Books: History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

J >> John William Draper >> History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

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Ideas respecting the nature of God necessarily influence ideas
respecting the nature of the soul. The eastern Asiatics had
adopted the conception of an impersonal God, and, as regards the
soul, its necessary consequence, the doctrine of emanation and
absorption.

EMANATION AND ABSORPTION. Thus the Vedic theology is based on the
acknowledgment of a universal spirit pervading all things. "There
is in truth but one Deity, the supreme Spirit; he is of the same
nature as the soul of man." Both the Vedas and the Institutes of
Menu affirm that the soul is an emanation of the all-pervading
Intellect, and that it is necessarily destined to be reabsorbed.
They consider it to be without form, and that visible Nature,
with all its beauties and harmonies, is only the shadow of God.

Vedaism developed itself into Buddhism, which has become the
faith of a majority of the human race. This system acknowledges
that there is a supreme Power, but denies that there is a supreme
Being. It contemplates the existence of Force, giving rise as its
manifestation to matter. It adopts the theory of emanation and
absorption. In a burning taper it sees an effigy of man--an
embodiment of matter, and an evolution of force. If we
interrogate it respecting the destiny of the soul, it demands of
us what has become of the flame when it is blown out, and in what
condition it was before the taper was lighted. Was it a
nonentity? Has it been annihilated? It admits that the idea of
personality which has deluded us through life may not be
instantaneously extinguished at death, but may be lost by slow
degrees. On this is founded the doctrine of transmigration. But
at length reunion with the universal Intellect takes place,
Nirwana is reached, oblivion is attained, a state that has no
relation to matter, space, or time, the state into which the
departed flame of the extinguished taper has gone, the state in
which we were before we were born. This is the end that we ought
to hope for; it is reabsorption in the universal Force-- supreme
bliss, eternal rest.

Through Aristotle these doctrines were first introduced into
Eastern Europe; indeed, eventually, as we shall see, he was
regarded as the author of them. They exerted a dominating
influence in the later period of the Alexandrian school. Philo,
the Jew, who lived in the time of Caligula, based his philosophy
on the theory of emanation. Plotinus not only accepted that
theory as applicable to the soul of man, but as affording an
illustration of the nature of the Trinity. For, as a beam of
light emanates from the sun, and as warmth emanates from the beam
when it touches material bodies, so from the Father the Son
emanates, and thence the Holy Ghost. From these views Plotinus
derived a practical religious system, teaching the devout how to
pass into a condition of ecstasy, a foretaste of absorption into
the universal mundane soul. In that condition the soul loses its
individual consciousness. In like manner Porphyry sought
absorption in or union with God. He was a Tyrian by birth,
established a school at Rome, and wrote against Christianity; his
treatise on that subject was answered by Eusebius and St. Jerome,
but the Emperor Theodosius silenced it more effectually by
causing all the copies to be burnt. Porphyry bewails his own
unworthiness, saying that he had been united to God in ecstasy
but once in eighty-six years, whereas his master Plotinus had
been so united six times in sixty years. A complete system of
theology, based on the theory of emanation, was constructed by
Proclus, who speculated on the manner in which absorption takes
place: whether the soul is instantly reabsorbed and reunited in
the moment of death, or whether it retains the sentiment of
personality for a time, and subsides into complete reunion by
successive steps.

ARABIC PSYCHOLOGY. From the Alexandrian Greeks these ideas passed
to the Saracen philosophers, who very soon after the capture of
the great Egyptian city abandoned to the lower orders their
anthropomorphic notions of the nature of God and the simulachral
form of the spirit of man. As Arabism developed itself into a
distinct scientific system, the theories of emanation and
absorption were among its characteristic features. In this
abandonment of vulgar Mohammedanism, the example of the Jews
greatly assisted. They, too, had given up the anthropomorphism of
their ancestors; they had exchanged the God who of old lived
behind the veil of the temple for an infinite Intelligence
pervading the universe, and, avowing their inability to conceive
that any thing which had on a sudden been called into existence
should be capable of immortality, they affirmed that the soul of
man is connected with a past of which there was no beginning,,
and with a future to which there is no end.

