ESSAY III. On Life and the Spirit.
How often we forget all time, when lone,
Admiring Nature’s universal throne,
Her woods, her wilds, her waters, the intense
Reply of hers to our intelligence!
Live not the stars and mountains? Are the waves
Without a spirit? Are the dropping caves
Without a feeling in their silent tears?
No, no; they woo and clasp us to their spheres,
Dissolve this clog and clod of clay before
Its hour, and merge our soul in the great shore.
Strip off this fond and false identity!
And who, though gazing lower, ever thought,
In the young moments ere the heart is taught
Time’s lesson, of man’s baseness or his own?
All nature is his realm, and love his throne.
BYRON.
ONCE it was wondered for the very first time why fate and its
pallbearer the world seemed so inhuman a thing. Perhaps this is too unwarranted
an elevation of the human, or perhaps it is too unjustified a diminution of the
inhuman, but that has not stopped the thought’s continued occurrence throughout
history, nor will it prevent its further recurrence in the times yet to come.
Nature or God may be many things but they are not human; for if given the
governance of the universe would not we ‘re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s
Desire’? A little immortality here, the destruction of evil there, the
reduction of frost and burning, the increase of habitable land, the expansion
of intellect, the remedy of ugliness, pimples, rashes, flatulence, these minor
alterations of policy would we establish in our government of this infinite
kingdom. Naturally an emphasis upon the happiness and strength of mankind would
be manifest, the case for the general welfare of bacteria must perforce be
neglected by such a sovereign as man, nor would those insects superfluous to
human affluence find due representation; nor vermin indeed, nor fungi, nor bog,
nor cloud, receive
much in reparation for the general decrease of their presence.
A pulse beats through existence which
renders all things living, and so we cannot simply regard that strange animal man, and all which is good for him, if
we are to have an even remotely justified perspective of existence, life, and
providence. Those organisms man designates living are not alone alive, and
those parts he designates mineral are not simply dead, for nothing is truly
dead which is ultimately alive, quite as no non-existence is feasible where
there is one existence. For life defined as thus: to do with being, in a
pantheistic conception of the universe, is coextensive and coeternal with
matter. Death, in this conception, takes on the character rather more of a
change than of a destruction. Thus matter begins to seem less of a prison and
more a subordinate element, and why not? Of course life is the
master of matter and matter the servant of life! Without life there is no
matter, nor any existence at all, for without life there is no perception. Men
grow depressed and sullen at the prospect of change, as though they knew what
was good for them! The soul, which is in the invisibles of life: thoughts,
emotions, the sense of self, is the name given to this intangible sense of
fundamental unity and purpose which all nations and peoples have experienced. D.N.A.
theory may trace the structures and materials of life but it cannot show its
essence. For once again it is necessary to observe that without a full
understanding of all existence we can hardly come near a partial understanding
of some existence.
Life is power
knowing itself, power is synonymous with reality. Our personalities, our
knowing identities, seem to be like whirlpools accumulating the heterogeneous
matter around them; like woodland clearances where the thousand beings gather,
light and floral, or dark and fungal, but always procuring from outside the
variety within. Man seems like nature herself taking upon her the opportunity
to enjoy her works, at least so it must strike anyone who considers how many
senses man is capable of gratifying in his life: smells of food, and flavours
of drink, creative, constructive, and social, works, sport, thought, reading and
writing, waking and sleeping; as nature herself in a narcissistic
humour, nature resolved to be the admirer and the admired. Like a mirror he
seems to reflect, like a flood he seems to absorb, like a patch of soil he
seems to nourish, like the sun he seems to gild, like the sky he seems to
touch, everything. In many respects it could be called a
blessed life if it did not so easily pall. Is it then really so strange and
impossible a notion that man is the most remarkable appearance of nature
herself, or God Himself, in any one place? Cannot a profound extension of life
be applied to mineral existence if this be the case?
Consider an individual animal which is alive.
It can only be true to call that animal alive and only false to call it dead,
yet some might assert that it has some flecks of skin, or some strands of hair,
or some other particulate particulars, which are lifeless. That these
constituents of the living whole could be dead must be impossible if the sum of
which they are constituent is not itself dead. One cannot validly designate
anything dead which is partly alive, nor can one validly designate anything
alive which is partly dead. It must therefore be ultimately false to so call the
universe, for we are sure at least that we are alive. What is perceived as
partly true must be generally true, for wherever an actual truth is discovered
in part it is discovered in full. This is applicable only to fundamental
truths, which might indeed be considered actual truths, for all others must be
only indicative of the fundamentals. Thus to prove that there is water
somewhere is not to prove that there is water everywhere but, water being
fundamentally a constituent of existence, is rather to prove that existence is
everywhere.
