and can only be, around a Being wh has death within 
 him. 
 
 It is much better to take the words of scripture in absolute simpli- 
 city if possible. It is of not much weight that a complete and consistent 
 and even beautiful scheme is made out on another plan. God said ' in 
 the day thou eatest thou shalt die ;' Adam ate and did die : he and all 
 his posterity spiritually died. How can the living spring from the 
 dead ? only the spiritually dead can be born into a world of 'matter.' 
 Thus the entire process comes to be just such as when one says to a 
 child : ' If you disobey me you will feel naughty.' That was exactly 
 the threatening, the punishment, in Adam's case. He disobeyed God 
 and ' felt naughty,' or was dead : all things were altered to him. The 
 entire difficulty seems to be in our great difficulty in conceiving that 
 that wh affects only the spiritual, the moral Being, can be worthy of 
 having applied to it words of any deep or important significance : can 
 be worthy of the same words as we apply to the physical. Shame on 
 us ! As if it were absurd to speak of a mere moral change as death ! 
 Alas, in truth, that is an infinitely profounder more absolute death, in- 
 finitely more worthy of the name, than the death of a thousand 
 bodies. 
 
 The curse on the earth, the alteration of the perception, was a proof 
 and sign of the actual death that had passed on Adam. In disobeying, 
 alike by Adam and by a child, the perception first comes that it is a 
 'thing' for wh the disobedience has been committed. There is first then 
 a not-being : i. e. in us. First then begins nature properly so called ; the 
 succession, the disturbance of equilibrium a 'not-resistance.' ' To
 
 680 
 
 feel naughty ' is to be conscious of not-being : that is the feeling evil. Is 
 that remorse ? I think not exactly. Does not remorse belong to time, to 
 the sensational existence ? The consciousness of feeling evil is the con- 
 sciousness of not-being. 
 
 And is this inseparable from the first perception of ' things,' or of the 
 physical ? Then we learn to act right by self-control ; and as we do so, 
 ' things ' become to us less and less merely physical, more and more forms 
 of the spiritual. The world grows spiritual, or actual, to us in propor- 
 tion as we gain spiritual Being, or holiness : so our spiritual life is pro- 
 duced from our physical passions. And surely it is this, this wickedness 
 [or feeling of moral evil] that God must destroy in Hell. The supposi- 
 tion of continued conscious evil is a denial of hell fire this is very clear. 
 But now, if this consciousness of evil i. e. of morally evil Being must 
 be destroyed, is not that the destruction, the ceasing, of the conscious 
 existence of the sinful ? Certainly in so far as they are sinful. This is 
 conscious not-being ; none the less not-being because conscious, and must 
 cease ; no being is annihilated in destroying conscious wickedness ; there 
 is no Being but moral Being, but Love. 
 
 I must hold fast the doctrine of the Bible that sin is not-being. This 
 makes so many who think they deny the Bible truly on its side. It is 
 indeed the favorite doctrine of those who seek to make light of sin : but 
 in truth it shows the fearfulness of it ; the necessity of the fire of Hell. 
 
 That there was no physical in Eden is an excellent illustration of the 
 use of physical words in Scripture to designate the actual. 
 
 We may truly say that we are now in heaven or hell according to our 
 state, and shd feel it, if it were not for this physical word that surrounds 
 us ; this illusion of succession. This hides from us, as it were, the act- 
 uality of our condition : it is a veil, as so often called. And, of course, 
 it is only from our being thus in time that redemption is possible ; in 
 eternity, where there is no change, there can be no redemption. 
 
 Do I come to the mystical doctrine of the pre-existence of Nature in 
 God ; the essential contradiction in the Divine Nature ; the darkness, the 
 wrath, as well as the Love ? I think not : in truth, the self -limit, the 
 self-negation is involved in the becoming the creature the action 
 from the presence of the ' not ' ; but observe the beauty : this is involved 
 in the very idea of love, wh is self-limit, self-sacrifice. I need no con- 
 tradiction, no two-foldness ; the one fact of love constitutes and embraces 
 all. How vast a wonder is here. Love is action in direction of, or de- 
 termined by, want of action. So all action is love again. Motion in a 
 direction of least resistance this is Nature ; i. e. action determined by 
 inaction ; Being giving itself to not-being. How clearly this is God in 
 relation to the creature ; the fact of redemption. All this series, this 
 succession of actions ' Natura ' is from the absence of a corresponding 
 action, want of the perfect re-action : all from a defect, an absence. 
 
 Death is the conscious wickedness, the feeling of being wicked, which 
 is the result of sin, of disobedience. This is spiritual death ; the death 
 wh the Bible means. Spiritual, actual death, is conscious not-being, or 
 wickedness ; but that is only saying it is wickedness : there can be no 
 wickedness but that wh is conscious. Spiritual, actual death, must be 
 conscious death, [or rather, is not death contentment with selfishness ?] 
 Now do I not see : Satan is truly not, but he is a spiritual ' not ' ; a con-
 
 681 
 
 scious not-being or wickedness rightly /. called evil spirit? The actual 
 wickedness, the conscious moral evilness, is the spiritual not-being. Now 
 this is the result of wrong doing, or of inaction ; it is ' corruption.' And 
 this death it is that God will destroy in Hell : even as He destroys it on 
 earth in redemption. Hell is one with redemption : but how far this in- 
 volves the destruction, the loss, of consciousness altogether, is the 
 question. 
 
 We must not suffer ourselves to think of relapsing into not-being, as 
 into a sort of natural original condition. Not-being is the most wranatural 
 condition : it is being contrary, opposed to God. True not-being is that 
 most fearful of all things, conscious wickedness ; that wh of all does the 
 greatest violence to Nature. It is this which God will destroy in hell, 
 thanks to Him. Hell is blessing, is mercy ; part of His redemption : 
 even so we must look upon it. The wages of sin is death, and Hell is 
 the destruction of death, of moral death or wickedness ; of the wages of 
 ein. In redemption sin is destroyed, death destroyed ; life given, and the 
 individual becomes holy. In Hell, death is destroyed, and with it the 
 individual ? 
 
 In the physical world death is in some sense natural, a part of the 
 order ; but this is from sin ; is image of the death of sin. And even 
 physical death, how unnatural we feel it ; how we struggle against it : 
 we feel that it does not belong to us. This is to be considered ; how we 
 regard physical death, natural tho' it be. I feel quite a new sympathy 
 here. Is not the ' unnaturalness ' of death a good image of the unnatu- 
 ralness of wickedness ? 
 
 Our difficulty in seeing that Adam died in the day he ate of the tree, 
 arises only from our extreme of phenomenalness ; that we cannot believe 
 anything is rightly called death except death of the body. In truth only 
 a Being that is ' actually ' dead, a sinful Being, can be in a physical or 
 ' real ' world, a world of ' things.' Reality i. e. unmoral existence can 
 arise only with sin, with moral not-being. The two terms are inter- 
 changeable ; they are the same. 
 
 How long have I seen that only a Being with a brain can work with 
 design, with contrivance ; that ' natural theology ' represents God as a 
 Being with a brain. In truth this conception of design in creation does 
 attribute to God (as I have seen on other grounds) our thingal-ness, i. e. 
 our un-moralness ; our sin acting for results when we shd do right. It 
 denies His spiritual Being ; it involves a denial of the essentially and 
 necessarily moral (or spiritual) character of His action. For if His 
 action be spiritual, or moral, it must be right or holy, and may not be 
 for results. In truth, man's actions by design and for results, are the 
 exemplifications of his spiritual not-being. If there were no absence of 
 the spiritual in man, he could not act for mere results ; in fact he could 
 have no body and mind, wh are not spiritual, i. e. not-being ; wh do not 
 act, but are passive, are inertia : for inertia is just as much the essential 
 quality of mind as of body, or matter. Man's body and mind, wh place 
 him in relation with mere results, and constitute him so far unmoral, are 
 the sign are rather the fact (?) of his spiritual not-being. With sin 
 came the physical ; it exists by the absence of the spiritual, or Being, i.e. 
 of acting. 
 
 It is beautiful to see how Nature purifies herself from sin. Science can
 
 682 
 
 only be attained, can only 6e, from and in a pure motive, from love of it ; 
 in doing it for its own sake. If a selfish motive operate, much may be 
 done indeed, but not true Science attained. It is just as in man's at- 
 tempts to gain selfish objects : he can do the thing he chooses or tries to 
 do, but he cannot attain the result he aims at, the happiness. The result 
 must ever lie in the act if it is to be at all ; if not it is infallibly lost 
 whatever be attained ; the form is gained but not the fact. So only 
 right action succeeds : here is proof again that Nature is a holy, not an 
 ingenious deed. Ingenuity ever fails. Talent seeks results, acts by de- 
 sign ; Genius loves and does right, for these are one. To seek results, 
 and to do wrong or ' wrung,' are the same. They are respectively Genius 
 and talent ? 
 
 Consider how the death, the feeling ourselves evil, the ' conscious wick- 
 edness,' [wh is the spiritual death] is the consequence of sinning. We 
 only feel the death when we have sinned ; no man feels wicked because 
 he is tempted only. Sin brings forth death ; conscious death, true actual 
 death, wickedness. 
 
 Is not this the great thing : to make the thought of Divine right action 
 take the place of God's arbitrariness [or sovereignty] ; to show that in 
 this we attribute Sin to Him ? And is not this truly the doctrine of the 
 Bible ? Are any assertions of His absolute will truly opposed to this ? 
 And this is the service of science to religion of that wh goes by Law. 
 Well and rightly does it come from science, from that wh concerns itself 
 with necessity, with rightness. This is the ' function ' of science, that 
 for wh it exists ; its end and object ; its great service to man ; to remove 
 the shadow of arbitrariness from God, to affirm and vindicate His holi- 
 ness ; that is, His Love. What a joy and glory invests the dull doctrine 
 of necessity, the repulsive dogma of universal physical necessity : the 
 best friend of piety, oft heretofore disguised as a foe. Welcome to all 
 hearts thou who bringest the good tidings that God is holy, that His na- 
 ture is all Love ; that His works are excellent, for that in wisdom, not in 
 ingenuity, He hath made them all : that Nature is not an arbitrary but 
 a right act. And see our depravity here ; how we have misinterpreted 
 alike Nature and the Bible. In these, wh alike reveal to us an absolute 
 holiness or love, we have found ingenuity and arbitrariness. We have 
 found sin. Light is come into the world, and we have loved darkness 
 rather. Arbitrariness is the absence of love, the absence of that moral 
 necessity in wh love or holiness consists. And what sin it shows in us, 
 that we have seen arbitrariness in creation and in redemption, which are 
 the very facts of love. How it shows that our perception is according 
 to ourselves : we have seen not-love, or arbitrariness, because in us was 
 not-love. Is not this, in another form, the same thing as the world be- 
 coming physical to man from sin ? did it not become arbitrary ? 
 
 As Science restores necessity, so religion restores love to the 
 universe. 
 
 Disobeying, not doing right, is exactly that fact of arbitrariness: first 
 comes the consciousness, the idea, of arbitrariness into man's heart with 
 sin. It is itself the fact of death, and when he finds it in himself then he 
 first introduces it into that wh is around him. He cannot before ; so 
 Adam introduced, by his sin, arbitrariness, not-being, thing-al-ness, in- 
 ertia, into the world the spiritual universe that was around him.
 
 683 
 
 Here is the source of our 'real matter,' our ' inertia,' in nature in our 
 own inertia, our in-action, our arbitrariness. How strange it is : that 
 wh seems like the most emphatic doing arbitrary doing is in truth 
 not-doing. It is not-being that seems like being to us ; not-acting, like 
 action. And Science is given to rectify this state. Its work is to ex- 
 clude arbitrariness from God's works. Its basis, its fundamental 
 conception, is love. 
 
 In seeing personality to be wholly moral, to be in fact love and that 
 alone, with no limits, no substance, how beautiful a change takes place 
 in our conception of God and creation. I feel though I cannot de- 
 scribe it how the artificial boundaries we have set up disappear; how 
 a simple necessary conception takes the place of difficult and intricate 
 theories : God is love, and all therefore must be love, all from it, all 
 one with it : from this and in this are all right, all law, all necessity, 
 all consciousness, all nature. Love is the fact ; and, alas, not-love also, 
 we feel in ourselves. Love and not-love : this is all. 
 
 I think we do wrong in introducing the 'a' into ' God is a spirit,' &c. 
 I shd read, ' God is spirit,' and 'God is consuming fire.' Just as we do 
 ' God is love,' and < God is light.' God is 'actual' light. 
 
 "We attribute arbitrariness to God, clearly, only because we find it in 
 ourselves. But we find it in ourselves only because we are sinful, be- 
 cause there is in us not-being, we do that wh is not right. Do we not 
 confound the power of Being with the actual Being, in our own case ; 
 we are ' Beings,' we are ' I,' because we have the power of doing right; 
 if we were perfectly holy i. e. if we absolutely and perfectly were 
 we shd do always right, then there would be no arbitrariness. Further : 
 if there were no elements in us wh are of a character not moral [or 
 personal] ; viz., a body and mind, we shd never do anything but 
 that which has a moral character ; that is we should do only 
 right. 
 
 !N"ow does not our entire conception of a free will want rectifying ? 
 I think we must have been in error here. Surely we have been con- 
 sidering as belonging to our constitution, as moral Beings, that wh is in 
 truth only the result and sign of our sinfulness ; viz., this 'power of 
 arbitrary action.' We think we have the power of doing as we choose, 
 as it were, absolutely, and in indifferent matters ; i. e. of acting freely 
 and primarily in matters of no moral concernment. I see that this is 
 altogether a false issue. It is not the point ; nor is it true. What we 
 have is the power of acting, i. e. of acting right ; but when we act we 
 must act right ; the Tightness consists in that fact of acting. If we 
 have not acted right we have not acted. I deny that pretence of acting 
 freely in indifferent matters. The question of moral freedom has been 
 wholly misunderstood; the wonder is that it stands so well on such false 
 ground. In indifferent matters our actions are absolutely determined 
 passively ; as much as any physical operations : there is no action of 
 ours in them at all. We have no such power as has been asserted. 
 This is most important for Science, for any intelligible conception of 
 humanity, and of history. What we have is the power to act. This 
 is clear, or we could not be, for Being is only in action, as every one 
 knows. But of this action the consciousness of right is an invariable 
 concomitant and and sign. We never act but we do right. We act ar- 
 bitrarily when we do wrong ; but that is we do not act at all. True 
 
 v 2
 
 684 
 
 arbitrary action is only not acting when -we shd act. Our apparently 
 free or arbitrary action in things of no moral character, is a misconcep- 
 tion : we 'do as we like ;' i. e. we are passively moved ; we are the 
 merest, most passive, puppets. ' Doing as we like ' is emphatically not 
 acting. Only in doing right do we act : save indeed when we love the 
 right, and our liking and our duty coincide [i. e. when we so love the 
 right that we like to do it in spite of, and in opposition to, our likings 
 the other way]. This is the highest form of moral action, i. e. of true 
 action. I must see more clearly how this is truly action, though we 
 also like to do it, and it is not done because it is right. Yet does the 
 consciousness, the sense that is is right, always accompany and dis- 
 tinguish it, and indeed it is because it is right [or love] that it is liked : 
 the Tightness or love [for the two terms are one] is ever the first and 
 primary element in the case. Think of this : Tightness and love are 
 always one and interchangeable. 
 
 I believe that our thinking that we can act arbitrarily in un-moral 
 matters arises wholly from our sinfulness ; i. e. our knowing that we 
 can and do act or not act at our own will, in actual or moral matters. 
 So that, in fact, we have been endeavouring to prove our moral Being, 
 our power of action, by that wh is itself merely a result and indication 
 of our moral not-being, our sin, our not acting. Man is not an arbitrary 
 Being, any more than God. He is only arbitrary as he is not, or does 
 not act [for clearly not to act is not to be]. God being absolute Being, 
 never failing action, is not arbitrary at all. 'In Him is no variableness.' 
 How can a Being that changes not be arbitrary ? What a fact it is 
 that we shd consider personality to be arbitrariness exactly that wh 
 it is not. It is holiness, Tightness, moral necessity. We define per- 
 sonality by that wh is its contrary ; we make personality dependent on 
 that wh is sin. 
 
 It is beautiful that in all that is not directly moral, or ac- 
 tual, man is strictly a part of nature ; in all man's arbitrary doings that 
 are not wrong it is nature that works : it is all a part of the great phy- 
 sical and psychical passive necessity. This is beautiful, making man's 
 works truly instincts, in mind as well as body; all mutually determined, 
 each just such as all others demand, constituting a living organization ; 
 by means of nutrition effecting functions. So each man and each work- 
 ing of each man is an organ of the whole, subserving the universal life: 
 and all an image of the great spiritual, or actual organization : the 
 universal created love, respondent to the creator's ; but which in 
 man is deficient, and so constitutes disease the disease, the death, of 
 humanity. 
 
 Must we not know that there are other spiritual Beings besides man 
 from the very fact of man's Being ? He must be part of an organization, 
 of a great whole, or he could not be at all. 
 
 We act arbitrarily only when we sin. In all un-moral things we act 
 necessarily, viz., by thing-al or physical necessity, on the one hand, or 
 by a mental or psychical necessity (the strongest motive) on the other. 
 In right action we also act necessarily; viz., by a moral necessity, the 
 true actual necessity. This is our freedom, our power of action, our 
 Being, our' personality. When we sin or do not act rightly, then only 
 are we arbitrary ; i. e. we are-not. Arbitrariness is not-being. Here 
 again logic, though appearing for a time to be opposed to religion, is
 
 685 
 
 yet found altogether on her side, with its proof that mun has not free 
 or arbitrary will, and that all he does is necessary. It is most true ; 
 logic is on the side of piety, now and for ever more. Man is free, is 
 moral, because he acts necessarily ; even as God is and does. We think 
 we act arbitrarily in un-moral things only because we are conscious of 
 being arbitrary in moral things, i.e. sinning. 
 
 And from this point of view all the difficulty vanishes respecting 
 those passages of scripture wh seem to attribute arbitrariness to God. 
 They have simply been wrested by a false philosophy. They all ascribe 
 action, will, to God ; but action is right action ; will is holy will. 
 These exclude arbitrariness. They are the most emphatic declarations 
 possible of holiness and love ; arbitrariness would be if these were not. 
 The devil is arbitrary. The Bible in these passages only asserts in 
 another form the absolute action, the absolute love, of God : His abso- 
 lute necessity, and the necessity of all He does. It is as if we were 
 to assert of some man that he did such and such things by his moral 
 act, by energy of character ; as we might speak of the labors and toils 
 of a missionary wh he accomplished because he would. This necessity 
 is moral ; it is that of wh we feel conscious that it is right to do it, but 
 that we can refuse to do it if we will. But with regard to these ex- 
 pressions in the Bible supposed to indicate arbitrariness, is it necessary 
 to suppose that the writers fully understood that they emphatically de- 
 nied arbitrariness ; as we see they do that the words must, indeed ? 
 Or would not such understanding on their part have involved their 
 knowledge of a Science that could only be in the future ? Our sup- 
 position of a ' free ' action in un-moral things, is just another instance 
 of the substitution of the phenomenal for the actual. 
 
 I say nothing but what has always been said implicitly, what the 
 very structure of language itself affirms. See the meaning of evil that 
 will not be ej ected from the word arbitrary, although philosophers have 
 tried to dignify it with the signification of moral freedom. 
 
 Motion determined by less resistance is exactly Love the love of 
 Pity : it is giving where there is want or defect. And Nature thus 
 considered is exactly redeeming love ; all love of benevolence is redeem- 
 ing love ; self-sacrifice action in a direction of less resistance. 
 There must be the force, or action, and the absence of resistance just as 
 there must be the love and the want. Man, having fallen, perceives 
 God's act as Nature, i. e. as the image of the love of pity. Now from 
 this can I see better the actual relations of that ' spiritual ' of wh Nature 
 is the image ? In redemption it is absence of love, actual death, that 
 excites the love. It is to give us love, the spiritual life, that Christ 
 gave Himself. Thus absence of love in us is the less resistance ; the 
 perfect corresponding love between God and the creature would be the 
 normal state. Sin cannot be part of God's creative act ; it is a fall : 
 not-being does not come from God. His self-limit is not not-being, but 
 creation. It is ' an enemy ' hath done this. 
 
 The love of complacency, perfectly corresponding love, mutually 
 delighting in each other's perfections, is the perfect equilibrium of force 
 and resistance ; action and re-action. The want of love on our part 
 turns this 'rest' this love of complacency into love of benevolence ; 
 perfect action and re-action into action in a direction of le. s resistance. 
 The axioms of natural Science image thus the deepest facts of Being.
 
 686 
 
 Sin absence of corresponding love, of the 're-action' turned eternity 
 into time, turned the perfect union of the soul and God into God's love 
 of pity to the soul creation into redemption ; not altering God at all, 
 but altering our relation to Him. For though, fallen or not-loving, 
 man perceives God's action as love of benevolence imaged in nature ; it 
 could only be the fallen man that could see it so. The mutual love of 
 God and man perfect action and re-action could not be ' action in a 
 direction of less resistance ;' could not be imaged by nature as we see 
 it. The physical the succession must have begun with sin. Before 
 was the eternal; not God giving Himself to man jbhe un-loving, but God 
 and man in mutual self-giving. For this is perfect action and re-action, 
 or equilibrium ; mutually giving of self each to the other : it is not 
 that there is no giving, no self-sacrifice ; but that there is equal giving 
 on the part of each. There is no not-giving. 
 
 This is creation : this is imaged in the marriage relation. And this 
 marriage relation is that wh God takes as the image of the right rela- 
 tion between Himself and His creatures ; equal and corresponding love 
 or self-giving action and re-action two united into one. The restor- 
 ation of this union is redemption. We are first made one, for this, in 
 Him ; receiving His life, He living in us. And now, since this work 
 of Christ ceases must it not have reference solely to that wh is temporal, 
 wh is in ' nature ?' And as I seem to see evidence of Satan in some 
 way belonging to, being essentially related to as it were included in 
 humanity as a whole ; so may it not be with Christ as the redeemer ? 
 Is He thus the 'root of humanity ?' iN'ot thus would His divinity be 
 denied ; for God is Himself the root of all creatures. Consider the rela- 
 tion of Christ to Satan : He is to crush him, to destroy his works : as 
 Satan causes the not-being of humanity, of man of love in him, that 
 is so Christ restores man ; gives him life again, more life. 
 
 The fact of nature being ' motion in less resistance,' is, as it were, 
 proof of the fallen state, the defect of man. For in truth matter has 
 a necessary relation to defect, or not-being ('inherent defectibility'). 
 This conception of less resistance necessarily refers our thoughts to a 
 state of perfect action and re-action, of perfectly corresponding force 
 and resistance, from wh it is a departure by not-being. So imaging 
 man's state, wh also refers our conception to a state of perfectly corres- 
 ponding love between him and God, from wh the present state must 
 have come by defect, or absence of love. This is clearly involved in 
 the idea that nature depends on man ; evidently the view that ' the 
 physical is from sin,' embraces this idea that the world depends on 
 man, in the fullest sense that is possible, viz., that its character and 
 form depend on man. Again, in reference to 'equilibrium ' being im- 
 age of perfect mutual love, see how we not only trace all action from 
 disturbance of it, but lay it down as a necessary truth, as an axiom, 
 that action and re-action are equal ; and hold the universe as a whole 
 (every whole indeed) to be in a state of perfect equilibrium. And we 
 apply the word 'perfect' also to equilibrium alone ; ' imperfect ' are all 
 things that are in succession. Here also is an image, how in spite of 
 man's not-being the universe of the spiritual, as of the physical, pre- 
 sents no defect, no want, no sin. That is perfect : man's sin disturbs 
 not the perfect reciprocity of love that constitutes the absolute and infi- 
 nite amount of Being, the love of God and creature. Here I see again
 
 687 
 
 in what sense I must say that perfection is now ; it is in relation to 
 eternity. Time does not exist for the actual. Heaven and earth are 
 full of God's glory. 'Keal' evil is, but not actual ; temporal or formal, 
 but not true or eternal. In truth, not only does evil exist in time, but 
 that wh exists in time must be marred with evil ; time is by means of 
 and arises from evil, it is the image and effect of sin. But now, if I 
 define the eternal as that wh changes not, how can I say that all the 
 spiritual or actual is eternal, when 1 hold that man sins and is re- 
 deemed. Is not here a change, a succession ? True, there appears to 
 be such ; but does not this rather show a wrongness in my thought re- 
 specting sin and redemption ? Partly, surely, I see this: it is included 
 in the doctrine that sin is not-being. Not-being cannot be in eternity ; 
 it has relation only to time and space. And think also : Being cannot 
 surely cease to be : how and whence is this not-being ? How could man 
 fall ? or loving, cease to love ? 
 
 The physical being from sin seems to embrace the Manichean doctrine 
 also, that Satan made the world and man's body, God the spirit. Is not 
 this in other words, ' from sin comes the physical ' ? The Manichean 
 doctrine seems rather to imply, when thus understood, that Satan really 
 is only in relation to humanity ; because the physical the real body 
 is only from and in relation to man. 
 
 If the physical be from sin, then, we may see that the first disobedi- 
 ence was not physical, or sensual sin ; not a yielding to bodily appetites : 
 yet it seems to have been such as that of wh eating is the image. The 
 taking of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil does not 
 correspond with a physical or sensual sin. Nor indeed is the woman at 
 all corresponding to the sensual part of human nature. Surely it must 
 have been a sin of the affections ? Perversion of the moral affections is 
 death. With regard to the influence of other spiritual Beings on our 
 moral state, as causing our sin the spiritual ' organization ' is not this 
 what we see in Nature ? The less resistance, the absence of reaction, is 
 ever from some external force. Theoretically, action and reaction are 
 exactly equal. The disturbance of this equilibrium is ever from some 
 action wh interferes. Does not Nature here represent the dependence 
 of human sin on satanic agency ? But as these disturbing causes are 
 comprehended ever within the whole, so is not Satan comprehended in 
 humanity? external indeed to each man and to the aggregate ot men at 
 any period, but contained within ' humanity ' ; so sin is comprehended 
 in the perfect holiness and love of God, and yet not in such a way as 
 to make it less sinful, less awful, and not to be endured ; for we know, 
 and the Bible tells us, that it must be so. It is the indefinite general 
 conviction that sin must be ' all right in the long run,' and with refer- 
 ence to God, that is demoralizing ; not to be taught by Nature and the 
 Bible that sin is not-being, and is to be destroyed. Only as not-being 
 can sin be comprehended in holiness. Not-being may be comprehended 
 we see it is in a whole of absolute Being ; not-acting in action, but 
 only so. If Sin be actual, then Holiness is not absolute : but the 
 causing ' less resistance,' or ' not-acting, is from action ; it also is from 
 Love. 
 
