Part 34 (1/2)
All omens point towards the steady continuance of just such labour as has already taught us all we know. Perhaps, indeed, in this complex of interpenetrating spirits our own effort is no individual, no transitory thing. That which lies at the root of each of us lies at the root of the Cosmos too. Our struggle is the struggle of the Universe itself; and the very G.o.dhead finds fulfilment through our upward-striving souls.
CHAPTER X
EPILOGUE
?d??e? t?? ?? ???? p??se????sa ?a?? ?a? e?e?d??, ?e??? ??t?a e ?a?
??pe??, ? S???ate?, ??at? ?e? t??t?t? f???? ??????? ?????.--???t????
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The task which I proposed to myself at the beginning of this work is now, after a fas.h.i.+on, accomplished. Following the successive steps of my programme, I have presented,--not indeed all the evidence which I possess, and which I would willingly present,--but enough at least to ill.u.s.trate a continuous exposition, and as much as can be compressed into two volumes, with any hope that these volumes will be read at all.[211] I have indicated also the princ.i.p.al inferences which that evidence immediately suggests. Such wider generalisations as I may now add must needs be dangerously speculative; they must run the risk of alienating still further from this research many of the scientific minds which I am most anxious to influence.
This risk, nevertheless, I feel bound to face. For two reasons,--or, I should perhaps say, for one main reason seen under two aspects,--I cannot leave this obscure and unfamiliar ma.s.s of observation and experiment without some words of wider generalisation, some epilogue which may place these new discoveries in clearer relation to the existing schemes of civilised thought and belief.
In the first place, I feel that some such attempt at synthesis is needful for the practical purpose of enlisting help in our long inquiry.
As has been hinted more than once, the real drag upon its progress has been not opposition but indifference. Or if indifference be too strong a word, at any rate the interest evoked has not been such as to inspire to steady independent work anything like the number of coadjutors who would have responded to a new departure in one of the sciences which all men have learnt to respect. The inquiry falls between the two stools of religion and science; it cannot claim support either from the ”religious world” or from the Royal Society. Yet even apart from the instinct of pure scientific curiosity (which surely has seldom seen such a field opening before it), the mighty issues depending on these phenomena ought, I think, to const.i.tute in themselves a strong, an exceptional appeal. I desire in this book to emphasise that appeal;--not only to produce conviction, but also to attract co-operation. And actual converse with many persons has led me to believe that in order to attract such help, even from scientific men, some general view of the moral upshot of all the phenomena is needed;--speculative and uncertain though such a general view must be.
Again,--and here the practical reason already given expands into a wider scope,--it would be unfair to the evidence itself were I to close this work without touching more directly than hitherto on some of the deepest faiths of men. The influence of the evidence set forth in this book should not be limited to the conclusions, however weighty, which that evidence may be thought to establish. Rather these discoveries should prompt, as nothing else could have prompted, towards the ultimate achievement of that programme of scientific dominance which the _Instauratio Magna_ proclaimed for mankind. Bacon foresaw the gradual victory of observation and experiment--the triumph of actual a.n.a.lysed fact--in every department of human study;--in every department save one.
The realm of ”Divine things” he left to Authority and Faith. I here urge that that great exemption need be no longer made. I claim that there now exists an incipient method of getting at this Divine knowledge also, with the same certainty, the same calm a.s.surance, with which we make our steady progress in the knowledge of terrene things. The authority of creeds and Churches will thus be replaced by the authority of observation and experiment. The impulse of faith will resolve itself into a reasoned and resolute imagination, bent upon raising even higher than now the highest ideals of man.
Most readers of the preceding pages will have been prepared for the point of view thus frankly avowed. Yet to few readers can that point of view at first present itself otherwise than as alien and repellent.
Philosophy and orthodoxy will alike resent it as presumptuous; nor will science readily accept the unauthorised transfer to herself of regions of which she has long been wont either to deny the existence, or at any rate to disclaim the rule. Nevertheless, I think that it will appear on reflection that some such change of standpoint as this was urgently needed,--nay, was ultimately inevitable.
I need not here describe at length the deep disquiet of our time. Never, perhaps, did man's spiritual satisfaction bear a smaller proportion to his needs. The old-world sustenance, however earnestly administered, is too unsubstantial for the modern cravings. And thus through our civilised societies two conflicting currents run. On the one hand health, intelligence, morality,--all such boons as the steady progress of planetary evolution can win for man,--are being achieved in increasing measure. On the other hand this very sanity, this very prosperity, do but bring out in stronger relief the underlying _Welt-Schmers_, the decline of any real belief in the dignity, the meaning, the endlessness of life.