To say, furthermore, that the Antarctic is
cold, therefore the world is cold, therefore the universe is cold, would be an
untrue statement insomuch as cold is fundamentally only a particular
manifestation of temperature. Equally to think, fire is hot, therefore the sun
is hot, therefore the universe is hot, would be an untrue conjecture, for heat
is also but a particular manifestation of temperature. Both qualities of heat
and cold are only discernible each by the other. To say, however, that the
Antarctic has temperature, therefore the world has temperature, therefore the
universe has temperature, is a necessarily true statement, for temperature is a
fundamental quality of existence, or at least of material existence.
The same may be very plausibly contended of
life. Whether life as we deem it was created with a kind of mechanical
deliberation, as seems most unlikely, or developed with the waves of providence
wherever most propitiate, the same essential inference is formed: that there
was a potentiality of life during its precedent days of death; that before the
beginning, as we usually suppose it, was the beginning already begun; that amid
the motions and throughout the quadrants of the death-stilled universe was the
charge of life ever primed, and whether it struck, sparked, and flamed, by
design or by an abiogenesis, the result was the same, was, indeed, what we
cordially enter into the lexicographic columns as life.
Yet we as disdainfully dismiss all other
existence, all non-protoplasmic matter, as dead, as withered, as corrupted, as
doomed to the unconsciousness of oblivion, and the oblivion of unconsciousness.
But wherein lie the real differences to what we deem the alive and the dead? It
is not in replication or reproduction, for anyone who puts a pipette to water
may see as much performed; it is not in any kind of mobility, for the seas
wander about the face of the earth, earthquakes rip apart the seams of the ground,
and suns perform massive fiery acrobatics, without any apparent difficulty; it
is not in chemical construction, for though all life, as we think fit to call
it, contains protoplasm, all protoplasm is made up of the common materials of
oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulphur, carbon, and other such stuff as runs
through every vein of the universe; it is not in knowledge and wisdom, for
anything we complex creatures learn we learn from what is about us and not
contrariwise; it is not in having brains, limbs, or senses, for not even all
readily defined life forms share these; it is not, in fine, in anything we
think unique to the monarchs and subjects of the animal and vegetable kingdoms.
Debates occur as to when a man is clinically dead or brain dead, though his lungs
might breathe and his heart still beat, though the most automatic processes of
the brain continue, there is yet a supposed measure of death when the
personality has disappeared from the brain itself. Science holds, now that
science is all materialism, that the thing called the personality is merely a
perception of the effects of the material brain. So if a man loses a leg he is
yet a man; if a man loses two legs he is yet a man; if a man loses all his
limbs he is yet a man; if a man loses all his limbs, his appendix, a kidney,
his teeth, his eyes, his tongue, yet is he still a man, though wounded; but if
a man loses his head he is not a man; he is a corpse. It is the head then, or
rather the brain in the head, which makes a man a man. Yet the brain is a most
abstruse enigma of an organ. Parts of it are wildly different to other parts.
One part is a statistician and another part a mechanic, one part is a warrior
and another part a scholar, one part is a coward and another part a brute.
Lobotomies deeply affect the personality of a man by the removal of his frontal
lobe, they make him foolish, yet they cannot be said to render him other than a
man. What then makes a man, and what is it that unmakes him?
The spiritual colloquially refers to those
parts of reality which exist but are not directly perceived; scent was
spiritual until we developed noses, sound was spiritual until we developed
ears, and everything around us, which we pass but do not detect, is called spiritual.
Yet the spiritual is not therefore any form of power which we find intangible;
it is God’s infinite reality itself. It is not a name given to ignorance, for
the fact that this all pervasive spirit of existence is named once a smell and
once a sound, once an object and once a gas, etc., does not discount its
original and more comprehensively correct designation as spirit. I am conscious this is a most controversial statement to
make. Most people nowadays are far more amiable to the self-contained and tidy
definitions of materialism. They will hold willingly with the celebrated atheist
who once exclaimed, in a debate on this subject, that, ‘We are not in our bodies, we are our bodies.’ This
statement is like many such statements, it is well wrought, immediately
convincing, and shallow.
It depends on three principal ideas: the
idea of the subject, its position, and its condition. If we are not, ‘in our
bodies’, where then are our ribs and lungs? If we ‘are our bodies’ then indeed
we must be within our bodies, as our blood is within our veins, and as our
marrow is within our bones; we are also, however, outside our bodies. The
position of our brains is within our skulls, the positions of our thoughts are
within our brains, the positions of our deeds, the products of our thoughts,
are outside our bodies. If the soul exists it is a thing within which our
brains progress, and a thing through which our deeds are done; it is in the
artist’s brain and on the artist’s canvas; it is a thing we detect but do not
see, such as beauty, folly, or electrons; it is not a man’s reflection in the
mirror, but it is in his reflection
in the mirror; it is in the living man, and perhaps somewhat in the living
corpse[1];
its position is simultaneous; its condition is absolute. When evil deeds are committed
the soul takes on their evil. When one man injures another, especially another
who threatens him, nothing but profit should be the consequence. To the
utilitarian, one who abjures the soul, it is materially desirable that rotten
units should be destroyed by healthy units. That is how tyrants think, and they
think correctly, in the system of utilitarianism. Yet use engenders use, ill
recoils on ill, and violence is self-destructive.
