MAN'S PLACE IN CREATION.

Colonist, Volume XII, Issue 1244, 27 August 1869, Page 3

MAN'S PLACE IN CREATION.

[SECOND ABTiettE.]

In controversies, such' as the one we have in hand, in which the contention is not ao much about facts as about the interpretation to be placed upon them, it is usual to find thinkers whose minds have been cast in a literary mould ranging themselves on one side, those of scientific proclivities on the other; and it is not difficult to see why it is so. The literary mind is perceptive, the scientific, receptive. The former prefers deductive processes of thought, the latter inductive. The one anticipates nature, the other interprets her. A mind purely literary is swift, eager, direct, and, if conscious of lofty powers and pure impulses, not unapt to view disdainfully, and to condemn without compunction conclusions patiently built up on a scientific basis, should they appear to run counter to its preconceived ideas of truth and fitness. Lord Bacon denotes this where he says:—" Almost, all scholars have this—when anything is presented to them, they will find in it that which they know, not learn from it that which they know not." The weakness of the other class of minds is of quite a different nature, and will fall presently to be considered. In our first notice of Judge Eichtnond's lecture, a good example of the literary method, we said roundly that while cordially wishing him God-speed in his assault on the fastnesses of materialism, we must decline to follow him over the metaphysical country, full, we apprehend, of pitfalls and precipitous places, and where moreover the enemydoes not care to stray; but we would gladly •do our utmost to support him by engaging the foe on a field where he cannot decline battle, the level ground of common sense and experience. To attempt this in the measure of our ability shall be our task to-day. Scientific men refer with complacent pride to the fact that while the history of Literature and Art is a chequered one, telling of the alternation of high perfection in one age with rapid declension in another, Science is essentially progressive, each law or generalisation, when once established, being an acquisition for all coming time, and furnishing a scaffolding on which the next higher one may be erected. But while science cannot go backward, it should not beforgotten that the only security for its continued advance is to be found in the maintenance of the same spirit of earnest and patient waiting on the higher teaching which has been the secret of its achievements. Some natural philosophers who value themselves on following the Baconian inductive philosophy appear to have forgotten that the moral which is embodied in it is that the Pagan pride which had fruitlessly striven to impose its self-evolved ideas upon nature must be forsaken, and admittance sought into the temple of truth through "no other means than the true and legitimate humiliation of the human spirit." f .Nor is it less needful to take heed to such warnings as these : " I hold that true logic ought to enter the several provinces of science armed with a higher authority than belongs to the principles of those sciences themselves, and ought to call those putative principles to account until they are fully established." And again, with reference to a presumptuous and exclusive reliance on the senses: "My first admonition (which was also my prayer) is that men [should] confine the sense within the limits of duty in respect of things divine; for the sense is like the sun, which reveals the face of earth, but seals and shuts up the face of heaven." As all discoveries are verified conjectures, the Imagination is the prime mover in discovery and must be nurtured and employed as well as the observing and logical faculties. The plan of nature is large, and so the mind needs breadth to take in its scope and meaning. One cannot see a thing distinctly if he stoops too close to it. A landscape is not complete, though every patch of ground be painted in, unless a bit of sky is also seen. We think it cannot be denied that the opulence of latter-day scientific research and the minute division of labor among men of science, have resulted in somewhat of complacent sen-sufficiency from the first cause, and narrowness of vievr from the second, conditions which are not favorable to originality and true progress. Thus we see how it is that discoveries and inventions are often missed by those whose special vocation it is to make them, and fall to the lot of outsiders whose insight has not been dimmed by a disuse of the imaginationinduced by routine and narrow ways. Accordingly Borne of the greatest improvements in the great art of agriculture have occurred, not to the bucolic mind, but to persons coming fresh to the subject; the prime discovery in naval warfare of "breaking the enemy's line" was made, not by a seaman, but by a Scotch lawyer; of the remedial properties of water, not by a physician but a German peasant. One of the most signal instances of this fact, and which comes near our subject, is that of vegetable morphology or the evolution of all the different organs of plants from the leaf. This discovery, which has revolutionised botany, was made neither by'a botanist nor a horticulturist but by a poet (Goethe). But while the need for an open, teachable, and comprehensive intellect holds true in all scientific pursuits, it is especially required * Man's Place in Creation.