 Christ the spiritual, the ' actual ' Adam : from Him is not our spirit- 
 ual nature ? In this relation of first and second Adam is there not to be
 
 688 
 
 clearly seen the relation of the real and actual universally. Adam is 
 the image of Christ ; even Adam is because Christ is ? 
 
 I see how it is that not-being can be destroyed ; it is not absolute but 
 relative only. We see in the physical; e. g., disease is not-being, ab- 
 sence of life or action ; but only *in relation to the particular body. So 
 with all other forms of not-being ; they are only relative, and therefore 
 included in absolute Being. It is like the + and in mathematics ; 
 the is only a relative ; a negation only in respect to the particular 
 positive. So is not sin not absolute not-being, but only not-being where 
 Being ought to be ; just as when a body is diseased or dies (prematurely) 
 there is not less life i. e. less action absolutely but only not-life where 
 it ought to be : i. e. in that body. This has to be seen in Mature ; how 
 all absence of action is but another form of action, the physical is that 
 by wh it must be understood. And all absence of action or not -being is 
 destroyed, not by the origination of any action that was not before, but 
 simply by an alteration of the relations of the action that exists. So 
 when a candle is lighted and destroys darkness, the darkness [or not- 
 being] is absolutely destroyed, but no new action is originated. All the 
 action there is in the production of the light was equally existing be- 
 fore ; it is only given. And so all the Being that is given for the de- 
 struction of sin was equally existing before ; it is only given. The not- 
 being is a direction of less resistance, but no action is thereby produced. 
 The Being must be, or it cannot destroy the not-being. 
 
 The analogy of disease to sin is most full of instruction [and in gen- 
 eral I see this is the way to speak of analogy between the physical and 
 the spiritual ; not the spiritual analogous to the physical, but the phy- 
 sical to the spiritual] The idea of the remedy for the moral disease by 
 the annihilation of aught that truly is, is just on a par with the false 
 therapeutics that seeks to cure disease by destroying something : consi- 
 dering inflammation to be excessive action, instead of the want of the 
 right vital action. There is not too much action; but too little ; all the 
 force that is operative must and shd be there ; necessarily must be there, 
 or there wd not be the being at all, the organization, the possibility of 
 life ; but there ought to be there also another force more action a 
 control, a life, that is wanting. To cure disease is to give life ; to pro- 
 duce action is to destroy disease. Thus Christ gives life, and destroys 
 not-life ; the two are one. We have been deceived by the phenomena of 
 sin, just as by those of disease ; have alike considered that to be an 
 action wh is a mere want of action. Both we have to interpret ; and 
 to see the moral by the physical ; for this end the physical exists indeed. 
 But as disease if life be not restored destroys the body, the individuality, 
 BO surely sin does if life be not given by Christ ? This is the old 
 question. 
 
 Think too how physical disease and death are a part of the life of 
 the whole, how they effect functions. Must not this be the idea of 
 sin also ? Disease and death and physical evil are not the less evil, 
 not the less truly disease and death, because they thus are only relative; 
 so sin is not the less sin, not the less evil, moral disease and death, be- 
 cause it too is only relative and part of the life of the whole? Or are 
 we not thus taking the physical, wh is itself the result of sin, as a sort 
 of standard wh it was never meant to be ? 
 
 The death of man is to MS, in its fearfulness and sadness, surely just
 
 689 
 
 what the death of the individual particles of the body wh subserve the 
 functions, e. g., is in their relations. This must appear like mere 
 lost aiid wasted life to Beings that could not grasp the relations of the 
 whole, and recognize the function wh the death effected. But though it 
 is true that the death effects function, and so is right and good, 
 yet this relation of function and of death were not save for the not-be- 
 ing ; that is, the evil. 
 
 Therefore we do not speak rightly when we attribute our wrong doing 
 to 'temptations,' or the strength of our ' passions;' it is the same error 
 as attributing disease to the operation of chemical forces ; not recog- 
 nizing that it is due to the absence of the vital. The only cause of sin 
 is absence of love ; the passions are good, essential to our life, just as 
 are the chemical tendencies of the elements of a living body. Nay, it 
 is by them alone that spiritual life is constituted, is nourished And 
 farther, just as the life in a seed is one with chemical action, and indeed 
 wholly derived from such chemical action in previous conditions, so 
 'love' and the ' passions ' must be one. There is the same argument 
 as for chemical and vital force being one ; viz., that one controls or 
 resists the other. Are not our passions, if we saw them rightly, the 
 actions, the love, of spirits ? and is not our love, our moral Being, this 
 very same fact of passion, only in a different relation to us ? As the 
 life of a seed is from chemical action in a plant, so surely the moral 
 love of each man is from passion, not in himself, but in, as it were, his 
 spiritual progenitor? 
 
 The 'annhilation' doctrine is a truth put wrongly, like Berkeley's 'no- 
 matter :' an attempt to give us ' inorganic' food. 
 
 Surely our doctrine of inspiration is to be superseded ; necessary as 
 it may have been, is has also stood very much in our way. It raises a 
 false issue. The point is : not is the Bible inspired miraculously, but is 
 it true 1 If it be not true, inspiration is nothing, it avails not : if it be 
 true, inspiration is not needed ; it still avails nothing. [Especially- 
 considering that all true thought, all mental as all physical action, is 
 the direct act of God ; so direct that nothing can be more so : His act, 
 seen however by us with a relation to not-being, from ourselves.] Surely 
 the doctrine of "a miraculous inspiration has done harm, as well as good, 
 in this way of directing our regard from the truth of the scriptural doc- 
 trines to matters wh though apparently of primary importance, are not 
 truly so. To be of any value to us a doctrine must be true, not only 
 revealed ; its value depends on its truth : if it be true, whether it be 
 revealed 'miraculously' or not is of no concern. We damage the Bible 
 by this external defence. We prevent ourselves from feeling its truth 
 by receiving on authority that wh we do not feel to be true. 
 
 I see that doctrine which makes all true religion depend on a 'know- 
 ledge of Christ/ on intellectual knowledge of facts and understanding 
 of them, cannot be true. It puts the intellectual for the spiritual, 
 phenomenal for actual. The true religious feelings, penitence and faith, 
 are the essential things, and these are ever wrought by God's spirit, 
 ever accepted by Him. Men are accepted and saved by Christ without 
 knowing Him intellectually ; and even intellectually rejecting Him : 
 what their intellect rejects may not be that wh Christ and religion truly 
 are. Men may reject Christ as a saviour from suffering, and yet re- 
 ceive Him as a saviour from hell from sin.
 
 690 
 
 If not a disorder or depravation of the physical world, but the physi- 
 cal itself be the result of sin, then we see that evil is essentially in it : 
 wh surely is clear, not in human life alone, but throughout all Nature. 
 This shows us the hope and course of philanthropy : not to get rid of 
 all evil from the life of man, to make a heaven on earth, to restore . 
 Eden. It cannot be : if there were no suffering for man, no evil, there 
 were no ' redemption.' But this we can and must do, or there is still 
 less any redemption, we must get rid of all the evil that we can, and of 
 all evil that exists we can get rid. It is in the nature of things : I 
 mean of all that is not itself sin ; and even that Christ came into the 
 world to destroy. It is true that as we get rid of one evil another will 
 come, but in this is advance, development, a rising higher. If ever a 
 time came when suffering or evil ceased in the physical world, there wd 
 be the end of all advance, of all true Being. But the getting rid of the 
 evils we now have is advance ; the only means to attainment of higher 
 good. Is not man better than a crocodile [physically I mean] because 
 in him, and to him, also, are evils and imperfections ? 
 
 If this seem discouraging or unwelcome it is misunderstood. It is of 
 all doctrines the most encouraging, the most stimulating to work. Not 
 to remedy evils on this view, is to have the nutrition and forego the 
 function ; it is for nature not to develope, for life to stop short of man. 
 The evils we have certainly can and must be remedied ; nor is it certain 
 that the evils wh will take their place will be worse. By remedying 
 these we produce an absolute amount of good, or clear gain ; the evils 
 that follow will be but the nutrition for another good. The evils are 
 the source of good : shall we have the labor of the sowing and refuse 
 to reap the harvest? Evils exist that we may reap the good of them ; 
 not that they may be, but that they may be destroyed, be overcome of 
 good. Evil is not-being ; what is it to destroy not-being but to produce 
 Being that is good ? and the evil that follows cannot make the good not 
 to be nor take away its valuo. Without the good thus obtained from 
 evil the new nutrition cannot exist. The remedying of evils is the fact 
 of ' nature ' ; it is development. 
 
 "With regard to the condition of men at death, is not Time no more to 
 them ? The judgment then, present ; for it is not truly future ; this time 
 is only an illusion of ours. It is a dream [as so wisely called] in wh 
 there appears to be a lapse of time but is not truly. This life is the 
 actual true dream. The end of the world is not far off, but necessarily 
 present to each man at death. So the apostles speak of the end of the 
 world, meaning evidently that it is now, at death, to all. This recon- 
 ciles the two opinions, that men sleep till the resurrection ; that they 
 immediately are in heaven or hell. How many illusions does this dream 
 of an actual succession involve us in. Doubtless there is a true judg- 
 ment, when all shall appear before God ; but this is not in time ; it is 
 everlastingly, each man when he dies finds it present. Is the prayer of 
 the martyrs, ' How long, oh Lord,' opposed to this ? 
 
 Christ's flesh and blood are 'meat indeed ' ' actual ' meat. ' This is 
 my body.' Surely the primary reference of words to the actual, is the 
 true key to the Bible. 
 
 With regard to Satan being the disease of humanity, consider how 
 well it agrees with the conception of the spiritual universe as an 'organ- 
 ization.' External causes produce disease [wh yet is part of the great
 
 691 
 
 life of the whole] ; and the general disease produces the death of the 
 individual parts or elements ; even as Satan may produce our spiritual 
 death, or sin. And I have seen that diseases are ' lives,' like living an- 
 imals specific. Thus we see how the disease of humanity is ' personal,' 
 or a devil ; all that is spiritual even the not-being of it must he 
 'personal.' 
 
 Is not this the true view of the Incarnation ; that the becoming phy- 
 sical, and not the crucifixion, is the death by wh comes our life. Christ 
 gives His Being for us ; the result and sign of wh is that He becomes 
 flesh ? So, whatever words be used, here is the fact : Christ has borne, 
 does bear, the punishment of our sins ; i. e. death. 
 
 Is not this a good principle of interpretation : that when any neces- 
 sary or essential quality is denied [or affirmed], that is denied, or 
 affirmed, of wh it is the quality. Fire that is not quenched is fire that 
 is not physical; that death came by sin, is that the physical came by sin. 
 Is there not a great parallelism between these passages, and probably 
 many more ? 
 
 I give up my natural doctrine of everlasting punishment, taught by 
 the Bible to do so. Men seek to retain the doctrine of everlasting suf- 
 fering, because they think it necessary to control men's wickedness, &c. 
 But, (1) it is an error of fact ; men are not frightened by it. The doc- 
 trine of eternal death, or selfishness, is more powerful ; we feel it so on 
 our ovrn hearts, and what other reason can we have for believing in the 
 power of anything over the hearts of others ? (2) and this is of infi- 
 nitely more moment : the argument, the feeling, is itself the very thing 
 that constitutes all wrongness, all sin. Acting for results instead of the 
 simple right, is the fatal disease and evil of man : no remedy can be in 
 that, no good ever was or will be ; it is the source of all evil. This is 
 the one lesson we have to learn, to act right, and not for results : what 
 can be more lamentable than to see the evil infecting the very cure ? 
 sin leavening piety, as it does directly men seek to conform religion to 
 that which is of good 'effect.' This death of humanity instils its poison 
 into the very stream of life. When shall we learn this lesson, that ar- 
 bitrariness is death ? 
 
 How certain it is that a man cannot begin to be a good man until he 
 feels sin, selfishness, to be the greatest of all evils. Once let him believe 
 this [and surely it is not so hard to see, at least in the light of the Gos- 
 pel] and he is converted ; we want not another faith. To believe this 
 is to repent and be converted. 
 
 See how in all things acting for results puts us all wrong, and fails ; 
 gives us bad results ; how the only way to true success is to ignore re- 
 sults and keep to the right. In thinking e. g. the only way of arriving 
 at the truth is not to regard results, never to mind paradoxes. See : if I 
 had feared to say that life was not an affair of being or existence but of 
 action only, regardless of the difficulties in wh this involved me, because 
 it was right, I shd have been perplexed to the end. All trying to in- 
 troduce the true result before the time [the inorganic food] is thinking 
 for result. But as I have seen in reference to action, this thinking not 
 for results is thinking not in time ; it is ignoring time. To think right 
 we must ignore time. This brings me back to all the infinitesimals : all 
 right thinking, all right acting, is ignoring time and space. The right 
 of every kind ever stands for the infinite and the eternal.
 
 692 
 
 Surely, in relation to time, God must be three ; in eternity absolutely 
 one. In relation to not-being, i. e. in the work of redemption (wh is 
 God in relation to not-being) God must be three, and it is only so that 
 time and space can be ; ' things ' are so because the Divine is so. Time 
 is, the physical world is, redemption is, because God thus becomes three 
 to us, and redeems us. From hence time and space, the physical world, 
 and our scope for redemption, because God gives His Son for our life, 
 and sanctifies us, i. e. creates us, by His Spirit. It is this necessarj , 
 because absolutely loving, act of God, that constitutes the physical ; the 
 universal three all flow from and represent this to us. The universe is 
 a mere image of that ; therefore it is necessary, because merely repre- 
 senting the Love of God in relation to not-being. That is redemption, 
 wh involves the physical, or space and time : ' space for repentance,' 
 time to flee from the wrath to come ' : this is the true, the actual space 
 and time. 
 
 This conception of the physical as being the result and sign of our 
 spiritual deadness makes clear so many difficulties: how it is, e.g. that it 
 condemns men so necessarily to sin ; why they are so ignorant, so mis- 
 led, so overpowered by temptation, not having in themselves the power 
 to do right, the knowledge of right. This is the very fact of the spirit- 
 ual death of humanity. How the word Life shows the ' actual' refer- 
 ence of words ; the true life is spiritual life ; all men feel it, and how 
 instinctively they cling to it, even falsifying science for it. Yet how 
 strange that the ' annihilationists ' shd not be conteut with this, but shd 
 insist upon making the ' death ' sensational, physical, instead of spiritual. 
 People ask, ' but do you believe that the eternal punishment will never 
 end? to wh I reply Certainly; it cannot end, it is not in time; but neither 
 does it, did it, nor will it, begin, nor continue. It is eternal ; it is now 
 just as much as ever it can be. If a man be not spiritual now, he has 
 no spiritual life ; he has eternal death : that is now just as it will be. 
 But his body and mind, his physical and sensational life, wh is in time, 
 of course ends ; it must end when time ends ; and his spiritual not-being 
 will be burnt up in the lake of fire. This physical, sensational existence 
 necessarily ceases equally to the righteous and the wicked ; if a man 
 have no Being except that wh is connected with and dependent on his 
 sensational existence, of course when that is gone there is no Being. If 
 he have not eternal life he cannot live eternally. This is what the Bible 
 says : we have eternal life ; God has given it to us. If this be not so, 
 then of course we do not live eternally ; there is nothing to live : just as 
 only that wh has physical life can live physically. This is the meaning 
 of the words, ' Now is the day of salvation.' If we have eternal life, 
 we live eternally ; if we have it not we do not. It is a question not of 
 the future but of the present, a question of eternity, but seen in time. 
 Is not this the point we want universally to see : ' He that hath the 
 Son hath life.' That wh is temporal ceases even as it began ; that wh 
 is spiritual, as it did not begin, nor ever was, but simply is ; so it ceases 
 not ; as it never ' will be,' so never shall it be said of it, it ' has been.' 
 This is the point to see, that the spiritual is not now in time, but only 
 appears so. For this we must see that time is itself only an appearance. 
 
 And consider what may be said : I affirm that the eternal life is a 
 matter of absolute Being ; does not, cannot, begin ; cannot be future, or 
 present, in a strict sense. Then why tell men to repent and to obtain
 
 693 
 
 it ? either they have it or they have it not ; that is all settled and done. 
 But no ! see how the words betray the false thought : how can that wh 
 is not in time be 'done ;' how be past ? Doubtless the eternal life is not 
 in time, nor subject to its conditions; but then neither are we : our bodies 
 are, and our minds ; but not we, nor our acts. This is an ' eternal ' act 
 that solicits us. Live, be ; not now, nor for the future, but eternally. 
 The fact of our Being, of our eternal life or eternal death, is now before 
 us. If we are, we must be by our own act ; this is the question : Will 
 we Be ? The long-suffering of God calls us to repentance ; the dream 
 of time passes before us, a painted shadow, that we, in our eternity, may 
 act and live. It is a question, not of time, but of Eternal Being. Say 
 not, ' I will repent tomorrow,' that choice is death. While time passes, 
 and presents before our wondering eyes the image of life and death, let 
 us say, ' I will Live,' or rather say it not, but Be. [~B\it this is not yet 
 quite clear. Is it not as Christ's incarnation is not itself in time, but 
 only in a certain relation to that wh is in time ?] 
 
 How clearly it is a false view of the Bible as giving us extraneous in- 
 ducements to virtue ; its object is to give us Life : exactly the doing 
 good from love without reference to results. This is what it seeks to 
 impart, eternal life ; and this by showing us Love. Very superficial is 
 the objection to ' doctrines' ; it is only by facts that anything is or can 
 be done. The doctrines of the Bible are the facts of the Love, i. e. the 
 self-sacrifice of God. We say, If God is love, why does He not put a 
 stop to human misery ? Here is the answer : He lias redeemed the 
 world ; He makes it love Him ; takes away its death of selfishness. We 
 do not see it because of the veil of Time. All this evil is in time : but 
 time is not actual, it is not: therefore there is not this evil. 
 
 With respect to the Fall, may we say that in it Adam came to act for 
 results instead of rightly ; and so became in time, i. e. in the physical ? 
 Is this an idea of the tree of knowledge of good and evil that then he 
 began to think whether results wd be good or evil to himself? 
 
 In affirming an eternal creation, we affirm creation to be a moral act ; 
 i. e. not for results. But if a moral act, then not a making of matter, 
 wh is not moral. In affirming eternal creation we affirm that the true 
 actual universe is spiritual or moral. 
 
 The depravity the original sin of man, as the effect of the Fall, is 
 simple. It is not wickedness, not a thing deserving punishment, but 
 ' inertia,' causing him to be subject to passions, to be tempted. It is a 
 mistake to speak of the depravity of man as a true wickedness an ab- 
 surdity indeed ; but the fact is patent. And this is a most venerable 
 philosophical doctrine, as well as scriptural : but no philosopher seems 
 to have truly recognized that sin is not-being. Even modern pantheism 
 has not truly grasped it, tho' it says the words. Thus we are not sub- 
 ject to temptation to ' try ' us, and to condemn ; but we have passions in 
 order that from them we may regain life ; only by them can our spirit- 
 ual life or Being be restored. They are in mercy, not in anger ; or- rather 
 in that anger for sin wh is the fact of love and mercy. For these 'pas- 
 sions ' and temptations, they are in themselves actions, love : they are 
 only ' passions ' from our inertia. 
 
 The temporal, the physical, will be to us after death truly and literally 
 as a dream when one awaketh ; we shall see that it was actually and 
 strictly an illusion, having no existence apart from ourselves. And see
 
 694 
 
 how useful dreams are sometimes ; yet none the less dreams : they . re- 
 present, sometimes how truly, that wh is real tho' themselves unreal. 
 Dreams, imparting knowledge and influencing men, are a beautiful image 
 of the use and meaning of the physical. Alen who use it aright are as 
 those whose dreams are revelations ; those who live in the physical alone 
 are mere idle dreamers. And so we can see better the relation of our 
 actions our moral acts to Time. In dreams we not only seem to act, 
 but often our real actions are determined by them. They seem to us to 
 take place at a certain time in the dream, and in respect to the events 
 dreamed of, but they are not truly in any such time or determined by 
 such events. The dream is an illusion, but the actions are real, and 
 have no relation to the dream time. And how often an action deter- 
 mined by a dream awakes the dreamer. So things that occur in time 
 rouse us to moral action, to a moral Being, that shows us all time is an 
 illusion. The worldly man lives an insignificant life, a mere dream with 
 no meaning ; nothing apart from his own sensations. His universe, his 
 life, are in-significant ; he does not pretend that they signify anything 
 but themselves. But what a rebuke to worldliness there is in our very 
 language insignificant, meaningless. The Bible does but express hu- 
 manity ; for to all the meaningless is folly. 
 
 How pleasant occupation of the mind annihilates time to us ; we are 
 unconscious of its passage when we are happy. We may say, Joy is in 
 its nature eternal. Is not this the key to the so frequent reference to 
 joy in respect to the eternal world ? The eternal must be absolute joy, 
 or time were. Absolute joy excludes time, is eternal ; but that is, it is 
 moral, it is holiness. Absolute holiness and absolute joy are one. And 
 they must be, for both are one thing, viz. Love ; holiness and joy unite 
 in love. Even now we know love and joy are two words for one thing. 
 So as absolute joy must be absolute love, it must be also holiness ; and 
 as holiness is absolute love it must be absolute joy. Joy is the eternal. 
 Eight action and pure joy are now eternal in us. So if there are pain 
 or sorrow, there must be time; these .. cannot be eternal. Eternal 
 punishment cannot be pain and sorrow ; it is moral punishment. Kow 
 can I not better understand the sensational descriptions of heaven : the 
 joy means love ; eternal joy is spiritual love and is one with holiness. 
 To what a prostitution have we subjected heaven, with our 'joy that 
 never ends.' 
 
 I say with the Bible, that death is the punishment of sin. And if 
 Adam had originally no physical natnre, it must have been spiritual 
 death that was announced as the punishment : and what wd that be to 
 him but selfishness ? 'Who by to love, do understand to be.' But it 
 may be said, this is the very fact of sin itself ; it is the sin, how can it 
 be its punishment ? Here is the beauty ; here is the eternalness : cause 
 and effect are one, the sin and the punishment must be one ; in the spi- 
 ritual there is no succession. Thus, clearly, death or not-being is at 
 once the fact and the punishment of sin. That sin is its own punish- 
 ment is the converse of that right exists for itself. This is the Bible 
 doctrine of eternity. So again, justification and sanctification must be 
 one ; it is introducing separation or time here that has made the diffi- 
 culty. Deliverance from death is giving life. 
 
 The maxim that ' virtue is its own reward ' is simply a popular ex- 
 pression of the fact that the moral is eternal ; which the Bible expresses
 
 695 
 
 scientifically in the doctrine that the gift of God is eternal life ; the re- 
 ward of well-doing eternal life. The Bible gives it a scientific expres- 
 sion ; for in the popular expression it is but imperfectly comprehended ; 
 the fact is evidently not fully seen. 
 
 There is a goodness and beauty even in the ' unending- time ' hypothe- 
 sis ; it is an instinct, tho' a blind groping. It does truly deny the time 
 tho' not so meant ; just as the ' a- torn ' of the chemist truly denies the 
 1 substance.' It is a tendency in the right direction ; the end is that wh 
 specially characterizes time : it is not absolutely wrong but only imper- 
 fect ; and doubtless necessary. 
 
 I am persuaded that the difficulty and mystery (or a great part of it) 
 which are connected with our conceptions of time and space, and make 
 people smile at any supposition that they may be clearly conceived or 
 understood, arise from our strange attempts to attach the ideas of infi- 
 nity and eternity to them ; and can be got rid of by the simple process 
 of leaving off doing so ; wh as it is an entirely arbitrary way of think- 
 ing [with no lightness, i. e. necessity] we can do at any time. 
 
 Surely ' no necessity ' means ' no Tightness,' arbitrary ; but this is one 
 with selfish ; selfishness .'. is that wh is not -necessary ; i. e. not-being. 
 Comte leaves the love out of nature, the Tightness, the necessity ; under 
 the pretence of excluding arbitrariness he makes it utterly arbitrary ; 
 excludes it from the details only to make it paramount over the whole. 
 Even the ordinary theological view is better than this ; for tho' giving 
 up the facts to arbitrariness, it did assert a love, a necessity, as the root 
 of the whole. 
 
 Is it not necessary that we see in the Bible, as in Nature, that which 
 corresponds to our own views ? Not that we mean to do so, but that we 
 must ; nor is it the less true that it is from it we derive our know- 
 ledge of the spiritual [as we do from nature of the physical]. It is ne- 
 cessary that at the 'limit' of our knowledge this shd be the case ; neces- 
 sary, altho' our design and intention may be that of absolute submission. 
 It is not that we will not see, but that we cannot. And the doctrine of 
 the Spirit's guidance, that we shd not abuse ; these facts are the very 
 thing ; they are the way in wh He guides, the only way possible to us, 
 as being men. 
 
 Is not the ' annihilation ' doctrine, in its present form, the one-sided 
 opinion, the holding to right result against logic ? And it is the result 
 truly of want of perfect faith ; the men have not had the perfect trust 
 in God, that He wd certainly do right ; they have felt as if it were ne- 
 cessary for them to clear up and establish His character. They could 
 not wait ; happy even in ignorance and under mystery. ' Patience' had 
 not its perfect work. [In right thinking, perhaps, as much as in any 
 thing, is the use of patience illustrious ; in that the perfect work of pa- 
 tience is the only perfect work. To think, be patient ; acquiesce in 
 mystery and ignorance, and cut no knots.] This the ' Life in Christ ' 
 doctrine has done, or tried to do ; to cut the knot. The everlasting mi- 
 sery has frightened them so that they could not wait ; a spectre so hor- 
 rible that they have run from it, heedless where they jan. If they cd 
 have calmly examined it, they might have ascertained that it was not a 
 spectre, but a distorted fact ; not an enemy, but a friend in disguise. 
 And how unliteral instead of literal, how sad a confusing of the literal 
 with the physical, is that view. Is it not amazing, this physicalness of
 
 696 
 
 our conceptions ? As I have said, we cannot believe that Adam did 
 actually and truly die, since his body did not die : we cannot conceive 
 that anything that is not physical death can be, or ought to be, called 
 ' death ' ; Yet how physical death is often called ' sleeping.' Of the 
 Bible the true or spiritual meaning the actual is the literal. This 
 is the clue to it ; the writers wrote truly ' as seeing things that are in- 
 visible,' and spoke of them naturally, as the things : the right, the sci- 
 entific, the natural, the only genuine way of writing. 
 