The soul comprises the invisibles of life;
thoughts; emotions; the sense of self. As dreams are sunless days and sightless
visions, so a soul is the essence of life, it is the deducible but
indiscernible force at work in the much disguised and inscrutable world around
us. As ever it is only truly comprehensible in the scheme of a pantheistic God,
whose presence pervades all time and space, and invigorates all things with His
own life force. That at least is my explanation for the process of evolution
which of itself only describes the structural changes of an animal in time, but
which, with a pantheistic interpretation applied, explains the will to survival
which is evident in the entire universe.
My brother once interjected in a hot debate
on this subject between me and another brother, like an old oracle between two
rash and ignorant disputants, to quietly observe that on the subject of
knowledge, its origin, and the universality of knowledge apparent in nature,
the bee orchid is a case of the highest interest. I, with a summoned effort and
perhaps a visible complacency, enquired what the bee orchid was. I was thus
informed, and thus greatly astonished by a very significant testament of a
universal mind.
It is an orchid which has so contrived the
arrangement of its stamen as to closely resemble the appearance of a bee. The
shape and colours are nearly identical, and the advantage is such that the real
bees are deceived by the subterfuge and pollinate the orchid. This might appear
to some to be of no apparent interest amid the many wonders of nature, when
some octopi can take on both the colours and the textures of their
surroundings, when some caterpillars stripe themselves to warn predators of
their poison, and others to deceive predators into thinking themselves
poisonous; yet consider but one fact alone in the humble case of the bee orchid:
that the orchid has no eyes. Before the scrutiny of mankind the orchid has no
senses. There are no indications of any kind to suggest that the bee orchid
possesses any organ capable of perceiving what a honey bee looks like, or,
indeed, any brain to construe that it would be advantageous to appear as one.
This example is of the utmost force in
illustrating God’s presence and providence in all things; it vindicates the
idea of a universal knowledge. A spirit which, without the presence of physical
senses, is in some measure conscious all the same of events in the world. It
cannot be merely an indication of the mathematically impossible and obviously
improbable notion of randomness at work, of utter chance cycling through every
feasible combination before a success occurs. That many combinations are tried
and fail does not prove this, it only shows that the creative nature of duration
is to attempt and yield up a great variety. Randomness is something quite
different, randomness is the notion that things are inexplicable, or, taken in
its looser sense, that things are unlikely. Throwing a die is not a random
process, although it is a process too minute for a person to easily follow. It
is a gaming term, a word of the most frivolous vernacular, irrelevant to philosophy.
There are throughout the animal kingdom
utterly miraculous developments which the human race will be forever unable to
equal. The regeneration of limbs in certain lizards; artificial lights in fish
which swim the deep-seas; the heat endurance of flamingos; the cold endurance
of penguins; the water retention of camels; all of these marvellous
developments stem from the same agents: water and foodstuffs. The naturalists
have observed all of these phenomena, and have even occasionally drawn some
conclusions upon the divinity of life which they prove, but because they have
been at pains to isolate themselves from theology,
as it is so called with opprobrium, they have stifled their profundities, like
a victorious army failing to pursue a retreat. Their victory is only pyrrhic.
This is their great mistake. These phenomena simply cannot be explained through
purely mechanical and mineral concepts, they are a step beyond, and when in
academic study there is an example of something taking a step beyond, such as
in the adaptations of life, it is the duty of the academic to take the same
step. Not to do so is to give up the subject.
There will doubtless arise a time when spirit is given a due and adequate
scientific attention as a concept, certainly more meaningful than that of
randomness, which accounts for the interrelations of life and indeed of all
existence as we perceive it around us. In philosophy and religion it has long
since held an esteemed place as a concept of the very highest importance to
people in their daily lives, in their means of understanding themselves, and of
reconciling their hopes with the certain prospect of death. It is more than
this however. It is a means of comprehending will, or energy, or power, the
relentless impulse of existence to persevere in its mysterious operations, in
spite of all peril, in spite of black holes, in spite of animal misery. It is a
way of understanding the Universe rationally, by presuming that it is itself
rational. Once the oblivious notion of crude and ungoverned forces is swept
away with, once the isolationism of scientific endeavour, which treats the
universe as something totally unrelated from one end to the other, is altered, then
will it be far less ridiculous to use a concept such as spirit to account for this
marvellous and astonishing universe; a universe capable at one and the same
time of producing a diamond and of sustaining consciousness.
To see a World in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour. BLAKE.
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