—A lecture delivered in the Provincial Hall, Nelson, by C. W. Richmond, one of the Judges of the Supreme Court of New Zealand. Nelson : J. Hounsell. t The passage is noble and touching: " For my own part at least, in obedience to the everlasting lovo of truth, I have committed myself to the uncertainties and difficulties and Bolitudes of the ways, and relying on the divine assistance, have upheld my mind against the shocks and embattled ranks of opinion, and against my own private and inward hesitations and scruples, and against the fogs and clouds of nature, and the phantoms flitting about on every side, in the hope of providing, at last for the present and future generations guidance more faithful and secure. Wherein, if I have made any progress, the way has been opened to mo by no other means than the true and legitimate humiliation of the human Spirit."— Jtacon, He Augmeutis,

iv Sitcli as relate to man's nature, pdwer"s'j and destiny) because those are the widest and deepest subjects with which science has to do. Man has need of all his powers to investigate and understand so high and complex a' subject as humanity; for only thus can he appreciate all the facts. It is conceivable (though historically untrue) that the properties of numbers, or the behaviour of atoms, or the structure of the planetary system might in any case be discerned without the use of our highest faculties, for they relato'to unoonseious matter or quantity alone ; but when we have to do with man—granting for argument's sake that he also is mere matter—as this congeries of atoms has somehow become endowed with self-consciousness, with intelligence, with love and hate, with hope and fear, with volition and responsibility, with memory of a past and anticipation of a future, and as even materialists acknowledge that these are the highest manifestations hitherto known, ana are moreover facts as hard and real as color or weight, is it, we ask, conformable to common sense to ignore these living witnesses to the actual nature of man und to place a preferential reliance on the secondary, and so to speak, circumstantial evidence afforded by his body ? What would be thought of a natural philosopher who, undertaking the investigation of the science of sounds, were to refuse to take note of the laws of harmony ? .We Bhould certainly say thafc he had thus saved himself much trouble, but that whatever conclusions he might come to would bo poor in respect to the highest developments of the subject. On these considerations then we found our first and second counts against materialists. These thinkers leave out the highest and most direct testimony in the matter to be investigated, and decline to avail themselves of the most appropriate faculties in the investigator. Ask a phrenological materialist why, prosessing the organs of Ideality and Veneration, he lays them on the shelf in an enquiry which involves them, as well as Causality and the knowing faculties, and he must either assert that they are useless and misleading (thus falling into the same mistake as the metaphysicians as to fictitiousness in naturo, referred to in our first notice) or else allow that his method of enquiry is partial and defective, and one which cannot be expected to have a satisfactory issue. Eejecting, however, these natural aids to reasoning, the materialists, advance a three-fold argument for their opinion, which may be stated as follows, — 1. That there is no direct evidence of mind, as it is not cognisable by any of the senses, and that therefore its existence as an entity is a gratuitous assumption. 2. That the manifestation of so-called mental phenomena is invariably found associated with the existence and activity o" organised structures called nervous and cerebral; that mental changes correspond with the simultaneous influence of physiological, morbid, violent, or other agencies plainly known to act upon the brain ; and that they cease to be manifested on the cessation of physical life. Prom all which, it is contended, it may legitimately be concluded that the brain, in other words, matter organized, is the cause of thought and emotion. 3. That any difficulty that may be experienced in conceiving that intellect and feeling can bo produced by arrangements of organised particles of matter is removed or mitigated by the consideration! that it is well-known that by certain orderly arrangements of material substances, as in a galvanic battery or a musical instrument, results are obtained which are totally unlike the materials employed to produce them; as unlike, it it is urged, as an idea or an emotion 13 to a particle of brain. The second of these reasons is the most considerable, and we shall postpone its consideration till we have disposed of the other two. ( A metaphysician of the Berkeleyan school would meet the denial of the existence of mind by denying the existence of matter, and thus a dead-lock would ensue; as in the