In the intellectual history of Arabism the Jew and the Saracen
are continually seen together. It was the same in their political
history, whether we consider it in Syria, in Egypt, or in Spain.
From them conjointly Western Europe derived its philosophical
ideas, which in the course of time culminated in Averroism;
Averroism is philosophical Islamism. Europeans generally regarded
Averroes as the author of these heresies, and the orthodox
branded him accordingly, but he was nothing more than their
collector and commentator. His works invaded Christendom by two
routes: from Spain through Southern France they reached Upper
Italy, engendering numerous heresies on their way; from Sicily
they passed to Naples and South Italy, under the auspices of
Frederick II.

But, long before Europe suffered this great intellectual
invasion, there were what might, perhaps, be termed sporadic
instances of Orientalism. As an example I may quote the views of
John Erigena (A.D. 800) He had adopted and taught the philosophy
of Aristotle had made a pilgrimage to the birthplace of that
philosopher, and indulged a hope of uniting philosophy and
religion in the manner proposed by the Christian ecclesiastics
who were then studying in the Mohammedan universities of Spain.
He was a native of Britain.

In a letter to Charles the Bald, Anastasius expresses his
astonishment "how such a barbarian man, coming from the very ends
of the earth, and remote from human conversation, could
comprehend things so clearly, and transfer them into another
language so well." The general intention of his writings was, as
we have said, to unite philosophy with religion, but his
treatment of these subjects brought him under ecclesiastical
censure, and some of his works were adjudged to the flames. His
most important book is entitled "De Divisione Nature."

Erigena's philosophy rests upon the observed and admitted fact
that every living thing comes from something that had previously
lived. The visible world, being a world of life, has therefore
emanated necessarily from some primordial existence, and that
existence is God, who is thus the originator and conservator of
all. Whatever we see maintains itself as a visible thing through
force derived from him, and, were that force withdrawn, it must
necessarily disappear. Erigena thus conceives of the Deity as an
unceasing participator in Nature, being its preserver,
maintainer, upholder, and in that respect answering to the soul
of the world of the Greeks. The particular life of individuals is
therefore a part of general existence, that is, of the mundane
soul.

If ever there were a withdrawal of the maintaining power, all
things must return to the source from which they issued--that is,
they must return to God, and be absorbed in him. All visible
Nature must thus pass back into "the Intellect" at last. "The
death of the flesh is the auspices of the restitution of things,
and of a return to their ancient conservation. So sounds revert
back to the air in which they were born, and by which they were
maintained, and they are heard no more; no man knows what has
become of them. In that final absorption which, after a lapse of
time, must necessarily come, God will be all in all, and nothing
exist but him alone." "I contemplate him as the beginning and
cause of all things; all things that are and those that have
been, but now are not, were created from him, and by him, and in
him. I also view him as the end and intransgressible term of all
things. . . . There is a fourfold conception of universal
Nature--two views of divine Nature, as origin and end; two also
of framed Nature, causes and effects. There is nothing eternal
but God."

The return of the soul to the universal Intellect is designated
by Erigena as Theosis, or Deification. In that final absorption
all remembrance of its past experiences is lost. The soul reverts
to the condition in which it was before it animated the body.
Necessarily, therefore, Erigena fell under the displeasure of the
Church.

It was in India that men first recognized the fact that force is
indestructible and eternal. This implies ideas more or less
distinct of that which we now term its "correlation and
conservation." Considerations connected with the stability of the
universe give strength to this view, since it is clear that, were
there either an increase or a diminution, the order of the world
must cease. The definite and invariable amount of energy in the
universe must therefore be accepted as a scientific fact. The
changes we witness are in its distribution.

But, since the soul must be regarded as an active principle, to
call a new one into existence out of nothing is necessarily to
add to the force previously in the world. And, if this has been
done in the case of every individual who has been born, and is to
be repeated for every individual hereafter, the totality of force
must be continually increasing.

Moreover, to many devout persons there is something very
revolting in the suggestion that the Almighty is a servitor to
the caprices and lusts of man, and that, at a certain term after
its origin, it is necessary for him to create for the embryo a
soul.