There are many, of course, who readily accept this limitation of view; who are willing to let earthly activities and pleasures gradually dissipate and obscure the larger hope. But others cannot thus be easily satisfied. They rather resemble children who are growing too old for their games;--whose amus.e.m.e.nt sinks into an indifference and discontent for which the fitting remedy is an initiation into the serious work of men.
A similar crisis has pa.s.sed over Europe once before. There came a time when the joyful navete, the unquestioning impulse of the early world had pa.s.sed away; when the wors.h.i.+p of Greeks no more was beauty, nor the religion of Romans Rome. Alexandrian decadence, Byzantine despair, found utterance in many an epigram which might have been written to-day. Then came a great uprush or incursion from the spiritual world, and with new races and new ideals Europe regained its youth.
The unique effect of that great Christian impulse begins, perhaps, to wear away. But more grace may yet be attainable from the region whence that grace came. Our age's restlessness, as I believe, is the restlessness not of senility but of adolescence; it resembles the approach of p.u.b.erty rather than the approach of death.
What the age needs is not an abandonment of effort, but an increase; the time is ripe for a study of unseen things as strenuous and sincere as that which Science has made familiar for the problems of earth. For now the scientific instinct,--so newly developed in mankind,--seems likely to spread until it becomes as dominant as was in time past the religious; and if there be even the narrowest c.h.i.n.k through which man can look forth from his planetary cage, our descendants will not leave that c.h.i.n.k neglected or unwidened. The scheme of knowledge which can commend itself to such seekers must be a scheme which, while it _transcends_ our present knowledge, steadily _continues_ it;--a scheme not catastrophic, but evolutionary; not promulgated and closed in a moment, but gradually unfolding itself to progressive inquiry.
Must there not also be a continuous change, an unending advance in the human ideal itself? so that Faith must s.h.i.+ft her standpoint from the brief Past to the endless Future, not so much caring to supply the lacunae of tradition as to intensify the conviction that there is still a higher life to work for, a holiness which may be some day reached by grace and effort as yet unknown.
It may be that for some generations to come the truest faith will lie in the patient attempt to unravel from confused phenomena some trace of the supernal world;--to find thus at last ”the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” I confess, indeed, that I have often felt as though this present age were even unduly favoured;--as though no future revelation and calm could equal the joy of this great struggle from doubt into certainty;--from the materialism or agnosticism which accompany the first advance of Science into the deeper scientific conviction that there is a deathless soul in man. I can imagine no other crisis of such deep delight. But after all this is but like the starving child's inability to imagine anything sweeter than his first bite at the crust. Give him but _that_, and he can hardly care for the moment whether he is fated to be Prime Minister or ploughboy.
Equally transitory, equally dependent on our special place in the story of man's upward effort, is another shade of feeling which many men have known. They have felt that uncertainty gave scope to faith and courage in a way which scientific a.s.surance could never do. There has been a stern delight in the choice of virtue,--even though virtue might bring no reward. This joy, like the joy of Columbus sailing westward from Hierro, can hardly recur in precisely the same form. But neither (to descend to a humbler comparison) can we grown men again give ourselves up to learning in the same spirit of pure faith, without prefigurement of result, as when we learnt the alphabet at our mother's knees. Have we therefore relaxed since then our intellectual effort? Have we felt that there was no longer need to struggle against idleness when once we knew that knowledge brought a sure reward?
Endless are the varieties of lofty joy. In the age of Thales, Greece knew the delight of the first dim notion of cosmic unity and law. In the age of Christ, Europe felt the first high authentic message from a world beyond our own. In our own age we reach the perception that such messages may become continuous and progressive;--that between seen and unseen there is a channel and fairway which future generations may learn to widen and to clarify. Our own age may seem the best to us; so will their mightier ages seem to them.
”'Talia saecla' suis dixerunt 'currite' fusis Concordes stabili Fatorum numine Parcae.”
_Spiritual evolution_:--that, then, is our destiny, in this and other worlds;--an evolution gradual with many gradations, and rising to no a.s.signable close. And the pa.s.sion for Life is no selfish weakness, it is a factor in the universal energy. It should keep its strength unbroken even when our weariness longs to fold the hands in endless slumber; it should outlast and annihilate the ”pangs that conquer trust.” If to the Greeks it seemed a ??p?ta??a--a desertion of one's post in battle--to quit by suicide the life of earth, how much more craven were the desire to desert the Cosmos,--the despair, not of this planet only, but of the Sum of Things!
Nay, in the infinite Universe man may now feel, for the first time, at home. The worst fear is over; the true security is won. The worst fear was the fear of spiritual extinction or spiritual solitude; the true security is in the telepathic law.
Let me draw out my meaning at somewhat greater length.