Mills, Lawrence H.

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GOD AND THE WORLD PHYSICAL.HY LAWRENCE H. MILLS.IX closing an article printed in the September number of thisperiodical, I mentioned that the differentiation of the Ideal Su-preme Deity from this universe of matter was a pressing necessityin the course of our endeavor to build up a proper concept of aspiritual God, but before we advance to such an undertaking, wehad better consider a little more closely what each of the two thingsmay be which we desire to put into antithesis. And. as implied orsaid above, we should not allow any fatuous and effeminate hesi-tation in the way of morbid sensibilities to check our progress,throwing us into a state of incipient mental cataleptic inanimationat the mere introduction of such a theme, for it is one which shouldlong ago have been a subject taught at all our infant school-desks.At least we should not balk this point, but advance upon theprinciple that the commonest of all structural mechanical factsshould not be blinked, for ignorance cannot much longer continueto be the source of undeviating satisfaction. We have then nature'suniverse on the one side (with mathematics) and on the other ourSupreme Ideal Faith-God with His cognate ideal system.These then are our theme for analj'tical discrimination. Whatthen is this our mechanic world-all which we should meet with lineand plummet, compass and lens, theodolite, etc.?—that is to say,if we are to examine it with anything approaching to sincerity. For,first of all, it seems actually to be necessary to mention such an itemas that such a physical world as ours is not "infinite." One wouldhave thought that most people who believe that there is anythingphysical anywhere were convinced that it could be limited at leastas regards dimensions. For the physical universe, in the name of"measure," is generally supposed to be at least in space, while itsplace there is a more serious problem. Space is in itself, as wegenerally understand it, simple unoccupied "nothing" for objectsGOU AND THE WOULD PHYSICAL. 217to Stand or move in, which objects in their relative distance fromone another, or approximation to each other, alone fix its limits,those of space. In these spacial particulars it, the universe, is there-fore, like most other things in a conceivable material world-system,not at all mysterious, any more so than a pebble or a microbe.It is simply, as said, an object rolling in nothing, not imagin-ably related by measure to others similarly situated, and no moreunlimited than any architectural structure. The mental universewe might add, — so, imperfectly, to speak of it for a momentwithout too much precision,—may, on the other hand, and in onesense of it, be indeed said to be not "bounded" as to space, for, asin the case of number, the mind can never stop ; it goes on irrecov-erably beyond to a figure still more remote, after having alreadyreached what seemed at first to be things unimaginable,—so, as tospace, the mind goes ever out beyond an almost ultimate conceptionof nothing, ever on to a still further emptiness.The material All-world, however, while neat-cut as a diamondas to "space," must yet be, as a whole, entirely unmeasured andimmeasurable as regards "time" ; though its particularly teeminglife in its everlasting change-motion is of course all that makes up"time" itself. Causal thought demands seeming fresh originationevery instant for each such myriad-phase of passing matter-form,but common sight soon shows us that the substance itself of theparticles, of which the almost immeasurable minute and multitu-dinous passing facts are the fleeting shapes, cannot itself be moved;—the atomic electron-particles simply change position; see aboveand below. Not fire, flood, nor earthquake diminish its weight bya kilogram; do ashes, smoke and gas weigh heavier than the ig-nited wood, consumed coal, or spirit? See the oxygen and hydro-gen separated by electricity in our experimenting machines,—theycombine again to equal weight. Let me not be misunderstood: Iblock no causes nor beginnings ; beginnings there are, as said, andby the myriad at every instant. "All is flow" with Hegel's originals,as with himself ; and precious are all things just in proportion as thatflow is strong and rapid.Life is firmer, for it is the flow that makes it; see the pulseor rather feel it. Yes, there are changes, as beginnings rushing onat every fraction of a second, but the everlasting substance in whichthe change takes place is itself in its elements unalterable. How cana change take place without something which changes, and whichonly changes so far as the changes noted are concerned? If therewere no solid basis, the motion could not exist, nor be maintained—2l8 THE OPEN COURT.the elemental substratum is—inadequately—like the deep sea. "mo-tionless." Changje, which is its