IV. PAN/ESTHETISM. 



It has been the custom of men from the dawn of thought to at- 

 tempt to construct for themselves cosmogonies and theologies. Sci- 

 ence is yet far from supplying the facts necessary to the construction 

 of a true system of the universe, and philosophy can only stretch 

 out a little further into the unknown by the use of necessary in- 

 ference. In spite, however, of the insufficiency of the data, men 

 still suggest new views or cling to old ones, and an occasional 

 flight into this region of thought, at least brings the thinker into 

 sympathy with the thoughts of his fellow-men. 



The admission of the possibility of the existence of conscious- 

 ness in other forms of matter than protoplasm, and in other 

 planets than the Earth, lends countenance to a rational belief in 

 the so-called " supernatural " (better called the supersensuous) 

 so prevalent among men in irrational forms. The question natu- 

 rally arises, is there any generalized form of matter distributed 

 through the universe which could sustain consciousness ? The 

 presumption is that such a form of matter may well exist. Evo- 

 lution or specialization has only worked up part of its raw ma- 

 terial in the organic world. Wherever primitive conditions re- 

 main, there primitive organisms abound. Protozoa are yet numer- 

 ous on land, and the /' nhabits the depths of the sea. 

 Highly specialized forms of life are in fact numerically a minority 

 of living beings. May not this be true also of inorganic beings? 

 It is thought that various celestial bodies represent unfinished 

 worlds. Is it not probable that the grand source of matter not 

 yet specialized into the sixty odd substances known to us, may 

 still sustain the primitive force not yet modified into its species, 

 and that this combination of states may be the condition of per- 

 sistent consciousness from which all lesser lights derive their 

 brilliancy? There is much to warrant such a view in the ob- 

 served facts of life, taken in connection with the general course 

 of evolution. Moreover that some form of matter connects the 

 interstellar spaces, is thought to be proven by the transmission of 

 light in some cases, and light and heat in others. That such a 

 form of matter pervades all spaces whatever, is the theory of 

 some physicists. If it be so generalized as to be capable oi sus- 

 taining consciousness, it becomes the source from which other 

 substances derive it, so soon as they, through the energy of nu- 



