Part 8

XVI

The Unity of Nature

§ 24

The lesson I learned was this: Nature is vast. Nature knows nothing of Time. Nor does Nature know anything of Space. It is we who import spatial and temporal limitations into Nature. Because we look up with two eyes, and feel forth with two arms, and walk about with two legs, we think, not only that our, but that the, universe is an infinite sphere!--an actual objective sphere of which each stupidly assumes that he is the centre! Which means that there are, supposedly, millions of centres, and each centre changing its place by millions of miles a day!--positive proof of the preposterousness of the assumption.--To an animalcule born and bred inside an old garden hose, the universe, I suppose, is an endless tunnel. To a baby cockroach hatched between floor and carpet, the universe is a limitless plane. Well, we are animalcules on a little rolling clod; and this clod may bear the same relation to some supernal, n-dimensional mansion and garden--and gardeners and Owner, as does my supposititious caoutchouc hose or patterned carpet to some terrestrial demesne.

* * * * *

And so with Time. Time is a matter of individual memory, of remembering past events and of anticipating (which is memory reversed, as it were; memory projected) events to come. And memory, as we know it, is purely a matter of this or that sort of nerve-substance in the brain. Had we no memory, we should know nothing whatsoever of time; an event would be a point, and no past point could be recalled, nor any future one conjectured. So, could an infinite number of memories coalesce, there would be no time either, for in that case all events would occur here and now.

* * * * *

Nature--the Cosmos--the All--the Deity ... He is not limited by cubical contents nor by clocks striking the hours.

§ 25

How convey a notion of this mysterious Unity? Shall we essay a gross and inadequate analogy?

There are in the blood of man little things called white corpuscles. They are alive; they are, in fact, little living personages. Indeed, it would be hard to deny that they possess a certain sort of "intelligence"; for, according to the phagocytic theory, they attack their foes and help their friends. Now, if these white corpuscles ever reason about the world which they inhabit, they must think that it consists of an immense red ocean in a perpetual flux, limitless and restless, and peopled with myriads of beings like unto themselves. Yet they are an integral part of the human frame; indeed without them the human frame could not be what it is. Well, man's place in his universe may be very similar to that of the white corpuscle in its; and the intelligence and nature of the Being of which man forms an integral part may be as inconceivable to man--to bewildered man, buried 'neath an ocean of air, and blown about space without even a "by your leave"--as are man's to the leucocytes of the blood.

If there is no such thing as Space objectively existing outside our groping human selves; and if there is no such thing as Time, also objectively existing independent of our remembering and anticipating human selves; if also Death is but Life undergoing Change (for Life is not a thing extraneous to the cosmos, and there is nothing in the cosmos that can ever go out of it); if even Change itself is but a process so named because of the necessities of our temporal and spatial conditions; and what we call "multiplicity" or "manifoldness" merely a word coined by our incompetence to perceive the interdependence of all that is ... why, then, surely, one with and interpenetrating our own little space-bound, time-fettered lives, there must be an Absolute Life, indiscerptible because coherent; immutable, because unspatial; inexorable, because timeless; not to be gainsaid, because all-embracing; whose behests the human spirit, because identical with and contained in it, must and cannot but obey.

§ 26

However, that there is a flaw in my Philosophy and a flaw in my Creed, I do not conceal from myself.--If, underlying and upholding all phenomenal multiplicity, there is a noumenal unity, how it comes about that there is evil and suffering and injustice and pain I do not know. Nor do I know how, if that Unity (including man) is governed by infrangible law, it comes about that we obtain notions of Responsibility and Will; how we feel that we ought to act thus and not otherwise, and have the power to choose the good from the evil.

Yet I comfort myself thus:--Human reason, after all, is inadequate for the explanation of anything superhuman. But there may be in man a faculty of imagination or feeling or emotion or faith--call it what you like--that insists upon our trying to act thus and not otherwise; upon our helping on the good and eradicating the bad; and that leaves the problem of the Origin of Evil and the problem of the Freedom of the Will to another sphere and another stage in the upward emergence of mind.

§ 27

Of the Origin of Evil I have no solution whatsoever. Why it is that not a single human being can go through his short threescore years and ten without pain, anguish, disappointment, the heartache, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to; why

"But to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs";

why this solid earth is drenched with blood, and on every square inch of its surface are creatures slaughtering and stuffing creatures into their maws; why torture and agony--mental and physical--should be rampant; why innocent little babies should suffer lingering deaths--racked with pain--weak--gasping ... upon this heart-rending enigma I dare not dwell. But I cannot accept the incredible solution that an Almighty Being created this cosmos out of nothing thus, and, having created it thus, looks on at this his appalling creation unmoved.

§ 28

On the Freedom of the Will may I quote myself? Matthew Arnold has given me precedent.

"There are just two misleading terms in that little phrase, the Freedom of the Will, and these are just the words 'freedom' and 'will.' There is no such thing in the bodily frame as a separate entity or faculty called a 'will' walking about like a pilot on deck and directing the course; and, if there were, such pilot would not be 'free' from the influences of wind and tide. The bodily frame is like a ship, with its captain and crew. The captain has to go by the chart (that is, by his knowledge and experience of life), and the crew have to trim the sails (that is, adapt actions to circumstances). The captain (that is, the higher coordinating centres) is not 'free,' for he is dependent on his crew (to which we may compare the nerves and the ganglia)--which, in turn, are dependent upon weather (that is, our surroundings). The captain may 'will' as much as he likes, but if his crew are mutinous, or the winds contrary, he will not make port. 'Will power' at bottom merely means an intelligent captain and an obedient crew; and 'putting-forth' or 'exercising' will power merely means that captain and crew must work in harmony. So that, if attention, if virtue, if conduct and character depend upon will power (as of course they do), Aristotle seems to be perfectly right in saying that the secret of these is ἑξις, or habit or practice: only a trained crew can work the ship."

§ 29

One thing only is certain--and whether the certainty derives from a rational or an emotional, a social or a cosmic, an evolutionary or an intuitive, a political or an ecclesiastical source, I do not stay to ask--one thing only is certain: The evil that there is, it is our bounden duty to alleviate; "le monde subsiste pour exercer miséricorde et jugement"; and I care not a fig that I have no metaphysical, philosophical, ethical, or religious basis of argument to adduce for this untransferable onus of Duty.

And I take comfort, also, in the thought that, after all, Reason has had very little to do with the moral progress of mankind. "C'est le cœur qui sent Dieu, et non raison." Answer me this one question: Which have exercised the greater influence for good: reasoned-out systems of philosophy; or religious evangels whose tenets no one could prove? How many pious followers has Spinoza or Leibnitz or Nietzsche? And how many Buddha or Confucius or Mohammed or--with all reverence be added his name--Jesus of Nazareth?

But the critic will say: If the religious tenet is incapable of proof, by what criterion can we judge of the authenticity of any evangel?--Well, if it teaches to alleviate suffering and to do the Right, that is criterion enough for me.

Return we to the humble topic of walking.

XVII