 Indeed, suppose it be that the word ' death ' has a different meaning 
 in the Bible from elsewhere : what is that but the Bible teaching us ? 
 teaching us to recognize and speak of the spiritual, wh of course is its 
 very work. Did it indeed first teach man to speak of death as not phy- 
 sical ; even as it first brought ' life ' and immortality to light ? Has it 
 taught us to recognize the fact of death as actual, even as it has taught 
 us to recognize the facts of Life as actual and not physical ? 
 
 And I see now why it is that the everlasting misery has maintained 
 its ground over the annihilation doctrine. It could not fail to do so, in 
 spite of its miserableness in every way, for this simple reason, that it 
 recognized a spiritual meaning where the contrary doctrine strove to 
 substitute a physical one. A triumphant proof, surely, of the 
 power of the spiritual : rather than drive the ' actual ' meaning out 
 of a word, and make it merely physical or temporal, men will accept 
 any consequence ; nor can they (in any large proportion) be driven from 
 this by any conceivable representation of consequences. Man's heart, 
 his nature, yea his very being demands the spiritual in words. Things 
 are things only by virtue of the spiritual in them. Man feels that life 
 is no life, and death no death, that does not mean a spiritual life and 
 death. It is not the pride of man, nor his delusion by the Tempter 
 alone, that makes him cling to to the belief that death is spiritual death, 
 and life spiritual life. It is his heart. It is God's voice in him, the 
 voice of universal nature, makes him feel in his inmost heart that all 
 things in their true being are spiritual. It is a poor hypothe- 
 sis, ever, that refers any deep tendency of humanity to anything but 
 the good and the divine, however it be perverted. Wrong, evil, is not 
 being, not power, but perversion, and perversion only. There can be 
 bad only by a spoiling of the good. A bad cause is no cause: that only 
 is an explanation of an evil thing wh shows a good and a ' not.' The 
 good the doer ; the not ' the perverter. 
 
 Is not this an excellent expression ? All Evil is from a Good or 
 Being and a 'not.' This is absolute and universal; in each detail it must 
 be, and is; and best of all it is so of the universal. For this is with- 
 out irreverence I say it this is God and Satan : Good and the ' Not ' 
 the Creator and the Perverter. This I arrive at by facts the ordinary 
 facts of Nature wh show that all badness, all evil or wrong, is neces- 
 sarily from the operation of good of right and proper actions or forces 
 perverted by the absence of a power or action that ought to be. The 
 Devil is the great ' Not,' spoiling, perverting God's works. 
 
 Is not all thus in one : eternal punishment, annihilation, and above 
 all Swedenborg's glorious doctrine that the punishment of sin is the 
 sinning; and all be being simple enough to leave time out of eternity : 
 truly getting is by giving, by giving up. 
 
 Shall we not find that the spiritual could not be otherwise rightly
 
 697 
 
 expressed than as it is in the Bible ; not by abstract terms : e.g. with re- 
 gard to the fire of Hades. Eternal fire wd have been arbitrary, like the 
 mathematical 'point;' spiritual fire wd have been worse, it wd have con- 
 tradicted the very essence of the truth, viz. that fire (as all that truly 
 is) is spiritual. And so of all other forms : they wd not do ; wd have 
 been at least equally misunderstood and could not have led to the truth. 
 The Bible speaks right even as God does right, apart from results, .. 
 the results are perfect. It speaks simply and straightforwardly of the 
 spiritual, as the fact. 
 
 "Was Adam's first state a state of spontaneity without law ; [i. e. save 
 the one law; like a child, a law seeming arbitrary but not truly so] then 
 came the exclusion of this spirituality, the death ; like the exclusion of 
 spirituality from Science, and at the same time coming under law. And 
 then the redemption is, to man, spontaneity and law in one ; i. e. true 
 holiness : just as in science the exclusion of the first spirituality intro- 
 duces law, but its completion again restores spirituality, i. e. law and 
 spontaneity in one. Man's fall and redemption answer to the rise from 
 the conception of God's arbitrary, to that of His holy action in nature. 
 Again : we cannot conceive of an absolute evil ; any Being, thing, 
 power, wh in and of itself and apart from being no<, is or can be, evil. 
 For this Being must be a power ; i. e. capable of doing its evil consists 
 in its doing. Now this idea refers us to a system of force of wh that 
 power, supposed evil, wd be a useful and necessary part, wd be good : 
 but surely that which is absolutely evil cannot become good. We are 
 driven to the conception of evil as a ' not.' All our evil is from good, 
 necessary, tendencies, with not the love ; wh causes them to be evil in 
 their action. But this does not deny personality. Not-being is personal 
 and has to be destroyed ; it is that wh is contrary to God. The proof of 
 the personal being of the ' not ' is in its needful destruction. Is it not just 
 as we might speak of the real or physical existence of darkness ? Is 
 not Satan personal, even as darkness is real ? Since Being is personal, 
 or love, must not not-being be ' personal ' also ? 
 
 But not-being can exist only in time, because it is the source of time. 
 So was not Satan from the first of his sin in time ? he cannot be 
 'eternal.' Does this mean that Satan is only in connection with hu- 
 manity, humanity alone being in time ? 
 
 If we gave no commands, or prohibitions, to our children they wd 
 not sin in that respect. But then they would not be trained ; it would 
 be spoiling them. Shall I see here this tree in Paradise ? not that 
 God would keep from them knowledge, but that, it being right to for- 
 bid this, by eating of it necessarily came that knowledge? Our children 
 disobey us for the same reason as Eve, because the thing forbidden 
 looks good, and to be desired to make them wise. They do not mean 
 any harm ; they only find out the evil by disobeying. And in the child 
 is there the female and male? 
 
 "With reference to Adam's willingly giving himself to death, and even 
 with reference to Christ's giving Himself to death for us, consider what 
 I have seen in the physical, how the male ever gives itself to, and ex- 
 ists in the female. It is so in development (as of moth), the death of 
 the male portion becoming higher life of the female portion [only the 
 'substance' is excluded, the life remains, and this is all]. So also in 
 the formation of the body by nuclei and cells ; so the light and heat, 
 [Bible 39.
 
 698 
 
 the life, given to planets by the heat of the sun. In truth, this giving 
 itself to death of male for female, is the fact of polar union ; it is 
 what that always is salvation, redemption, the raising of one to higher 
 life by the death of others. Surely Adam eating the fruit and dying 
 out of love to Eve, is as my mother says ; and it is just what happens 
 in the worm developing to the moth ; the male element dying, and its 
 life becoming the higher life of the female element. Is not the same 
 idea in the life to the world from the casting away of the Jews ? Sure- 
 ly this same relation exists between Jews and Gentiles the dynamic 
 one ? and again the restoration of the first ; is it not double life, devel- 
 opment ? Is not the giving self ever rewarded with a more perfect 
 gaining of it ? Even as Christ says, he that giveth his life shall have 
 it more abundantly. This is the lesson of the seed and harvest ; dying, 
 giving its life, its life is multiplied a hundred fold ; it lays all nature 
 under contribution to it : and so do we by giving ourselves. Our self- 
 control, our self-sacrifice, represents this dying of the seed by wh all 
 the external forces are converted into its life. By self-control we make 
 our passions the external forces to subserve, to become, our life. 
 Dimly I see this two-fold relation ; how our passions, the nutrition of 
 the whole, are from Adam's death ; our 'vital resistance,' or self-control, 
 constitutes them our individual life. Is there not an exact parallel 
 here, wh I shall see by and bye : the mortification and subjugation 
 of our passions a true dying? 'I die daily,' ' crucifying the old 
 man.' 
 
 "Was not Adam's sin less truly a self indulgence than a self-sacrifice ; 
 more like our self-control than our yielding to passion ? So was his 
 dying a new nutrition, even as the first 'spiritual,' in Science voluntari- 
 ly dies to become merely physical, and to live again. And the merely 
 physical Science is not less 'evil' and wrong because thus a result of 
 voluntary and self-sacrificing love. So Adam shall live again : giving 
 life is not losing it, but gaining it. Now is it not probable that, in 
 truth, the fall in the garden .of Eden presents humanity and not a man ; 
 or if a single man, he only as image of the race ? If it were truly 
 spiritual before the fall, were it not rather humanity than a man ? 
 Only when the physical began, began succession. Surely humanity fell 
 in Paradise ; and I as much as any : but after the fall then began the 
 race of man ; and was Adam first, not because he was especially the 
 subject of the fall, but because in the illusion of time it needed that 
 he shd come first ? Humanity fell in Eden ; humanity it is that is re- 
 deemed. Thus the succession of men, in time and space, as many or variety 
 instead of one, is the result of the fall. It is an appearance only, re- 
 sulting from the not-being of humanity. The nature and reason of all 
 the details will come ; why men, why the earth, why such an universe ; 
 and whether this be not simply the fact of the eternal (the moral or 
 spiritual) creation, wh constitutes this physical existence, and universe 
 to us ? It was not a man that was in Eden, but humanity ; men the 
 succession began with the fall. 
 
 As the physical is image of the spiritual ; so is not true holiness, de- 
 velopment of the spiritual life, to be obtained only by means of it ? 
 Here is a reason against ascetisism. The physical is the image, in 
 some sense the fact and means, of redemption. 
 [Spirit, 179. See p. 538.
 
 699 
 
 With regard to moral action : man is a physical Being because he 
 performs physical actions ; so he is a mental Being because he does 
 mental actions : he clearly therefore is a moral Being, because he 
 does moral actions. What these are is of no consequence. If any one 
 says they are ' necessary,' that is all right. They are necessary, i" e. 
 they are from love; this is the true, the only necessity. They are or are 
 not, as we love, or have moral Being. The evil of it is that we have 
 not love ; that is the wrongness, the sin, the misery. Man is diseased 
 morally, is dead, or dying : Redemption is a moral remedy, a restoring 
 love ; again making right action necessary. That right action is not 
 necessary to us, that is the death. 
 
 No one would deny that a man ought not to steal, any more than 
 that a steam engine ought not to explode. The engine ought not to ex- 
 plode because there ought to be a proper cohesion or force of the iron 
 wh composes it ; and if it does burst it is because that force was want- 
 ing. So a man ought not to do wrong, because he ought to have a 
 proper, a right, love in him. If he does wrong it is because he has not 
 this love ; this is the wrongness, the sin. The doctrine that man ne- 
 cessarily obeys the strongest motive has nothing in it offensive to relig- 
 ion. If he has love he is obliged to do right, if not he is obliged to do 
 wrong ; his not having love, his being obliged to do wrong, is that 
 wh is his guilt. It is not-love with wh God is angry, the only thing 
 with wh God can be angry ; the definitions require it to be so. That 
 God shd be angry with this not-love, or not-being, is involved in His 
 being love : if he were not He wd not be love (i. e. moral love). 
 
 The placing the proof of our moral agency on our power of arbitrary 
 action is the saddest of all mistakes. In truth, if a Being be perfectly 
 holy he does necessarily always the same thing, he changes not. There 
 must be the very same evidence of necessity in respect to the actions 
 of such a Being as there is with respect to the operations of nature ; 
 viz., an absolute law or unity, an unvarying constancy. This is what 
 we call ' necessity ' in respect to nature. Doubtless questions may be 
 asked farther. Is our having or not having this love our own act, de- 
 pendent upon our free will ? and so on. There is no necessity but moral 
 necessity, viz., Tightness. How we err, in conceiving some kind of ex- 
 ternal passive necessity for God's Being, apart from His own moral act. 
 God is only by His own act. And so of ourselves (preserving ever the 
 relation of creator and creature), we also are by our own act. The 
 mystery of existence is here in ourselves ; it is that with wh we are 
 brought into relation by our conscience. Will we or will we not be ? 
 Here we see how God is ; He is because He is holy, because He wills to 
 love. Just as we 'are' when we love, if and when we will to love. God's 
 Being depends on Himself, even as our Being depends on ourselves. 
 
 But love is not to God as it is us, the * sense of right,' because 
 He has no passions wh oppose it. As creatures we are different, deriv- 
 ing not from ourselves but from Him the power of Being, evidenced by 
 our conscience. For surely the creation of moral Being cannot be a 
 mere passive creation so far as the creature is concerned ; a moral Being 
 must be by his own act ; the definition requires it. This is an axiom, 
 that wh is plainly seen to be involved in the definitions of the words 
 used. [So axioms 'become,' with increasing knowledge ; for in fact all 
 truth is involved in the definitions, and it becomes axiomatic just when 
 it comes to be plainly seen to be so. So axioms are discovered by 
 
 w 2
 
 700 
 
 observation and experiment. Necessary (or self-evident) and contingent 
 truths only differ in respect of the completeness of our knowledge.] 
 
 Man differs from God also in being sinful. What this involves I do 
 not fully see. Not only is his power of moral Being derived, but in re- 
 spect to him there is a moral not-being, a not-being by his own act. 
 Surely from hence comes much that we see of the temptation to sin, 
 the struggle, the difficulty of being holy. Of this I must think what 
 part of our conscious experience it is that arises from our being sinful. 
 In the mean time hold fast to this, that a moral Being can only be by 
 his own act, that our conscience is God giving us the power to be, 
 creating us. Thus when we disobey conscience there is in us moral not- 
 being. This it is that is opposed to God, that He hates and is angry 
 with, and must, inasmuch as He is love, abhor and consume. 
 
 I perceive I am at the foot of another deep question (or rather 
 'lofty'). I say sin is from not-love; but why and how is it that this 
 love may be in me or may not ? how by my own act ? is it not neces- 
 sary, from something previous, that there shd be or not be this love in 
 me? Does it not, in fact, depend wholly on God? Two answers. (1) 
 I have before said we must morally be by our own act, even as God is ; 
 there is no other moral Being. (2) This moral Being is absolute, not 
 in time or succession ; it is the eternal, it is the uncaused, uncondi- 
 tioned, after wh philosophers have been seeking so long. It cannot de- 
 pend on anything 'previous;' there is no previous in relation to it. It 
 is the fact of creation. (3) This last statement needs an opposite with 
 wh to be unified, viz., that our actual condition does depend upon, or 
 rather is, a fallen state ; that humanity is diseased, and hence our not- 
 being. But then this is a moral not-being, a not-being by our own act; 
 the disease or death consists in our not-being, is not the cause of it but 
 the effect ; our not-being is the disease of humanity. I do not see this 
 fully ; but in general this much : that our moral death is not only a 
 fact in ourselves, but has a relation also to other spiritual Beings to 
 temptation. The facts of man's moral condition cannot be satisfactorily 
 explained without a reference beyond himself. 
 
 In this doctrine that moral Being the only true Being is by the 
 Being's own act, see again an embracing of other doctrines. For philos- 
 ophy ever comes to this point, that Being must be by its own act. I 
 mean not theology, nor spiritual Being ; but all philosophy, and all ex- 
 istence ; it is only another word for necessary Being. Materialists, who 
 hold an eternal 'world' and nothing else, hold, and must hold, that the 
 world is by its own act. But I affirm that 'Being that is by its own 
 act' is moral Being, that this is the definition of moral Being, of per- 
 son, whether Creator or creature. Our word 'posit' contains it. 'Posits 
 itself I interpret into 'Is by His own act.' That wh 'posits' itself, is 
 moral Being, person ; that wh is not moral Being, i.e. is 'thing-al,' does 
 not 'popit itself,' it must be posited. 
 
 "With reference to the 'burning' being of the ' not,' and the chemical 
 union from a not-being, or absence, consider how, in the mental, the 
 two polars present ever a not-being ; they are two polars ; and in each 
 the 'not' is excluded in their union : 
 
 Arbitrary action Necessary passion. 
 
 The two 'nets' (viz., arbitrary and passion) are excluded in their union 
 into necessary action or holiness, i. e. love. This is the same thing as 
 in the physical, wh I must see.
 
 701 
 
 Thus humanity is brought into one-ness with nature. Man's spiritual 
 Being is seen to be simply the fact of wh nature is the image. The 
 chasm between the moral and physical is abolished. The < freedom of 
 the will,' the great contrast, shows itself the emphatic point 
 of identity. But now comes the difficulty: whence and how 
 is it that we have the consciousness of personality, although 
 in connection with sin or wrong doing, i. e. not acting ? What is 
 that conscience, that consciousness ? how can we say / am wicked ? 
 This is our relation to God. "We are created as it were before we act. 
 God alone is absolute existence. We have as it were power to be or 
 not to be. The difficulty of self-control is removed by this view all 
 except the self that is controlled ; how can it be 'I,' and yet not Love 
 or spiritual Being ? Here surely is the key to the being of the Devil. 
 Does it not show the mystery of moral action to be one with the 
 mystery of Being ; i. e. reduce two mysteries to one, wh is surely re- 
 moving a mystery ? 
 
 This also I begin to see, but as yet obscurely, how spiritual, true, not- 
 being can be selfishness ; must be so. Emphatically not-love is selfish- 
 ness. Love is acting ; selfishness is simply not acting ; it is absorbing 
 and not giving out ; it is not-being. This will help me now to see how 
 the 'I,' the self, can be, without love or moral Being. The selfishness 
 it is God must destroy in hell, if not destroyed now by the love of 
 Christ ; and with it surely the self, the consciousness. I think so. 
 Adam became selfish, died, in disobeying ; and surely all the love, 
 other than selfishness in us, is from our redemption, is from Christ ? 
 
 Because Adam did die in the day when he ate. I thus merely affirm 
 in a true or actual sense, what some theologians affirm in a thing-al 
 (formal) sense, when they say that the physical life of the race arises 
 through the intervention of Christ : I say also the true, the moral life. 
 And doubtless both ; for the one is the image of the other. Without 
 the moral life the physical were not, at least not consciously ; there 
 were no man, because no conscious man ; ' we ' shd never have been, 
 whether there had been human bodies or not ; and indeed certainly not 
 human bodies because things are only by the percipient, the conscious- 
 ness. Adam died in eating, and Christ gives us our life moral and 
 physical the physical in and through the moral. So the world is 
 thing-al or physical ; we have a Being, and yet are in relation and con- 
 nection with not-being. 
 
 Is not the meaning of ' destroying both body and soul in hell ' just 
 this : the destruction of the conscious Being, the self, the individual ? 
 In heaven we shall have bodies, i. e. true spiritual bodies ; but in hell 
 the body destroyed. Redemption and hell are both the destruction of 
 selfishness, but in redemption it is with the salvation of the man, in 
 hell with his destruction ? And think; the destruction of selfishness, or 
 not-being, is creation. Hell, the consuming fire, is but one form, one 
 part of the 'creating all things new,' a part of God's creative, redeeming 
 act ; that wh is our infinite woe, our eternal punishment and perdition. 
 How fearful must that sin be which makes love a fire to us : creation 
 our perdition. 
 
 What is more positive, more real, to us than death ? yet is it only a 
 not-being, a relative not-being, a not-reaction ; it is the image of self- 
 ishness ; not the less real to us because it is a mere not-being ; that is 
 the horror of sin and death alike ; not-being is the horror.
 
 702 
 
 It does not seem that moral action is rightly to be spoken of as in re- 
 lation to a Being that is perfectly holy, involving as it does a concep- 
 tion of existing apart from the acting, a substance ; action is of a 'sub- 
 stance,' i.e. of a something that itself does not act ; it is the action, i.e. 
 the Being, of a 'not-being.' It is only appropriately used of the moral 
 action of a sinful Being. Of a perfect Being the being and the action 
 are one ; we cannot rightly speak of his action ; -we imply a wrong 
 conception ; his being is his action. I must think more of this, and see 
 what comes of it. I think I see : men 'act' morally ; they are as it 
 were the substance, or 'not-being, 'with power of action, wh nature im- 
 ages to us in things. I think this is it, though I only dimly see it. We 
 are conscious of a mental and bodily existence, that is an inertia, a pas- 
 sive existence ; we have thus a conscious not-being, wh, without love, 
 without true moral action, is selfishness, the very fact of not-being. 
 For of course it is our physical and mental existence that is the source 
 of our selfishness ; necessarily so, being the source of our pleasure, our 
 desires, our passions, there being no other. In our physical and mental 
 existence is conscious not-being, or rather mere not-being ; it must be 
 conscious ; unless ' conscious ' it would not be ; not-being as much re- 
 quires consciousness as being. Our moral love is Being ; considered in 
 relation to this not-being or ' substance,' it is rightly considered, and 
 called, action. Action is in relation to us as substances, or bodies and 
 minds; Being is in relation to us as spiritual. So in truth the destruc- 
 tion of soul and body in hell, if there be no love, is only a destruction 
 of not-being. The 'man' acts ; the spirit is. The action of the man 
 and the Being of the spirit are one. But spirit does not act in the 
 same sense as man in his moral action. The spirit only is. I begin to 
 see ; the body and mind of man are simply expressions as it were of his 
 moral not-being, results of the fall ; are in time and space. So in rela- 
 tion to them, his moral being begins or is in space and time. 
 
 Long ago I saw that God's Being or existence and His action must be 
 one ; and it rather troubled me, as seeming to confound Nature (which 
 I called God's ac<) with God Himself. But now I see this and gladly 
 accept the consequence. We do see God in Nature ; we see Love : and 
 God is Love. Here again how true language is. From time immemo- 
 rial men have said that they saw ' God ' in Nature in His works. God 
 Himself, not His act : men's words were truer than my philosophy. "We 
 see God in Nature : it is not right to call it His act. God does not act : 
 He is not a man ; there is no substance, no not-being, no selfishness in 
 Him. He is. It is His Being, viz. His Love, wh we see in Nature. 
 While thinking that the world is a real matter, and so on, we cannot 
 say that God is nature : it is horrible. But seeing that the physical is 
 wholly from ourselves [even as color is]we may well understand that the 
 actual spiritual fact of Nature is not so truly the Act as the Being of 
 God. So God gives as His name, I AM. God's Being is the fact, the 
 deed, the act, of eternity. I am is one with Love. 
 
 See : as I have noted with respect to God, love or action is, in its own 
 nature, limiting self. This self-limit is the fact of spiritual Being. 
 Spirit is [i. e. man truly is] by limiting himself. And is not this again 
 one with nature ? does not all Being, 'even thingal or phenomenal, con- 
 sist in the limiting itself ? is it not this limit that constitutes the being, 
 the individuality ? Limiting self, is it not creating, i. e. producing 
 Being from from not-being ? See in how far the self-control of nature
 
 703 
 
 is the Being of nature, of things.' Think again how selfishness is not- 
 being; it is like a vacuum : we may imagine it thus a man walks safely 
 over solid ground, meeting with due reaction ; but when he comes to a 
 chasm where the solid ground is not, he is precipitated down : the not- 
 being is the cause of the fall, of the great change. Not-being is as it 
 were a stimulus. So in the moral world ; among beings who have due 
 love, proper reaction, man lives morally in safety and well-being ; but 
 when he comes to a selfish being, in whom is not the reaction, not the 
 support, then comes the fall, the ruin, from the not [moral] being. 
 And see now a proof that there is no vacuum in nature ; it is involved 
 absolutely in the doctrine of conservation of force ; for a force impinging 
 upon or entering into a vacuum is necessarily lost, ceases absolutely. 
 The extremest attenuation makes no difference ; the force remains just 
 as much ; but the very least absolute vacuum conceivable might destroy 
 in time all the force in the universe. 
 
 Creation from not-being (or nothing) is not a mere unmeaning expres- 
 sion ; it is a most important fact. It is producing moral Being or love 
 from selfishness : that wh takes place in ourselves, in the making our 
 moral life from our passions, by control. This is the wonder of creation 
 from nothing, producing moral Being from selfish passions : not God's 
 primary act, as it were, but coming only after sin ; it is ' redeeming.' 
 The not-being is not a mere negation, it is a fact ; like a negation in 
 algebra; not mere absence, but contrariness to Being, wh swallows it up 
 as it were. Not-being becomes thus so important a fact, because of the 
 Being that is ; it ceases to be a mere negation, and operates for evil with 
 all the power of the Being of wh it is the absence. So now I see how 
 ' things,' the mental and physical universe, may be so real, and yet only 
 not-being; how, being not-being, they yet act so powerfully, are so much 
 to us, influence us so much. I must trace those facts in the real which 
 show it to be not-being : the ' point ' e. g. in mathematics. I see that 
 thingal-ness and not-being are one. Man's thingal-ness, i. e. his body 
 and mind, are his not-being, his ' selfishness.' [Rather his self-ness?] 
 
 Selfishness is that in wh force is lost, not returned, as in a vacuum. 
 So on man's selfishness God's love produces no return of love, (no re- 
 action.) 
 
 This is the sin, that we do not see that it is sin ; we do not perceive 
 that we ought to love God, we do not see any harm in our not doing so ; 
 it is all a matter of course, we do the best we can for ourselves : God is 
 good certainly, but then perhaps He cannot help it ; and so on. The 
 utterly selfish man is to men just as we are to God, just so dead, just so 
 blind. We are dead to Him, just like a vacuum would be to force, all 
 swallowed up and none returned. Thus also may we not see how moral 
 virtue, social excellence, cannot save a man. It is good, inestimable; 
 but it does not touch the death of the spirit ; there is no love towards 
 God, no reaction in respect to Him ; the not-being is there still. Surely 
 this it is that comes only from Christ : He gives us Life to God, as He 
 only can, showing us God's self-sacrifice. For I see this world hides 
 God from us : it is, because of our sin ; it does not and cannot suffice 
 for our spiritual life, it is the sign and effect of our death. Here I see 
 the necessity of a revelation quite in another way. The universe is less 
 a revelation of God than a concealment of Him. It is good for the real, 
 fatal for the spiritual ; to know God as a spirit, we need to know Him
 
 704 
 
 by a moral revelation thro' the spirit, the soul, of man. That nature 
 cannot suffice for the revelation of God is clear from this that even up 
 to the present time we have attributed to God in respect to nature ex- 
 actly that wh constitutes our sin ; viz. a seeking for results. Nature 
 has misled us : I see it now more truly ; but I see it only by the light 
 of the Bible. It is the Bible has interpreted Nature to me. 
 
 Adam by his fall became selfish, physical, i. e. subject to passions : 
 thing-al I think this is it. 
 
 Not-being could only be mere negation, entirely inoperative, ' no harm 
 in it/ if it were universal, i.e. absolute, or necessary ; the absolute being 
 the necessary. But that is the right; there were only no harm in not-being 
 if it were right, i.e. if it were love, were Being. See the proof that not- 
 being must be evil, or sin : if it were not so it must be right, or Being, 
 it must be the contrary to itself. It is because of this absoluteness, act- 
 uality necessity, or Tightness of Being [or acting] that not-being is al- 
 ways wrong or evil ; not merely negation, but distortion ; is ' real ' as 
 we say. [It is not that there is no real evil but sin ; but sin is truly not 
 real evil.] The wrongness, or evil, is infallible ; it is of such sort as is 
 according to the nature of the case physical, mental, moral. Not-being 
 or deficiency is always wrongness. 
 
