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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



the poetry itself is blindly ground out by the 

 same illimitable mill of evolution which grinds out 

 virtue and affection. We are by no means sure 

 that we understand what Cosmic Emotion is, even 

 after reading an exposition of its nature by no 

 ungifted hand. Its symbola, so to speak, are the 

 feelings produced by the two objects of Kant's 

 peculiar reverence, the stars of heaven, and the 

 moral faculty of man. But, after all, these are 

 only like anything else, aggregations of molecules 

 in a certain stage of evolution. To the unscien- 

 tific eye they may be awful, because they are 

 mysterious ; but let science analyze them and 

 their awfulness disappears. If the interaction of 

 all parts of the material universe is complete, we 

 fail to see why one object or one feeling is more 

 cosmic than another. However, we will not dwell 

 on that whicb, as we have already confessed, we 

 do not feel sure that we rightly apprehend. What 

 we do clearly see is that to have cosmic emotion, 

 or cosmic anything, you must have a cosmos. You 

 must be assured that the universe is a cosmos 

 and not a chaos. And what assurance of this can 

 materialism or any non-theological system give ? 

 Law is a theological term : it implies a lawgiver, 

 or a governing intelligence of some kind. Science 

 can tell us nothing but facts, single or accumu- 

 lated as experience, which would not make a law 

 though they had been observed through myriads 

 of years. Law is a theological term, and cosmos 

 is equally so, if it may not rather be said to be a 

 Greek name for the aggregate of laws. For or- 

 der implies intelligent selection and arrangement. 

 Our idea of order would not be satisfied by a 

 number of objects falling by mere chance into a 

 particular figure, however intricate and regular. 

 All the arguments which have been used against 

 design seem to tell with equal force against order. 

 We have no other universe wherewith to compare 

 this so as by the comparison to assure ourselves 

 that this is not a chaos but a cosmos. Both on 

 the earth and in the heavens we see much that is 

 not order but disorder, not cosmos but acosmia. 

 If we divine, nevertheless, that order reigns, and 

 that there is design beneath the seemingly unde- 

 signed, and good beneath the appearance of evil, 

 it is by virtue of something not dreamed of in the 

 philosophy of materialism. 



Have we really come to this, that the world 

 has no longer any good reason for believing in a 

 God or a life beyond the grave ? If so, it is diffi- 

 cult to deny that with regard to the great mass 

 of mankind up to this time Schopenhauer and the 

 pessimists are right, and existence has been a 

 cruel misadventure. The number of those who 



have suffered life-long oppression, disease, or 

 want, who have died deaths of torture or perished 

 miserably by war, is limited though enormous ; 

 but probably there have been few lives in which 

 the earthly good has not been outweighed by the 

 evil. The future may bring increased means of 

 happiness, though those who are gone will not be 

 the better for them ; but it will bring also increase 

 of sensibility, and the consciousness of hopeless 

 imperfection and miserable futility will probably 

 become a distinct and growing cause of pain. It 

 is doubtful even whether, after such a raising of 

 Mokanna's veil, faith in everything would not ex- 

 pire and human effort cease. Still we must face 

 the situation : there can be no use in self-delusion. 

 In vain we shall seek to cheat our souls and to 

 fill a void which cannot be filled by the manufact- 

 ure of artificial religions and the affectation of a 

 spiritual language to which, however persistently 

 and fervently it may be used, no realities corre- 

 spond. If one of these cults could get itself 

 established, in less than a generation it would be- 

 come hollower than the hollowest of ecclesiasti- 

 cisms. Probably not a few of the highest na- 

 tures would withdraw themselves from the dreary 

 round of self-mockery by suicide ; and if a scien- 

 tific priesthood attempted . to close that door by 

 sociological dogma or posthumous denunciation 

 the result would show the difference between the 

 practical efficacy of a religion with a God and 

 that of a cult of " Humanity " or " Space." 



Shadows and figments, as they appear to us to 

 be in themselves, these attempts to provide a sub- 

 stitute for religion are of the highest importance, 

 as showing that men of great powers of mind, 

 who have thoroughly broken loose not only from 

 Christianity but from natural religion, and in 

 some cases placed themselves in violent antago- 

 nism to both, are still unable to divest themselves 

 of the religious sentiment, or to appease its crav- 

 ing for satisfaction. There being no God, they 

 find it necessary, as Voltaire predicted it would 

 be, to invent one ; not for the purposes of police 

 (they are far above such sordid Jesuitism), but as 

 the solution of the otherwise hopeless enigma of 

 our spiritual nature. Science takes cognizance 

 of all phenomena; and this apparently ineradi- 

 cable tendency of the human mind is a phenom- 

 enon like the rest. The thorough-going material- 

 ist, of course, escapes all these philosophical 

 exigencies ; but he does it by denying Humanity 

 as well as God, and reducing the difference be- 

 tween the organism of the human animal and 

 that of any other animal to a mere question of 

 complexity. Still, even in this quarter, there has 