Considering man as composed of two portions, a soul and a body,
the obvious relations of the latter may cast much light on the
mysterious, the obscure relations of the former. Now, the
substance of which the body consists is obtained from the general
mass of matter around us, and after death to that general mass it
is restored. Has Nature, then, displayed before our eyes in the
origin, mutations, and destiny of the material part, the body, a
revelation that may guide us to a knowledge of the origin and
destiny of the companion, the spiritual part, the soul?

Let us listen for a moment to one of the most powerful of
Mohammedan writers:

"God has created the spirit of man out of a drop of his own
light; its destiny is to return to him. Do not deceive yourself
with the vain imagination that it will die when the body dies.
The form you had on your entrance into this world, and your
present form, are not the same; hence there is no necessity of
your perishing, on account of the perishing of your body. Your
spirit came into this world a stranger, it is only sojourning, in
a temporary home. From the trials and tempests of this
troublesome life, our refuge is in God. In reunion with him we
shall find eternal rest--a rest without sorrow, a joy without
pain, a strength without infirmity, a knowledge without doubt, a
tranquil and yet an ecstatic vision of the source of life and
light and glory, the source from which we came." So says the
Saracen philosopher, Al-Gazzali (A.D. 1010).

In a stone the material particles are in a state of stable
equilibrium; it may, therefore, endure forever. An animal is in
reality only a form through which a stream of matter is
incessantly flowing. It receives its supplies, and dismisses its
wastes. In this it resembles a cataract, a river, a flame. The
particles that compose it at one instant have departed from it
the next. It depends for its continuance on exterior supplies. It
has a definite duration in time, and an inevitable moment comes
in which it must die.

In the great problem of psychology we cannot expect to reach a
scientific result, if we persist in restricting ourselves to the
contemplation of one fact. We must avail ourselves of all
accessible facts. Human psychology can never be completely
resolved except through comparative psychology. With Descartes,
we must inquire whether the souls of animals be relations of the
human soul, less perfect members in the same series of
development. We must take account of what we discover in the
intelligent principle of the ant, as well as what we discern in
the intelligent principle of man. Where would human physiology
be, if it were not illuminated by the bright irradiations of
comparative physiology?

Brodie, after an exhaustive consideration of the facts, affirms
that the mind of animals is essentially the same as that of man.
Every one familiar with the dog will admit that that creature
knows right from wrong, and is conscious when he has committed a
fault. Many domestic animals have reasoning powers, and employ
proper means for the attainment of ends. How numerous are the
anecdotes related of the intentional actions of the elephant and
the ape! Nor is this apparent intelligence due to imitation, to
their association with man, for wild animals that have no such
relation exhibit similar properties. In different species, the
capacity and character greatly vary. Thus the dog is not only
more intelligent, but has social and moral qualities that the cat
does not possess; the former loves his master, the latter her
home.

Du Bois-Reymond makes this striking remark: "With awe and wonder
must the student of Nature regard that microscopic molecule of
nervous substance which is the seat of the laborious,
constructive, orderly, loyal, dauntless soul of the ant. It has
developed itself to its present state through a countless series
of generations." What an impressive inference we may draw from
the statement of Huber, who has written so well on this subject:
"If you will watch a single ant at work, you can tell what he
will next do!" He is considering the matter, and reasoning as you
are doing. Listen to one of the many anecdotes which Huber, at
once truthful and artless, relates: "On the visit of an overseer
ant to the works, when the laborers had begun the roof too soon,
he examined it and had it taken down, the wall raised to the
proper height, and a new ceiling constructed with the fragments
of the old one." Surely these insects are not automata, they show
intention. They recognize their old companions, who have been
shut up from them for many months, and exhibit sentiments of joy
at their return. Their antennal language is capable of manifold
expression; it suits the interior of the nest, where all is dark.

While solitary insects do not live to raise their young, social
insects have a longer term, they exhibit moral affections and
educate their offspring. Patterns of patience and industry, some
of these insignificant creatures will work sixteen or eighteen
hours a day. Few men are capable of sustained mental application
more than four or five hours.

Similarity of effects indicates similarity of causes; similarity
of actions demands similarity of organs. I would ask the reader
of these paragraphs, who is familiar with the habits of animals,
and especially with the social relations of that wonderful insect
to which reference has been made, to turn to the nineteenth
chapter of my work on the "Intellectual Development of Europe,"
in which he will find a description of the social system of the
Incas of Peru. Perhaps, then, in view of the similarity of the
social institutions and personal conduct of the insect, and the
social institutions and personal conduct of the civilized
Indian--the one an insignificant speck, the other a man--he will
not be disposed to disagree with me in the opinion that "from
bees, and wasps, and ants, and birds, from all that low animal
life on which he looks with supercilious contempt, man is
destined one day to learn what in truth he really is."

