Volume 1

Faiths of man : a cyclopædia of religions / by Major-General J. G. R. Forlong.

  • Forlong, James George Roche, -1904.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Faiths of man : a cyclopædia of religions / by Major-General J. G. R. Forlong. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    required for the Designer of the Universe a maker of matter, and of its energies. [Whereas the Pantheist regards Deity as being itself the Universe.—Ed.] Granted the existence of matter there is no need for an “ incomprehensible ” ; for we possess the phenomena— that is matter in all its modes, or “spirits,” if we prefer that term. We perceive that matter, in all possible forms, follows unalterable laws ; and—which is the most stupendous of wonders—that under certain conditions (organic, or non-organic) it exhibits energies, con- sciousness, and life, the latter developed in the cell, or matrix of atoms [by the combination of the nucleus with that of another cell. Ed.]. Thus carbon and oxygen must, under certain conditions, pro- duce carbonic oxide, or acid, resulting iu a Bios or life (or form of matter) as different as possible from the original elements—charcoal or diamond, and oxygen gas. Given the addition of other modes of matter such as sulphur, hydrogen, and nitrogen, at certain temperatures, we have as product every form of life, from suns down to man ; but without such conditions nought—the silence of the tomb, though that also is full of busy life; and the stillness which is the real unknowable. “ Matter then carries within itself the form or potency of all life”; as Prof. Tyndall shocked some of his audience, at the British Association meeting (of 1877) in Belfast, by saying. What is this but to say that life, or spirit, is a mode of that “ eternal energy from which all things proceed” which is inherent (as a property) in matter ? Darwin, who was strong on Pan-genesis, said with a roughness unusual with him : “ it is mere rubbish thinking of the origin of life ; one might as well think of the origin of matter.” He felt that a “ creation ” of life would be a break in the universal continuity of nature, or conditions, behaviour, and motions, of matter following what we term universal law (Danuin’s Life, iii, p. 18). There is no room for a separate Creator, or unconditioned one : for matter, whether in distant planets, or in yonder tree, must and can only move along its own conditioned paths, and in its own forms, whether in the first protoplasmal state of the ^.toms of carbon, oxygen, sulphur, hydrogen, and nitrogen, or in the gaseous nebula. We wonder not therefore that early man worshiped Nature as a deity, erring only in beseeching her (as he still does) to vary her universal, and unalter- able, laws. Seeing her dread powers in the miseries and cruelties of life they (at first) never pictured their gods as being good, just, and wise, but as evil and tyrannical, or at best partial—caring only for their own tribe, or even for but a few of these. All others were (as even