'Laws without a lawgiver, intelligible order and no intelligent agents, meaning and purpose before there is aught that feels or strives—a phantom skeleton first which then quickens itself to life and power— is not this unthinkable? Moreover, laws are not real forces, but only abstract formulae. Bodies gravitate, no doubt, but not because constrained to do so by an independent law: the law is but a generalization describing their behaviour: to know more about that, we must know more about them.'

PROFESSOR J. WARD, Hibbert Journal, October, 1905, p. 96.

'My objection to materialism is, simply, that it involves a contradiction, and therefore I have a difficulty in saying what is its logical result. If two and two make five, what is the sum of three and three! That is a question with which I do not see how to deal. And, in regard to materialism, I have a similar difficulty about the primary assumption. It is the first step that costs. If any feeling can be explained as a motion, perhaps our whole nature may be explained in the same way.'

SIR LESLIE STEPHEN, An Agnostic's Apology, p. 157.

'The distinction between the First Cause and secondary causes is a perfectly unreal distinction. It may, I think, be shown that the concept of cause itself necessarily involves the existence of a mind which thinks and wills-a mind whose thinking and willing are in some degree analogous to our own thinking and willing. If this be so, then secondary causes are not causes at all. They are simply symbols which serve to foreshadow the uniform action of the Divine Will.' 8. H. BEIBITZ, The New Point of View in Theology,'

Hibbert Journal, January, 1904, p. 304.

'As the doctrine of natural selection out of an endless diversity of aimless variations fails to account for that general consistency of the advance along definite lines of progress which is manifested in the history of evolution, it leaves untouched the evidence of design in the original scheme of the organized creation; while it transfers the idea of that design from the particular to the general, making all the special cases of adaptation the foreknown results of the adoption of that general order which we call Law.'

DR. W. B. CARPENTER, Modern Review, October, 1884, p. 700.

VII

THE LAW OF SUBSTANCE

THE reason for coining the phrase so oft repeated in Professor Haeckel's works, and the unmeasured importance attached to it, may be best expressed in his own words:

The supreme and all-pervading law of nature, the true and only cosmological law, is in my opinion, the law of substance: its discovery and establishment is the greatest intellectual triumph of the nineteenth century, in the sense that all other known laws of nature are subordinate to it. Under the name of 'law of substance' we embrace two supreme laws of different origin and age-the older is the chemical law of the 'conservation of matter,' and the younger is the physical law of the 'conservation of energy.' It will be self-evident to many readers, and is acknowledged by most of the scientific men of the day, that these two great laws are essentially inseparable.

The sum total of force or energy in the universe remains constant, no matter what changes take place around us; it is eternal and infinite, like the matter on which it is inseparably dependent. . . . This supreme law dominates also those elaborate performances of the nervous system which we call, in the higher animals and man, ' the action of the mind.' Our monistic view, that the great cosmic law applies throughout the whole of nature, is of the highest moment. For it not only involves, on its positive side, the essential unity of the cosmos and the causal connexion of all phenomena that come within our cognizance, but it also, in a negative way, marks the highest intellectual progress, in that it definitely rules out the three central doctrines

of metaphysics-God, freedom, and immortality. In assigning mechanical causes to phenomena everywhere, the law of substance comes into line with the universal law of causality.'

2

So far as the statement of modern physical conclusions is concerned, no fault need be found with the above. It will, however, be noticed that there are two alleged laws, and two asserted inferences. (1) The law of the conservation of matter teaches us that the sum of matter is eternal and unchangeable.' (2) 'The law of the conservation of energy teaches us that the sum of force, or energy, that is ever at work in the universe, is unchangeable.' (3) The inseparableness of these two comes as an inference: They cannot be divided, because if energy is only to be found in association with matter, then, if the law of the conservation of matter falls to the ground, the principle of the conservation of energy falls with it. Energy, therefore, like matter, cannot be destroyed or created by any process known to man.' But (4) the further inference as to the consequences of this combination of two laws into one, is no less questionable than it is wide. It would, indeed, be difficult to make a larger claim in fewer words. As it is elsewhere expressed:

From the gloomy problem of substance we have evolved the clear law of substance. The monism of the cosmos which we establish thereon proclaims the absolute dominion of 'the great eternal iron laws' throughout the universe. It thus shatters at

Riddle, pp. 75, 82, 83.