The views of Descartes, who regarded all insects as automata, can
scarcely be accepted without modification. Insects are automata
only so far as the action of their ventral cord, and that portion
of their cephalic ganglia which deals with contemporaneous
impressions, is concerned.

It is one of the functions of vesicular-nervous material to
retain traces or relics of impressions brought to it by the
organs of sense; hence, nervous ganglia, being composed of that
material, may be considered as registering apparatus. They also
introduce the element of time into the action of the nervous
mechanism. An impression, which without them might have forthwith
ended in reflex action, is delayed, and with this duration come
all those important effects arising through the interaction of
many impressions, old and new, upon each other.

There is no such thing as a spontaneous, or self- originated,
thought. Every intellectual act is the consequence of some
preceding act. It comes into existence in virtue of something
that has gone before. Two minds constituted precisely alike, and
placed under the influence of precisely the same environment,
must give rise to precisely the same thought. To such sameness of
action we allude in the popular expression "common- sense"--a
term full of meaning. In the origination of a thought there are
two distinct conditions: the state of the organism as dependent
on antecedent impressions, and on the existing physical
circumstances.

In the cephalic ganglia of insects are stored up the relics of
impressions that have been made upon the common peripheral
nerves, and in them are kept those which are brought in by the
organs of special sense-- the visual, olfactive, auditory. The
interaction of these raises insects above mere mechanical
automata, in which the reaction instantly follows the impression.

In all cases the action of every nerve-centre, no matter what its
stage of development may be, high or low, depends upon an
essential chemical condition--oxidation. Even in man, if the
supply of arterial blood be stopped but for a moment, the
nerve-mechanism loses its power; if diminished, it
correspondingly declines; if, on the contrary, it be
increased--as when nitrogen monoxide is breathed--there is more
energetic action. Hence there arises a need of repair, a
necessity for rest and sleep.

Two fundamental ideas are essentially attached to all our
perceptions of external things: they are SPACE and TIME, and for
these provision is made in the nervous mechanism while it is yet
in an almost rudimentary state. The eye is the organ of space,
the ear of time; the perceptions of which by the elaborate
mechanism of these structures become infinitely more precise than
would be possible if the sense of touch alone were resorted to.

There are some simple experiments which illustrate the vestiges
of ganglionic impressions. If on a cold, polished metal, as a new
razor, any object, such as a wafer, be laid, and the metal be
then breathed upon, and, when the moisture has had time to
disappear, the wafer be thrown off, though now the most critical
inspection of the polished surface can discover no trace of any
form, if we breathe once more upon it, a spectral image of the
wafer comes plainly into view; and this may be done again and
again. Nay, more, if the polished metal be carefully put aside
where nothing can deteriorate its surface, and be so kept for
many months, on breathing again upon it the shadowy form emerges.

Such an illustration shows how trivial an impression may be thus
registered and preserved. But, if, on such an inorganic surface,
an impression may thus be indelibly marked, how much more likely
in the purposely- constructed ganglion! A shadow never falls upon
a wall without leaving thereupon a permanent trace, a trace which
might be made visible by resorting to proper processes.
Photographic operations are cases in point. The portraits of our
friends, or landscape views, may be hidden on the sensitive.
surface from the eye, but they are ready to make their appearance
as soon as proper developers are resorted to. A spectre is
concealed on a silver or glassy surface until, by our necromancy,
we make it come forth into the visible world. Upon the walls of
our most private apartments, where we think the eye of intrusion
is altogether shut out and our retirement can never be profaned,
there exist the vestiges of all our acts, silhouettes of whatever
we have done.

