Divine Selection or The Survival of the Useful/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
of the
Unseen World
IT HAS been thought that through scientific research would come an explanation of the motor power of the universe and of the cosmic process in particular, so that there would be no need of resort to the thought of a spiritual world or of a Divine Being. But research has resulted in the reverse. The further we go, the more evident does it appear that nature is not sufficient unto herself. The more we learn, the more certain we are that nature is only an effect of which an interior world is the cause.
If science shows that one hair sac is developed into an eye and another into an ear, it does not tell why; and the fact of the development is even as great a mystery as ever. For there is as much mystery in conceiving how and why nature develops an eye from one tissue and an ear from another as there is in imagining similar development from pure protoplasm. There is no intelligence in sound waves or ether vibrations. They can neither hear nor see. They are deaf and sightless things, and can therefore give neither the consciousness of sound nor sight, much less can they form the organs of these senses. Though no other reply had been given to the reasonings that materialize spiritual phenomena, a sufficient answer is involved in those ancient yet trenchant words, "He that, planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that formed the eye, shall He not see?"
If materialistic Evolution fails to explain the causes in matter that form the physical organs, how much more must it fall short in accounting for the life that animates them, which we designate as human, and which is manifested in intelligence, the aspiration for eternal life, the worship of God, and the desire to know and to fulfil His laws.
Spiritual things are as surely the objects of spiritual desires as material things are the objects of the senses. The wing of a bird is proof of an atmosphere; the fin of the fish is evidence of the sea. The ear is a proof of sound, the eye of light, the olfactory nerves of odors, the hand of objects external to it. We do not find in nature such a contradiction as a wing and no atmosphere, lungs and no air. It does not exist in the imagination of man to conceive, or in the power of God to create that which has no relation to anything. Everything is in correspondence with something. Likewise every desire of the human heart must have not only a real object, but a possible one. It is impossible for it to be otherwise, for in correspondence with something is every living thing made. There is no orderly appetite for which there is not a satisfying food. Of the mind's appetites it is equally true that the desire is sufficient evidence of the reality of its object and of the possibility of its satisfaction.
Evolution emphasizes the theory of a development from the unicellular form to the complex structure of man. The creating energy has been so persistent that it has persevered to bring forth the perfect form, even by infinitesimal increments. It has developed a type of being whose understanding gives him an immovable faith in the existence of God, whose inmost and all-controlling life is to know God, whose chief purpose of existence is to become like Him, and who, in the exercise of this life, finds the highest, sweetest, most blessed and precious joy that is known. There are many who will say that it does not stand to reason that such a being could be created and brought to this state of life, and yet there be no reality in it. Moral intuition dictates that the human form could not be so perfected and endowed with sublime aspirations simply for disappointment. Since science holds that every animal organ, sense, and faculty, are developed through their relations to something, is it possible for the distinctively human senses and faculties to be developed if they are in relation to nothing? Is it not a violation of every principle of scientific reasoning to assume that human aspirations are developed in relation to non-realities, or to nothing? We may conclude with logic as sound and certain as is used in any scientific deduction, that every sense, faculty, and hope of the human soul has an objective reality in relation to which it is developed as surely as the wing argues an atmosphere, or the eye an ether.
That there is a substantial, spiritual world in relation to which the faculties of the human soul are developed, is not too great a thing to conceive nor too remote to be urged as an esssential basis of philosophical reasoning. Considering the wisdom and power of the Creating Agency displayed in the universe, can we conceive of its final failure through attempting that which is too much for it? Man may lay a foundation upon which he is unable to build, but we cannot conceive of the Supreme Architect making false calculations, and Himself ridiculous in the understanding of His own creatures, through inability to complete the structure upon the foundation which He has laid.
It was once a grievous question what we should do for oil when the sperm whale becomes extinguished. Coal oil was found. Yet mankind took up the same childish dirge, What shall we do when coal oil gives out? Electricity has now revealed an inexhaustible supply of light. In whatever field man has wrought, nature has been found replete in her provision, and all experience goes to show that she amply supplies, in the best way and forever, the developing needs of mankind, giving him more and better than he had hoped for. If nature is so perfect in her ministry to the external and lower desires of mankind, how much more must the spiritual world be able to satisfy the internal and higher desires!
The sense that tells us that nature could not have been started by fortune, nor continued by chance, nor perfected by selfish strife, reveals not only that there is an intelligent, designing, loving God, but also a world within the material, which gives shape and life to the natural world, and is able to serve with full satisfaction the aspirations that are planted in the spirit of man.
In asserting the existence of a real, spiritual world, we do not carry materialism into the spiritual realm. Material applies to the passive, dead, substances of the natural universe, including the substances that enter into the composition of the sun down to the most fixed rock of the earth. The substances of the spiritual world are superior and interior to all of these.
We recognize that water has a property of plasticity superior to that of rock. Air is still more plastic than water, which constitutes it the medium of sound. Ether is still more plastic than air, which enables it to be the medium of light. No scientist can doubt or fail to conceive of the material substance of ether, so subtle as to penetrate matter of a lower degree and be universally present. We can as easily conceive of a spiritual world likewise separated from the material. We are obliged to introduce into our higher reasoning a substantial, spiritual world, a form as real to the faculties of the soul as nature is to the senses of the body. The whole difficulty with the science of the day is that it refuses to acknowledge in its reasonings what is not discernible by the bodily senses, yet which reason clearly discerns. And as spirit must ever elude the senses of the body from its superiority to them, it must be introduced as a rational conclusion of scientific thought. In which case spiritual or mental phenomena are as readily explained as natural phenomena, and by analogous principles.
Materialism has never explained a primary cause. It is safe to say that the realm of interior causes can not be entered until science admits the rational deductions that every cause originates in a substance, that every force is the activity of a substance, and that all supernatural powers are from a substantial, spiritual world. Indeed, it may as well be admitted now as at any time that there can be no interior knowledge of anything if an explanation is desired that shall do away with the acknowledgment of God, who is the Creator and the life-power itself. Suppose it to be true that there is a God, in whom is life itself, who is a Creator because He can put forth from Himself substance, and form spiritual and material objects. Suppose that things external to the Creator, both natural and spiritual, were so formed that they could receive their respective kinds of life perpetually from Him. What then would be the mental status of him who, denying this, should try to account for creation apart from the Creator? Would not the present materialistic and agnostic conditions necessarily ensue? In this the origin of Evolution, together with all its modifications and adaptations, is clearly apparent.
The materialism revived by Mr. Darwin, and pressed so zealously by his followers, is in substance the rejection of God, the same as that of which Jeremiah long ago wrote: "Saying to a stock, 'Thou art my father,' and to a stone, 'Thou hast brought me forth.'" And the reason of it is the same as in the lines following: "For they have turned their backs unto Me, and not their faces."