Consciousness

The application of the microscope increases, in the most striking manner, our impression of the rich luxuriance of animal life in the ocean, and reveals to the astonished senses a consciousness of the universality of life. In the oceanic depths, far exceeding the height of our loftiest mountain chains, every stratum of water is animated with polygastric sea-worms, Cyclidiae and Ophrydinae. The waters swarm with countless hosts of small luminiferous animalcules, Mammaria (of the order of Acalephae), Crustacea, Peridinea, and circling Nereides, which when attracted to the surface by peculiar meteorological conditions, convert every wave into a foaming band of flashing light. p 310 The abundance of those marine animalcules, and the animal matter yielded by their rapid decomposition are so vast that the sea water itself becomes a nutrient fluid to many of the larger animals. However much this richness in animated forms, and this multitude of the most various and highly-developed microscopic organisms may agreeably excite the fancy, the imagination is even more seriously, and, I might say, more solemnly moved by the impression of boundlessness and immeasureability, which are presented to the mind by every sea voyage. All who possess an ordinary degree of mental activity, and delight to create to themselves an inner world of thought, must be penetrated with the sublime image of the infinite, when gazing around them on the vast and boundless sea, when involuntarily the glance is attracted to the distant horizon, where air and water blend together, and the stars continually rise and set before the eyes of the mariner. This contemplation of the eternal play of the elements is clouded, like every human joy, by a touch of sadness and of longing.

Remove, then, the existing bondage of human- ity, remove those factitious restraints which keep appetite and passion on the perpetual look out for escape, like steam from an overcharged boiler, and their force would instantly become conservative instead of destructive. For man is destined by the very necessity of his creation, for nothing but the obedience of his inward and divine self-hood, for the obedience of God within him. Even while he is utterly unconscious of his true or inmost self- hood, the aim of his whole existence, the end of all his struggle and toil is to realize it, and when it does dawn upon him, it sheds a complete calm upon the turbid sea of his outward relations. The effect is irresistible. You cannot arouse a man to self-respect, to a sense of his proper hu- manity, to a consciousness of the divinity which constitutes his being, without rendering him supe- DEMOCRACY AND ITS ISSUES. 49

reproduced in nature, until they become fixed or embodied in act. We know nothing in respect either to the nature or the intensity of our passions until they become developed in action. No one knows the sentiment and life of Love in his own bosom by intuition, but only as some outward occasion arises for its exhibition. No one knows the force of the parental sentiment, save as it is called into consciousness by intercourse with his children. Nor does any one know the reach and subtilty of his intellect, until some outward strug- gle of truth and error has evoked the evidence. And all this for a very good reason, namely, that power, no matter of what sort, has no passive existence, has no existence apart from performance. Power in other words is purely active. It is never power save in producing. You may say for ex- ample, that A has greatly more powerful passions that B. But in making this judgment you do not mean to intimate that A has a greater material bulk of passion than B, but only that his passions are more influential upon his action. The measure of a passion's intensity is the control it exerts upon action. His passions are the most potent who is most impelled to action by them. Power is by no means contingent upon bulk. In fact it is impaired by it. Daniel Lambert added six hundred pounds to the avoirdupois of ordinary humanity. Daniel was not therefore six hundred times more a man.

I said in my last that the natural world, being the world merely of phenomena or appearance, is strictly unintelligible without some light or reve- lation derived from the spiritual and real world. The reason of this is not very far to seek. Every lover of Truth, every one who is able to discrimi- nate between Truth and fact, will not merely ad- mit, but will loyally insist that her infinite and spotless form transcends the sphere of sense, or discloses itself only to the eye of reason. All spiritual existence indeed, all those higher truths which affect the soul's life, truths of the Divine existence and operation, of the Divine Creation and Providence, exceed the capacity of sense, and report themselves only to a higher and interior consciousness. To suppose me, for example, sen- sibly cognizant of an exclusively Divine operation such as my creation is : to suppose me not merely believing that God is my life, or rationally assenting to that truth, but also actually knowing it, or Ren-

to us; and the American spuks and table-turners are said by some of their disciples to make revela - tions even in advance of his. But this is an absurd use of the word. What is meant to be said in either case is, that the persons in question give us information of a certain character, and the character being unusual, it is supposed to be enti- tled on that account to the more dignified name of revelation . But revelation is not a more ele- vated information, because, strictly speaking, it is not information at all. Information always means imported knowledge, knowledge which is not in- volved in our consciousness, but which comes up to the soul from the senses, or is derived ab extra . Revelation, on the contrary, means exported knowledge, knowledge which belongs wholly to the sphere of consciousness, or comes down to the senses from the soul, thus ab intra. Whatsoever the broad face of Nature, or the testimony of friends, or the lettered page, brings to our eyes, and ears, and other senses, is information. It always bears the stamp of direct or immediate knowledge, being addressed by the sense to the reason or soul; whereas revelation is always re- flected or mediate knowledge, being addressed through the consciousness to the sense as to a mirror. Information postulates Nature as absolute or fixed. Revelation, on the other hand, turns it into a fluent mirror of superior existence. Infor- mation is subjective knowledge ; that is to say, it