case of the two mothers who came 1 before Solomon, the assertion of the one has as much < weight as that of the other, unless the secret belief i can be put to the proof; and here the ro3erablance ceases, for though the materialist certainly acts as if / he were conscious of being a spiritual being, the ] case cannot on that account be given in favor of the i metaphysician, for he, with equal disbelief in his £ professed opinion, acts constantly as if matter had a very real existence. In short these two opinions are of equal worth, just because neither is worth any- 1 thing. Both are phantoms which may trouble ouv 1 dreams, but which vanish when the daylight of t common sense comes in. Our hourly experience, 1 whatever its deficiences, does not carry a lie in its c hand; it tells us that we have bodies and that we t have minds also. t But we would further remind the materialists that \ this argument is faulty, inasmuch as all acknowledge s that a plain inference from facts is an equally good ' ground of belief with the testimony of the senses s themselves. Thus no one has ever seen oxygen, j hydrogen, or azote, and yet no chemist doubts their a existence; and though magnetism can neither be t seen, heard, smelt, tasted, nor touched, it is known 1 as a reality by its effects; and, therefore, those t scrupulous materialists who avoid using the word c "Mind" as carefully as the Hebrews did another ( word, are guilty of a similar affectation to that of a i person who should refuse to say " Magnetism," but s would prefer to talk of ." the peculiar molecular i polarity of iron under certain circumstances." I suppose that a materialist thus pressed would merge , this first argument in the second, which we shall come to by-and-bye. - The reason we have marked 3 may bo termed the apologetic or analogical argument for materialism, because it aims at overcoming the repugnance we feel , at classing mental phenomena with those of matter, ■ which seem so very different, by alleging the analogy \ of artificial arrangements effecting changes as great.* We readily allow that analogy is a legitimate resort , in argument, for we regard the Imagination as quito , a3 valuable an instrument of research as the Season, c and one which culls materials from a much wider * range; but we think that science affords a ready means of showing that there is no analogy in this case. The argument would have been very difficult 8 to meet thirty or even twenty year 3 ago, but now it . is easy. The greatest physical discovery made lasfc century I wa3 that of the indestructibility of Matter, so absolute (in man's experience at all events,) that even where substances consume, they are not lost. The greatest c discovery of this century again has been the indis- * tructibility of Force. While it assumes many forms, T appearing now as light, now as heat, or as electricity, c galvanism, magnetism, chemical affinity, elasticity, or 1 sound, it is proved to demonstration that there is ' always the same amount of force through all these £ changes. Now, place these two truths together: * matter never undergoes a loss ; force never acquires ' a gain; therefore, no matter becomes force. Conversely, force cannot become matter. Science, so r . * much distrusted in certain quarters, has thus made a' c valuable contribution to Psychology, for it has attested the correctness •of that intuitive feeling of E the mind which affirms the total distinction between 1 force, which acts, and matter, which is acted on. c And this furnishes us with a legitimate reason for J continuing to rely on that intuition when it tells us i that neither matter nor force are the same as mind ; ' for we feel that while the two former are essentially ( diverse between themselves, they yet agree in that ( neither have the slightest thing in common with 3 intelligence. We now take up the argument most relied on by ' those who consider mind to be generated by the brain in the same way as bile is secreted by the liver. ' We refer our readers back to our mode of putting it, I given in a previous column, where we endeavored to : express it fairly and plainly, ar.d free from objection by our opponents. (Argument No. 2.) The connection between the manifestation of sensation, motion, (whethcrvoluntaryorinvoluntary) instinct, reason, and. moral emotions, and the existence of nervous matter in the shape of ganglions, spinal chord, brain and nerves proper, is very close and significant. That is agreed upon all hands. The question is : will it bear the meaning put upon it by the materialistic school of physiologists ? It; is a difficult question. No wonder if men have stumbled ; there is a " darkness that may be felt." We must lend each * Thn argument conveyed iv this paragraph and the next, has been independently arrived at by \ another writer, who states it concisely in a thoughtful letter (signed " S") ia the Examiner of the 21st insfc,l