manifestation, is the splendid surge.The water particles rest still, or move but vertically ;—it is thewave-form that rushes on the sea or wheat-field. So also thought-form itself, the life-spark of sentient nature ;—it cannot stop. Mind-<^rganism on organism reaches mature status and cerebral actionat once inevitably sets in. It is the mere motion of thought faculties;thought-particles;—the thought-muscles alone rest in sleep, if then.The brain cerebrates, whether normally or not, at advancing stages.Take our common human puberty as a sample,—a seed-thoughttime it is for most of us. See it at the soul's awaking;—"con-version," we used to call it,—blessed crisis that it was. We thenbroke forth into reason's consciousness,—we were veritably "bornagain." Right was our deity ; the strident will seemed fiercely free,to have it out with our highest yearnings,—this, passionately. Nega-tion seemed cowardice ; to do some noble thing, or many, was ourpoint. We took our lives lightly in our hands ; we gripped to do ordie; we would even violently force idlers io take part. But whatwere we here again, but the fine poise of nature's sentient forces,her better ones? Injustice seemed the kernel of all woe (all hell)to us,—its center;—but behold truth was everywhere, half-con-sciously.If the bird be fragile, she can yet rise on wing and be in amoment safe; if the farm laborer bends to toil, he still smells thesweet earth and breathes the life-giving air; if the tigress is longstarving, she yet enjoys her fierce spring the more, and the satis-faction of a fuller meal ; if the inventor wrestles with hell's influencesin the frightful fights of jealousy, he has yet at times the thrill ofvictory ; if Dives is his life-long assailed by a million demons tuggingfor his all, he has still at moments the satisfaction of his wishes.There is (imperfect) balance everywhere,—the essence of what weso fondly try to call the "truth." Equity means evenness (see gravi-tation, which is analogous to stability, compacciess). It is how-ever never perfect, but attempted everywhere—sometimes in terrificforms. Two monsters meet in duel;—the horn of one snaps likea pipe-stem;—each battles, so he thinks, and thinks rightly, forsome vital interest. Two stags struggle on a precipice ;—antlers areinterlocked;—the does look on. The youth knows that he feelsconscience, as much as this;—nay more. And so of that activeright-form, the aflfections, with their obedience ;—he, our youth, longson principle, as on passion, to follow them,—but the very doves dotoo, dving if parted, of their sorrow. See the wild-fowl's mother-GOD AND THE WORLD PHYSICAL. 2I9hood ;—she will draw the gunner off, feigning herself wounded,drooping her bedraggled wings, on ever further from her nest,saving her half-hatched brood. Look at the common poultry of thebarn-door ;— they even attracted the attention of our Lord. Seetoo a keen bitch with her litter ; she shows her sharp teeth at once ;—devotion is a part of nature ;—"attraction as the square of the. dis-tance" ;^ see above.And what is order^ but a something akin to chemical distribu-tion ; like crystallization ; see above. The chief bull leads the herd ;look at the ants again. Order is everywhere (attempted), and sois genius. The very mould of the world seems to out-fold itself ofitself ;—see the chrysalis ;—the butterfly's cast is there. Look atthe physical perfection of a new-born human being ;—every littlenail is in its place. In fact all sentient and all non-sentient beingis there in motion toward an ideal, infernal or sublime. Even in thefused condition this was so ;—change-phenomenon lived on in theelectron in spite of flames ;—forms predestined and pre-existing,appeared everywhere, as globe on globe grew cool. All the polesfirst chilled slowly,—then half-way down they grew more temperatetill at last the equators themselves became possible, just as theglobes themselves contracted from their still prior fire-mists,—andeverywhere, as of dire necessity, as the heat went off, life swarmed,and with it consciousness, terrific or benign. So our self-life ; allwas struggling right, love, order and motion everywhere, with inter-mittent defeat or victory through murder, sneak, etc. But wheredid it all come from?—this all-creative motion—for none of us whohave left our cradles interpose a preternatural creative interferenceprecisely here ;—we, all of us, insert that miracle at a long distance,indefinitely further back. All is as yet "sequence," with us, in thecommon causal-chain ; it is shape-form, ever changing in the ever-lasting unchanging substance—substratum. But suddenly, in theseour well-fed meanderings on facts so patent, a keen thought shootsthrough us like a pang ;—why in such an hypothetically conceived-ofalmost perfect physical system, balanced so symmetrically,—whydo we need any quasi-natural creative interference ever, anywhere,or at all ? "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"is an absolute mystery which we must accept in childlike ignoranceand faith. We have no right at all to exercise our intellectualfaculties upon it, but we have likewise no right to stop our mentalexistence for this or any other cause. God has given us our sanity,^ Vohumanah. See "God and His Immortals," The Open Court, Jan., 1906.