A consciousness of the fallacy of our senses is one of the most important consequences of the study of nature. This study teaches us that no object is seen by us in its true place, owing to aberration; that the colours of substances are solely the effects of the action of matter upon light; and that light itself as well as heat and sound are not real beings, but mere motions communicated to our perceptions by the nerves. The human frame may therefore be regarded as an elastic system, the different parts of which are capable of receiving the tremors of elastic media, and of vibrating in unison with any number of superimposed undulations, all of which have their perfect and independent effect. Here our knowledge ends: the mysterious influence of matter on mind will in all probability be for ever hid from man. SECTION XXVIII. Common or Static Electricity, or Electricity of Tension—A Dual Power—Methods of exciting it—Attraction and Repulsion—Conduction—Electrics and Non-electrics—Induction—Dielectrics—Tension—Law of the Electric Force—Distribution—Laws of Distribution—Heat of Electricity—Electrical Light and its Spectrum—Velocity—Atmospheric Electricity—Its cause—Electric Clouds—Violent effects of Lightning—Back Stroke—Electric Glow—Phosphorescence.

V. PHYSICAL SYNTHESIS.—An attempt to show the manner in which the succession of states of consciousness conforms to a certain fundamental law of nervous action that follows from the First Principles laid down at the outset. VOL. II. VI. SPECIAL ANALYSIS.—As at present published, but further elaborated by some additional chapters. VII. GENERAL ANALYSIS.—As at present published, with several explanations and additions. VIII. COROLLARIES.—Consisting in part of a number of derivative principles which form a necessary introduction to Sociology.[3] THE PRINCIPLES OF SOCIOLOGY. VOL. I. PART I. THE DATA OF SOCIOLOGY.—A statement of the several sets of factors entering into social phenomena—human ideas and feelings considered in their necessary order of evolution; surrounding natural conditions; and those ever complicating conditions to which Society itself gives origin. II. THE INDUCTIONS OF SOCIOLOGY.—General facts, structural and functional, as gathered from a survey of Societies and their changes: in other words, the empirical generalizations that are arrived at by comparing different societies, and successive phases of the same society. III. POLITICAL ORGANIZATION.—The evolution of governments, general and local, as determined by natural causes; their several types and metamorphoses; their increasing complexity and specialization; and the progressive limitation of their functions.

One other consideration should not be overlooked—a consideration which students of Science more especially need to have pointed out. Occupied as such are with established truths, and accustomed to regard things not already known as things to be hereafter discovered, they are liable to forget that information, however extensive it may become, can never satisfy inquiry. Positive knowledge does not, and never can, fill the whole region of possible thought. At the uttermost reach of discovery there arises, and must ever arise, the question—What lies beyond? As it is impossible to think of a limit to space so as to exclude the idea of space lying outside that limit; so we cannot conceive of any explanation profound enough to exclude the question—What is the explanation of that explanation? Regarding Science as a gradually increasing sphere, we may say that every addition to its surface does but bring it into wider contact with surrounding nescience. There must ever remain therefore two antithetical modes of mental action. Throughout all future time, as now, the human mind may occupy itself, not only with ascertained phenomena and their relations, but also with that unascertained something which phenomena and their relations imply. Hence if knowledge cannot monopolize consciousness—if it must always continue possible for the mind to dwell upon that which transcends knowledge; then there can never cease to be a place for something of the nature of Religion; since Religion under all its forms is distinguished from everything else in this, that its subject matter is that which passes the sphere of experience.

Here ending preliminaries, let us now address ourselves to this all-important inquiry. CHAPTER II. ULTIMATE RELIGIOUS IDEAS. § 9. When, on the sea-shore, we note how the hulls of distant vessels are hidden below the horizon, and how, of still remoter vessels, only the uppermost sails are visible, we realize with tolerable clearness the slight curvature of that portion of the sea’s surface which lies before us. But when we seek in imagination to follow out this curved surface as it actually exists, slowly bending round until all its meridians meet in a point eight thousand miles below our feet, we find ourselves utterly baffled. We cannot conceive in its real form and magnitude even that small segment of our globe which extends a hundred miles on every side of us; much less the globe as a whole. The piece of rock on which we stand can be mentally represented with something like completeness: we find ourselves able to think of its top, its sides, and its under surface at the same time; or so nearly at the same time that they seem all present in consciousness together; and so we can form what we call a conception of the rock. But to do the like with the Earth we find impossible. If even to imagine the antipodes as at that distant place in space which it actually occupies, is beyond our power; much more beyond our power must it be at the same time to imagine all other remote points on the Earth’s surface as in their actual places. Yet we habitually speak as though we had an idea of the Earth—as though we could think of it in the same way that we think of minor objects.

What conception, then, do we form of it? the reader may ask. That its name calls up in us some state of consciousness is unquestionable; and if this state of consciousness is not a conception, properly so called, what is it? The answer seems to be this:—We have learnt by indirect methods that the Earth is a sphere; we have formed models approximately representing its shape and the distribution of its parts; generally when the Earth is referred to, we either think of an indefinitely extended mass beneath our feet, or else, leaving out the actual Earth, we think of a body like a terrestrial globe; but when we seek to imagine the Earth as it really is, we join these two ideas as well as we can—such perception as our eyes give us of the Earth’s surface we couple with the conception of a sphere. And thus we form of the Earth, not a conception properly so called, but only a symbolic conception.[6]