 It was an idea about metaphysics that suggested this thought 
 to me viz. how our hypotheses are so chimerical, our science so absurd, 
 for want of metaphysics. The absence, the not-being of metaphysics 
 here is not a mere want ; it is a wrongness, a spoiling ; the not-being is 
 ' evil.' That wh is good becomes perverted, distorted, made bad, for 
 want of it. 
 
 "When I say body and mind are passion in or of a spirit, do I not truly 
 assert them to be not-being ? for passion of a spirit is spiritual not-being : 
 spirit being essentially active. Passion takes place by virtue of not 
 resistance, not action : it is the result of external spiritual action on 
 spiritual not-being. If the spirit were, there would and could be no 
 such passion : there wd be absolute action. The passion is, in relation 
 to us, because of our not-love; but the true fact as external to us is not 
 passion, but Being or action. The not-being in us occasions there being 
 passion in us, a passion consisting of the Being or action without us: the 
 less resistance is as it were a stimulus. 
 
 Now I see why statics come before dynamics, and why they shd do 
 so. They refer to equilibrium, the primary conception necessarily. All 
 motions are from disturbance of equilibrium, from a not-being of the 
 corresponding reaction, from a direction of less resistance. A great key 
 surely is here to mechanics themselves. The spiritual explains the 
 physical. 
 
 Only to think that all this doctrine of life and love should be in this 
 heap of dust wh constitutes our Science ! What a ' making of dry bones 
 to live ' it is and by love. Yes, truly by love, even in the sense of its 
 being by interpretation, by approximative permitted action, polar union. 
 
 "What we call Nature, or the Universe, begins as spiritual in God, and 
 ends as spiritual in us. It is as absurd to suppose it truly ' material ' 
 between, as it wd be to say of a chain, of wh we saw the two ends to be 
 material, that it was spiritual in the middle because we could not see it. 
 It is our ignorance alone, our not seeing, makes the middle of this uni- 
 versal chain of wh the ends are spiritual, seem material to us.
 
 705 
 
 Suffering, physical suffering, as in disease of the body, depends upon 
 not-being in relation to being ; not entire but partial not-being : disease 
 is excessive decay of the body. And think of the analogy wh presents 
 itself here : disease is from excess of that wh constitutes function. Can 
 it be so in respect to sin ? or has it been so at first in respect to the 
 Fall ? The first sin, like the origin of disease, as it were from excess 
 of function? But there are other diseases, viz. those in wh the nutrition 
 is deficient : not excess of decay but insufficient vital action ; and after 
 disease is once set up it continues by an insufficient vitality. This is 
 the case with us, I conceive : we are born in and into a state of disease ; 
 it is not in us an excess of function ; we are never in a natural, normal 
 state, as Adam was. To return to the first thought : suffering is as it 
 were sentient not-being not-being in a living, sentient Being. So 
 surely our spiritual suffering, remorse, moral suffering in widest sense, 
 must be not-being in a living, morally sentient Being ? In death, com- 
 plete and entire, is no suffering ; but see how we consider death the 
 greatest of evils. Now utter selfishness and deadness to all good is spi- 
 ritual death. This is the punishment of sin [Swedenborg] : spiritual 
 not-being without any consciousness of it, without any pain. We are so 
 blind, we do not see the fearful horror of this punishment ; we cannot 
 see that this is death. Man's justice must claim suffering, something 
 thingal ; God's justice inflicts death, the actual. 
 
 That nature is truly spiritual consider how spiritual Being, love or 
 not-love, determines some physical things [our bodily actions, &c.] nd 
 if some, surely all : how can we divide physical phna into two classes ? 
 if some are expressions of spiritual being, surely all must be so. That 
 wh is not the expression of our spiritual Being is the expression of that 
 of other spirits. That action of ours which in relation to us is sin, or 
 expresses our not-being, must express other Being ; it is still spiritual, 
 still love : just as that wh is disease and death in respect to us bodily, 
 is part of the life of the whole. 
 
 If a child be loving and good it is a ' child ' ; only so truly the idea. 
 So a 'man' involves the idea of the spiritual too ; he who is selfish is not 
 a man : he is deficient in an essential element the actual fact is want- 
 ing, and all else is to be destroyed. All that is in him is from not-being ; 
 only the negative element is in him. Here again is a proof, a confession, 
 of our spiritual not-being. If we see the physical and mental it seems 
 to us that there is all ; we do not perceive that the essential part is not. 
 Here an idea comes in respecting pur state after death : the man who 
 has no spiritual being dies, and truly he is not. To him also the judg- 
 ment is then present. How is this, if time be not, if the wicked after 
 death also have no relation to time? are they not overpowered with God's 
 love, and destroyed ? The ' annihilation ' people are in the position of 
 Berkeley : they put a true doctrine wrongly, and so the world rejects 
 it, and rightly ; for true as it is, it wd have put a stop to progress : it 
 is inorganic food. So they confound ' eternal ' with unending time talk 
 of not having immortality when they shd speak of not having moral, 
 i. e. spiritual, ' eternal ' Being and represent the destruction as destruc- 
 tion of Being instead of not-being. 
 
 Time and space 'begin' with the relation to not-being. Of course 
 time has no beginning or end as time ; it is a spiritual (i. e. an eternal 
 and infinite) or absolute Being, appearing as a minus Being, .. as an
 
 706 
 
 apparently unbeginning and unending ' extent.' They begin with sin ; 
 and of course are infinite and eternal at all times equally ; at their be- 
 ginning they are as infinite as ever they become ; i. e. time from the 
 first, had an infinity of past. The infinity is not in the time, but in 
 the fact ; time is only a form under which we perceive infinity. So of 
 space, &c. 
 
 We must have such senses, because we have such spiritual faculties. 
 Sight, because we spiritually see ; ears, because we hear ; and so of all; 
 and all our faculties because we do actually so act. The senses, as all 
 other things, all other words, are truly and actually spiritual. 
 
 Consider this : action (any action) cannot be in time without resist- 
 ance ; and with resistance it must be in time. Our moral action is re- 
 sisted ; does not this constitute the time, the physical ? is it not thus 
 our action seems to be in time ? Our passion resists our action ; here is 
 the meaning of the word. That wh is ' passion ' is physical physical 
 because 'passion.' We have passion because of our not-being, not-acting; 
 passion is the contrary of acting ; inaction surrounded by action neces- 
 sarily has passion in it. Our ' passion ' (in largest sense, including our 
 ' passions ' commonly so called) arises from the effect on us, as not acting, 
 of other action. These ' passions' are the physical, in opposition to the 
 spiritual, wh is action. These passions in us resist our action. Our 
 entire conception of the physical is from passion in us ; but passion in 
 us can only be from inaction i. e. sin in us, not-being. The physical 
 is from sin ; because without not-acting (or not-being) there is no pas- 
 sion, and without passion no perception (of the physical world). Ne- 
 cessarily that wh has passion has inertia. But this resistance of our pas- 
 sions to our spiritual act wants more thinking of. Surely theresistance 
 to our moral being or action must be from our not-being ? Or must not 
 the action without us be resistance to our action ? Is it not ever so 
 in the physical : the action without is resistance to the individual 
 action. Yet surely, save from our not-being, there wd not be passions 
 in us ; there wd be our action, our corresponding love, instead of these 
 passions. Our passions are from our absence of love ? Not yet quite ; 
 because these passions constitute our ' life.' But I see now how our 
 passions, our evil desires, are from our corruption, our depravity, our 
 disease. Tet how is it that a man is not wicked save as he yields to 
 these against his conscience ? not wicked because tempted, altho' only 
 from his depravity subject to temptation ? This relation of the con- 
 science, the moral personality, is what I have to find out. Is it the 
 life given by God in pardoning man ? 
 
 The eternal is being and action in one : these are separate or distin- 
 guishable only in the physical ; and it is clear .*. that man's spiritual 
 action is eternal. This is the great point I want to render plain : the 
 Being, the life, is in the acting. 
 
 I see that the eternity of the spiritual involves the equivalent of the 
 pre-existence of the man : i. e. not as in time, not that we existed be- 
 fore our physical life ; but we exist in a sense independent of it. This 
 life is a dream, not being truly a part of the actual existence or Being 
 at all ; this idea of the dream is the clue to the physical life. A man's 
 real life is independent of, unconnected with, his dreams. Now will 
 the idea of sleep help me altogether in understanding the physical life ? 
 Sleep, the image of death, a passive state.
 
 707 
 
 Time (the physical) represents the love of benevolence : Being giving 
 itself to not-being, force operating in direction of less force : i. e. the 
 love of complacency (the eternal) becomes necessarily benevolence by 
 being in relation to not-being (i. e. becomes the temporal). The love 
 of complacency is love of Being, love between Being ; and this same 
 love, if one Being is not, necessarily is then love of benevolence or gives 
 itself. Love of benevolence exists only in time, wh the physical 
 images, by wh only the physical exists. This physical is God's love 
 of benevolence to us, even as the eternal is mutual love (of complacency) 
 between us and God. In the physical, in redemption, God gives Him- 
 self to and for us, to become us. Time is the becoming; eternity the 
 Being, the acting. Time is exactly the separation of the Being and 
 the action. In the eternal, Being and acting are one. Separately they 
 constitute nutrition and function, one existing for the other; action for 
 results. In time nutrition is ' Being/ function is 'action ;' but in 
 the eternal these are one. So I see again how there is no spiritual 
 substance ; but spirit is act and Being in one, it is eternal ; action not 
 separate ; atom not divisible. And ' substance' the physical thus is 
 from 'atomic'[spiritual]action, as chemists say ; or of the 'point,' as the 
 mathematicians say. Substance, or space [the physical] is from spiritual 
 action. But farther ; it is from spiritual action in relation to not-being. 
 We see this both in mathematics and chemistry j the motion of the 
 point involves it, but still more clearly the chemical action 'of atoms.' 
 For this action is a polar action, an action in less resistance being 
 giving itself to relative not-being. See what is involved in the chemi- 
 cal doctrine of substance from the polar action of atoms. It is the phy- 
 sical arising from spiritual Being in relation to spiritual not-being. And 
 in mathematics also we must see this ; the motion of the point must be 
 truly thus polar ; Being giving itself to not-being : the point continu- 
 ally gives itself to not-point. The conception of the polar is truly that of 
 time itself, of Being and not-being, function and nutrition. The posi- 
 tive atom is love, action (truly therefore Being) ; the negative is rela- 
 tively not-being, therefore ensues action, a giving of self to not-being, 
 i. e. the production of substance. Every new substance or thing is 
 thus from self-sacrifice, is a true 'creation.' 
 
 The philosopher's ' religion is the restoration to unity in thought of 
 the connecting idea that seems broken to pieces in the multiplicity of 
 phenomena.' [Strauss, Rev: in National, Jan., 1857, p. 192.] This 
 is truly good. The one that is separated thus is the moral, the spiritual 
 (or eternal), wh appears in the phna as succession or use, as chain of 
 cause and effect ; existing i. e. in time. The right or holy, existing in 
 time or succession must be use ; it still retains its character as love or 
 good. 
 
 The doctrine of virtue or moral rightness being that wh most pro- 
 motes happiness [Paley's doctrine], goes with that view of natural 
 theology, wh sees in creation only God's wisdom in the sense of design 
 and skill. Nature truly viewed teaches a better lesson ; she is law, 
 she does not exist for results. God in nature acts according to an ab- 
 solute rule independently of results. What an infinite (yes, and 
 eternal, for it is moral) meaning there is in this law of Science. God 
 acts by an invariable rule, and not for results : blessed be the men who 
 have sought to establish this as the fact of Science. Therefore He does
 
 708 
 
 not act in time ; He acts morally. Philosophy used to consider that 
 God acted for results, subordinated the spiritual to the temporal. 
 Therefore philosophy required to fall, to become wholly physical, be- 
 fore it could rise to a true holiness. Now must it not have been so 
 with Adam [i. e. original man ? is it not that we did all exist do ex- 
 ist, rather in Adam] ? This was his state before the fall ; the spirit- 
 ual in some sense was in him subordinated to results, not truly seen as 
 holiness. So that it was necessary he shd fall, become not spiritual, 
 merely physical, arbitrary, selfish, before he could become truly holy. 
 He had not life, or only by the tree of life : what was his state ? That 
 of children, in whom is no sin, yet all is for results ; not denying and 
 rejecting the holiness or true spiritual, but not seeing or knowing it ? 
 And children also fall, and by God's grace become, through falling, 
 holy. Now the evil of sin remains to me, but its mystery departs ; 
 death swallowed up in life. 
 
 I begin to see this now. It is necessary that in respect to man the 
 spiritual shd not be, shd be wholly excluded or suppressed, in order 
 that it shd come back in a higher form, as true holiness instead of in- 
 nocency. But then what was Adam's relation to the physical ? what 
 exact death ? "Was he not then in time ? or else how were there re- 
 sults ? Perhaps I must modify the thought of the physical being ab- 
 solutely and entirely from sin. 
 
 Thus do I not see better the scriptural doctrines of sudden conversion 
 of mere repentance at death as constituting salvation ? This also is 
 the deepest philosophy : if the spiritual life be, it is absolute, eternal. 
 So again, the perfect happiness or joy in heaven, undisturbed by re- 
 morse, in spite of past sin i.e. of not-being. It is the not-being that is 
 looked back upon, not a subject for remorse. The not-love in us is the 
 only sin. The love being absent, the particular 'actions', the things we 
 do, are mere result of circumstances. We are passive, and are acted 
 through ; that is our external 'sinfulness.' The sin is the not- being, 
 not-loving ; on this in heaven all feeling as it were is concentrated. 
 
 In our life the point is not what we can get, but what we can be ; 
 i. e. what we can give. For Being is giving self; it is the action, the 
 spiritual, i. e. the eternal ; but ' things ' cease to be in giving self. 
 Force, or action, exists in giving self ; but things cease in giving them- 
 selves. This is the difference. They are not eternal, they are in time, 
 they end, i. e. they are not actual. That which acts exists in giving 
 self. 
 
 With regard to spiritual Being consisting in action : it is not the ab- 
 stract action we conceive from nature, apart from Being ; spirit is not 
 action in this abstract sense. God is not the action of loving, as we 
 consider it ; apart from the loving Being. This is applying the concep- 
 tion of time to eternity. The true conception is that wh does away 
 with the distinction. Spirit is Being and action as absolutely one : no 
 more action alone than Being alone. Which is the best way of arriving 
 at the right conception of this ? If we consider how the eternal can 
 be in time, of course it must be seen as right, i. e. as necessary. 
 
 Might it not be that Adam was in some way so created as to be in a 
 world in some sense physical, created with the 'not-ness,' not of sin but 
 of childhood ? and so necessarily became sinful ; excluding that imper- 
 fect spirituality in order to rise to a true one, a .holiness ; and in his
 
 709 
 
 full the world becoming physical, or thing-al, in a sense quite different 
 from before ? This seems to me the very fact, though as yet too dim. 
 
 Making God's act in time makes it at once un-moral, denies its eter- 
 nity wh is one with its moralness. Creation, in the sense of making at a 
 given time, of course could not be moral, must be for results, must be 
 arbitrary. So it goes on depriving the universe of all that makes it 
 truly a universe to us. The view of the physical as from man's sin, 
 beginning as it were from the fall, answers that question else unan- 
 swerable : when did the physical begin ? Time began when man fell ; 
 then was the first 'when.' He did not fall in time ; but, he falling, 
 time was. 
 
 See, in the very conception of force the law of liberty is written, i.e. 
 love Action in direction of least resistance, mutual action and re-ac- 
 tion. The love of benevolence, as seen in time ; love, in eternity. The 
 law of liberty is love. And this belongs thus, as its very definition, to 
 all that can be conceived as existing, i. e. as acting to motion, to force 
 of whatever kind. It is in its nature, it forms its essence, it is written 
 in its name. The law of love, the only not-arbitrary. Justice is ac- 
 tion in direction of least opposite action; it comes within the 
 definition of lore. ' If there be any commandment it is included 
 in this.' 
 
 Our entire conception of the material is a hypothesis, an arbitrary 
 'supposition,' i. e. no reason for it in itself; but we are obliged to 'sup- 
 pose' it to account for what we know or feel ; this is the idea of hypo- 
 thesis as opposed to fact. Newton did away with the hypothesis of the 
 motions of the solar system, referring them all to a fact of our own 
 experience ; viz., weight. And this he did by showing that in the de- 
 tails the phna of astronomy were the same thing. I seek to set aside 
 the hypothesis of the material universe, and refer the whole to a fact of 
 our own experience, viz., to love. And this I do by showing that the 
 phna of the physical are in their details the same thing* [See the 
 proofs of this, that nature is love.] The steps of the process, prepara- 
 tory and decisive, and the result, all seem to me to be closely parallel. 
 The physical world is love, even as gravitation is weight. I think the 
 evidence is even stronger. Can I find any spiritual relation in the law 
 of the inverse square ? 
 
 Consider how evidently hypothesis and arbitrariness are from not, 
 from not-action The external force or action, operates alone; it is the op- 
 eration of extraneous thought in the absence of knowledge on that particu- 
 lar subject. A vacancy of action (or Being) left, is as it were filled up 
 by action or Being from without. So that this is in truth an instance of 
 less resistance, polar union. This is the nutrition, the vital action 
 (wrongness) : not the not-being, but the action determined by it, the 
 giving self to not-being, the love. All the effect, all the mischief pro- 
 duced by not-being is only the fact of love, it is the ' external ' action 
 giving itself to the not, it is the life indeed, the nutrition. 
 
 And just as this is true of hypothesis, so is it also of all arbitrari- 
 ness, and emphatically of selfishness ; that is action external to our- 
 selves, taking the place of us as it were, operating where our action, 
 our Being ought to be. A man who acts arbitrarily or selfishly, does 
 not truly act : he is merely acted' through or on by powers external to 
 himself. He is not, is 'naught ;' his existence is utterly ignored save 
 as affording a mere scope for the operation of that wh is not he. His
 
 710 
 
 passions rule, i. e. he is inertia and does not act. Inertia is not-ness. 
 
 So all the physical is from not-ness ; it is a shadow. "We perceive the 
 shadow of a spiritual fact or Being, wh shadow of course is a thing, is 
 real enough ; has its effects, its action (in that sense), as all shadows 
 have ; and of course is definite and exact, is not imaginary, or an 
 illusion ; repays and demands accurate examination. Nay, only from 
 such accurate examination can an unseen reality be learnt from its 
 shadow. [An analogy good, but rather far off. Is it not Plato's ? 
 See Rep. book vii. Ed.] 
 
 How like is that universal gravitation to the universal love. And 
 surely all other action is derived from it, the same fact, with form only 
 changed ? And it is atomic, not truly of masses, but of the invisible 
 molecules, i. e. it is action without substance. Gravitation is not a 
 property of matter or substance ; it constitutes matter, as it were; gen- 
 erates it. The one-ness between it and chemicity must be borne in 
 mind ; both are actions of atoms, not 'affections' of matter, but its cause. 
 The other inorganic forces belong to masses larger or smaller. Chemi- 
 city and gravitation to atoms, i. e. are pure action. Yet again this helps 
 me, for can I not see all the infinite variety of chemicity as one with 
 the absolute simplicity of gravitation ? For from gravitation we have 
 the results of both attraction and repulsion ; a light body rises from 
 gravitation just as a heavy body falls ; and bodies are attracted with all 
 variety of velocities, owing to the varied resistances. Surely this same 
 idea may be the clue to chemicity, the varieties of chemical action, all due 
 to varieties of resistance ? In accounting for any facts all the external 
 surrounding forces or actions must be taken into consideration. 
 
 Here is an instance of necessary false hypothesis preceding truth ; 
 e. g. the rising up of light bodies ; it must first be stated as a false hy- 
 pothesis in being stated in the simplest way. Nothing but a theory and 
 an interpretation could ever give us the truth of that ; we cannot in any 
 other way state the phn but by the false hypothesis that the light body 
 rises up. See also how facts are to be understood by going quite away 
 from them. To know about bodies rising it was necessary to know the 
 opposite, to study bodies falling. A good parallel for the study of life. 
 That has been regarded as a rising up, and studied as such ; and neces- 
 sarily the phn cannot otherwise be studied ; yet is it truly only falling 
 down, and only by that to be understood. This applies to all divergent 
 actions : they are only to be known by knowledge of corresponding ap- 
 proximative. 
 
 Surely the law of the inverse square must apply also to chemicity, and 
 indeed to all only interfered with by resistance. And therefore the de- 
 partures from it reveal those resistances. In gravitation, e. g. the re- 
 sistance of atmosphere, &c., is known by its interference with this lav 
 of gravitation. Is not all this, by wh I have been proving nature to be 
 love or moral, just that wh corresponds to the law of the inverse square? 
 Yes, I have first seen these laws or facts of our own experience (i. e. 
 the weight), and then that nature corresponds to them. Surely the law 
 of less resistance must be in some sense analogous. 
 
 I see now better about our consciousness as belonging only to the 
 spiritual ; how the I, the person, is ; altho' in us is spiritual not-being. 
 There is not, cannot be, absolute spiritual not-being. Being is abso- 
 lute, is infinite. Our not-being is not from mere absence of Being, but
 
 711 
 
 is its suppression. As in the pendulum, the downward movement is 
 not ; it is suppressed, but still exists ; is not, yet is. The tendency, 
 the necessity, remains ; it is to be again. So our conscience [wh in- 
 volves of course consciousness and is the only basis and source of it : 
 man is perceptive or sensational, because he is a moral (responsible) 
 Being ; love is conscious necessarily] our conscience is this suppressed 
 spiritual Being, still asserting itself, existing as tendency, as conscious 
 right, as necessity. So in Science, merely physical as it is, there is a 
 conscience, the voice of wh is ever heard, a feeling of the spiritual wh 
 at last re-asserts itself, and Science becomes spiritual again. 
 
 This suppressed spiritual Being of humanity is the great fact, the 
 universal life, including and represented by all others. The tendency 
 to re- assert itself, the necessity revealed by conscience, the Tightness, is 
 the great functional tendency. The re-establishment of the spiritual as 
 holiness is the great function of humanity, wh is one with the develop- 
 ment (as I have seen in the mental life) ; all that exists in relation to 
 man, exists 'that man be holy.' 
 
 All not-being exists as a suppression of Being. It begins with the 
 suppression, and save by such suppression cannot be. Therefore all 
 not-being is result of a nutrition, and means of a function. Also all 
 suppression of action is from action, i. e. from resistance, from other 
 action wh is equally right and good. So now I see how sin is all from 
 good. It is suppression of Being by means of other Being. The 'not' 
 wh constitutes nutrition arrises from action in relation from other action. 
 The failure of humanity, from wh the sin of man arises, is from the re- 
 lation of that action to other action by wh its completion is prevented. 
 Now I begin to trace the preciser meanings and correspondencies of the 
 actual or spiritual universe. I must trace the continuous and transitive 
 vibration. In the history of humanity is a continuous vibration, a life, 
 a development. But still remains the evil of sin. Our sinning is not 
 life, not control wh makes nutrition, but self-indulgence wh is death. 
 Sin is none the less evil to us because it constitutes part of the life of 
 the whole. The function is good wh is gained by means of the not-be- 
 ing ; the not-being in itself is absolutely evil. But now seeing the sup- 
 pression thus, as the suppression wh is involved in all nutrition, I see 
 the necessity of it as it were. 
 
 Humanity failed, and failed as ever in nature, not from too little- 
 but from too much. [It was that failure that ever determines life the 
 failure in the earth's gravitation to the sun that causes it to revolve 
 around it.] Humanity failed, so became sinful ; so its spiritual Being 
 or action was suppressed ; and the physical arose space and time in 
 vh redemption is carried out. By this failure a necessary function is 
 achieved : man's holiness. Before the fall man was not holy, but only 
 innocent ? 
 
 Do I not see how humanity is one, and humanity is redeemed ; how 
 conscious men may perish utterly, and yet humanity be wholly re- 
 deemed ; 'men' as we call them, perish, but there is no loss to humani- 
 ty ? All that is, or was, must ever be: the spiritual, the true Being cannot 
 not be ; though suppressed, it still is, and cannot be lost. If no life is 
 in us, there is yet no less human life. Is not this succession of men 
 only the redeeming of humanity; must not the human race continue until 
 all humanity, all that is of it, is redeemed ? But not we if we 
 be not.
 
 712 
 
 When and wheresoever there is sin, suppression of moral Being, 
 there is the physical, there is time and space, there is nutrition; i.e.there 
 is redemption or development. This is the great life. This constitutes the 
 spiritual universe, this is our not-being from other spiritual Being, our 
 nutrition-producing failure, our tendency and function. All other forms 
 of life flow from, are included in, and re-present this. 
 
 About personality. It seems to be compatible with not-being. Is it 
 therefore we confound it with arbitrariness ? Or, in truth, is not per- 
 sonality, if we use the word properly, only from such arbitrariness, i.e. 
 from such not-being or passion ? Is not the true 'Being' that from wh 
 personality arises by the not, even as space from the point by motion, 
 i. e. by being moved, by passion or 'not' (i. e. inertia). Personality is 
 from the 'not,' as life from failure, as action from self-control ? May it 
 not be the suppression wh constitutes the personality ? Does it not 
 involve limits, i. e. physicalness ? In a person are not the Being and 
 the action separate ? Is a 'person' a substance, with power of action ? 
 Personality has reference to time. So with reference to the Divine na- 
 ture : God is personal in reference to time ; i.e. in the work of redemp- 
 tion. Three persons in one God. The three persons are not one person, 
 but one God. The personality comes from the true Being (i. e. Being 
 and action in one), by the relation to not, i. e. as seen in time Just as 
 length, breadth, and depth are from the point by relation to time, or by 
 motion (inertia). The 'atom' must surely represent Being and action in 
 one. The atom is not mere action apart from the Being or substance, 
 not action in that sense wh is a mere abstraction ; but is action and Be- 
 ing in one, a type of the spiritual. So in the production of the substance 
 from 'atom,' what takes place is separation of the Being and action ; so 
 we have substance and its actions. Emblem of the Divine, in wh the 
 absolute One, by relation to time, to not-being or as Eedeemer is 
 Three. 
 