^ Khshathra. See ibid.220 THE OPEN COURT.and \\c imisl use it. We proceed tn trace the facts and check aquasi-creationism.Caloric does not imperatively call for it. All nature's thingsonce flamed, so far as we can dream of it.—once, at least, so on thisour sidereal ball,—with its planet-mates. It surely once passedthrough fire, as now all clearly see. All was included in that massof burnt nature which once was this rolling sphere. Out of theseseething substances, once vapor, then fluid, then fiery sands andstones and metals, came all things here terrestrial,—as few nowdoubt,—for all were already there without exception. The evolvingand revolving masses became slowly dense ; vapor thickened toliquid, liquid to solid, till the well-formed continents appeared be-tween the oceans, with hot rivers rushing in their own midsts them-selves. And out of this all came the great souls of earth as wellas the villains, counterfeits and knaves ;—and with them the nowforever forgotten millions upon millions of other sentient beingswho have emerged from the same elements, came also to their apex,some of them, and perished, having vibrated to some partial measureat least, all of them, with the same yearnings, emotions, fears andhopes in the long aeons of a past formative eternity ; and this inendless iterations, catenations. Oh, no ! we raise no voice to denythat thing "beginning"—far from it ; God forbid ;—see everywhereabove. Beginnings rushed on, are rushing now, and will foreverfly at more than electric speed ;—it is only the affixed particle to thegreat word with which we quarrel. "Beginnings" there are, as wecannot too frequently accede, and by the million,—myriads at everyinstant pressing on,—so ever throughout all,—but they are but therushings-on of eternal form-change—not one single one of the vastfinitude was ever for a moment absolute as an ultimate, or primal,original in any sense at all,—not for an instant. Like the chantsto God in the Gathic faith they "had no first" ;—all was fleeting"form-change" of an abiding substratum, eternal in its sequence,forth and back. So only or, rather, so really,—for there is nothinggreater than a form-change, we must not snub it,—substance'seternally proceeding externals it is—mighty indeed. So they are withcrashing cataclysms in smiles of beauty, or frowns of horror. Dif-ferences there are in them, somewhat great ;—slime and a solarsystem are not so close alike ;—see a fetish and a Phidias. The everfurious fresh form-changes glide, or crash, on with standing speed(sic), and in that motion all sentient life-forces have their being,—but from the first ever imagined slightest jar, not to say "recorded,"to those awful motions now passing at this present instant, not oneGOD AND THE WORLD PHYSICAL. 221solitary one has been without conditions, so not one ever for an in-stant absolute or preternatural ;—incessant is the change. No, ele-mental absolute beginning is not thinkable. For how, as said, cana thing begin out of nothing? Beginning phenomenal has of itselfreference to time, beginning absolute belongs to eternity, and notto nature-motion, nor to its measure ;—least of all could a siderealmember of our solar group begin—in nature ; that is to say, notabsolutely. It is not dreamable : that is, not without miracle ; andmiracle is not our subject here; see on below. Creation-miraclewould indeed be beginning elemental,—but it would be, like acci-dent, out of nature ; a break in the unbreakable chain-circle of allphenomena, while a missing link is here fatuity. Intellection dealsalone with nature in its unbroken chain ;—miracle, creation, accidentlie in an entirely different cat-egory,—in the same ideal system withthe Ideal God, not in nature, but in supernature, and there they arequite as possible, ideally, as He is. They are faith-objects, but ourlanguages can ill express the idea here, for language is objective.These then are the two things to differentiate, if we wish to renderan account for the use of our supposed full sanity. Consciencehere should interpose one twinge at least for an honest "plumb"for once, and it is a very bad sacrilege indeed for us to fatuate ourfaculties. The nature-universe is simply permanent (Herakleitos) ;—things are and always were,—and after every effort to bring athing to nothing, we find that we can only change its phase.It has become at the present time a vital necessity to defend allcherished opinions upon subjects of prominent religious importance,and