If, after the eyelids have been closed for some time, as when we
first awake in the morning, we suddenly and steadfastly gaze at a
brightly-illuminated object and then quickly close the lids
again, a phantom image is perceived in the indefinite darkness
beyond us. We may satisfy ourselves that this is not a fiction,
but a reality, for many details that we had not time to identify
in the momentary glance may be contemplated at our leisure in the
phantom. We may thus make out the pattern of such an object as a
lace curtain hanging in the window, or the branches of a tree
beyond. By degrees the image becomes less and less distinct; in a
minute or two it has disappeared. It seems to have a tendency to
float away in the vacancy before us. If we attempt to follow it
by moving the eyeball, it suddenly vanishes.

Such a duration of impressions on the retina proves that the
effect of external influences on nerve-vesicles is not
necessarily transitory. In this there is a correspondence to the
duration, the emergence, the extinction, of impressions on
photographic preparations. Thus, I have seen landscapes and
architectural views taken in Mexico developed, as artists say,
months subsequently in New York--the images coming out, after the
long voyage, in all their proper forms and in all their proper
contrast of light and shade. The photograph had forgotten
nothing. It had equally preserved the contour of the everlasting
mountains and the passing smoke of a bandit-fire.

Are there, then, contained in the brain more permanently, as in
the retina more transiently, the vestiges of impressions that
have been gathered by the sensory organs? Is this the explanation
of memory--the Mind contemplating such pictures of past things
and events as have been committed to her custody. In her silent
galleries are there hung micrographs of the living and the dead,
of scenes that we have visited, of incidents in which we have
borne a part? Are these abiding impressions mere signal-marks,
like the letters of a book, which impart ideas to the mind? or
are they actual picture-images, inconceivably smaller than those
made for us by artists, in which, by the aid of a microscope, we
can see, in a space not bigger than a pinhole, a whole family
group at a glance?

The phantom images of the retina are not perceptible in the light
of the day. Those that exist in the sensorium in like manner do
not attract our attention so long as the sensory organs are in
vigorous operation, and occupied in bringing new impressions in.
But, when those organs become weary or dull, or when we
experience hours of great anxiety, or are in twilight reveries,
or are asleep, the latent apparitions have their vividness
increased by the contrast, and obtrude themselves on the mind.
For the same reason they occupy us in the delirium of fevers, and
doubtless also in the solemn moments of death. During a third
part of our life, in sleep, we are withdrawn from external
influences; hearing and sight and the other senses are
inactive,but the never-sleeping Mind, that pensive, that veiled
enchantress, in her mysterious retirement, looks over the
ambrotypes she has collected--ambrotypes, for they are truly
unfading impressions--and, combining them together, as they
chance to occur, constructs from them the panorama of a dream.

Nature has thus implanted in the organization of every man means
which impressively suggest to him the immortality of the soul and
a future life. Even the benighted savage thus sees in his visions
the fading forms of landscapes, which are, perhaps, connected
with some of his most pleasant recollections; and what other
conclusion can be possibly extract from those unreal pictures
than that they are the foreshadowings of another land beyond that
in which his lot is cast? At intervals he is visited in his
dreams by the resemblances of those whom he has loved or hated
while they were alive; and these manifestations are to him
incontrovertible proofs of the existence and immortality of the
soul. In our most refined social conditions we are never able to
shake off the impressions of these occurrences, and are
perpetually drawing from them the same conclusions that our
uncivilized ancestors did. Our more elevated condition of life in
no respect relieves us from the inevitable operation of our own
organization, any more than it relieves us from infirmities and
disease. In these respects, all over the globe men are on an
equality. Savage or civilized, we carry within us a mechanism
which presents us with mementoes of the most solemn facts with
which we can be concerned. It wants only moments of repose or
sickness, when the influence of external things is diminished, to
come into full play, and these are precisely the moments when we
are best prepared for the truths it is going to suggest. That
mechanism is no respecter of persons. It neither permits the
haughtiest to be free from the monitions, nor leaves the humblest
without the consolation of a knowledge of another life. Open to
no opportunities of being tampered with by the designing or
interested, requiring no extraneous human agency for its effect,
out always present with every man wherever he may go, it
marvelously extracts from vestiges of the impressions of the past
overwhelming proofs of the realities of the future, and,
gathering its power from what would seem to be a most unlikely
source, it insensibly leads us, no matter who or where we may be,
to a profound belief in the immortal and imperishable, from
phantoms which have scarcely made their appearance before they
are ready to vanish away.

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