 Thus it is that we associate with our idea of personality, the ideas of 
 freedom of the will and arbitrariness : it is essentially connected with 
 the ' not,' wh is the only arbitrary with the conception of self. But 
 now do I thus introduce ideas opposed to absolute love and holiness into 
 our conception of the Divine Persons ? Observe, how little it can be 
 that I give up in respect to personality ; not anything that is dessirable 
 to retain consciousness, love, moral character, &c. It is ridiculous to 
 fear the moral consequences of this view of personality. How can that 
 from wh humanity flows and arises, be less than it ? In truth, three 
 persons are not only one God ; bat three persons are the one humanity: 
 father, mother, and child ; without these three the one, the humanity, 
 is not ; and these three are one. In time humanity is three persons, 
 and so is God. The Bible speaks home, as it were ; says not the form, 
 but the fact ; e. g. that the man and wife are one, are one flesh ; not 
 are as if one, or feel as one, or shd be one ; but are one, even as Christ 
 and the Church are one, as Christ and the Father. 
 
 The wicked must be destroyed in order that humanity may be ; the 
 wicked are the suppression of humanity. Not-man and wicked man are 
 one the only not-man. But is not a table, e. g. not-man ? Answer : 
 the table is not ' being,' it is a form. But is not an angel not-man ? is 
 not God not-man ? I am not quite right here : I shd say, perhaps, in- 
 stead of not-man, the suppression of man, or the not-being of man. The
 
 713 
 
 wicked is the 'hypothesis' as it were existing only for the function effected 
 by its destruction. The only not-being of man is the suppression of hu- 
 manity, love, conscience, by passion, wh is the result or fact of inertia 
 or inaction : as physically, there is no not-action save where there is 
 mischief, ruin : the ruin is the test and proof, (and only test) of the 
 not-action. So there is no ignorance without hypothesis : i. e. there is 
 no gap, or spot, where is no action, but external action takes possession 
 of it (i.e. in the form of passion) necessarily from law of least resist- 
 ance. So man's being subject to passions proves his not-being. And 
 see, these passions are external actions operating where he ought to be : 
 and yet again, they are the love, the Being giving itself to not-being ; 
 it is by these passions so given him that he can live again. They are 
 the very fact of his redemption ; by means of them he is in time and 
 space, i. e. in the physical world, and has the means of laying hold on 
 eternal life. 
 
 I see why the physical is so strong in its influence over us, so predo- 
 minant. It is because it is the very thing ; it is the ' point ' after all, 
 tho' in a relation to not-being wh makes it space (and time). Our part 
 is not to ignore it, not to substitute a spiritual for it, not to ' rise above 
 it,' but to see it, itself, to be the spiritual. 
 
 That wh is done for ' result ' must be wrong. It is the very work of 
 Talent (nutrition); it is as such the effect of the ' not.' So thinking 
 for result is always wrong thinking, and puts us wrong, leads us to mo- 
 dify, to make up, &c. : but as this acting for result in thought is nutri- 
 tion, so also sin must be. 
 
 With regard to animals and their not feeling, how far am I right in 
 considering them [and all the physical world] as constituting or contri- 
 buting to constitute, the bodies of spirits, and so subserving spiritual 
 consciousness or sensation ? Consider how the ' physicalness ' arises 
 from ourselves : they are not truly matter ; but may it not be true just 
 the same, that these physical things do subserve spiritual consciousness ; 
 that our physical action on them has such effect ? The true things are 
 spiritual ; and our action, tho' physical to us, is truly spiritual action, 
 tho' not ours. Dimly I see, the pain of animals has a true actual 
 meaning, tho' not pain of the physical animal. 
 
 Does not the continuance of force, after ceasing in any given form, 
 (e. g. when a tree dies, the force that was vital in it still remains) 
 does not this represent the absolute existence of the true humanity, the 
 love wh exists tho men be dead ; tho' suppressed, it still is. Is this the 
 conscience ? 
 
 In respect to the two forms of cause, efficient and co-existing : as to 
 the former, the relation is of force only ; one action becomes another ; 
 but in the latter there must be, besides, a substance, a something in or 
 by means of wh the image is seen : e. g. the motion of the sun, or of a 
 hedge, is an image of our motion ; a shadow is cast by some object by 
 means of light, &c. In respect to our perception, does not eur not-being 
 answer to this substance? Not exactly; yet I see how the not-being in us 
 causes us to see a not-ness in the universe. This physical state is a nu- 
 tritive state. Adam's state was not physical, nor was it the heavenly 
 state ; the physical state is the intermediate, the nutritive. Just as the 
 old Science was not rightly 'physical,' nor the future ; this physical Sci- 
 ence is intermediate. Now here is a help ; the future Science is not
 
 714 
 
 physical, as heaven is not physical : the former Science was not physi- 
 cal as Eden was not physical. I have a help to the mode of the non- 
 physicalness of Eden. The past Science was a non-physicalness of igno- 
 rance ; the future will be a non-physicalness of knowledge and choice : 
 the former from its merely not having been, the latter from its having 
 been excluded and rejected. Advance is not from mere ignorance, but by 
 voluntary rejection, of the not. We must know good and evil, that we 
 may choose the good and reject the evil : this is in Nature. The becom- 
 ing physical of Science was from the tree of knowledge of good and 
 evil. See also the applicability of the idea of fruit ; it is an eating, 
 just what the physical Science is. 
 
 It is curious to note how frequently the truth comes the inorganic 
 food : truth but arbitrary instead of right an attempt to anticipate inter- 
 pretation. Wd it not seem to be a law ? some necessary action in hu- 
 manity of wh I shall see the universality ? 
 
 Man [humanity] must be impersonal, even as God is ; the same argu- 
 ment exists, viz. that he can only be in three persons. But this imper- 
 sonal humanity is not therefore nothing, it is the very fact. It is the 
 Love, wh because it is love, demands more than one person. And it is 
 this humanity that is redeemed ; this is saved ; while personality, per- 
 sons, are destroyed : in truth it is saved by and in the destruction of 
 that self personality which is the not-being of it. Selfishness, that 
 personality in wh love is not, is the not-being of man. Human selfish- 
 ness is not-being in respect to humanity. For that is love ; it must be 
 since it demands three persons for its ' personal ' existence. 
 
 See the oppositeness of passion and action. Passion is getting : action 
 is giving : even the passion of love (as we call it) is for a getting, made 
 worthy only by the giving of ourselves that is united with it. And it 
 is this passion, or getting apart from giving, that is to be done away. 
 When we consider that passion is only from inertia, we may see as self- 
 evident, the doctrine of the Fall. "Without inertia there can be no 
 passion ; but there can be no inertia, i. e. inaction, save from previous 
 action. There could be no physical save from a fall, even as there can 
 be no passion or inertia save from action or Being that has ceased to be. 
 
 Physical passions are from the very action that has ceased. They are 
 itself in another form, and in relation to its not-being, to inertia or the 
 not-being of that action. So is it in the moral : are not the actions wh 
 constitute our passions the very same action which is suppressed in us ? 
 even as the ' light ' is the very same chemical action wh has ceased. 
 
 Do I not see a true life in these relations of the forces : the ceasing 
 of the chemical action, and becoming of heat or light,&c.,is the same as 
 nutrition from suppression ? It is the chemical action failing, being 
 suppressed, and existing in another form. 'Fails,' and 'reaches its limit,' 
 are they not one ? Am I not in truth seeing the essential one-ness of 
 the continuous and transitive vibrations ? in each the same fact that 
 the action is suppressed, and exists in another form, wh therefore is 
 polar,i.e. at right angles. So the chemical action and the resulting forces 
 are polar ; or generally, the attraction and the vibration are polar. 
 And with respect to the spiritual, our 'passion' is polar to the suppress- 
 ed action from wh it arises. So the former spiritual, and the present 
 passional, are polar, and by being united into one constitute the devel- 
 opment of humanity. Our passions are truly ours, ourselves, but in a 
 new relation as it were ; they are that action wh from ita failure, its
 
 715 
 
 failure, its suppression, is not now in us; they are humanity, the love, in 
 a relation to the not-being of the same humanity. Just as in life, in the 
 pendulum, the 'rectangular' motion is the same motion as that from wh it 
 arises, only in a relation to the not-being of it. So the two can be 
 united, and development can be. Adam was active humanity, we are 
 passional humanity. The very same action, but in relation to Adam ac- 
 tive, in relation to us passion ; because Adam was the ' Being ' of the 
 action, we are the not-being of it. This not-being it is that must be 
 destroyed in order that the function, the life of humanity may be a- 
 chieved, the full true Being of man may be. 
 
 For in truth this is the very fact of sin, or spiritual not-being that 
 man becomes a thing; is, so far, a thing, acted upon passively by extern- 
 al forces or powers, doing what circumstances determine. This is the fact 
 of sinf ulness or not having love. Like all other things, he ' acts according 
 to the strongest motive ' (motive or mover) : all this selfishness, arbit- 
 rariness, doing as we like, is exactly what takes place in things ; this is 
 just what they all do, and what constitutes them things. But wheu a 
 man has love, then he acts. He is no longer a substance, inert and de- 
 termined by moving forces external ; he himself acts and is. In the 
 former case he is not, for he does not act. 
 
 To see the evil of not being, look into our own hearts and see the ser- 
 pents that are there. How wonderful is the instinctive shudder at that 
 word. Not-being is a 'serpent; 'there is a wonderful physical truth here: 
 see Hugh Miller's Footprints respecting degradation of typas ; the sei^pent 
 is degraded by defect. It represents absence of that wh should be ; so 
 all repulsive low forms, the degraded forms, are from 'absence,' i.e from 
 suppression. The development of life here agrees with and repeats what 
 we have seen. All evil in living forms is from suppression of that wh 
 is in the perfect forms ; i. e. of that wh shd be. And this evil, this not- 
 being, comes not first but last ; it is a suppression in the physical of that 
 wh has been [i. e. so far as it exists in relation to time]. 
 
 These low forms are evil by not-being ; and they are from suppression. 
 And consider the multiplication of similar parts in the serpent. It shows 
 a want of resistance, i. e. of development ; no sufficient control, as it 
 were, and so a running on of the same instead of rising to higher. Is 
 it a type of the self-indulgence ? Is it not as if the vital action were 
 gone on into higher forms, so leaving these defective ones : and this a 
 proof of the mutual dependence of the successive grades of life upon 
 each other (virtually a proof of development) ? This implies the de- 
 velopment and degradation ; this suppresssion of Being is only for the 
 sake of higher Being. It is the type (as all nutrition is) of self-sacrifice, 
 willing suppression for the sake of another. 
 
 The question is, whence comes the inertia that we perceive in nature ? 
 and the answer is, from ourselves. We perceive it in nature that we 
 may know it of ourselves, and so create true Science. This is why we 
 are in a physical world ; only so can the fact be revealed to us, the fact 
 being spiritual, and two fold : God's Being, our not-being. True Science 
 begins with this discovery that the inertia of nature is subjective. By 
 seeing that the motion we perceive in the heavens is of ourselves, how 
 much is shown to us ; the physical universe is revealed to us. So by 
 seeing that the inertia wh we perceive in nature is iu ourselves, how 
 
 x2
 
 716 
 
 much is shown to us ; the spiritual universe is revealed. Will it not be 
 good for man when the idea of the spirituality of the universe that the 
 facts wh are around him are love, moral Being, and that thing-al-ness is 
 in him alone [in him and in the devil] will it not be good for him when 
 this thought is as familiar to his heart as that of the motion of the earth 
 is now to his head ? 
 
 Restraining our passions, giving up that wh is agreeable for right, for 
 Being, or even for the betterness of ourselves, for our own true good, 
 how can it be called self-sacrifice ? what a poor trivial thing it is, and 
 yet what wonder it is that so much is given to it, that life comes from it, 
 that even that is made a means of infinite blessing the sacrifice of a 
 thing that is not us at all. 
 
 It is no wonder there has been so much materialism, confounding as 
 we have done, the spiritual with the mental. The mental is truly phy- 
 sical, one with the rest of the bodily life, and is only perceived as is the 
 rest of it. This seems the clue to the philosophy of the mind. It is 
 our mode of perceiving that very same passion wh constitutes our bodies, 
 and of course it depends on our bodies ; there is nothing about it other 
 than physical, i. e. passional. Surely here I shall find out the secret of 
 the connection of thought, consciousness, &c., with the brain. 
 
 As to animals we are all of necessity poets. The poet says of a 
 flower that it is ' thirsty;' and he does not speak figuratively, but strictly. 
 The flower is thirsty ; if that wh is in the flower were in us we shd per- 
 ceive the thirstiness, or as we say, ' be thirsty.' This is only the per- 
 ception of a bodily condition ; wh condition does not depend on our per- 
 ceiving it ; nor can it rightly be called by any other name. The poet 
 has true and fine perceptions : but the most ordinary man is a poet re- 
 specting animals, and says of them ' they are hungry ' or ' thirsty.' All 
 recognize in them that wh, in themselves they perceive as hunger and 
 thirst. Of course the animal is hungry, just as we are ; but we are 4 a 
 Being' to perceive or be conscious of the hunger ; there is no Being to 
 be conscious of or perceive the hunger of the animal ; it is altogether a 
 thing. If the hunger were not there (independent of our perception), 
 how could we perceive, feel, or be conscious of it ? Does our conscious- 
 ness create that of wh we are conscious ? How can we feel hunger, ex- 
 cept because there is hunger to feel ? We have been deceiving ourselves 
 here as if our consciousness or perception were something in itself, in- 
 stead of a perception of something. It is just an inversion here of the 
 fancy of a real matter external to us ; we make in one case that wh is 
 internal external ; in the other that wh is external internal. Or again, 
 how can I be conscious of (or perceive), under the form of hunger, a 
 condition of the body in respect to proportion of fluids or of salts ? It 
 is hunger that I feel. These ' conditions of the body ' are hypotheses, 
 theories. I do not ' perceive ' them, they are suppositions wh I infer or 
 invent to account for what I perceive. 
 
 Is there anything in this : that it is only by our 'function' that we can 
 ever act, i. e. be ? 
 
 I see now how much there was in the emenda tion of Descartes' max- 
 im, to ' ago ergo ego,' for see what it comes to : the very statement of 
 the not-being of humanity ; I do not act, therefore not I. The thinking, 
 the passion, does not make the I : it is the not-acting wh reveals the not
 
 717 
 
 I. Tt is on the conscience, not on sensation, that the basic fact depends ; 
 true knowledge, being only moral, must have foundation in the moral. 
 The inertia in us is revealed by this axiom ; in me there is passion, .-. 
 I am not-being. [It is clear that Being can only be established by 
 action, be predicated of that which acts. To act and to be are 
 one.] 
 
 It seems to me that theism or deism is the most superficial of all views. 
 It is impossible in it to do justice to the facts, to grasp them all boldly. 
 To do that we must, I think, have either Christianity, or pantheism or 
 atheism (wh are two forms of one thing). 
 
 There is none too much sin ; only so much as there is love acting upon 
 man in his death. Necessarily it must be that man, being inert, should 
 sin. So of individual cases ; may it not be that sin is the source of the 
 life of love ? By evil deeds comes conviction of sin, repentance, Love, 
 and even thus the forgiveness. Save as sinning from our passions, we 
 could not be forgiven, i. e. made alive. Selfishness without sin were ir- 
 remediable loss and utter hopeless death. How vile a thing that must 
 be of wh the only hope and help, the only remedy and cure, the best 
 effect of wh, for the cure and removal of wh it is all worth while is all 
 this sin. For the cure of selfishness this is a light price to pay. It is 
 a joy, an infinite blessedness, to get rid of selfishness at only such a 
 sacrifice, adding to it the sacrifice of the Saviour. 
 
 That which is obscure and difficult must be so from our looking at it 
 wrongly. But that wh we can look at wrongly we can look at aright. 
 The reason of the obscurity is ever our introducing a hypothesis or * not ' 
 from ourselves either arbitrariness or inertia, according to the circum- 
 stances, or the ' stage.' Surely there is but one remedy ; viz., uniting 
 action and necessity, or that wh is in us, and that wh our concience re- 
 veals as the Being that we are not. 
 
 All respecting ' matter ' is obscure because we introduce inertia ; all 
 about spirit is obscure because we introduce arbitrariness. Our con- 
 ceptions of spirit and matter are the two halves, each a fact and a 
 * not ;' arbitrary action, necessary passion. These are to be united : both 
 seen to be ' necessary action;' are made one in spiritualism, wh is the 
 unifying of matter and spirit, destroying inertia and arbitrariness, wh 
 are introduced alike from our own ' not.' We get rid of the inertia 
 from the physical, the arbitrariness from the spiritual, in all the details 
 of mental life, surely on the same principle. Obscurity is ever from 
 hypothesis, from the half being considered as the whole: a half fact with 
 a ' not,' considered as a complete fact. Of course this must be obscure. 
 But now that we are up to this, shd not the days of obscurity be draw- 
 ing to a close ? We have a guide; a light, we know what to do with 
 obscure conceptions ; viz., resolve them, distinguish the positive from 
 the negative element, and see what is and what is wanting. We may 
 not be able to complete it and solve the problem that is always a work 
 of time and progress but we may see the problem, and be no longer 
 puzzled we may distinguish the known from the unknown, and see 
 clearly the nature ofthe case and the mode of the enquiry. The negative 
 or unknown must be either as arbitrariness, or as inertia; and under 
 whatsoever form we detect these elements in any conception, we may
 
 718 
 
 know that these are the symbols of the unknown. And so the problem 
 may be marshalled and brought into consistency with new knowledge 
 and the progress of our thought. Let me try this in some case ; e. g. 
 gravitation, or chemicity. 
 
 It is interesting to see how little Comte sees what comes of exclud- 
 ing arbitrariness and inertia that love or holiness comes in their place. 
 It is like the mathematician excluding substance or space, and thinking 
 that he has only nothing, or the point ; not seeing that he has truly the 
 infinite or spiritual. Tho' the latter does recognize some infinity in his point 
 as in the use of infinitesimals. But in truth there is an interesting parallel 
 between the mathematical conception of the point as absolute nothing, 
 and the 'positive' conception of mere laws the 'absolute nothing' again. 
 In trying to get rid of the absolute he puts up nothing as absolute, just 
 as the mathematician and chemist do in the point and atom. And by- 
 the bye, is there not a parallel in positivism to the chimera of an 
 infinity by indefinite extension? 
 
 Of course the problem of the universe is to unify matter and spirit, 
 to reduce all to one : that which is within, or conscience that wh is 
 known and that wh is without us, or the unknown, the symbolical. 
 [The external world is a symbol, as being ' unknown.'] Do we not effect 
 this unification by leaving out from each a 'not,' wh is in truth the same 
 ' not' under a different aspect? This is what God does too ; this is an 
 image of redemption ; redemption is the great interpretation, the great 
 function of humanity. Even as unification of matter and spirit is the 
 great function of the mental life of man ; the great intellectual inter- 
 pretation. 
 
 We feel the ' not ' in ourselves : ' that we are not as we ought to be.' 
 In us, as testified by our true and most intimate consciousness, viz., our 
 conscience, is at once this not right, this not action, wh we now seek 
 to leave out from the universe. We leave out thus only 'hypothesis,' 
 that ' not ' wh is from ourselves, and show clearly how we came to in- 
 troduce it, and must have introduced it ; as the astronomer who seeks 
 to exclude the diurnal motion of the sun and stars, can show how we 
 must have introduced it. Or might this ' not' be again from our own 
 'limit? 
 
 And see the mutual part taken. The physical Science excludes the 
 arbitrary ; the spiritual consciousness excludes the inertia. Each sup- 
 plies half, the nutritive and functional respectively ; but functional of 
 conrse first. The two halves unite into the development, making the 
 triune whole, as ever. 
 
 This is the part of our physical Science, to exclude arbitrariness from 
 our spiritual conception ; as our present physical state as men, our nu- 
 tritive state, is to exclude arbitrariness from ourselves, to make ns 
 holy ; and v.v. the spiritual excludes the inertia. Nutrition excludes 
 arbitrariness ; function, inertia. 
 
 It is strange how inertia has been to us the very essence of the phy- 
 sical : and arbitrariness of the spiritual, of the freedom of the will, of 
 God's sovereignty or personality, and so on. Feuerbach and Comte 
 are not without justification in confounding personality with arbitrari- 
 ness; i.e. from our words. Edwards and the necessitarians, are not they 
 anticipators? just parallel to Berkeley, denying this optional power, or
 
 719 
 
 the arbitrariness. Even as Berkeley denied matter or inertia. Our 
 hypothesis, our unknown symhol, has been the thing, the fact, to us, has 
 been considered as the actual, the Being. There is good reason for ar- 
 bitrariness and inertia being but one ; for in truth arbitrary action is 
 but passion. It is the very mode in wh we ' know,' or in ourselves 
 perceive, passion. It is one thing ; we, put in reference to nature, pas- 
 sion in place of action, 'not' for Being; even as in ourselves we take our 
 passion, the not I, to be ourselves. 
 
 Now do not I see better why matter and all the physical are? It is all 
 involved in that idea of inertia or passion, it is the mere fact of motion. 
 So do I get any better clue to the first of it as it were, to gravitation, 
 the line at wh the spiritual and physical become one ? We only have 
 to leave off looking wrongly at this. "We err by considering the phy- 
 sical and spiritual as distinct ; there is no line of demarcation, no point 
 at wh the spiritual becomes physical to us ; the two are one ; the phy- 
 sical is our mode of perceiving the spiritual. I have not to think how 
 the spiritual or actual joins on to gravitation, but how we, acted on by 
 the spiritual, perceive gravitation. It is love the love, the only love 
 itself seen as thing-al because of our ' not.' But I perceive also that 
 here is wanting more physical knowledge ; we must first know what 
 gravitation is physically, whether polar, &c., before we can rightly 
 see this ; as we could not see the relation of life to the spiritual till 
 we saw it physically. In general, I think, we may safely say gravita- 
 tion is but life, and has therefore the same spiritual relations. We 
 look at this wrongly ; there is a ' not ' in it. I must see if I can apply 
 my principle here, and distinguish the known from the unknown, so as 
 to state my equation, even if I cannot solve it. 
 
 Our idea of a spiritual apart from and above the physical is just the 
 error we have to give up, if we must see that this physical is the 
 spiritual wrongly seen. We have to learn to perceive the physical as 
 spiritual, to leave out the ' not.' All we can perceive must be things, 
 inertia, the physical. It is truly Being, act (i. e. spiritual), but to us 
 physical. We have hitherto practically considered our spiritual as phy- 
 sical, though not in name, i. e. as substantial, as acting in time, or for 
 results, as arbitrary. The study of the physical has redeemed us now 
 from this ; and now we have to invert the process and see the physical 
 as truly spiritual ; viz., as right, as holiness, or love. 
 
 How little our broad distinction of the spiritual from the physical has 
 availed us. This was a work of talent, a nutritive discrimination, ex- 
 isting for the functional unification. Most characteristic is this as a 
 nutrition done too under the sense of right, or 'ought,' for results; but, 
 like all such things done for results, how it fails. Our spiritual, in our 
 thought, has been exactly physical after all ; only by our conscience 
 have we truly known it. And it is this despised physical, wh has been 
 so carefully distinguished from the spiritual and put so below it, that . 
 teaches us after all what the spiritual truly is. A beautiful unification 
 for pantheism. But pantheists have failed to see that nature is but half 
 of the true Divine, that there is a not' in it; viz., passiveness or in- 
 ertia, for wh an action is to be substituted ; so that theirs is but a half 
 view. It is just an anticipation, an exclusion, parallel and exactly cor- 
 related to Berkeley's, function without nutrition. 
 
 Trace the parallel of pantheism, Berkeleyism, and materialism. Ma-
 
 720 
 
 terialism excluding wholly the known quantities, sticking to the un- 
 known symbols alone : Berkeley excluding the unknown symbols of 
 one sort ; yiz., inertia : pantheism excluding the unknown symbols of 
 another sort ; viz., the arbitrariness. It is necessary to retain all till 
 the problem is solved. These are all methods of cutting the knot, wh 
 re-ties itself immediately and leaves us just where we were (save as 
 they act as nutrition). Observe, there are two kinds of unknown sym- 
 bols, inertia, and arbitrariness : are these constantly present ? In 
 every form of the problem, or only in the higher comprehensive 
 forms ? 
 
 In perceiving the spiritual it is the physical we must perceive, and 
 v. v. There is no other way. Thus the incarnation becomes an axiom ; 
 and the symbolism of the Old Testament, the needful and only possible 
 process. 
 
 To our own perception or idea, we act arbitrarily, or at our own op- 
 tion merely ; and this is true, this is what we do. Our not-ness, our 
 inertia, is this our dead and fallen state. This is the misery of it. 
 This is why we conceive of the spiritual at once as arbitrary, and as 
 inert : the arbitrary ' spiritual/ and the inert physical, are the two ways 
 in wh our inertia or arbitrariness causes us to perceive the one spiritual 
 fact. Why are these two forms of the ' not ' in us ? are they not 
 polar, the vibration, i. e. the life, but in negative form ? are not both 
 necessary ? 
 
 Our conception of the spiritual apart from the physical, is the opposite 
 form in wh the spirituality of nature, suppressed in Science, still exists. 
 It is just as our conscience is the suppressed love existing in opposite 
 or polar form. Inertia is, to us, Being; even as our own bodies, or pas- 
 sions, appear to us to be us. The physical is the ' suppression' of the 
 spiritual ; and the separate spiritual world we conceive is like the con- 
 science apart from this ' us.' This is the mode in wh it still exists, as 
 being suppressed. The two polars diverge as it were. This divergence 
 of two polar opinions from limit, wh I saw before, is the same thing 
 as this existing of a fact in an opposite form from its being suppressed. 
 Each is but a half, and they are to be united, for truth or development. 
 Long ago, though dimly and with much trembling, I saw nature to be 
 God's act ; then that it was the very Being of created spirits, and then, 
 doubtingly but unavoidably, saw that it must be God Himself His act 
 and Being not being separable. Now I have traced it the polar op- 
 positeness (the life) of physical and spiritual, the half-ness of each, the 
 marriage union of the separate physical and spiritual in one holiness, 
 or love. See the antagonism at first of the polar opposites, repugnance 
 and contempt marking the separate spiritual as female, physical as 
 male ? again an inversion [here law, male ; arbitrary, female ; a con- 
 stant interchange of characters, each being either]. Opposites are one. 
 
