. . Even
three or four centuries.'
'There may be, and probably are, stars from which Noah might
be seen stepping into the Ark, Eve listening to the
temptation of the serpent, or that older race, eating the
oysters and leaving the shell-heaps behind them, when the
Baltic was an open sea' (Froude's 'Science of History').
Facts and figures such as these simply stupefy us. They
vaguely convey the idea of something immeasurably great, but
nothing further. They have no more effect upon us than words
addressed to some poor 'bewildered creature, stunned and
paralysed by awe; no more than the sentence of death to the
terror-stricken wretch at the bar. Indeed, it is in this
sense that the sceptic uses them for our warning.
'Seit Kopernikus,' says Schopenhauer, 'kommen die Theologen
mit dem lieben Gott in Verlegenheit.' 'No one,' he adds,
'has so damaged Theism as Copernicus.' As if limitation and
imperfection in the celestial mechanism would make for the
belief in God; or, as if immortality were incompatible with
dependence. Des Cartes, for one, (and he counts for many,)
held just the opposite opinion.
Our sun and all the millions upon millions of suns whose
light will never reach us are but the aggregation of atoms
drawn together by the same force that governs their orbit,
and which makes the apple fall. When their heat, however
generated, is expended, they die to frozen cinders; possibly
to be again diffused as nebulae, to begin again the eternal
round of change.
What is life amidst this change? 'When I consider the work
of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast
ordained, what is man that Thou art mindful of him?'
But is He mindful of us? That is what the sceptic asks. Is
He mindful of life here or anywhere in all this boundless
space? We have no ground for supposing (so we are told) that
life, if it exists at all elsewhere, in the solar system at
least, is any better than it is here? 'Analogy compels us to
think,' says M. France, one of the most thoughtful of living
writers, 'that our entire solar system is a gehenna where the
animal is born for suffering. . . . This alone would suffice
to disgust me with the universe.' But M. France is too deep
a thinker to abide by such a verdict. There must be
something 'behind the veil.' 'Je sens que ces immensites ne
sont rien, et qu'enfin, s'il y a quelque chose, ce quelque
chose n'est pas ce que nous voyons.' That is it. All these
immensities are not 'rien,' but they are assuredly not what
we take them to be. They are the veil of the Infinite,
behind which we are not permitted to see.
It were the seeing Him, no flesh shall dare.
The very greatness proves our impotence to grasp it, proves
the futility of our speculations, and should help us best of
all though outwardly so appalling, to stand calm while the
snake of unbelief writhes beneath our feet. The unutterable
insignificance of man and his little world connotes the
infinity which leaves his possibilities as limitless as
itself.
Spectrology informs us that the chemical elements of matter
are everywhere the same; and in a boundless universe where
such unity is manifested there must be conditions similar to
those which support life here. It is impossible to doubt, on
these grounds alone, that life does exist elsewhere. Were we
rashly to assume from scientific data that no form of animal
life could obtain except under conditions similar to our own,
would not reason rebel at such an inference, on the mere
ground that to assume that there is no conscious being in the
universe save man, is incomparably more unwarrantable, and in
itself incredible?
Admitting, then, the hypothesis of the universal distribution
of life, has anyone the hardihood to believe that this is
either the best or worst of worlds? Must we not suppose that
life exists in every stage of progress, in every state of
imperfection, and, conversely, of advancement? Have we still
the audacity to believe with the ancient Israelites, or as
the Church of Rome believed only three centuries ago, that
the universe was made for us, and we its centre? Or must we
not believe that - infinity given - the stages and degrees of
life are infinite as their conditions? And where is this to
stop? There is no halting place for imagination till we
reach the ANIMA MUNDI, the infinite and eternal Spirit from
which all Being emanates.
The materialist and the sceptic have forcible arguments on
their side. They appeal to experience and to common sense,
and ask pathetically, yet triumphantly, whether aspiration,
however fervid, is a pledge for its validity, 'or does being
weary prove that he hath where to rest?' They smile at the
flights of poetry and imagination, and love to repeat:
Fools! that so often here
Happiness mocked our prayer,
I think might make us fear
A like event elsewhere;
Make us not fly to dreams, but moderate desire.
But then, if the other view is true, the Elsewhere is not the
Here, nor is there any conceivable likeness between the two.
It is not mere repugnance to truths, or speculations rather,
which we dread, that makes us shrink from a creed so shallow,
so palpably inept, as atheism. There are many sides to our
nature, and I see not that reason, doubtless our trustiest
guide, has one syllable to utter against our loftiest hopes.
Our higher instincts are just as much a part of us as any
that we listen to; and reason, to the end, can never
dogmatise with what it is not conversant.
End of Tracks of a Rolling Stone by Henry J. Coke
