September 1, 1887.] 



KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



245 



sacrifices ; hence, also, the persistence of like beliefs amongst 

 the illiterate in civilised countries. 



This animism, or general doctrine of spiritual agents, was 

 largely fostered by personal experience .supplied by dreams 

 about both the dead and living, hallucinations, swoons, and 

 by the shadows or reflections which objects cast, all which 

 seemed to witness to the existence of a second self or soul, 

 that came and went at pleasure during life, and haunted 

 its old spots after death. The burial-place became the spot 

 where the living brought their gifts to the dread spirits of 

 the departed, whose worship is a leading feature of barbaric 

 religions. Combined with the belief in life wherever power 

 or movement were manifest, these elements have built up all 

 theologies from the polytheistic to the so-called monotheistic, 

 the common element in each being the ascription of per- 

 sonality to unseen powers. Given the intellectual stage 

 which a people has reached, the character of their gods can 

 be predicted, although the higher theologies will retain per- 

 sistent ti-aces of the barbaric conceptions of deity in which 

 they arose. They are not, as shallow carpers have argued, 

 the ingenious inventions of self-seeking men; they arise out 

 of the necessity of human nature to frame an explanation of 

 that which affects it deeply and constantly. Their roots 

 draw nutriment from a common soil ; the frenzy of the 

 savage and the ecstasy of the saint have a common base in 

 undisciplined imagination. 



Theology is only puritied fiom gross conceptions in the 

 degree that it is purged of the false science with which, to 

 its own hurt, it identified itself in the past, and to the 

 remnants of which it still clings. The function of science 

 is to clarify the mind and to show how the beliefs of the 

 past are the myths of the present ; the duty of theology is to 

 readjust itself to what science proves to be true. Creeds 

 may die, rites and ceremonies become matters of archajological 

 interest, but human needs endure. Conduct is everything, 

 because duty never lapses. Theology, uncorrected, troubles 

 itself about the fate of a man who denies its speculative 

 doctrines ; morals bid him remember, as the one thing need- 

 ful, that what he sows he or his will reap. 



In the papers now brought to an end a vast field, the 

 limits of which shade into the unlimited on all sides, has 

 been roughly surveyed. We began with the primitive 

 nebula, we end with the highest forms of consciousness ; 

 the story of creation is shown to be the unbroken record of 

 the evolution of gas into genius. 



Let us epitomise what, after all, is itself but a summary 

 of a large subject : — 



I. Description. — The universe is made u|) of Matter and 

 Power, both of which are indestructible. Matter contains 

 about seventy so-called elementary substances, which exist 

 in a free or combined state as .solid, liquid, or gaseous ; it is 

 also present throughout space in the imponderable state 

 known as etheieal. The motions of Matter are due to Power, 

 which acts in a twofold and ojjposite way, viz., as a pulling 

 or combining Force, and as a pushing or separating Energy. 

 Force inheres in matter, and acts continuously whatever 

 the distance ; Energy is both passive or stored up, and active 

 or in a state of transfer from body to body, the sum-total 

 being in gradual course of transfer to the ethereal medium, 

 where its power to do work ends. Ponderable matter is 

 distributed throughout space in bodies of various size and 

 density, from molecules to sidereal or solar systems. Such 

 a system is our central sun, with his company of planets .and 

 their moons and of comets and other wandering bodies. 

 The planet on which we live is a neaily spherical body, 

 three-fourths of which is covered by water, and the whole 

 surface enveloped by an atmosphere. So far as its rind or 

 crust can be examined, it is found to consist of solid rocks, 



the lowest of which have been fused by fire, and the upper- 

 most laid down by water. The water-laid rocks contain the 

 remains of plants and animals which have escaped the 

 general destruction of organisms in the wear and tear which 

 the rocks undergo ceaselessly. The simplest fossils are 

 found in the oldest deposits, the more advanced in the 

 newer, and so on in ascending scale until we reach the 

 newest deposits, which contain the highest forms (see 

 Table, Knowledge, vol. is. p. 174). The existing species 

 of plants and animals compri.se the lowest and simplest, 

 which have persisted throughout the life-period, and the 

 highest, the vast majority of intermediate species having 

 died out. All plants and animals are made of the same 

 materials and have to do the same work. That work is 

 threefold : to feed, to multiply their kind, and to respond to 

 the outer world. The cells of which every part of every 

 plant and animal is built up are variously altered and 

 arranged according to the way in which that work Ls more 

 or less divided amongst the several parts. The main dif- 

 ference between plant and animal is in the mode of feeding ; 

 the plant is alone able, in virtue of its cljorophyll, to 

 convert the inorganic into the organic, and the animal 

 therefore depends on the plant for its food supply. 



II. Explanation. — At the beginning of the present 

 universe matter was a diflfused v.iporous mass, unequally 

 distributed throughout space. Force, acting on the un- 

 stableness of tliat mass, drew its particles together, and the 

 resulting collision set free the stored-up energy, which 

 became active in two forms : the molar, causing the several 

 masses into which the ])articles had gathered to spin round 

 in an orbit, and the mi'lecular, causing a swinglike motion 

 among the particles, which motion was converted into light 

 and heat. The masses into which the primitive nebula was 

 broken up became sidereal or solar systems, each of which, 

 like the parent mass, threw oif, as it was indrawn towards 

 its common centre of gravity, masses which became the 

 planets, from which were detached, in like manner, masses 

 which became moons. Comets and other fugitive bodies 

 are probably due to expulsion. Both in its shape and 

 general condition the earth gives proof of this passage from 

 the gaseous to the solid state. As one of the smaller bodies, 

 it long ago ceased to shine by its own light, but a vast 

 period elapsed before it became cool enough to form a crust 

 and condense the vapours that swathed it into primeval 

 oceans. The simplest compounds of its elements were 

 formed first, the combinations becoming more and more 

 complex until they reached that subtile form which is the 

 physical basis of life, and which, starting as a structureless 

 jelly, has reached its fullest development in man. The 

 organic is dependent upon the inorganic, and mind, as a 

 special form of life, takes its place as the highest product of 

 the action of Power upon Matter. From the action of mind 

 on mind has arisen that social evolution to which, in a 

 supreme degree, is owing the progress of man in knowledge, 

 whereby he has subdued the earth. 



The idtimate passage of all energy to the ethereal medium 

 involves the end of the existing state of things. But the 

 ceaseless redistribution of matter, force-clasped and energy- 

 riven, involves the beginning of another state of things. 

 So the changes are rung on evolution and dissolution, on 

 the birth and death of stellar systems — gas to solid, solid to 

 gas, yet never quite the same — mighty rhythmic beats of 

 which the earth's cycles, and the cradles and graves of her 

 children, are minor rhythms. 



Thus the keynotes of Evolution are unity and continuity. 

 All things are made of the same stuff" differently mixed, 

 bound by one force, stirred by one energy in divers forms. 

 Force inheres in matter ; Energy acts through it ; therefore 