with the utmost regard to truth and reason. To assert a greatspiritual principle and then to refuse altogether to discuss it, is nolonger to be regarded as being either safe or honest. I have myselflately endeavored to advance here upon these better lines, and withlittle hesitation, for I have even applied scrutiny to the very doctrineof creation itself. The miraculous element in this representation asrecorded in the first chapter of Genesis is sentimentally dear to everyone of us, but the only way to preserve it is to face its difficultieswithout recoil. And, first of all, it is obviously vital to separate theideal of creation as a miracle from the never ceasing activities ofnature in its continuous chain of cause and effect.My explanation is that the creation of the world, in perhaps acertain rhetorical sense of it. is now still progressing and at everydivisible moment of time. As the course of history is the "day ofjudgment," so that course is its hours of divine origination. Myinconsistency is of course obvious. It was once thought bv earnest222 THE OPEN COURT.lucii that a natural creation in tlic ordinary sense of the word wasneeded in the Hght of pure reason. How could the jjhysical world,it was asked, have orig^inated of itself, and devout men simply wel-comed the first chajiter of Genesis, and that almost as a scientificexplanation.It was a miraculous act of creation of the world out of nothint:^,so they thouj:;;ht. Or, granted an eternity of the raw matter, it wasat least the miraculous interference of an artificer (there wasn'tmuch difference)—to this of course I adhere, so far as we mustaccept a supernatural world-maker. Of course there was fallacy inthe truism of the supposed pious rationalist, when he asserted thatsomething- could not come out of nothing,—a fact which no one everdenied. Indeed in the light of mere logic he was right, for GodHimself is as much an entity, or a "thing" as any other object, ifHe be an object. How then did He Himself arise, was only a fairquestion, to which the pious disputant of course answered that Hedid not arise at all. To this the sceptic might have rejoined, "Ifyou say that God did not arise at all, why could you not also saythat nature had no arising, either as regards its matter or its laws?"There would be nothing w^hatsoever profane in such a remark, forit merely concerns time. It is not profane to say that nature nowexists ; why should it be wrong to say that it existed for untoldmillions of ages gone by, as all now agree ? Why then should it nothave existed forever, and where is the blasphemy? Obviously thiswould rob God of the glory of a mechanical achievement,—butwould that be so gross a deprivation? To say that the physicalworld, not the universe, is the production of God's natural creativefunction might in some lights of it be hardly regarded as a com-pliment. See on the Zoroastrian Dualism. At all events I ventureto propose as above, that God is in the world, physically, super-naturally, as eternally and miraculously active in it at every instant,and this is and was the "creation." Dut why, asks the worshiper,was it so written in Genesis I, if there were really no beginning?The answer is obvious. Such a statement is misleading. There wasever so much of a beginning, that is to say, as regards our humanrace. The ideal God, in His omniscient wisdom, foresaw all thefuture as He remembered all the i)ast ; or rather, at every momentHe was conscious of both. If "not a sparrow falls to the groundwithout Him," surely the incipience of the human race, howeverdegraded it was destined to be and to continue, was no matter ofindifference to Him. for it (the human race) has its good pointsas well as its evil ones. So that the "creation" of Genesis I was in-GOD AND THE WURLD PHYSICAL. >2i^deed an epoch in liod's eternity, but it had simply reference to us.See above. Otherwise it was but a mere dot in His unHmited ex-perience.My only explanation of my suggestion that God is now creatingthe world is that this is all "ideal" ; but as to what "ideal" reallymeans, I am not at present prepared to say. See Kant's doctrineof the ideas. Certainly ideas are actually things, as much so as themountain ranges, but I will not now discriminate. I only say thatto be serious we must separate all natural process from all miracle,and above all from creative miracle, which indeed the doctrine ofmiracle demands of itself. I do not think it can do harm to dwell onthis for a moment. The course of the physical world must be tracedback to eternity, if that be possible, just as it must be tracedback to the last fifty years or anticipated for the next future half-centurv, and to sav the contrary is either fatuitv or fraud.

God and the World Physical.

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God and the World Physical.

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