* Wonders, pp. 465, 466.

Hooper, Aether and Gravitation, p. 85.

the same time the three central dogmas of the dualistic philosophy -the personality of God, the immortality of the soul, and the freedom of the will.'

The essential unity of the 'cosmos'-which here unmistakably connotes the 'universe '-the causal connexion of all phenomena; the absolute dominion of great 'iron laws'; the 'assigning of mechanical causes to phenomena everywhere'; the 'highest intellectual progress' because of ruling out or shattering the three central dogmas of metaphysics'these and other such demands upon our faith, are verily large enough to make us hesitate before we consent to them.

Inasmuch, then, as the claims of Haeckel's monism are as vast in extent as they are ostentatiously based upon this 'law of substance,' it becomes

1 Riddle, p. 135.

'It were greatly to be desired that the usage of these terms were always similarly clear and unequivocal. It is, however, very far from being the case. Mr. Underhill (Personal Idealism, p. 196) rightly says, 'Mr. Spencer would apparently extend the evolutional process to the whole universe, though it is by no means clear what he would wish to include in the universe.' And the remark applies still more, in the case of many other writers, to the two other cognate terms 'cosmos' and 'world.' All three are not seldom mixed up in confusion. Thus in the chapter of The Riddle here considered (p. 76) Haeckel says concerning Spinoza, 'In his stately pantheistic system the notion of the world (the universe, or the cosmos)' where his own italics identify the world with both the universe' and the cosmos.' So too elsewhere (Confession, pp. 16, 17). Whereas Mr McCabe talks freely about 'world-masses,' and 'cosmic masses,' averring that our solar system is as a single snowflake in a shower'; that 'worlds in every stage of development people the heavens;' that the universe is developed piecemeal, star by star. The hundred millions that we see shining to-day are by no means the universe.' Surely, then, it is part of the responsibility of his championship to inform us what Haeckel means, when he deliberately calls the 'world' the universe.' Also to make plain

necessary to examine alike its alleged foundation, and the much-vaunted superstructure.

I. In regard, then, to the blending into one of the wo laws of the conservation of matter and the following points merit distinct

of energy,

attention.

1

1. Haeckel himself acknowledges that 'this fundamental thesis, however, is still much contested in some quarters.' And however 'natural' the thought may be that these two great cosmic theorems are just as intimately united as their objects, matter and force (or energy), it is still 'very far from being generally accepted.' To put it more fully:

It is stoutly contested by the entire dualistic philosophy, vitalistic biology, and parallelistic psychology: even, in fact, whether by the 'cosmos we are to understand the 'solar system,' or the illimitable sidereal system. Mr. Mallock (Religion as a Credible Doctrine, p. 269) is warrantably severe upon Professor Huxley for 'card-sharping' with words and ideas in regard to the term 'cosmic process,' which he rightly says 'naturally suggests and includes all the processes of the universe.' But it is no less necessary here that we should know precisely what is meant by 'cosmos,' and should clearly understand that 'world' does not and cannot connote the 'universe.' It is of the greatest importance that we should know whether the 'cosmic process' consists in the evolution of cosmic masses' of which the existing universe is the result. Compared with Haeckel's looseness of diction there is as much more science as reason in the plain statement of the authors of The Unseen Universe (p. 96): 'In fine we do not hesitate to assert that the visible universe cannot comprehend the whole works of God; because it had its beginning in time and will also come to an end. Perhaps, indeed, it forms only an infinitesimal portion of that stupendous whole which alone is entitled to be called THE UNIVERSE.' I am glad to avail myself of italics in order to commend this sober judgement to all who search for truth.'

Riddle, p. 75.

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