other helpirig hnnds ,' and first* enquire in what i direction we shall look for light. s Another department of thought was once as dark v as this; und from the highest of all examples 9 moving in that sphere we may learn that the 7 most instructive truths lie close at hand and attach 3 to common things. Thus, when the Great Teacher j_ would throw light upon God's thoughts and wishes 3 about mankind he likened the Deity to a man acting ? in various capacities, as a king, a father, a sower, a ) shepherd ; and we hope we are on a safe track if we ) do the like in this other province ;in which case the ■ enquiry becomes: what does man do when he acts l on nature or on his fellow 'men ? Man as an artificer , or an artist gives the simplest case. He either alters l the/or>» or the substance of some natural object, i corresponding to the mechanical or to the chemical ; arts. And of these we will take the most i instructive acts those in which man alters the i form of substances. ; In every case, we believe, four things may be ■ noted :—l. He desires and designs the work. 2. He ■ performs it. 3. The thing when made has acquired a fitness for some purpose for which it was not before 1 adapted. 4 This change is not owing to any fresh properties acquired by the substance, but to a new form given to the article in accordance with the original design. All this is so plain as to require no remark except as to No. 4, which nee :1s examples in illustration. A block of wood if turned into a cup, or into a ball, or carred into an image has undergone no change as regards the particles, but an utti-r change as regards the mns3. An artist holding a piece of chalk or charcoal in his hand will so distribute its particles, by a few masterly strokes, portraying, say, a beautiful head, as to cause pleasure and elicit admiration. Tho particles of the crayon have acquired no fresh properties—they owe their efficacy to the blackness which they always possessed, and yet through their means a mental effect has been produced. Catgut has surely no elements of harmony in it; it sul:served [no such purpose in its original location ; and yet one can so place it as to draw sweet music from it. Does not &U this show that even man can so control the material world as to draw out from it more than was in it, by impressing on it his own ideas ? Is it not then easy, natural, almost necessary to conclude that the Creator is adequate to so adapt and arrange matter as that without its acquiring any additional jiroperties it shall do his behests in any department of His kingdom ? Aud as no one falls into admiration of the crayon on the catgut, but passe 3at once and rightly to the mind of tho artist or musician, so all achievements of the human mind should according to this view be traced to and accumulate at the primal fountain. We conclude therefore that as far us we arc warranted in reasoning from the familiarly known to the more obscure, the stssociation of mental operations with the brain by no mean 3 warrants any such conclusion as that the latter produces thought, but rather the belief that the Creator has so organised the brain as to be the mere medium of the spirit. If it be objected that this implies the cessation of tho life of the mind with the departure of the breath, wo reply that the analogy of the other two created entities (matter nnd form), which modern science has co closely scrutinised, suggests with a hitherto unrealised cogency that nothing is destroyed, and that the system of the world gives ample warrant for believing that an active agency, though it may slumber for a time, never loses tho capacity of reviving at a future timn. Many other conclusions might be worked out from pursuance of this method, which is jusb that of natural theology, but our limits warn us to be brief. We will therefore only indicate a few ideas without expanding them. The work, a mere passive evidence of the mind of the workman, can yet tell a good deal, and as it could show nothing of him if he worked at random, it follows that all that it reveals is consciously his. \ gain if the work be of a high character, it will show Ms character, aud will be a more or less explicit revealing of himself. Accordingly we can see how it was that man, the highest work of God, should be said to have been made in His likeness. There are, doubtless, many minds to whom it would be more agreeable to believe that the Almighty had used no intermediate means to work out His will; but we think that on reflection it will be perceived that it was a greater thing to accomplish vast designs by humble meaus than by any other way. We conceive of the great scheme of Creation and Providence that its majesty lay in its conception and design, and that these are seen in strongest relief against tho poor aud shifting short-sighted stratagems of our species when the Author is realised as so knowing " what is in man," and in all beneath Him, as securely work out his utmost purposes by means, poor it may be in themselves, but acquiring dignity and grandeur from the use to which they are made to subserve and inevitably to fulfil. For it cannot have escaped any reader who has followed our line of thought, that the less we find it needful to assign to the creatui-e the more remains to be attributed to the Creator, and that the true dignity of man is to be more really found in his falling in as a willing adjunct to ihe replete design, than in any more restricted contentment. F. W. I.