1.]

THE SPECTRE OF THE ABSOLUTE.

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turns from his doctrine of force and the persistence of force, whereby he empties of Deity the wondrous All, and exhibits it as a senseless mechanism, to tell us that the Relative cannot exist, cannot even be conceived of, without the Absolute; owns to an inclination to regard "symbolically" the universe as instinct with "a quasi-psychical principle;" nay, more, recognizes as the most certain of certainties, though transcending knowledge and concepception, an unknown and unknowable Power, with out limit in space, without beginning or end in time. Thus, M. Littré, the second founder of Positivism, who insists so strongly that we must banish the notion of the Infinite, ends by recognising "Immensity physical and intellectual, as a positive idea of the first order"-an idea, the contemplation of which "is not less salutary than formidable;" and, in language of religious reverence, betakes himself to the contemplation of this entity " upon the throne of his sombre grandeur." Thus, a new school of Positivists, not specially associated with any one name, allows a Demiurgic Power which has shaped from the formless void of primitive elements the worlds that have been and now are; which will shape the illimitable series of worlds to come, when this universe shall have faded like the stuff that dreams are made of, and its constituent atoms shall have entered into other combinations. I cite but a few out of a great cloud of witnesses. But they are sufficient. The philosophy of relativity will

never yield to others that spell to lay the spectre of the Absolute, which it is impotent to confer upon these eminent thinkers. It is a psychological impossibility to rid ourselves of the idea of a Supreme Reality, veiled by the things of sense, and "beyond the probe of chemic test." "Nous sommes les fils de l'idéal et malgré nous-mêmes."

We read in the Mesneviyi Sherif, the great poem of the illustrious Mohammedan saint and doctor, Jelâlu-'d-dîn, that upon one occasion a certain king caused an elephant to be brought to his palace, and shut up in a dark chamber. He then assembled the wisest of his realm, and entering with them into that chamber commanded them to judge what was there. Groping in the obscurity, they stretched out their hands and felt the creature as best they might. They all agreed that it was a living being; but one declared that it was like a huge column; another, that it had a rough hide; a third, that it was of ivory; a fourth, that it possessed huge flaps of some coarse substance. Then light was admitted to the chamber, and it was discerned how falsely true these diverse judgments were. Even so, we may say-applying to our present purpose the moral which the saint derived from his allegory-even so do the wise men of this nineteenth century, shut off from the light of selfevident truths, of primary principles and final causes, judge of the Being of Beings. He is indeed, as Professor Huxley insists, the Unknown

1.]

THE WORDS OF THE WISE.

25

25

and Unknowable: his substance and essence utterly beyond the reach of our faculties. He is, as Professor Tyndall would seem to hold, that Transcendent Ideal which is the Supremely Real. He is that Absolute, that sustaining might of every creature, whose Being, Causal Energy, Omnipotence, and Eternity Mr. Spencer confesses. He is "the Immense" whom M. Littré reveres upon His awful throne. He is that Secret Power, acknowledged by later positivists, from whom the unthinkable succession of mutable worlds proceeds. Thus, in their different ways, do these prophets of antitheism rear each his lonely altar to the Infinite and Eternal. Thus do they bear testimony, not merely to the necessity of our intellectual constitution, which compels us, in Mr. Spencer's words, "to give shape to that indefinite sense of an ultimate reality;" but also, as I venture to think, to the longing of human nature spoken of by St. Augustine: "Fecisti nos ad Te et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in Te."

But these high thoughts are the prerogative of the comparatively few profounder intellects among the masters and students of the natural sciences. Far otherwise is it with the canaille of writers and talkers, who retail to the world their discoveries and speculations. Unquestionably our vast Progress in the physical order has served to in

doctrinate such with a vulgar and debased Materialism, which finds in cosmic dust and the laws of movement the last word of the universe: which explains life as the potentiality of atoms: mind as a correlation of magnetic and psychic forces: will, thought, love, and all man's intellectual and moral nature as the phenomena of nerve tissue; civilization-to use the language of a once famous book-as "nothing else but the knowledge and observance of natural laws;' which, allowing no room in the universe for Creative Energy or Directive Intelligence, puts aside "the hypothesis of Deity" as superfluous, and holds truth to be only that which lies at the bottom of a crucible or retort, or which is ascertainable by the experimental method. And these credenda have exercised a wide influence beyond. the sect-if I may so speak-that explicitly holds them. On every side we see the exaltation of the materialist and positive element in life, the depreciation of the idealist and moral element. The popular notice of Progress is certainly utilitarian, holding it to consist in the enhancement and more general diffusion of "happiness." But it is the intellectual and moral element in life which alone has any worth in itself; nay, which is in the true and proper sense of the term, real.

I shall return to that consideration presently. Here I would observe how doubtful it is whether

* Supernatural Religion, p. 53.

1.]

"AGREEABLE FEELING."

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our advance in the knowledge of natural law, and in its adaptation to human wants, has really resulted in the general increase of "happiness." The word indeed is question-begging. I suppose it is usually taken in the sense of "agreeable feeling" put upon it by Mr. Spencer, one of the chief preachers of the doctrine of necessitated and unlimited Progress. It is maintained by many thoughtful persons, not tainted by the suspicion of Pessimism, that there is now less agreeable feeling in progressive countries than there was in former centuries. No doubt the lower classes obtain in the present day, at small cost, objects of secondary utility which were formerly out of their reach. But the growth of popular intelligence has brought with it a consciousness of wants for which there is no adequate means of satisfaction. Nor can there be any doubt of the corrupting and corroding influence of those ungratified desires. Again, it may well be doubted whether the general diffusion of comfort is not more apparent than real. Let us take an example from our own country-"the richest in the world." Is the physical condition of the agricultural labourer in England better now than it was at previous portions of our national history? I turn to the fourth volume of the late Professor Rogers's elaborate and authoritative work on History of Agriculture and Prices, and I find there evidence, apparently conclusive, that our agricultural class was relatively much better off