 So with regard to the conscience, it is exactly this existence in polar 
 opposite form of the suppressed fact. It can exist only in reference to 
 a ' not ' (also thus the separate spiritual?). But it now is law ; it can 
 be only where there is passion, i. e. inertia, i. e. only in a nutritive 
 stage. In perfect union it is no longer as conscience. Or rather it 'be- 
 comes' only from suppression (as ever the nutritive or female) ; but 
 being once, it does not cease. It is then united to the polar opposite, but 
 possessing then most fully its perfection and power. It is just so with
 
 721 
 
 personality, of wh perhaps the conscience may be said to be the essence; 
 it arises only from a 'not' or suppression, but is itself not the not, but 
 the polar form of the Being, and in development exists in its most per- 
 fect, most emphatic, form in union with its opposite. Law and love 
 co-existing ; perfect absolute law, perfect absolute love. I have been 
 thinking -wrongly about the destruction of personality ; it is passion 
 only must be destroyed. In development shall we have the physical 
 and spiritual together perfectly ? I think this is not a parallel ; we 
 shall have that wh is of both certainly, but not the arbitrariness nor 
 the inertia ; and without the inertia the physical is not. I say love and 
 law are the polars wh co-exist; but in truth the word love is too large, and 
 includes the law : without the absolute and perfect law love is not (it is 
 the fulfilling of the law). Just so does not the ' spiritual ' properly in- 
 clude all that is of the physical, i. e. the law, the Tightness. The law 
 is absorbed in the love, the physical in the spiritual. Even surely as 
 the female is absorbed in the male. This is imaged in marriage surely, 
 and the resulting domestic institution ; and especially I conceive in true 
 physical development, in wh the female truly and fully exists, and yet 
 is entirely absorbed in the male. This new animal is male, and yet 
 consists of the male and female of the grade below ; the female abso- 
 lutely exists, yet the ' animal ' is male. So I conceive of conscience 
 and personality in heaven perhaps, in the developed state ; truly and 
 fully will they be there, yet is the fact merely love. That new and 
 higher love consists in the union of the lower love and law ; in wh, the 
 law or conscience is, yet cannot be distinguished ; it could not be with- 
 out law or conscience, and yet utterly absorbs it so that, as conscience, 
 it can no longer be found. So with regard to personality ; a spiritual 
 Being, a love, in which personality is, yet cannot be distinguished, 
 wh cd not be without the personality, yet in wh the personality is utter- 
 ly absorbed. 
 
 We think we exalt God by attributing to Him an optional creation, 
 a supreme and absolute self-determination apart from any law. We 
 forget that love includes law, and can only be by it. It is true we act, 
 or seem to act, optionally, or without any determining power : but this 
 is our misery, our degradation, our death ; it is because we are passional, 
 inert, not-loving. There is no mere optional with Him, all is holy. Our 
 own true human characteristics and dignity are entirely in abeyance in 
 respect to those things in wh we act optionally. 
 
 Where there is arbitrary action, i.e. passion, in spirit from inertia or 
 suppression of spiritual Being, there is necessarily matter or ' things.' 
 There is 'matter' to us because we can act arbitrarily. There can be no 
 wickedness in an eternal or spiritual state. Wickedness, spiritual death, 
 necessarily makes its own physical, is only in time. Punishment must 
 be in the physical, in some sense, and cease with it. I wonder it has 
 not been seen, that inasmuch as suffering must be in Time, there cannot 
 be a Hell after time is no more. Also how curious, that in spite of 
 this, men have considered eternity to be everlasting time, directly con- 
 tradicting the Bible. 
 
 How pleasant it wd have been if men had been in the habit of consi- 
 dering theories as merely symbols of the unknown and temporary : that 
 all these things wh we suppose, because we cannot make out any other 
 way, are unknown symbols, destined to be interpreted and discarded.
 
 722 
 
 Do we not, in our hypotheses, act like mathematicians, assigning ficti- 
 tious values to the unknown terms, to test them ; but unlike them, 
 holding on to them because they at first seemed most probable, although 
 they will not answer. 
 
 We know the physical is truly spiritual, or love. By the ' not ' or 
 arbitrary we separate two that are truly one, matter and spirit. All 
 nutrition is just such separation ; and all nutrition is from not again a 
 generalization. 
 
 Conscience is the sum and revealer of all of the Being, and also that 
 we are not. So I see again that animals cannot perceive the external 
 world ; because this perception arises from a ' not,' wh ' not ' is only re- 
 vealed by our conscience. The ' not,' not being in them, how can it be 
 ' supposed ' external to them ? it is not as if even there were the true 
 material things to be perceived. Only moral beings, who are conscious 
 of their own not-being, can perceive ' things,' wh are wholly dependent 
 upon that not. [Think of madness and delirium : there is a key here ?] 
 Do I not see from this ' not ' the idea of cause, as of passion ? There 
 is no cause in the actual ; even as we have seen the moral is exactly the 
 absolute, the uncaused. Cause is from not-action, inertia ; relates only 
 to the passive: so if there be no perception of 'not,' no conscience, there 
 is .-. no possible perception of things or external not-action. But now 
 may not some animals be truly moral beings ? perhaps in some lower 
 sense than man. If so, these animals of course perceive. At any rate 
 the perception and the (moral) Being must go together : I only mean to 
 assert this connection. 
 
 It is pleasant to find ' cause ' thus belonging to the 'not,' or passion, 
 and not to a consciousness of power or action. It is a great inversion, 
 but satisfactory ; especially in its other connections : we no longer want 
 cause for the theological argument ; and in respect to matter it proves 
 inertia, wh is a great point. As for our own moral Being, I utterly ab- 
 jure that assumed arbitrary power, wh wholly belongs to our not-being, 
 or death. ~We rather get the idea of cause from feeling that we are 
 passively acted on, viz. by our passions ? thence the conception of force. 
 The other idea is a vicious circle, that refers our idea of cause to our 
 own consciousness of causing, i. e. causing by our power external 
 changes ; for we must have the idea of cause before we can know that 
 there are external things, before we can perceive. So we get the idea 
 of cause from our own consciousness, through the conscience ; viz. we 
 feel that we are operated on by force, by cause, are subject to passion 
 wh prevails against us. So we have the idea from our inertia, and it 
 at once fits itself to the inertia wh we, from our own, perceive around 
 us. 
 
 These two 'nots,' of arbitrariness and inertia, are the same, and surely 
 answer to the two polar forms of the fact, of every fact. Here is a 
 clue : every fact, and every act, has two polar forms. And surely each 
 polar form of the fact has its polar form of the ' not,' and is to be 
 united with the other polar fact, wh also exists united with its corres- 
 ponding ' not ' ; and in this union the two ' nots ' are to be destroyed. 
 Now it is easy to know wh is the fact and wh the ' not,' or hypothesis. 
 The two forms of the fact correspond to action and necessity ; those of 
 the ' not,' or hypothesis, to passiveness and arbitrariness. A general 
 statement, surely, and a guide to thought. So interpretation, unifying,
 
 723 
 
 or development is the putting together of two halves wh are truly one, 
 adding self to self in two forms, so making a new whole. What in phy- 
 sical development answers to the destruction of the hypothesis or 'not'? 
 
 Is not the ' not,' or nutritive, the type or image of the fact, as the 
 physical is of the spiritual, or love ? The ' not ' corresponds in its way, 
 and is designed to reveal the actual. See in the hypothesis in science, 
 e. g., the sun's motion is an image of the earth's; it must be so; the 
 hypothesis is the very action of the fact, only in relation to a ' not.' It 
 is the same thing under another form. Think how Being and not-being 
 are truly one. The physical is not itself the ' not,' but the operation 
 of the actual in relation to the ' not' ; the physical world is not itself 
 inertia, but is spiritual Being seen under an inertia in ourselves. All 
 that there is, is spiritual, but it is passion instead of action ; that very 
 passion, regarded as action, is the spiritual fact. Hypothesis is thus 
 necessarily symbol ; the nutritive is ever a type : so must not our nu- 
 tritive Science be ? 
 
 Nature appears to be one fact, into wh we introduce from ourselves 
 a ' not ' : first as arbitrariness ; and then, when that is excluded, again 
 the same ' not ' as passion or inertia. The absolute is Being and not- 
 being in one : .-. there is a similar life of this not-being as of Being. 
 First is the (instinctive, as it were) arbitrariness ; then this ' failing ' 
 is suppressed, but it still exists, and now as inertia. As action and ne- 
 cessity are the two polar forms of Being, so surely are arbitrariness 
 and inertia the two polar forms of not -being. And these always are ; 
 the ' not ' ever exists with the Being, even as it does and must in the 
 absolute Being, or God ; i. e. love as consisting in self-sacrifice. Even 
 when, in the development, the two 'beings' are united and the ' nots ' 
 excluded, they still exist, they reappear in reference to that higher 
 grade, just as before ; ever they are, and so continue even up to the 
 highest. Now here may there not be a clue to that curious inversion 
 of the polar relations I have noticed as so constant ? is not this inverse 
 relation ever between the Being and the ' not,' the male in the one, the 
 female in respect to the other ? I shd expect this wd a key to many 
 things. 
 
 And again : in God, Being and not-being must co-exist and be one 
 in the very fact of not-being existing at all since G-od is Infinite. If 
 the not were not in Him, it could not be in the universe. So Satan 
 [does it not come also to this?] must be in God. Should I shrink from 
 this ? I think not. Are not wicked men in God ? wh is as repugnant 
 to the moral sense. Do I, by the doctrine of the oneness of the physical 
 and the spiritual, confound God and the creature in an irreligious sense? 
 I think not. Religion does not require, it prohibits, such absolute se- 
 paration of creator and creature as we think of. Creator and creature 
 are strictly one : this fact is not to be softened down ; only so can the 
 distinction between them be fully seen. And besides, let me not 
 forget the principle, that religious truth, the moral, is so deep, so safe, 
 that no thought can ever endanger it ; that no deductions need be feared 
 for it. It is the known, the starting point ; whatever else we think, 
 that is incompatible with it, is hypothesis, is unknown symbol, never to 
 be feared, but fully to be traced out in order to be interpreted. Let 
 me lay fast hold of this, and never shrink from any inference whatever 
 especially after all my experience.
 
 724 
 
 But, in finding not-being one with Being, do not I do away with the 
 evil of sin, even in a moral, personal sense? Answer: (1) here con- 
 science is supreme : that sin is evil is a felt, known fact ; it is wicked 
 and wrong, and opinions can make no difference. Opinions can no more 
 make sin not an evil, not a crime and shame and ruin, than they can 
 make pain not to be pain, or alter any other fact of nature. (2). These 
 opinions, I think, are not open to this objection ; for sin is the not-being 
 without the Being ; sin is in Time, where true real evil is ; we see it 
 in that wh is in time, in the physical ; we see the physical indeed, in 
 order that we may see how evil a thing Death is, how monstrous self- 
 ishness. True, our death is part of the great life, our not-being part of 
 the great Being with wh all not is one ; but still it is not-being, it is 
 death, it is selfishness. It is not the same not-being which is one with 
 Love, with self-sacrifice : it is not-love moral death. Surely this is 
 enough : if we do not feel it so then we are not. ' Not dead, but only 
 damned.' 
 
 I say these ' nots,' which we introduce, in development destroy each 
 other ; and at last, excluding ourselves altogether, we see the Love. 
 Yes, but in this absolute, this love, we see too at last the true meaning 
 and fact of the 'not' : the glorious free-will and self-sacrifice. 
 
 If we had seen Nature as right sction, as love, from the first, there 
 wd have been no need for physical Science with its hypotheses ; but 
 this ' not ' is needful for us because we are in a ' not,' a nutritive epoch. 
 It is interesting to think of all as being in Eternity ; not in Time, as 
 we imagine [i. e. feel] ourselves to be. I am dimly able to grasp this 
 conception ; to feel that humanity eternally exists, perfect, developed, 
 and holy : all this human life, occupying so many ages, with so many 
 woes and disasters, and hopes and fears and struggles, one part of the 
 great whole not in truth such a painfully protracted scene, but the/acf 
 of humanity's self-sacrifice and holiness ; suffering even as God suffers ? 
 
 To postulate a real matter is to make God act for results, or in this 
 sense, arbitrarily : but this is surely to deny Him, to deny Love. Mat- 
 ter denies God ; for arbitrariness (in this sense) and inaction or passive- 
 ness are the same [polar ?]. This is not the glorious arbitrariness 
 wherewith of His own will He loves. 
 
 How essential is that conception of the ' not ' as involved in Being, in 
 that self-sacrifice in wh alone love can be ; and that the ' not ' thus shd 
 have its own life, and continual polar relations, development and all. 
 How incomplete my views must have been without this. Self-sacrifice 
 is hardly so much the fact, as the cause, of not-being ; yet in the eternal 
 both are necessarily one. And the arbitrariness is the cause of self- 
 sacrifice ; yet again one in the eternal. As in Nature force or action 
 exists only in ' merging itself,' will not this facilitate just that modifi- 
 cation in my conception of the physical as from the ' not ' wh I need ? 
 I see the necessity of the physical as from this absolute and essential 
 ' not' : I see why (and the Tightness of it) we do take inertia for real 
 Being. It gives me that entire relation of the 'not,' wh else is so mys- 
 terious : it enables me, while asserting the physical to be not, to main- 
 tain its being. An unification here again of opposites. And with 
 wonderful simplicity this all flows out of the idea of love, the necessary 
 fact of love, self-sacrifice, I see how from the very fact of love there 
 must be inerti , i. e. passion ; and therewith space and time, and all 
 the physical.
 
 725 
 
 This bears too on that wh I noticed respecting the origination of our 
 inductive science. This is a suppression, a nutrition, giving us law as 
 it were conscience with passiveness or inertia, in place of action with 
 arbitrariness. I say this nutritive Science comes from a self-sacrifice, 
 as noticed before, viz. giving up man's ideal and taking God's ; sacrificing 
 our own conception to submit to the truth. Like our nutritive state 
 from Adam's self-sacrifice ? 
 
 The separation of spiritual and physical is a nutrition, the nutritive 
 state of man; a separation wh is ever the result of a 'not,' or of time. 
 Is it not as in mathematics ? Motion is the being in Time of the point, 
 the relation of it to ' not,' to an absence or inertia ; bringing passion to 
 it. Now the motion of the point separates length and breath ; and 
 they are united again in depth. So, by time [or 'not'], the one 'holy* is 
 separated into spiritual and physical arbitrary action and necessary 
 passion to be united again into one holy, i. e. a holy in relation to man. 
 The spiritual and physical thus are polar opposites, one thing under two 
 forms, (i.e. the spiritual as we conceive it, or as arbitrary, for that is 
 not the true spiritual). To our intellect there has not been as yet the 
 true or actual, inasmuch as we considered the spiritual as arbitrary, 
 making therefore only half. Our spiritual was as much a ' not ' as the 
 physical, and therefore of course we could not refer intellectually to it 
 the physical ; and thus Berkeley necessarily failed. It is necessary to 
 retain all that is in the physical, i. e. the Tightness, the law, or neces- 
 sity : retaining this we give up nothing. To give up inertia is surely 
 only to gain. Here is the getting by giving ; because what we give up 
 in self-sacrifice is but the not, the arbitrariness. Self-sacrifice must be 
 creation, because it is the destruction of not-being; just as our self- 
 control is : it is the destruction of inertia. Self-control is the type of 
 all self-sacrifice; the destruction of 'not,' either of arbitrariness or of 
 inertia ; it is putting action for passion, Being for not. 
 
 In our heart, in our conscience, we have had the true or actual, be- 
 cause by that we held to the loving, the holy. But our intellectual 
 'spiritual' has been merely a half, like the physical, and only becomes 
 true by being united with the physical. Our matter and spirit are alike 
 chimerical hypotheses. Ought I to say so of spirit, since God is 
 ' spirit ' ? I think I may ; using the term as I do, and as it has been 
 used. 
 
 We have known the true by the conscience and the love ; but then 
 these have ever abjured the physical and the arbitrary. The intellect 
 has to rise up to the level of the conscience ; to learn of her, become 
 one with her. This is just the business of the intellect : to interpret 
 the unknown into the known ; and the conscience, the moral, is the only 
 known. "We have to reduce all to that wh we know, viz. right or ne- 
 cessary action, that wh we ought to be. That wh is not this is symbol 
 of the unknown, and must be interpreted into this. 
 
 This separation into two halves physical and so-called spiritual 
 is the great nutrition ; of wh the unification of all into the one holy, is 
 the function. This is the course of the intellect on one stage ; now ia 
 beginning a new life for it on that basis. Here is the holy, the one 
 great fact. Now for a life of thought respecting this : how do the 'nota' 
 reappear ?
 
 726 
 
 .These two polars do truly exist, but then they exist only iu their 
 union. They are in God : the arbitrariness of the Father, the passion 
 of the Son ; but then these are not, and cannot be, distinct and alone ; 
 the three Persons are only as being one God. So in some sense there is 
 the arbitrary spiritual action, the necessary physical passion, 
 but not separate and alone. These exist as such only because they are 
 one, and one with a third, or The Holy. The arbitrary spiritual, the 
 necessary physical, the Holy, these are the absolute one ; save as being 
 one they cannot be. In the Trinity the third Person is not only said 
 to be The Holy, but also the Holy Spirit. The word ' Spirit,' wh is 
 used for God Himself, the One, is given as the peculiar name of the 
 third Person. So is it not in this third, wh is from the union, the 
 Being emphatically is ; not without the others, but as including and 
 being one with them ? This ' Holy ' in wh the arbitrary spiritual and 
 necessary physical unite, to this shd be given emphatically the name of 
 the ' spiritual.' 
 
 How great an aid is given towards the feeling and devout realization 
 of God, by familiarity with the conception of the general humanity. 
 To think of humanity as a person is surely a great aid towards the true 
 worshiping of God. 
 
 These [intellectually separate] spiritual and physical are such as they 
 are only by virtue of that separation ; truly are one. So with male and 
 female ; which so far represent, surely, spiritual aud physical ; they are 
 such as they are [personal so] only by their separation. They are one, 
 and cd not be as they are save by their being truly one: the personality 
 comes from the separation. It is a nutrition wh is from ' force,' a put- 
 ting into a condition opposed to the original and primary. [This is not 
 right yet.] Surely it is as seen in Time only, that the spiritual and 
 physical, male and female, are thus separate. To us, hereafter, God 
 will be absolutely one, and so will male and female. Thus it is that no 
 marrying will be any more ; the separation wh constitutes it not exist- 
 ing. This shows how and in what sense the ' personality ' is destroyed; 
 yet being in its not being ; the true being, the oneness, restored. Is it 
 even as woman was taken out of man ? Surely this must indicate a 
 time to Adam ; and therefore a physical before the Fall ? But if so also 
 a not ; and this too ensuring the Fall ? 
 
 How symbolical is that generation of space by motion wh has such a de- 
 pendence on time. The union is but a restoration of the true state, a doing 
 away with Time a type of the union of the creature with the creator 
 restoring the original oneness ; the creature not thereby ceasing to be, 
 but most truly being in that union and not-being ; it is love, sacrificing 
 self to be one with God. In being one with God the creature truly is : 
 only that is destroyed wh is the creature's not . So the physical is truly 
 in being one with the spiritual ; the ' not ' is thereby put out of it. 
 
 See the bearing of this upon Science. We think that the separate 
 polar opposites exist first, and are then united into one in development; 
 the fact being that these polars are truly one, and can only exist as se- 
 parate by forcible separation. The union in development is only return 
 [in higher form] to the original oneness. Each 'one' consists of the two 
 polars and the union : but the two polars cannot exist separately save 
 by being truly one, and separated in Time or nutrition. The physical 
 is a circle, starting from the absolute oneness, into wh it returns, after a
 
 727 
 
 long course of nutrition. The nutrition consists of intermediate 'lives,' 
 or circles. All opposite polars arise from a one that is both ; hence this 
 tendency to union, to return to the primary or true condition. 
 
 Have I not the clue to chemicity ? the conception of it is in that of 
 personality : three in one ; and from separation of that wh is one, po- 
 larity, and union in a new one, which then is a new starting point as it 
 were, and has its own polarity again. This is the thing to do in respect 
 to chemicity : avert our eyes from the constant inter-action of the va- 
 rious bodies upon one another (backward and forward and all ways) and 
 trace out a distinct course, or life. As in dealing with an organic body 
 we exclude its actions on the media, and vice versa ; and trace 
 out its continuous life, wh then of course is the clue to the whole. 
 
 The 
 worth 
 spiritual, 
 
 us : here, as it were, is our 'point.' But there is passion of this not- 
 being, time, motion. So out of this not-being come the universal three, 
 and all the physical. [Obscure ; but it is the way, I think.] Substance 
 comes from atoms ; from the ' not ' of chemical action is force in relation 
 to inertia, &c. 
 
 To see the physical as truly spiritual, or rather the two as one, or 
 holy, we must see it not in Time. What we do want for a true under- 
 standing, even for Science, is a clear conception of the actual oneness of 
 the spiritual (as we say) and the physical (as we say). Thinking this 
 distinction to be fundamental, we can understand neither. We could 
 not understand either man or -woman save by considering them as truly 
 one, and complementary to each other, each having a not wh prevents it 
 from being the whole. Or rather perhaps we may say the reason why 
 we do not understand either man or woman is that we have" not learnt 
 to regard them in this light. In our own nature how clearly the physical 
 and spiritual are one ; we can understand neither save by seeing that 
 any fact in the one is a fact in the other. I quote from my papers : 
 ' Now I see the physical ; it is simply ' not.' Being and ' not ' are po- 
 lar ? and I have married them.' No ; the inertia of the physical is the 
 ' not' only ; the female is not simply ' not.' Is not the physical just 
 the very life of the ' not '? and so it is symbol, as the ' not ' ever is. In 
 our spiritual is also the ' not '; the inertia of the physical is the ' not,' 
 but the fact of it is with the action, The Holy. It is not the physical 
 is ' not,' but the inertness supposed of it. It is the Beiug when this is 
 turned out of it. ' The physical the ' not ' ? why then surely it is the 
 Devil.' Not exactly ; but that inertness or selfishness that causes the 
 Being to be physical or inert to us. 
 
 Now I seem to have arrived at the root of the physical. It is (as of 
 course it must be) in its origin and in the whole, as it is in each part. 
 I have seen how each physical thing, development, process, fact, &c., is 
 from the application of a 'not,' i. e. it is action determined by relative 
 not-action. Now just such is the physical altogether; it arises as such 
 from the application of a spiritual ' not ' to the spiritual. It is our not 
 being what we ought to be conscience. 
 
 So the personal arises from the 'not.' It arises even as male and 
 female from one in the physical. The physical is a symbol ; all in it is 
 from ' not,' because all in the spiritual is from Love, i.e. from self sacri-
 
 728 
 
 fice. I have seen how personality arises from self-sacrifice ; and now 
 seeing how in the physical the two polars arise from one, will show me 
 the clear image of self-sacrifice in the physical; and I know all is one. 
 See also how this 'not ' wh causes the polars, this self-sacrifice, is truly 
 a getting, a giving up of ' not.' Self-sacrifice is Being ; the giving up 
 of the ' not.' It is a vender. It is not an exception that Being is not- 
 being to us', it is the universal fact : not-being is Being, and in the 
 giving up of it is self-sacrifice. Even so our primary self-sacrifice is 
 giving up our ' not,' our passions, the material. God gives up arbitrari- 
 ness, submits to Law; and so does man ; alike in self-sacrifice. 
 
 I see the inverse relation, in respect to order, of that wh ia in time, 
 and of the spiritual. In Time the separate parts multiply and unite into 
 one ; in the actual the one separates into the parts. E. g. it is actually 
 one humanity wh unfolds itself into male and female and offspring, and 
 all the multitude of the human race : these are because the one human- 
 ity is. But in the temporal these different persons spring up one after 
 another, and unite to form the human race. A tree is made up of all 
 its parts, yet in truth it is the tree unfolds itself into its parts : 
 all the many which form the one arise in some sense from 
 one, e. g. from the germ. So woman was taken out of man, 
 and the individual persons from one or a few pairs. But in truth the one 
 wh includes all the parts is first. ' The tree puts forth its leaves '; we 
 speak truly while thinking falsely. This idea of humanity unfolding it- 
 self, does it not aid the conception of the connection of spirit with body? 
 The tree, perfect as such, unfolds into all its parts, und yet is produced 
 by development under least resistance. 
 
 In there not a clue here to how the physical depends on ' not ' ? viz. 
 by virtue of this inversion. Seen backwards, wd not such unfolding be 
 by ' not '? This unfolding or becoming separate or many [personal] is 
 actually a self-suppressing, self-sacrifice. It is that wh we see in the 
 Trinity ; the One, by self-suppression, becoming separate. Therefore, 
 this unfolding, as we see it in the physical, must be a becoming ' not,' a 
 becoming by not . The many are from the suppression of the one : .-. to 
 us, seeing first the many as constituting the one, it must be production 
 and development by 'not,' and not-being to us is Being, i. e. this physi- 
 cal Being. Thus the three colors are from the one Light : light, in re- 
 lation to the ' not,' is color. We have conceived of light as made up of 
 three, as we ever do of unity, as made up of many or variety. Perhaps 
 we have so conceived of the Trinity as one God constituted by three 
 Persons. Shd not this be reversed, as also in the case of light ? instead 
 of a one made up of three, is there not a one becoming three by self- 
 sacrifice by 'not'? [not in relation to time but to order of process]. 
 Ever we do and must see effect first ; putting the unity as cause of va- 
 riety, is the one work of interpretation. 
 
 In chemicity we say the elements make up the compounds ; I say 
 the ' Being,' by suppression, becomes or constitutes the parts ; especially 
 self-suppression ; for there are two forms, as seen in colors: interference 
 and ' absorption,' &c. So of all polars, of all conversions of force : 
 it is action sacrificing self to be other, this other being the polar. It is 
 in truth vibration ; and equally whether continuous or transitive the 
 one produces or becomes the polar opposite ; the downward produces 
 either the corresponding upward or another form, either rise of the body 
 wh falls [as in the pendulum] or heat [as in the ordinary form]; but in
 
 729 
 
 either case the rise or heat is the polar opposite to the downward. The 
 suppression of the downward wh exists in nutrition is self-suppression ; 
 and the polar opposite is the result of this, not of the mere suppression. 
 The upward, in all its forms, is self-suppression, self-sacrifice ; the fact 
 of love producing by self-suppression its polar opposite. I see now why 
 all physical action is necessarily vibration ; it is love an image of love in 
 Time. Self-suppression, Love, is vibration; i. e. life : for vibration and 
 life are one. 
 
 So God is life ; the Living God creates. And this creation is nutri- 
 tion ; separation for union, for union of creature with creator. Here is 
 the beauty of seeing that from the one, the variety, the separation, pro- 
 ceeds. The development, the union of creature and creator, is the eter- 
 nal fact ; not the result but cause of this chain of Being. 
 
