The puzzle or the contradiction in the naturalistic view of life appears
when we try to think of a being as a part of Nature, having his genesis
in her material forces, who is yet able to master and direct Nature,
reversing her processes and defeating her ends, opposing his will to her
fatalism, his mercy to her cruelty--in short, a being who thinks,
dreams, aspires, loves truth, justice, goodness, and sits in judgment
upon the very gods he worships. Must he not bring a new force, an alien
power? Can a part be greater than the whole? Can the psychic dominate
the physical out of which it came? Again we have only to enlarge our
conception of the physical--the natural--or make our faith measure up to
the demands of reason. Our reason demands that the natural order be
all-inclusive. Can our faith in the divinity of matter measure up to
this standard? Not till we free ourselves from the inherited prejudices
which have grown up from our everyday struggles with gross matter. We
must follow the guidance of science till we penetrate this husk and see
its real mystical and transcendental character, as Tyndall did.
When we have followed matter from mass to molecule, from molecule to
atom, from atom to electron, and seen it in effect dematerialized,--seen
it in its fourth or ethereal, I had almost said spiritual, state,--when
we have grasped the wonder of radio-activity, and the atomic
transformations that attend it, we shall have a conception of the
potencies and possibilities of matter that robs scientific materialism
of most of its ugliness. Of course, no deductions of science can satisfy
our longings for something kindred to our own spirits in the universe.
But neither our telescopes nor our microscopes reveal such a reality. Is
this longing only the result of our inevitable anthropomorphism, or is
it the evidence of things unseen, the substance of things hoped for, the
prophecy of our kinship with the farthest star? Can soul arise out of a
soulless universe?
Though the secret of life is under our feet, yet how strange and
mysterious it seems! It draws our attention away from matter. It arises
among the inorganic elements like a visitant from another sphere. It is
a new thing in the world. Consciousness is a new thing, yet Huxley makes
it one of his trinity of realities--matter, energy, and consciousness.
We are so immersed in these realities that we do not see the divinity
they embody. We call that sacred and divine which i
|