 Time is of course from variety or separateness. Consider in relation 
 to Thought, how variety is from unity. Is it not so by ' not,' or by 
 separation of that wh is truly one ? Is not Time involved in creation ; 
 and only done away with in the union of creature and creator wh is 
 truly the eternal ? Is not this the Eternal, from wh all is, the first or 
 Cause ? So may not Creation, as such and apart from sin, involve Time ? 
 So might not Adam at first have been in Time ? yes, certainly ; or how 
 could there have been the arbitrariness ? I think that in the separate- 
 ness of creator and creature is Time : the eternal is their union. Thus 
 the Eternal, the One, is that in which is the Three : viz. creator, crea- 
 ture, and union of both. 
 
 In the spiritual also, as in the physical and mental, there is other 
 suppression besides direct self-suppression : one force suppressing an- 
 other, or opposing tendency, wh is equivalent, though quite distinct ; 
 and yet of course in organic connection with it. So that seen in refer- 
 ence to the whole it is virtually the same ; it is self-sacrifice. Is not 
 the typical vibration not that wh is to and fro, or successive, but those 
 opposite motions wh necessarily co-exist ? Should not all vibration be 
 so considered primarily ? Then it is of two kinds : the forced motion 
 and its opposite ; the permitted motion and its opposite ; every vibra- 
 tion being two vibrations. One pair are co-existent, the other pair 
 are successive ; it only the co-existent that are always recognizable. 
 The vibration ordinarily so called is in time. Does not the other re- 
 present rather that wh is not in time ? But this latter is not so truly 
 self-suppression. I conceive that, as physical, that wh is in succession 
 is the true image of the actual or love. Yet the other has its 
 interest. 
 
 In respect to the order of cause : is it not brain from mind, not mind 
 from brain ? and all the material from the mental ? So nutrition from 
 function, not function from nutrition ? Was not my interpretation of 
 function just such another inversion of the obvious order ? putting the 
 one as the cause instead of the variety ; viz., the one chemical change 
 instead of many functional operations. For in truth we see the func- 
 tions only as new nutritions ; it is the operation of the force we call the 
 function. And further, it is putting one necessary (i. e. parallel to 
 'holy)' in place of several arbitrary. 
 
 The human race is from the suppression of humanity, and clearly 
 from its self-sacrifice. And these thing-al parts, the body and mind, in- 
 asmuch as they cease, are essentially the ' not,' the form. Physical
 
 730 
 
 humanity is exactly the suppression or not-being of humanity ; it is the 
 thing wh, as not-heing, is to cease. But all that truly is in respect to 
 it, the personality, the conscience, is still to exist in union with that 
 love or actual humanity, of the suppression of wh physical humanity 
 is the result. It is just as I derive inertia or substance from chemicity. 
 I have seen, the chemical action ceasing, being suppressed as such, there 
 is, relatively to it, an inertia, i. e. a substance, a thing or form. In 
 relation to wh inertia this same action exists now, as an action of that 
 substance. And the substance is not, relatively to the action which 
 was ; it is the not -being of that, and therefore coresponds to that. So 
 the different substances are, from different chemical action. In humanity 
 the active Being is suppressed, answering to the chemical action sup- 
 posed ; therefore there is, in relation to that, a not-being, an inertia, or 
 a substance ; i. e. physical humanity ; and in relation to that, this sup- 
 posed action exists ; i. e. as conscience, or law. It is the polar, like the 
 light or heat wh exists after chemical action ceases ; i. e. wh chemical 
 action becomes. And as chemical action is approximative, so these are 
 divergent, are nutritive. Surely conscience is the nutritive form of 
 humanity. And now, as the inertia from ceasing of chemical action is 
 relative to it, so the human 'substance' corresponds with the human wh 
 has been suppressed, and now exists as conscience. This is why hu- 
 man 'substance' is such as it is. Also, in the physical world, the sub- 
 stance thus formed not only has its own force of heat, &c., wh is the 
 polar form of the chemical action (answering to conscience), and wh is 
 that whereby it acts the law of it but it affords a scope for the ac- 
 tion of all surrounding forces, wh produce accordingly passion in it ; it 
 is a direction of less resistance, takes its place as one of the substances 
 of the material world. So the human 'substance' or inertia becomes a 
 sphere for the operation of all the forces of nature. So our passions, 
 i. e. surrounding spiritual actions, are passions of our inertia. 
 
 That wh holds of chemical action, &c.,shd hold also of all approxima- 
 tive (altho' only from the chemical results to us, what we call substance) 
 From every approximative or permitted passion necessarily results an 
 inertia or not-being of it, when it ceases ; and does not the correspond- 
 ing polar action, divergent, constitute as it were an action in relation to 
 this inertia ? Is this best seen in the pendulum ? is it true of the 
 polar or rectangular motion there ? And again, I have seen the chemi- 
 cal action to be the image of the first active Being of humanity, and 
 the conscience, of the polar action [or tendency ; in our case shd not 
 conscience be taken as a tendency to action rather ] ? and the physical 
 body to the inertia or substance. Now is there a parallel here, in the 
 correlated idea of force and matter; in reference to the physical, it is 
 action and inertia; do they not represent respectively the actual or spir- 
 itual and the physical or Being and ' not ?' This is why the idea of 
 matter so clings to us : it is to the physical as the physical is to the ac- 
 tual ; i. e. it is the ' not,' wh cannot be excluded. We cannot have 
 the physical without matter, any more than we can have the spiritual 
 without the physical ; i. e. as it is to us. Having the conception we 
 have of the spiritual, we mnst also have the physical for the sake of 
 the Tightness. So, thinking as we do of force, we must also have the 
 matter or substance ; also for the sake of lightness. Must not force and 
 matter be unified, even as spiritual and physical, the ' not ' left out
 
 731 
 
 of both. The 'not' is in a different relation in the arbitrary spiritual and 
 the necessary inertia : in the one it is a quality, in the other the very fact. 
 
 With respect to sin, it is not necessary for development. Passion 
 may be necessary, i.e. suppression of the first active Being: conscience; 
 but not therefore selfishness I think, the sinful state. We see this in 
 the seed ; it dies to live, but it lives by exercising the right control of 
 the passion in it ; wh we do not do ; we are as a seed that decays and ' 
 becomes corrupt dies utterly and so we want a new life bestowed on 
 us. The true and natural nutrition of a spiritual Being would it not be 
 as that of a seed that dies to grow ? passion, but rightly controlled. 
 Or, are our selfishness and sin the nutrition of humanity ? 
 
 Surely we are not personal in heaven as here ; we become one ; the 
 male and female are one (therefore it is not possible to marry) ; that 
 true perfect union for wh here we long in vain first humanity made 
 one, then one with God. 
 
 In this union to God, which is the intensest most absolute fact, is the 
 truest, the perfect Being of the creature ; Being in not-being, or in ac- 
 tion, i. e. in love. True Being is in not-being, or in action, i. e. in self- 
 suppression. I see now that Being is in not-being, even as it is in ac- 
 tion ; that the two terms are one, because action is self-sacrifice. So 
 love is true Being, is Being in action ; is Being in not-being. Is not 
 this the absolute ? I see these two to be one ; the separation was a 
 nutrition. What I called 'Being in action,' and 'Being in not-being,' 
 are one and the same thing Being in self-sacrifice, self-limitation, wh 
 is the only action : all is involved in the saying love. This is the root 
 of this not-being. Every Being that truly is, is in not-being, or in ac- 
 tion. Now I approach surely to the mystery of time : it is not a true 
 existence, of course ; but relates to the separateness only. As separated 
 from God the whole creation is in time ; so is under law. That which 
 is in time must be under law ; the spiritual or actual Being so suppress- 
 ed, exists must exist as law. 
 
 Love, in truth, is an eternal word ; it excludes time, save as in the 
 very fact of its self-sacrifice, it is the ' not ' from wh time arises, and 
 in relation to wh it exists. We must not feel as if time were an evil ; 
 time is not ; but the ' not ' is included and involved in love, is an essen- 
 tial part of Being ; thus only comes law or right. Time is swallowed 
 up in eternity, but it also is most truly in not-being. Even God has a 
 certain relation to time, and is ' holy ' by this relation. Man could not 
 be a spiritual Being, could not be eternal or holy, if he were not also in 
 time. I said by God's relation to time He is holy : I shd have said 
 God, by His holiness, is in relation to time, by His spontaneous self- 
 sacrifice and submission to law, as creator. The creation, as separated 
 from God, is in time and under law ; but the Law Giver also submits 
 Himself to lav. And so God as creator and law giver, subjecting Him- 
 self to law, is in relation to time. Time is a most blessed reality and 
 necessity. Without time there were no holiness, no law, no obedience, 
 no self-sacrifice on the creature's part, no love there were no creature. 
 But law involves passion (i. e. inertia). So the creature as such, i. e. 
 as separate from God and under law, is passional. But not therefore 
 sinful ; like nature surely, subject to law and obeying law ; keeping 
 their first estate. This is perhaps what people mean by supposing 
 spirit cannot be without a body or matter. But I conceive that it is 
 from sin, from disobeying and dying, that we are in a material world 
 that though in time and under law, Being is not in the material, save as
 
 732 
 
 dead or selfish. Our state of sin must alter our perception ; what I 
 have seen by that remains. 
 
 Now here I see this inertia again. The creature is separate from God; 
 it is by God's self-sacrifice or (relative) not-being. Here is just my 
 first view (in reference to atomic chemical action) again. The creature 
 is that same Being, self-suppressed, but existing in reference to that 
 suppression or not-being ; it is the < polar.' Therefore the creature is 
 passion under law. The creature is Being existing by virtue of, and in 
 relation to, the not-being of the Divine. It has therefore passion, is 
 related to an inertia. It is the spiritual universe, the living whole, the 
 organization under law of least resistance. The creature is to the 
 Creator as the heat wh results from the action wh has ceased in rela- 
 tion to wh action there is inertia. This represents the 'substance' of the 
 Creator. The creator has no substance. [See Chemicity, vol. u.] 
 
 We must get well familiar with the conception of the ' not ' must 
 rise above imagining it as a mere negation. It is essential to our thought; 
 as much to us as to mathematics, wh indeed exists by it. Our analyti- 
 cal thought must be by means of the ' not.' If you speak to a mathe- 
 matician of minus twenty, he does not laugh and say it is mere no- 
 thing ;' he knows it is an element of calculation just as important as any 
 other. So when we speak of the ' not being ' of anything, we must 
 learn to rise above the vulgar instinctive contempt, and recognize in 
 that as essential a conception for knowledge as any affirmation can be. 
 * Not-being' is a relative fact of the very utmost consequence, as we know 
 practically well enough. There is nothing more real, more important, 
 to us in daily life than ' not ;' we must bring our intellect into accordance 
 with it. I must take the instance of atomic action as introducing in- 
 ertia or substance ; and get well familiar with that. And see in mathe- 
 matics if possible more about the origin and use of the ' minus.' Ob- 
 serve too how clearly time and the ' not ' are one, and go together ; 'not' 
 comes with ceasing ; time is at once cause and effect of it or rather 
 its effect. Yes, time is from ' not,' i. e. from self-sacrifice. Alike time 
 and eternity are involved in love. Eternal is Being, temporal is ' not ;' 
 are they not the plus and minus respectively ? and therefore time, like 
 minus, has only a relative meaning or existence : time is the ne- 
 gative. 
 
 How I see the life in thinking hov each interpretation makes a 
 new nutrition by suppressing some existing instinctive or ' arbitrary ' 
 opinion or thought. After more thought I bring back the fact wh I had 
 suppressed, as one with the opposite wh resulted from its suppression ; 
 and this giving me the truth of that, repeats again the process of nutri- 
 tion in respect to some other subject, causes me to suppress some other 
 view, and so it goes on, ever ; there is no end to this process, as there 
 is none to the life of nature. When this can be clearly seen as the life 
 of thought, how simple and satisfactory thought may be; we shall never 
 be afraid to suppress, to oppose ; always giving freely, yet in absolute 
 obedience to law. We shall introduce our hypotheses knowing them to 
 be unknown symbols ; suppress our instinctive views knowing 
 that Being is only in self-sacrifice, and that that which dies does so for 
 a higher life. 
 
 Now, in men of talent who effect this separation or suppression only, 
 adding merely facts or observations of phna and laws, surely in them
 
 733 
 
 is produced the nutrition resulting from function in other minds : they 
 are organs of humanity. Just as Genius interprets the ' nutrition ' of 
 other minds. This mutual relation is evident enough. 
 
 Surely in mathematics, as in other thought, the process must be 
 separation of one, and that by virtue of the unknown. In music each 
 part shd be right, or as it must be in itself ; not made arbitrarily to suit 
 
 the other parts, as in 's harmonies. Is not this the charm of a 
 
 fugue ? The moral being the only known, there can be no interpre- 
 tation of nature but that which makes it moral. Till it is moral it is 
 not known. 
 
 Hypotheses represent the passion produced by external force in (or 
 in respect to) the inertia as a 'not' (or gap). So our physical natures, 
 our bodies, are one with Nature. They are the passion produced, in re- 
 spect to the not-being of the spiritual, by external (surrounding) Being 
 or action. Our bodies must be part of the external world. See the 
 parallel to this in the mental : the suppression of the ' fact ' constitutes 
 an 'inertia,' or not that fact. But then in respect to this there is passion 
 produced by the ' surrounding ' thought ; we have and must have ' hy- 
 potheses ' where we have not knowledge, just as there must be passion 
 where not-action, body where there is not-man. So the inertia from 
 the atomic action is a 'not,' in respect of wh passion necessarily en- 
 sues from surrounding action; and this passion constitutes the substance. 
 So the ' not ' of any one ' moral ' is an inertia in reference to wh other 
 ' moral' exists as passion, constituting for it substance and properties ; 
 and that wh has ceased or been suppressed exists only as force. 
 
 In function or development the excluded ' nots ' pass on to some other. 
 This is simply the function being new nutrition. This passing on of 
 the ' not ' is the suppressing of some other Being ; we see it perfectly in 
 the mental life. So now as the spiritual universe is an organization in 
 the perfecting of man do not the excluded ' nots ' pass on and cause sup- 
 pression of some other Being, and a nutritive state ; even as man fell by 
 the ' not ' wh was cast out from heaven, the Devil ? So the wicked will, 
 in the development of man, be excluded, not existing in humanity at 
 all? 
 
 As to this restoration of humanity and yet the personal loss and de- 
 struction of men, I have it not yet perfectly ; I have tried to unify too 
 soon. A diseased organism may be restored, tho' its dead and diseased 
 particles are cast out and utterly rejected; nay by virtue of such re- 
 jection ; and none deplore the loss, but all rejoice. Is it not thus hu- 
 manity relieved of the dead within it ? Those who are redeemed alone 
 retaining their Being ; the dead cast out, even as Satan from heaven. 
 Are they the cause of other disease ? is it like contagious disease ? So 
 humanity is restored, but it is death and destruction to the sinner ; he 
 no longer exists as part of humanity ; his personality is not developed 
 lost in union with God but ceases utterly. So may not the Gospel 
 be a 'savour of death' to those who reject it ? refusing to love, they, 
 above all, are dead and cast out. This [of humanity casting off the 
 dead element] seems to me the best conception of the destruction 
 of the wicked. They are now dead ; and then, as dead, are cast off and 
 consumed cast into the lake of fire : and so humanity is healed of its 
 its death. 
 
 In order truly to be, we must be self-suppressed, (as seen in respect to
 
 734 
 
 Thought). Is not this, in Thought, interference, even as in the physical? 
 So all the physical is like ourselves ; suppression of the spiritual con- 
 stitutes physical ; yet the spiritual still is, as conscience, in relation to 
 man. So the spiritual exists, in relation to the physical too ; that con- 
 stitutes it what it is. The world must he physical hecause we are so : 
 it is from our ' senses ' [in this sense] that the physical proceeds. The 
 inertia of man, acted on by the surrounding spiritual action, is of course 
 physical man ; hut then to the physical man all that is around must be 
 also physical. So from our inertia first comes the physicalness of our- 
 selves [i. e. our bodies] from surrounding action, by presenting to it a 
 1 not ' ; then because of our physicalness (or passion) all the surrounding 
 spiritual of course is physical to us. So our bodies are parts of Nature, 
 are passion in us, i. e. in the inertia or not-being of us ; wh passion is 
 such as it is by relation to it of the not-being of man. And all this 
 universe is not physical save from its relation to ourselves as passive. 
 It is we are inert, not the universe ; that is truly active. If we could 
 see it truly, it is holy. 
 
 So I must see our senses why they are such. They are the cause, 
 the fact, of the physical 'forces'; we must explain them from the moral, 
 from our inertia ; from not-spiritual sight, hearing, feeling, &c. Also 
 how is it that we see the process inverted many human beings begin- 
 ning from infancy while the fact is one humanity, unfolding in 'not' ? 
 
 See how the suppression wh produces the nutrition is ever from ne- 
 cessity felt, a necessity for reason, or Tightness. [Being that is not ne- 
 cessary is necessarily not.~\ Is not this from our conscience, our known 
 ought ? The force (wh is ever from function) is parallel to conscience ; 
 it is the suppressor, the controller, the producer of nutrition. Force = 
 necessity or ought. So is not conscience again parallel to force 1 
 
 A parallel between hypothesis and substance : the ' not ' from sup- 
 pression of Thought [or instinct or fact], with passion from surrounding, 
 is hypothesis. The ' not ' from suppression of Being [or spiritual or 
 love], with passion from surrounding, is Substance. 
 In respect to each ' not,' passion comes from the surrounding action or 
 Being ; and this passion is necessarily under law. 
 
 Substance is at once matter and force : matter and force are separation 
 of the two elements wh constitute substance ; substance is not without 
 the force. [According to the metaphysical idea, substance is an assem- 
 blage of properties ; but these properties have a necessary relation to an 
 inertia. Metaphysicians have not seen the ' not ' by wh alone action be- 
 comes passion.] Substance is matter and force, i. e. at once ' not' and 
 action. So is hypothesis at once ' not ' and [intellectual] action. Hy- 
 pothesis, like substance, is matter and force ; i. e. relatively. The force 
 is the action converted into passion by the ' not.' 
 
 ' Passion ' is necessarily under law and could not be otherwise ; if not 
 so it were not at all, there were no reason for it. If it were not under 
 law it must be action, and therefore spontaneous. And this ' Law ' is 
 the same being as that wh is suppressed, that of wh there is the ' not,' 
 (as seen in the pendulum). That suppressed fact or instinct regulates 
 the passion or hypothesis, and causes it to be seen as it is ; there is no- 
 thing else to regulate it : and thus it is that the law is made one with 
 the fact afterwards having been one with it from the first [so also 
 creator and creature). How absurd it is to consider facts as produced
 
 735 
 
 by Law ; the Law exists by virtue of them. The facts are passion pro- 
 duced by a ' not ' in relation to action ; the Law is that, which being 
 suppressed, constitutes the 'not.' ' Substance' is, in relation to the 
 spiritual, or Being, what ' hypothesis' is in relation to the mental or in- 
 tellectual ; and how beautiful it is that language should have expressed 
 this identity, using the same word ; tho* men have been far enough from 
 perceiving the identity they have expressed. 
 
 The ' natural body' in the Bible, is the ' psychical' body. I suspect 
 those men had not arrived at the idea of ' matter' at all. We must ex- 
 clude that from our conceptions if we wish to understand them. I think 
 the division into 'physical' and 'psychical' is like the division of matter 
 and force, wh constitute one, or substance. They are the inertia and 
 the passion, surely are one and not two ; take away the psychical and 
 nothing remains. The physical is and depends on the psychical, even 
 as matter is and depends on force. The physical is the inertia that 
 makes 'action' psychical, even as matter is the inertia wh causes action 
 to be force or passion. [But matter and force are themselves psychical; 
 they are mental conceptions]. The psychical, the conscious, is thus 
 the fact and Being of the physical [material] what it comes from and 
 indeed consists in without wh it is a mere ' not ' ; even as force is to 
 matter. Whence the inertia? It cannot be primary; it is a ' minus.' 
 It is from ourselves necessarily. 
 
 How beautiful is the conception of the spiritual universe as an ' or- 
 ganization,' or development, like the physical. It must all be on : all 
 the spiritual one with humanity. ' Tota in minimis.' And how this 
 physical world is subordinate to man : especially the chain of animal de- 
 velopment of wh his body is the result. How can this be from my 
 point of View ? Is humanity truly the highest, truly all ? Or is it 
 that all Nature forms part of a spiritual that is truly human, all con- 
 stitutes a physical body that is human in form ? Is the universe of hu- 
 man form ? So man is a microcosm : these subordinate developments 
 represent on a large, what is on a small scale, in us. So we should con- 
 stitute one organ of a vast humanity ? 
 
 Nothing that is in Time can be perfect, because it must be only a part ; 
 and a perfect whole cannot be made up of parts that are each perfect. 
 Apply this to all mental developments, and even to moral. Is not this 
 the meaning of ' only Thou art holy ' ? Also inversely, Time, since it 
 includes only that wh is imperfect, must be merely relative. The ne- 
 gative must be relative merely, being essentially destructive. 
 
 The great fault I find with modern anti-christian or anti-religious 
 men, is the acceptance some of them give to anything and everything, 
 however inconsistent, if it have only the one merit of being hostile to 
 religion. It is a scandal, wh for their own sakes they shd put away 
 and for the sake of their influence ; for how can men be expected to 
 trust those who have evidently no principles in which they themselves 
 trust ? or to follow in a direction wh is all zigzag ? 
 
 Where there is law there must be passion ; where passion, inertia : 
 where inertia, suppression of the actual. The glory of Science is that 
 it is Law. The law is the 'actual' in it. This is how it is the great re- 
 vealer ; how all our knowledge must be from the physical. So our pre- 
 sent state is one of Law ; that is the idea, the basis of it. It is all from 
 and for that to introduce the holy.
 
 736 
 
 When we see a man doing wrong, we shd think, ' This is inertia where 
 there shd he life. All this mischief is because he does not act, hut is 
 acted thro' merely, like an animal : the evil is, not that he does these 
 things, hut that he is not a man.' 
 
 Men have had to suppress the doctrine of the Freedom of the "Will, 
 hecause it was arbitrary : so they have had to suppress the spiritual al- 
 together, because it was arbitrary ; in order to have all back again, as 
 Love. Love is the great oneness of opposites : for this oneness of oppo- 
 sites can only truly be as moral. As physical it is ' not,' it is the point ; 
 it is the mere denial of space or substance (or time) i. e. of the physical. 
 Our errrors respecting the Infinite and Eternal necessarily were, 
 through our supposing the intellect should regulate belief, &c. If we 
 had known before, how much better it wd have been. But then there 
 wd be no ' life.' Other beings may look on us as we on children who 
 are learning experimentally, by pain and sorrow, what we know quite 
 well but could never teach them otherwise. Shall we not hereafter see 
 our relations to other races of Beings ? Does the spiritual world con- 
 stitute a family ? Is humanity one member ? 
 
 "Wrong-doings, and other effects, are the 'symptoms' as it were of the 
 disease, the effects produced by the right or normal forces operating in 
 relation to the inertia of the dead 'elements' ; and surely thereby results 
 the cure. So treating symptoms is vain. Disease without such effects 
 (symptoms) cannot be cured. The cure must be the giving life to the 
 moral, is Love. But as all this suppression of the spiritual is a neces- 
 sary process in human development, [tho' arising indeed from the death 
 of man] it cannot involve as intellectual merely any wickedness ; 
 there can be no damnation in it. The belief indeed, the moral state, is 
 all important ; but salvation must be determined altogether apart from 
 opinion as intellectual. But this subject becomes larger as we look at 
 it ; and [without contradicting what we have just said] perhaps these 
 intellectual processes, though not causing, may indicate, the spi- 
 ritual state. For may it not be that those who are dead are the very 
 ones who suppress the fact, the spiritual ? This suppression indicates 
 their deadness ; they do not appreciate, do not perceive them. So nu- 
 trition is produced thro' them ; just as the wicked deeds of a ' dead ' 
 man are a nutrition to the world the means of curing the death. So 
 intellectually, do the necessary thoughts of the spiritually dead constitute 
 the nutrition whereby the intellect does its work, and the spiritual is 
 made more fully known. But none the less are they dead. And so the 
 distinction of men, based on their opinions, losing its objectionableness, 
 acquires a new significancy. We must however be careful not to con- 
 found the intellectual, merely as such, with the actual. Doubtless the 
 most living men have often been the most active in suppressing the ar- 
 bitrary spiritual fact the arbitrariness compels them. Still those who 
 like these opinions because of the ' not,' are dead, and are shown thereby 
 to be so, and their death is thus used as life for the world. Even as 
 the Jews by rejecting Christ ? If it were not for the wickedness of the 
 world, how should we ever know how selfish we are, and what an evil 
 thing selfishness is ? 
 
 Repair of diseased or injured living wholes is one great instance of 
 production by the ' not.' Is not every nutrition, considered in relation 
 to a larger whole, necessarily a process of repair ? Necessarily such, as
 
 737 
 
 being a process of development, and ever from a ' suppression' which is 
 equivalent to a morbid state, or injury. Every growth or development, 
 or production of new, is part of the process of repair. What then is 
 the disease ? Is not all sin, all failure, all nutrition, part of a process 
 of repair, i. e. of a redemption or development, of a becoming holy of 
 some other ? 
 
 If you are selfish God will punish you by making you do wicked 
 things, i. e. damning you. How strange appears to me now the confu- 
 sion of 'damnation* with 'misery,' with sensation making it, too, not 
 actual : it is just parallel to that wh makes religion to consist in phy- 
 sical observances. And see, here is the appeal to the conscience Love ! 
 Be not selfish. This we can do. By looking to Christ we are saved 
 from damnation by being made alive or loving. He gives us His life in 
 Love. 
 
 "With regard to the loss of individual men while the race progresses, 
 may there not be some truth in the doctrine of ' transmigration of souls'? 
 May it not be that all humanity is redeemed, and the human race goes 
 on until it be so ? Not different ' souls,' but one humanity developing ; 
 and nothing truly lost, because all that is lost is merely ' not.' The 
 human race must last till humanity is redeemed then there can be 
 no longer any physical ? 
 
 Is not the world of genuine Thought as it were created almost by the 
 introduction of the ' not '? even as mathematics (analytical) is almost 
 created by the use of the minus ? 
 
 Surely this is the relation of the intellect to the moral or spiritual : 
 the intellect is compelled to suppress the fact of the moral, [e. g. of 
 the freedom of man], just as it is all other facts in order to see them 
 rightly, or as necessary. Hence if the function of the intellect be mis- 
 understood, a difficulty arises. Perhaps indeed it is natural and neces- 
 sary to man to conceive of the intellect as determining Belief, until by 
 the development of the intellect itself he has learnt better. And .. 
 when the intellect comes to deal in its universal manner with ' moral ' 
 actual facts, difficulty and dispute arise : for these facts are vital to man ; 
 he cannot be without them. The intellect deals with them no otherwise 
 than it does with all others ; but our necessary clinging to them raises 
 an embarrassment directly ; the intellect is put in opposition to the very 
 fact of humanity on the one hand ; and on the other it is checked and 
 distorted, not permitted to act freely, by those who try to maintain 
 those facts wh it cannot help suppressing. Here of course is the origin 
 of all the talk about the ' inability of the intellect to deal with spirit- 
 ual matters,' the necessity of ' acquiescing in mystery,' and so on. The 
 intellect can deal as well with these matters as with any other questions ; 
 first suppressing the facts it will show them necessary. But it must 
 first suppress the facts; if we will not let it do that, we simply prolong 
 a strife wh can have but one end ; we oppose life, wh is ever a futile 
 attempt. The intellect will render an infinite service to religion, but 
 she must do it in her own way, and we only need to understand her. 
 
 [Spirit, 204.

 
 INDEX. 
 
 ACTION. 6, 10, 34, 43, 422, 607. 
 
 Chemical. 5 20 35, 48, 52. 
 
 Cerebral. 7, 8, 9. 
 
 Functional. 4, 12. 
 
 Approximative and Divergent. 43 
 
 Muscular. 3, 7, 9, 12. 
 
 Moral. 101, 416, 521, 603 , 699 
 
 Vital. 9, 14, 20, 25 , 49. 
 
 Volitional. 12. 
 
 for result. 691. 
 
 identical with self-sacrifice. 731. 
 
 God's. 59, 60, 70, 92, 115, 126, 
 
 138 , 160, 422, 473, 523. 
 
 Kightness of 263. 
 
 AFFINITY, Chemical. 1 , 22 , 42, 495. 
 
 Cohesive. 16, 37, 43, 545. 
 
 Vital. 10, 37. 
 
 Mental vital. 344. 
 
 ANALOGY. 270, 306, 470. 
 ANIMALITY. 3, 22, 47, 426, 432. 
 
 Pain in relation to. 427. 
 
 Mind 435. 
 
 Perception 437. 
 
 ANNIHILATION. 668, 695. 
 ARBITRARINESS. 144, 225, 266, 380, 413, 
 
 442, 452, 513, 623, 682, 699, 720. 
 ART. 72, 184, 207, 240. 
 
 considered as phenomenon. 247, 415. 
 
 ASCETICISM. 698. 
 
 ATHEISM. 467, 606. 
 ATMOSPHERE. 40, 55. 
 ARBUTHNOTT. 314. 
 
 BACON. 74, 125 , 148, 338, 414, 574 
 BAROMETER. 55. 
 
 BEAUTY. 61 , 72 , 98, 133 , 231, 
 414, 443, 461, 520. 
 
 Reality as. 240. 
 
 BEING, as Agent. 423, 442 , 532, 595, 
 607, 632, 731. 
 
 as Moral. 502 , 595, 672, 680, 
 
 , 700. 
 
 BERKELEY. 3, 8, 115, 127, 161 , 221 , 
 
 228, 259, 362, 719. 
 
 BIBLE and NATURE. 236, 307, 467, 653 
 BICHAT. 111. 
 BOASTING. 381. 
 BRODIE. 22. 
 BROUGHAM. 110. 
 
 CARBON. 19 , 37. 
 
 CAUSE. 372, 440 , 460, 490 , 525, 722. 
 
 as End. 224, 338, 366. 
 
 God's action as. 340. 
 
 and Effect. 126 , 138, 213 , 
 
 225, 471, 511, 517, 618, 640. 
 
 CAUSE and Effect, polar. 351, 508) 527 
 CAUSES, Final. 111. 
 CELLS. 49 , 53. 
 
 Generation of. 9, 18, 24 , 40, 51. 
 
 . , , , , . 
 
 CHEMICITY. 20, 5], 84 , 314, 401, 479, 
 
 487, 548, 571, 590, 728. 
 CHRYSALIS. 22 , 25. 
 COLERIDGE. 33 - , 522, 576. 
 COMTE. 228, 260 , 358, 369. 
 COMETS, as Fossils. 85. 
 COMMON SENSE. 193. 
 COHCEPTIONS, simple and complex. 129. 
 Mental. 496. 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 455, 476, 523, 603, 720, 734. 
 CONSCIOUSNESS. 181, 282, 428, 437, 500, 
 
 , 515, 668, 710. ' 
 of Brutes. 284, 305, 333, 426 , 
 
 435, 549. 
 
 of choice. 523. 
 
 CONVERSION. 424. 
 
 COPERNICUS. 288, 294. 
 
 COUSIN. 69, 170. 
 
 CREATION. 45, 54, 88, 96, 394, 506, 510, 
 
 612, 703, 709. 
 
 special. lOfi, 164, 355, 615. 
 
 CREED. 291. 
 
 CRYSTALLIZATION. 1, 5, 19, 30 , 37, 44, 
 
 , 48, 590. 
 CUVIER. 539, 64G. 
 
 DEATH. 9, 266, 550, 605, 688. 
 
 oneness with God's anger. 653. 
 
 DECAY. 9, 15 , 21 , 29, 39, 42. 
 DECOMPOSITION. 24 , 39, 55. 
 DEFECT [see Evil]. 
 DESCARTES. 128, 168, 435, 584, 716. 
 DESTRUCTION of not-being. 688. 
 DEVELOPMENT. 9, 14 , 23 , 33 , 42, 
 54, 540, 550 , 715. 
 
 Mental. 189. 290, 386. 
 
 DEVIL. 477, 526, 598, 604, 656 , 675, 
 
 , 690, 697. 
 DISEASE. 12, 29, 68, 111, 134, 263, 379, 
 
 544, 566, 688. 
 
 as Life. 223, 264, 424, 598. 
 
 Mental. 186,311. 
 
 DYNAMICS. 314. 
 
 before Statics. 59, 108. 
 
 Statics before. 714. 
 
 EAR. 31 , 60, 581, 585. 
 
 EGG. 26, 40, 44. 
 
 ELECTRICITY. 1 , 7, 21 , 33 . 
 
 in Animals. 3. 
 
 ELLIPSE. 113, 473, 488 , 498, 512, 578, 
 586, 608.
 
 740 
 
 EMERSON. 102, 123, 132, 143, 227, 310, 
 
 416, 466, 652. 
 
 EMOTION. 3 , 7 , 9, 16, 98, 100. 
 EMBRYO. 10 , 18 , 26, 38 , 41 , 54. 
 
 Universe as, 291. 
 
 EQUILIBRIUM. 5, 24, 28, 44 , 607. 
 ERROR (see Evil). 
 
 ETERNITY. 493 , 517, 593, 654, 694. 
 EVIL, 8, 15, 67 , 70, 86, 145, 165 , 
 182, 425 , 430 , 450, 519. 
 
 phenomenal. 269, 414, 416, 443. 
 
 utilization of. 233, 265, 462 , 605 
 
 EYE. 8,31,44,60. 
 
 FACTS. 226, 347. 
 
 moral. 354, 372, 625. 
 
 FALL, The. 662, 679, 687, 693, 697. 
 FEUERBACH, 608. 
 
 FCETUSES, Brainless. 9. 
 FORCE. 568, 607. 
 
 Accumulation of. 2. 
 
 Centrifugal and Centripetal. 4,10, 
 
 34, 35. 
 
 Chemical. 1, 10 , 14. 
 
 Conversion of. 6 , 17, 34, 59, 
 
 105, 585. 
 
 as eternal. 599. 
 
 Latent. 1, 2, 5. 
 
 Nervous. 4 , 7 , 13, 59. 
 
 Positive and Negative. 12. 
 
 Polar. 5. 
 as spiritual act. 399. 
 as violence. 267. 
 vital. 2, 9 , 14. 
 
 FORCES, Kelation of the. 56, 714. 
 
 musical development of. 143, 160. 
 
 FORM. 593, 599. 
 
 FUNCTION. 4, 9 , 25 , 34 , 43, 48, 
 , 550, 607. 
 
 Mental. 76, 187, 198, 207. 
 
 FRESNEL, 193. 
 
 GEOLOGY. 23, 39, 85. 
 
 GENIUS. 46, 64 , 77, 91, 119, 129, 135, 
 
 150, 160 , 187, 194 , 256, 314, 457, 
 
 478, 502 ,* 550 . 
 
 as Function. 214, 291, 318. 
 
 as Belief in God. 331. 
 
 GEMMATION. 27 , 33 , 39 , 44, 47. 
 GOETHE. 625. 
 
 GRAVITATION. 34 , 44 ,310. 
 
 Invention of. 96. 
 
 GRAVITY. 1 , 20. 45 , 50, 55, 113, 586 
 GROWTH. 15 , 27, 33, 36. 
 
 HAPPINESS. 518. 
 HEAT. 1, 571. 
 
 negative. 4. 
 
 HELL. 456, 524, 594, 665, 680, 711. 
 HEAVEN. 171, 195, 415, 606, 665, 669. 
 HEGEL. 471, 548. 
 
 HOLINESS. 69, 78, 131, 218, 238, 387, 413 
 450, 473, 508, 539. 
 
 HOLINESS, as practical interpretation of 
 Natnre. 270. 
 Nature as. 448. 
 
 HUMAN BODY. 3, &c., 546, 562. 
 HUMANITY. 424, 448, 470, 558, 601, 701, 
 11, 729 , 736. 
 
 oneness of. 711. 
 
 distinction between Nature and. 269 
 as subjective passion. 222, 239, 
 
 261, 296, 358, 397. 
 HUGH MILLER. 715. 
 HUME. 220 
 HYBERNATION. 12, 23. 
 HYDROGEN. 4, 20, 33, 37, 43. 
 HYPOTHESIS. 576. 
 
 IDEAL. 70 , 73, 197, 232, 424, 472, 643. 
 IDOLS. 257. 
 
 IMAGINATION. 277, 288, 387, 427. 
 INDIVIDUALITY. 382 , 395, 442, 457, 
 
 515, 527, 603, 672, 712, 731. 
 INSTINCT. 5, 39, 46, 91, 110, 150, 180. 
 INTERPRETATION. 338, 374, 377, 384, 430, 
 
 470, 691. 
 INVERSE SQUARE. 709. 
 
 KITE. 58, 582. 
 
 LAW of Liberty.' 65 , 93, 102, 112, 131, 
 
 139, 176, 709. 
 as Love. 150. 
 
 LIFE. 3 , 9, 16, 20 , 36 , 43, 50 , 
 57, 117, 511, 530. 
 
 as vibration. 120,433,519, 540,553. 
 
 as opposition to Tendencies. 188, 
 
 198, 249. 
 
 as political and social organization. 
 
 197. 
 
 eternal. 653, 692. 
 
 from death. 419. 
 
 as unity by limit suppressed. 497 . 
 
 origin of. 38. 
 
 social. 647. 
 
 oneness of. 212, 413, 417. 
 
 spiritual. 413 , 420, 463 , 692. 
 
 as wrongness. 198. 
 
 variety of. 6,16,23,33,41,69,544. 
 
 existence without. 444,459 ,537. 
 
 universal. 448,463, 547. 
 
 Animal and vegetable, 8 , 14, 
 
 , 22 , 29 , 32 , 41, 58, 62 , 69, 
 80 , 112, 335, 479, 543, 562, 588. 
 
 LIGHT. 11 , 27, 43 , 55 , 193, 574. 
 Polarization of. 581. 
 
 LIMIT. 115, 273, 339, 464, 473, 506, 513, 
 527, 548, 608, 634. 
 
 of human faculties. 148, 164. 
 
 finite derived from infinite by. 141, 
 
 504. 
 
 moral. 527. 
 
 LOGIC. 288, 380, 454, 603, 619. 
 
 and Imagination polar. 288.
 
 741 
 
 LOGIC and Theory, oneness of. 482. 
 LOVE 93, 119, 127, 198, 283, 291 , 445, 
 
 460 _, 504, 512, 525, 5:58, 605, 674, 683, 
 
 699, 702, 731. 
 
 absence of. 410, 594, 607, 661. 
 
 Gravitation as. 710. 
 
 MAGNETISM. 5, 15, 23, 33 , 574. 
 MANICHEAN DOCTRINE. 607. 
 MATHEMATICS. 145, 224, 336, 354, 407, 
 481 _ t 513, 572, 608, 733. 
 
 of Things. 152. 
 
 like vegetable. 548. 
 
 as the history of Life. 233. 
 
 dynamical. 587. 
 
 MATTER. 3 , 10, 16 , 34, 45, 53, 75, 
 , 84, 92, 130, 162, 211, 437, 455, 510, 
 556, 633, 637, 646. 
 
 invention of. 60, 96, 114 , 120, 
 
 139 158, 164, 383, 400, 428. 
 
 idea of. 163, 632. 
 
 as property of thought. 3, 86, 159, 
 inertia of. 107, 114, 394, 405, 485, 
 
 538, 608, 632, 715, 724. 
 
 phenomenally unreal. 259. 
 REAL: why this effect on us? 600 
 
 623, 683. 
 MAURICE. 605. * _. . . 
 MENDELSSOHN. 68, 
 METAMORPHOSIS. 19 , 28. 
 METHOD. 147, 372. 
 MIND. 9, 25, 100, 141 , 158. 
 
 Development of. 181, 472, 480. 
 
 The universal. 273, 389, 426, 431 
 
 as Life. 343. 
 
 MIRACLE. 96, 537, 662. 
 MODESTY. 274, 430, 529. 
 MORALS. 451,516,522,525. 
 
 interpretation of phenomenal. 53( 
 
 MOTION. 15, 36, 60, 82, 114, 121, 157 
 162, 396, 436, 576. 
 
 . Law of our own mind. 97. 
 
 an illusion. 117, 125, 167. 
 
 Three vibrations at rt. angles, 297 
 
 Origin of. 589. 
 
 in least resistance, &c. 304, 681 
 
 Music, Architecture as. 61 , 65. 
 
 Defect as. 67, 112. 
 
 . Grades of life as. 254. 
 
 . Human Bodr as. 44. 
 
 Motion as. 57. 
 
 Nutritive and Functional. 208, 2i 
 
 as phenomenon. 271. 
 
 Universe as. 44, 56, 67, 73, 80 
 
 92 , 109 , 586. 
 
 . Worship as. 44, 65. 
 
 M'ULLER. 284. 
 
 MYSTERY, not Life but death. 420. 
 MYSTICISM, 531. 
 
 NATURE, Man's Servant. 124. 
 
 ATURE, as Bride of Man. 173, 208. 
 
 as taken out of Man. 125, 4?0. 
 
 Man brain to. 362, 427. 
 
 Man lawgiver to. 126, 462. 
 
 as Truth. 414. 
 
 as moral. 450. 
 Laws of. 555. 
 
 ECESSITY. 413, 457 , 473, 603, 630, 
 EGATION, existence of. 407. 
 'ITROGEN. 36 , 40 
 
 NUTRITION. 4, 9 , 22, 32, 48, 429, 488, 
 ,.550. 
 
 control of passion, as. 420, 532, 698 
 
 Mental. 76, 188 , 470, 551, 619. 
 Wrongness, as. 198, 23., 252 
 
 264, 310, 313, 331, 386, 425 , 605, 620, 
 725. 
 
 two forms of. 553. 
 
 phenomena, as. 632. 
 
 OCTAVES. 57 , 80 , 143, 160, 335, 
 
 544, 555. 
 
 ORGANIZATION. 21 , 29, 38, 81, 549. 
 OXYGEN. 4, 1 5 , 22, 33 , 43, 81. 
 
 PAIN. (See EVIL.) 
 
 PAINTING. 496. 
 
 PAGET. 11, 14. 
 
 PANTHEISM. 450, 473, 533, 606, 642, 
 
 PARADOX. 149, 473, 500 , 513, 529. 
 
 PASSION. 71, 180, 372, 447, 520 , 602. 
 
 Nature due to subjective. 196, 
 
 218, 226, 259, 365, 377, 423, 513, 520. 
 our life and Nature's. 270, 345, 
 
 362, 389, 440. 
 
 as Instinct. 286. 
 
 Life as due control of. 418, 623. 
 
 Science, Art, and Literature, forms 
 
 of. 294. 
 
 as Vibration. 546. 
 
 controlled, in what sense ours. 474. 
 
 PENDULUM. 14 , 27 , 38, 51, 60, 582. 
 PERCEPTION, wrongness of. 197 > 242, 
 
 266, 276, 352, 432, 501, 703. 
 
 outness of. 302. 
 
 reason of. 370, 379, 437, 601. 
 
 wrongness, causingmental life, 345. 
 
 according to state. 663. 
 
 PHENOMENA. 90, 104 , 119, 127, 137, 
 219, 413, 460, 531, 627, 692. 
 
 wrongness as. 363. 
 
 as Theory. 271. 
 
 as basis of Theory. 317. 
 
 Spirit as key to. 527, 538. 
 
 PHILOSOPHY. 309. 
 PLATO. 70, 74. 
 PLEASURE. 446. 
 
 relation between pain and 447, 522. 
 
 POETRY. 240, 290, 349, 470. 
 POLARITY. 4, 23, 33 , 42, , 50 . 59, 
 83, 102, 478, 536, 575, 618, 621 , 714.
 
 742 
 
 POLARITY of right and wrong. 449. 
 
 of body. 282. 
 
 of Religion and Science. 452,461. 
 
 of Nature and Thought. 452, 477- 
 
 POWELL. 126, 344. 
 
 PRAYER. 658. 
 
 PRESSURE. 25 , 40 , 55, 92. 
 PROPERTIES and TENDENCIES. 130, 283, 
 305, 517, 562, 620. 
 
 QUINARIES. 32, 42 , 375, 372, 621. 
 
 REALITY. 307, 375, 395, 681. 
 
 moral. 264, 273, 379, 397, 416 
 
 423, 643. 
 
 REASON. 576, 603. 
 
 REDEMPTION. 416, 419, 658, 667, 711. 
 
 image of Creation. 661 . 
 
 re-assertion of suppressed Being. 
 
 667. 
 
 oneness of Creation and. 445, 506, 
 
 536, 599, 602, 653, 675. 
 RELIGION. 315, 452, 464, 677, 682, 689. 
 REPAIR. 25, 123, 737. 
 REPLACEMENT. 26, 31 , 39, 54, 566. 
 REPRODUCTION. 26, 32, 622. 
 RESISTANCE. 16 , 20 , 31 , 37, 47 
 
 , 59 , 134, 412. 
 
 moral. 534. 
 
 RESISTANCE, Least. 31 , 36, 47, 60 , 
 
 82, 87, 96, 123, 364, 450, 460, 514, 709, 
 RIGHT. 63 , 71, 96, 417, 444, 448, 519, 
 
 530, 603. 
 
 our sense of. 487, 526, 530, 572. 
 
 law of Nature. 93, 131, 175, 218, 
 
 414, 443. 
 
 as Life. 601. 
 
 RUSKIN. 248, 250, 288, 392. 
 
 SALVATION of the Soul. 235, 512, 658, 718. 
 SCIENCE. 119, 128 , 137, 145, 151,200, 
 464, 480, 486, 643, 677, 682. 
 
 and Art. 239, 451. 
 
 Intellectual. 153. 
 
 Spiritual. 364, 407, 486, 528, 530. 
 
 as Holiness. 369. 
 
 SECRETION. 3, 4, 9 , 13. 
 SELF-SACRIFICE. 12, 299, 398, 408, 441, 
 
 506, 512, 518, 523, 533, 598, 605,614, 
 674, 685, 698, 724. 
 SENSATION. 375, 388, 408, 416, 442, 453. 
 
 as property of Spirit. 425 , 432. 
 
 two kinds of. 426. 
 
 image of moral. 537, 734. 
 
 SERVICE. 164. 
 SHAKESPEARE. 271, 300, 349. 
 
 SlN. 8, 60, 77, 101, 135, 149, 174, 190, 
 206, 238, 597, 626. 
 
 as Death. 269, 381, 468, 512, 680. 
 
 as productive of Life. 217, 235, 238, 
 
 420, 461, 667. 
 
 as resistance to God's action. 304. 
 
 as Act. 538. 
 
 SlN, as uncontrolled passion. 410, 434, 
 461,466, 669. 
 
 as Disease. 419, 424, 476, 604, 736. 
 
 as Negation. 407, 415, 443, 456, 465, 
 
 474, 594, 596, 603, 608, 661, 668, 697, 
 703, 715. 
 
 as Selfishness. 474, 693, 701. 
 
 Punishment of. 332, 439, 455, 512, 
 
 524, 633, 691, 737. 
 
 SLEEP. 361, 549. 
 
 SOUL. 53, 282. 
 
 SOUND. 571. 
 
 SPACE. 113, 139, 262, 374, 396, 409, 440, 
 
 490, 600, 627. 
 SPECIES. 21, 33. 
 SPIRAL. 42, 54, 49, 81, 134, 137, 19?, 214, 
 
 371, 562, 579. 582. 
 
 SPIRIT. 6, 53, 85, 100, 112, 145, 158, 160, 
 262, 395, 407, 444, 517, 630. 
 
 confusion of Mind with. 422, 435. 
 Future existence of . 440,538,661. 
 Act identical with. 396, 448, 455, 
 
 474, 522, 536, 702. 
 
 right action a property of. 444. 
 
 SPINOZA. 646. 
 
 SWEDENBORG. 188, 296, 407, 448, 657. 
 
 SYDENHAM. 9. 
 
 SYLLOGISM. 193. 
 
 SYSTEMS, Solar and Sidereal. 16, 21, 27, 
 
 44,49,76,81,111,364,578. 
 as diseased. 417. 
 
 TALENT. 203, 255, 314, 458, 478, 502, 
 512, 550, 629, 682. 
 
 as mental vital force. 343. 
 
 as nutrition. 214. 518. 
 
 as parallel to duty. 525. 
 
 TENSION. 22. 
 
 Luminous. 84. 
 
 THEORY. 100, 110, 121, 144, 195, 200, 
 292, 317. 
 
 False. 275. 
 
 an organization. 272, 389. 
 
 Religions. 456. 
 
 THINGS. 139, 154, 160, 171, 179, 193, 255, 
 395, 606, 632, 646. 
 
 conception of. 304, 399, 623. 
 
 believed in 19th century. 230. 
 
 as forms, signs of the actual. 402, 
 
 404, 607. 
 
 as passions. 438. 
 
 THOUGHT. 3, 85, 103, 380, 737. 
 
 Development of. 142, 148, 165, 
 
 172, 281, 520. 
 
 Development of, musical. 160. 
 
 Fossil.' _ 85. 
 
 as material phenomenon. 155, 
 
 219, 255. 
 
 Necessity a form of. 148. 
 
 as Resistance to Thought. 178. 
 
 as Respiration. 193, 199. 
 
 as spiritual passion. 374.
 
 743 
 
 THOUGHT, Rightness of. 626. 
 
 Unity of. 618. 
 
 Unconscious. 428. 
 
 as Vibration. 165 , 171, 181, 
 
 378, 452, 464. 
 TIME. 44, 50, 140, 188, 218, 261, 347, 
 
 396, 440, 490, 599, 678, 728, 731. 
 TOUCH. 173, 501, 549. 
 TRIPLETS in Action 81, 104, 154. 
 
 Art. 72, 190, 283. 
 
 Causation. 340. 
 
 Change of Force. 36. 
 
 Chemical Change. 107. 
 
 Color 104, 122, 469, 637. 
 
 ,, Development. 114, 193. 
 
 the Divine Nature. 103, 452. 
 
 Function. 187, 211. 
 
 Ideas. 416. 
 
 Life, mental. 76, 113, 122, 
 
 187, 192 , 262, 369, 375, 417, 468, 520, 
 547. 
 
 in Life spiritual. 244. 426. 
 
 in Life physical. 68, 369, 375, 
 
 417. 468. 479, 489. 
 
 in Limitation. 115. 
 
 Matter. 75, 118, 141, 267. 
 
 Motion. 60, 118, 211, 579. 
 
 Number. 104. 
 
 Passion. 477. 
 
 Science. 119, 283. 
 
 Syllogism. 193. 
 
 Theologies. 651. 
 
 Time. 77, 192. 
 
 Universality of. 218, 223, 237, 
 
 289,417, 538. 
 
 in Vibration. 189, 122. 
 
 TRUTH. 73,92, 111, 120, 125, 520, 620, 
 
 667, 689. 
 TURNER. 253. 
 TYPES. 122. 
 
 UNITY. 31, 38 , 68 , 91, 100, 109, 
 128 , 144, 388, 619, 640, 731. 
 
 of Mind and Body. 145, 159, 166, 
 
 169, 191 , 204, 226, 292, 315 , 362, 
 485. 
 
 of Science and Art with Nature. 
 
 245, 253. 
 
 UNITY of God and Nature. 702. 
 
 UNITY of God's Spirit and ours. 461,674- 
 of God's act and ours. 457, 463, 
 
 503, 613. 
 
 of Holiness and Love. 458. 
 
 of Science and Piety. 461. 
 
 of Good and Evil. 462. 
 
 of Soul and Body. 481, 485, 524, 
 
 721, 726. 
 
 of Genius and Theory. 507. 
 
 of Force and Matter. 730, 734. 
 
 of Being and not-being in God. 723 
 
 UNIVERSE, as animal. 33, 48 , 82, 158. 
 
 as God's act in the present. 494. 
 
 as God's act. 91, 110, 118, 161, 
 
 , 277, 416, 425, 438. 
 
 as result of moral act. 413, 503, 
 
 629. 
 
 as a work of Genius. 313, 379, 
 
 450, 456. 
 
 as Passion. 263, 315, 346, 397, 
 
 438, 447, 527, 619. 
 
 as God's act on a world of spirits. 
 
 435. 
 
 as passion in spirit. 440, 455, 
 
 489. 
 
 as effect of 499. 
 
 as acts and agents. 166. 
 
 as Man. 100, 112, 125, 129. 
 
 as a finite motion. 109, 114, 140, 
 
 158. 
 
 as a limited plenum. 267. 
 
 as Vibration. 120, 315. 
 
 spiritual. 603, 704, 732. 
 
 an organization. 732, 735. 
 
 VARIETY. 492, 497, 505, 627. 
 VESTIGES of the Natural Histoiy of Cre- 
 ation. 614. 
 VIBRATION. 35, 43, 49, 79, 575 , 588. 
 
 Thought and motion as one. 
 
 411. 
 
 Transitive and continuous. 297, 
 
 550, 571, 714. 
 WHEWELL. 85, 104, 110 , 129, 161, 
 
 260, 306. 
 WILL. 145, 161, 333, 421, 448, 464, 473, 
 
 535, 683, 699, 724, 736. 
 
 polarity of Free. 193.
 
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